The Jesus Revolution: Seeing My Story on the Screen

Because I actually wrote about the film The Jesus Revolution prior to it hitting the theaters, I was surprised when a blog reader asked me if I was going to write a response to actually seeing it.

A response? My response was emotional. Even though the film was the story of evangelist and Pastor Greg Laurie, and even though the film was the story of Pastor Chuck Smith, and even though the film was the story of hippie evangelist Lonnie Frisbee … it was my story they were telling on the big screen.

I’m where I am today and do what I do because of what happened in those years in Orange County, California. I even got to meet several of the people portrayed in the movie in real life in many visits to the area, and at one point was interviewed for the job of Assistant Editor of Contemporary Christian Music magazine. To say I was immersed in all this would be serious understatement.

I’ve only experienced sensory overload a few times in my life. (For comparison purposes, one was at the New Year’s Eve fireworks at Epcot in Disney World.) But in the only thing that held me back on Saturday was an abundance of respect for the other patrons at the cinema. Otherwise, I wanted to wail. Those events shaped my life. Dang! It hit me hard!

And, I am not alone. I’m hearing this deep, gut response — or hints of it, since we’re guys, right? — from other people. Powerful. Impactful.

My wife is on staff at a local church, and lately I’ve been trying to be supportive at another nearby church in our community. I went back to the former church on Sunday for a special service they were having, and the pastor spontaneously decided to open the service with a song by the group LoveSong which is titled Two Hands, which he’d heard the day before at the theater.

It’s not the first time he’s played guitar in church. Probably closer to the thousandth if you count all the churches he has ministered in. But as I reminded him after lunch, the very fact that he was able to stand in church holding a guitar — a few Catholic folk masses notwithstanding — traces back to the revolution described in the film.

In other words, it wasn’t just the time the hippies came to church, but it was the time the guitars came to church. And it wasn’t just that, but it was also the time casual dress came to church.

And it was the time revival came to church. People turned to Christ. Which is the point, after all. The Jesus Revolution — the actual events, not the film — is considered the last great outpouring in modern church history. How could I watch that play out onscreen and not be overcome by the emotion of it all.

What would I say in more of a review sense?

They captured the times well. The addition of the reporter for TIME Magazine as a tertiary character was brilliant. The people were believable. The other components that make a film more than just ‘good’ were there in the right places. I would watch the whole thing again.

Driving back, my wife pointed out that though both the Christian and mainstream music of the day was represented, Chuck Smith’s pre-revolution church wasn’t shown as having any music at all. I’m sure there was old church piano or organ hiding somewhere, but we didn’t see or hear it. (It’s like there wasn’t any music at all in those years!)

And that is also, I believe, just the point. While people underwent spiritual transformation and became Christ followers, a pivotal part of the revolution was expressed in music, just as music was a central component earlier this month at Asbury University.

That music revolution reverberates in the capital “C” Church today in the forms of Contemporary Christian Music, and in Modern Worship.

As someone who participates regularly in both, how can I not be overwhelmed with thanks to those who led the way?

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Special heartfelt thanks to the people behind faithfilms.ca for arranging for us to see the movie. Faith Films provides marketing and publicity support for Christian productions screening in Canada and is part of Graf-Martin Communications.

You Say You Want a Revolution

Review: The Jesus Revolution: How God Transformed an Unlikely Generation and How He Can Do It Again Today by Greg Laurie and Ellen Vaughn (Baker Books, 2018)

You know you’re getting older when the people, places and events which were part of your spiritual formation become the object of historical retrospectives. Having watched The Jesus Music movie before Christmas, and then recently completed Jesus and John Wayne, it seemed fitting that the next book in my stack was The Jesus Revolution which actually isn’t a new book, but was released four years ago before inspiring a curriculum study exactly one year ago. I guess it completed a trilogy of reminiscence.

I spent a few blocks of time in southern California between 1979 and 1988 and was privileged to have access to some of the major creators of what, by that time, was becoming less known as Jesus Music and more known as Contemporary Christian Music or CCM. (I was once interviewed for the job of Assistant Editor for the magazine of the same name. When you’re from Canada in the early 1980s, you should never agree to a lunch interview in a Mexican restaurant.)

This book is really three things. First it’s the story of what was going on the world, especially the United States, in the 1960s and ’70s. There is much detail provided, and at times I wondered how much was truly necessary to the two other elements of the book named below, but for those who didn’t live it, it does provide a broad picture of the cultural and political climate that shaped teens and twenty-somethings growing up in those years.

Second, and more importantly, it’s the story of The Jesus People, albeit the American, Southern California version as similar cultural forces were transpiring in the UK as well as other parts of the U.S. Orange County, California was indeed the epicenter; ground zero of a movement that the author places in a line of revivals in American church history going back to the 1800s,

Finally, it is the story of Greg Laurie, the evangelist and founder of Harvest Church in Riverside, California, which begat the Harvest Crusades. With two authors carrying this story, I wondered if it would work, but the two voices speaking this story seem to weave in and out seamlessly. If the book’s subtitle implies that God used “an unlikely generation,” then certainly he used “an unlikely candidate” to reach a literally untold number of people with a straight forward evangelistic challenge.

The story is set in the past, but with the perspective of today’s developments and hindsight. The current spiritual and cultural climate break in to the story at odd times to wake the reader to the impact today of what happened then. To that end, the book is somewhat didactic when appropriate such as in this instance toward the end of the book,

God grants revival. He grants it to those who are humble enough to know they need it, those who have a certain desperate hunger for Him. Only out of self-despair — a helpless understanding of the reality of sin and one’s absolute inability to cure it — does anyone ever turn wholeheartedly to God. That desperation is sometimes hard to come by in American, because it is the opposite of self-sufficiency. In the U.S., many of live under the illusion that our needs are already met, that maybe God is an add-on to our already comfortable existence… People don’t seek God when they are comfortable. (pp 232-3)

I love that analysis and the observation that those long-haired hippies were desperate for God. This is key to the book’s short epilogue, which questions as to whether we will see a youth movement like the Jesus Revolution again.

One can surely hope.

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Harvest Church continues to this day and is in no way related to Harvest Bible Chapel in Chicago.

 

The Most Uncomfortable Seat I Ever Had at Church

Arriving at Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California for the first time in late 1979, I decided I wanted to have the whole Jesus People experience.

Calvary is known as the birthplace of Maranatha! Music and the Pacific Ocean baptisms in Pirate’s Cove. It’s the place where rather than hear the old guard complain about the rivets in the hippies’ blue jeans scratching the pews, they simply removed the pews.

But by the time I got there, the Sunday morning service was fairly traditional. They sang from Inspiring Hymns, the same hymnal my parent’s church used back home. Despite what the band Love Song sang about the “Little Country Church” with “Long hair, short hair, some coats and ties;” there were actually a lot of men in sport coats and ties. It took some adjusting.

One remnant still remained from the earlier days in their older building — which by that time was the Maranatha! Village bookstore — and that was the remnant of people who sat on the floor at the front.

I had to discretely shift my position a few times during the sermon. The floor was plush carpeting but I wasn’t a little kid who could sit cross-legged for an hour school assembly. I think I was somewhat sprawled out by the final one-third of the message. Probably a bit undignified, but I wasn’t alone.

Despite a sore back for the rest of the day, I’m glad I did it. I got to share a piece of history. I feel connected to those just a bit a older than me who sensed a call to the “church on the edge of town” to worship with others of their generation.

photo: Calvary Chapel via this story at Premiere Christianity (UK)

In the 1970s and 80s, Church Planting, Wasn’t Always “Churches”

In 1987, I wrote an 8-page document entitled, “Proposal for a New Kind of Church in Metro Toronto;” went to a copy store and had 200 copies printed to younger Evangelical leaders. The particular church itself didn’t happen — perhaps it was ahead of its time or perhaps God knew that I just wasn’t ready to lead something that significant — but it’s with some regrets I consider that I could have been known today as the founder of _______ Church. I’d like to think that because the recipients of that document were especially hand-picked that its distribution had some impact.

By 2007, I was part of a cohort of people from different cities who met monthly to discuss what had become a boom in church planting. People who didn’t quite know how to spell ecclesiology were talking about it. Lay people. Not clergy. The term was well-traveled.

This was reflected on the blogs, and I started one myself on a now-defunct religion forum at USAToday, and it was also the subject of many, many books that were published, many of which I carried at a small chain of Christian bookstores I owned. Our small group met every six weeks in a city chosen because it was somewhere in the middle. We continued to have some contact when the group disbanded. The phrase “a different kind of church” was on everyone’s lips and alternative churches were becoming mainstream.

I’ve had a lot of opinions on this subject, but a key word search this morning showed that not all of them have landed here at Thinking Out Loud. I would have thought they had, because this subject is something close to me.

Someone once put it this way,

“Church planting is the extreme sport of ministry.”

In 2004, I started a church of my own. Transformation Church was located in downtown Cobourg, a small town about 70 minutes east of Toronto, Canada. Our first series was 17 weeks entitled, “Ground Zero: Where Everything Ends and Everything Begins.” Just four years out from the World Trade Towers falling in New York City, the series name had more resonance then than it does now. That church ran until March of 2006. (It’s a long story.)

I was reminded then that while it’s probably a good idea to be theologically trained to administer a church, you don’t need a degree to start a church. Of two significant ones in our town, one was founded by a woman they simply refer to as Grandma Caffin. Another came out of a meeting of five families at a picnic table in the park. Most of the people attending those churches — Baptist and Alliance respectively — probably have no idea as to their inauspicious beginnings.

But today, in June 2020, I want to return to the title of today’s piece, but to do so involves one more time travel.

Back in 2008, I wrote an article about a weekly Saturday night event in Toronto called Reach Out.

The setting:  The first Reach Out took place in a Lutheran (I think) church that was built overlooking a large river valley parkland. The front of the church was all glass, so when you looked towards the front, you looked out on a beautiful view. (A later incarnation of Reach Out took place in a downtown church. I only attended that once, and it was so packed I had to sit on the stairs.)

The motto:  “Everyone Gives, Everyone Receives.”  Reach Out was based in I Cor. 14:26 which says, “When you gather together everyone has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. All of these must be done for the strengthening of the church.”  (NIVMOL – stands for NIV more or less) So people would jump up — sometimes suddenly — and say, “I have a Psalm;” and then read it; and other would jump up and say, “I have a teaching;” and would give a 60-second teaching; etc. They always said at the outset what it was they were going to say. That way nobody could jump up and say, “I have a cute story about my dog!”

The format:  People gathering talking, mostly in their teens, 20s and 30s; then they would sit down; and then — I don’t know how else to say this — a holy hush would fall over everyone.  What a moment! There would be silence for a minute or two, and then someone would start playing their guitar.   There was blended worship.  This is where I first learned “Oh, The Deep, Deep Love of Jesus” and I had never heard younger people sing classical hymns with such passion. Then there was an extended prayer time. I can’t remember if we broke up into groups of 3 or 4 — I’ve got this part confused with another group I belonged to — but there was plenty of opportunity for people to share requests. Then a teaching.  Then some worship.

I don’t know if we considered it church or not. The test would be to go back in time and ask the people attending if they also had a connection on Sunday mornings. It was just an event that happened and we didn’t try to over analyze. The problem with dissecting a cat is that once you’ve got it all figured out how it works, the cat is dead. Today, Twitter provides us with far too much dissection.

There were other similar things in Toronto. A Christian Church on A Hill, Catacombs, Shekinah. Sadly, I never made it those. I did frequent Christian coffee houses — there were so many in Toronto that several people undertook to publish directories — and a monthly camp reunion (for a camp I’d never attended) called Power and Praise.

Part of what got me thinking about this was watching a YouTube documentary this week about Love Inn, a ministry in Ithica, New York founded in the 1970s by Christian radio personality Scott Ross and part of the Jesus People revolution which was taking place at the time. Watching the 8mm film footage reminded me of the whole vibe.

I know what you’re thinking. When are you going to get to the title of today’s article?

The point I want to make is that on reflection, those early events were created in lieu of church planting. The people who today might be scouting for community centers and high schools to hold weekend service were back then content to put together Tuesday night or Friday night events. They were interdenominational which means the people who attended, often under 30, were part of other fellowships on the weekend, including some who were mainline Protestant and Roman Catholic.

These days, the energy that might go into promoting something like this at a local level is often put toward conferences. They have the advantage of reminding everyone that ‘it’s a big tent’ and that we’re part of a larger family, as well as being able to bring top name speakers and musicians, but they do get expensive and unwieldy.

What about where you live? Is there a weekly Christian event that’s not church your city is known for? Or do people simply attend the megachurch for one service and then go to their own smaller church for connection to family and longtime friends?

I think that gatherings like the ones I described are still needed and hopefully — after the pandemic — we might see new expressions of what it means to be part of the body of Christ.

 

 

 

 

 

More from the Lost Songs Channel: CCM’s Early Days

Part two of the top-ranking songs on the YouTube channel I manage for Searchlight Book. See yesterday’s post for the top 5 Click through to YT for descriptions. And when I say top-ranking, realize this is a rather obscure YT channel. These are very old CCM songs and the criteria for choosing them was to select songs that had not been uploaded (that we could find) on the day they were posted.

#6 Noel Paul Stookey – Building Block (1982)

#8* Danniebelle Hall – Work The Works (1974)

#9 Wayne Watson – Born in Zion (1985)

#10 Craig Smith – God and Man at Table are Sat Down (1979)

#12* John Fischer – Righteous Man

*Items 7 and 11 on this site are spoken-word (non-music) extras.

Yes, John Fischer had two songs on this list. I always felt the chorus of the one featured today, Righteous Man, would make a great song for Promise Keepers.

Samples from the Lost Songs YouTube Channel

Today, the top-ranking songs on the YouTube channel I oversee which is sponsored by Searchlight Books but has never, to the best of my knowledge, posted anything that has anything to do with books. We think of it as a “Lost songs of Christian music” channel, and that’s what it should have been named; additionally we started out with songs that had not been posted by others, so these were intended to be unique in terms of what’s on YouTube. Click through to YT for descriptions. And when I say top-ranking, realize this is a rather obscure YT channel.  Again, remember these are very old CCM songs.

#1 Barry McGuire – Communion Song (1977)

#2 Ken Medema – Lord, Listen To Your Children Praying (1973)

#3 Scott Wesley Brown – I Wish You Jesus (197?)

#4 John Fischer – All Day Song (197?)

#5 Michael and Stormie Omartian – Seasons of the Soul (1978)

When Heroes Lose Their Honor

I do not believe I would be in the place I am today spiritually were it not for the great influence of Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) and the role I got to play in helping introduce the genre to a nation that was hesitant to accept it.  The people I met, the songs and scriptures they were based on, the communities, the whole movement of it all; each of these contributed to my spiritual nurture in ways for which I will be forever grateful.

In general, Larry Norman is considered to have started the thing — referred to as the “father of Jesus music” or even “grandfather of CCM” — but it would be more accurate to say that he popularized it rather than birthed it.¹ Larry passed away in 2008.

While I was aware that Fallen Angel, a documentary had been produced showing a darker side of Larry Norman there is a difference between knowing about a film and actually seeing it. Imagine! A popular Christian figure having personal issues. That had never happened before.

I think that too often we want to see the good in people and so we miss the clues that things might be wrong. One of Larry’s songs was Baby Out of Wedlock and it was so easy to see this as a piece of poetry, not a personal confession. That very I Corinthians 13 of us.

As it turns out, I still haven’t seen Fallen Angel, but last week we discovered 28 sections of it have been posted on YouTube; some of them have been there quite awhile. The user’s channel is Corrine M. and the documentary excerpts include a number of names I was aware of back in the day, promoters, managers, record company execs, past wives or girlfriends, and Randy Stonehill. Some of these I met through helping three different concert promoters bring Larry, Randy and Tom Howard to Canada, while others I met on a half-dozen extended holidays in Southern California. Collectively, they paint a rather sad picture of a person I could have easily hero-worshiped.

For his part, Stonehill is rather charitable, considering everything. He simply points out the disconnect between the person who led him to Christ and the personality idiosyncrasies about that person that later surfaced. The whole story is so very sad.

…

Growing up, my father was part of a music team that was associated with a popular Canadian evangelist and pastor who later lost his faith. Charles Templeton’s move from the Christian limelight to bewildered agnosticism is chronicled in many places, including the opening chapter of Lee Stroebel’s The Case for Faith.

One of the takeaways from my childhood that my father made sure I didn’t miss is that you can’t look to people to sustain your faith. They will inevitably let you down. Or take you down. We must instead look to Christ and Christ alone. He is the rock that never rolls.

…

Elsewhere here at Thinking Out Loud:

• March 11, 2009: Fallen Angel‘s premiere
• On April 21, 2010 we linked to a website called “Failed Angle” which purported to refute Fallen Angel. Clicking the same link now takes you the Truth About Larry Norman blog.
• February 25, 2008: Larry Norman Obituary
• undated: Larry Norman CD sale — I acquired an inventory of sealed CDs from a distributor and we still have more copies of all these if you’re willing to pay the shipping from Canada

¹Supporting the idea that the roots of Jesus Music were much broader than what might be traced to a single “alpha person” is the YouTube channel Favorite Jesus Music. Scroll down to reveal some of the oldest posted songs. There is another YT channel like this as well; if someone recalls it I will add the link here.

Remembering Chuck Smith

“Little country church on the edge of town
People comin’ every day from miles around
For meetings and for Sunday School
And it’s very plain to see
It’s not the way it used to be”

The first time I saw the sprawling campus of Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa was November, 1979. We didn’t have the term ‘megachurch’ then, nor was I prepared for a style of church architecture which, owing to the California climate, didn’t require indoor hallways to connect the various classrooms, departments, and offices.

The first service I attended there featured Chuck Smith doing what he did every single Sunday without exception: Preaching consecutively through the Bible, verse-by-verse, with that deep voice that transmitted much Biblical authority, but also much peace and calm. Thus, it was your choice to become engaged in the exposition or to fall asleep; either was possible, the latter was not encouraged.

Chuck Smith died this week at age 86. Many of the tributes have mentioned Calvary’s most renowned spinoff, Maranatha! Music and its related Maranatha Studios and the Ministry Resource Center (MRC); the Saturday night concerts; or the baptisms at Pirate’s Cove which made the cover of Time Magazine.

Baptism at Pirate’s Cove

The story has it that when the church occupied a smaller building — that later became a bookstore — studded jeans were popular and the older members were concerned that the studs were scratching the church pews. So Chuck ordered the pews removed. By the time I arrived in the late ’70s, there was still floor seating available at the front — a tribute to those days, perhaps — and one week I spent a Sunday morning service sitting on the floor, partly to have that experience and partly to release a scarce seat to someone who might need it more. The place was packed. 

If you attend a church that uses contemporary music or modern worship, you are, as I wrote here, a direct product of those early Jesus Movement days on the American west coast. Even if your church is more conservative and uses a hymnbook on a Sunday morning, odds are it contains a few Maranatha! Music copyrights.

But Chuck’s greatest legacy was Calvary Chapel, the denomination.

It is said that back then you didn’t need theological degrees to plant a Calvary, rather they were looking for individuals who already had a “proven ministry.” I don’t know how it works today, but I love that concept. A few of the pastors came out of the bands that played at the original Calvary at those Saturday night concerts. Today, Calvary Chapel churches in Fort Lauderdale, FL, Albuquerque, NM, Philadelphia, PA, Phoenix, AZ, Diamond Bar, CA, Chino, CA, Downey, CA, West Melbourne, FL, Jacksonville FL, and a handful of others are among the top megachurches in the US.

One generation megachurch pastor to another: Chuck Smith and Rick Warren

Some of the other musicians from those early days, such as Chuck Girard from Love Song, continue to bless us with worship leadership; while the spirit of Calvary Chapel lives on in other churches that sprang from that era, such as Harvest Church in Riverside, CA. Harvest pastor Greg Laurie paid tribute to Chuck Smith this week.

Chuck Smith’s ministry in California was an example of the right man, in the right place, at the right time, with the right vision.

He will be missed.

…The song lyrics which began this article are from “Little Country Church” by LoveSong, written about those early days at Calvary Chapel, Costa Mesa. The file is audio-only.

Wednesday Link List

Actually, a little rain would be nice.

Week three of our Wednesday Link List adventure at Out of Ur, a blog of Leadership Journal which is a ministry of Christianity Today.  Just under 30 links this week…

• Okay, it doesn’t rank up there with A Shepherd Looks at Psalm 23 but in this case, an architect looks at the $130 million worship center that is First Baptist Church of Dallas.
• Or how about a youth specialist looks at teens and peer pressure.
• The Pope orders a statue of himself taken down to avoid a “cult of personality.” Strong words were exchanged between Francis and the priest responsible. “Get that thing down, immediately,” the Argentinean newspaper Clarin reported. With that attitude, he’d never make it in North American charismatic circles.
• In 2009, Christianity Today published, “The Case for Early Marriage.” Now exactly four years later, a writer challenges that thesis at another CT website.
• Randy Alcorn’s Heaven is out in a new format, but some Christians are uncomfortable with the graphic novel genre.
• The Jesus People movement reached it’s peak in 1972? Hey, it was just getting started then. If you’re a relic from those hippie Christian days, check out this review of God’s Forever Family.
• An Evangelical seminary with 4,500 students from 100 denominations has certified an LGBT student club.
• Depending on the weather and the waves, Lynne Hybels is planning to kayak 36 miles across Lake Michigan and there’s $10,000 on the line.
• At last, a quote that gives me some hope: ‘If you have no particularly discernible talent, then you have the gift of leadership.’ Erwin McManus at Q.
• A New Mexico ministry now has the Bible on audio in 733 languages which collectively represents a potential outreach to more than 5.7 billion people in more than 189 different countries.
• For pastors: A description of how one minister stays intentional about sabbath.
• My home and native land’s contribution to Christian culture this week: The Heaven is for Real movie adaptation is shooting in Manitoba.
• Worship leader and recording artist Matt Redman talks to the Grammy Awards people about a pop song that greatly affected him.
• Doctrinal Differences Department (hey, it’s alliterative): 5 reasons one writer rejects unconditional election. (Do I have to give equal time next week?)
• If your musical roots include listening to four guys from Liverpool, you might listen to this and imagine you’ve heard it somewhere before.
• In 2000 British Prime Minister Tony Blair introduced academies, a new class of school. Now, the Church of England is to oversee this school system.
• Here are five significant trends in modern worship. (Sample: #2 –A significant interest in locally produced music over against production company-generated music.)
• Essay of the Week: Philip Yancey looks at Christian radicals he has known, from the ’60s to today.
• If you’re new to the Christian sector of the internet, singer Shaun Groves thinks you missed some of Christian blogging’s best days.
• It costs $108,000 per year to incarcerate a youth, but for a quarter of that Cora Jean’s Old Skool Café in San Francisco can provide them with life and job skills, community, self-confidence, and the support that keeps them out of prison.
• From our fashion department: Soul Surfer Bethany Hamilton goes shopping for a wedding dress. Actually we don’t have a fashion department feature.
• Samuel Adams beer drinkers are “endowed by their Creator” with the right to drink beer, but the Creator isn’t mentioned in their advertising.
• Christian rapper LeCrae responds to rumors he is signing with mainstream rapper Jay-Z.
• A rant erupts at one blog over the comedy This is the End in which actors play themselves post-rapture. (Note, at this blog the phrase “the director” refers to the writer’s son, not the movie director.)
• You can do crowd-funding in Canadian dollars, too; as The Toronto Mass Choir embarks on securing $40,000 CDN for a live worship album.
• A Christian poet looks at a couple of people who suffered from clinical depression, and one who had a name for it.
• Photographers and graphics types: Here’s a different blog for you, The Photo Faith Challenge…
• …But that blog is tame in comparison to the goings on at Hogwarts Seminary. (There should be some kind of advisory for this one.)

Click here to read the list.

Given the weather system that has blanketed much of the Midwest and the northeastern States and adjoining provinces we thought this doctrinal outline from the Twitter feed of Church Curmudgeon was most appropriate, though we think the original was TULIP not TALIP:

Total Humidity
AirConditional Malfunction
Limited Grace
Irresistible Temper
Perspiration of the Saints

Maybe that describes where you live.

And just before you click over to Out of Ur, take a glance at this Bible app infographic from YouVersion:

This History of Contemporary Christian Music

Most the “histories” you hear on Christian radio only involve material the production staff were able to source on CD, and of those, some are limited to items still available for purchase on collections, since record companies are actively involved in “helping” the radio guys create these specials.

My purpose at the YouTube collection I created for the SearchlightBooks YouTube account — our sponsor, so to speak — was to find things that nobody had posted on YouTube to date, or possibly any other video service, either…

The Mass for Peace was originally written in Italian in 1963, so if you think Jesus Music began with Larry Norman or the Calvary Chapel concerts around 1969 and following, forget it; the Catholic folk masses really got there first. This one got translated into English in 1967.

The Christian festival scene began with Explo ’72 in Dallas, but was refined by a series of different events in rural Pennsylvania, including Jesus ’75 and ’76 which took place on a diary farm in the western part of the state.  Regulars at this event were the group Hope of Glory, and this 1975 song took it’s cue from a Hallmark Cards advertisement, “When you care enough to send the very best.”

No history of CCM’s early years would be complete without mentioning The Archers. (No, you’re thinking of the Archies…) Tom, Steve and Janice Archers recorded this song later in the career for a concept album by Dony McGuire and Reba Rambo based on the Lord’s prayer.

Contemporary Christian radio took a different form back in the day. There were a few dedicated stations, but many organizations had to settle for purchasing block airtime on secular stations on the weekend, or providing free programming features for use during the week, or even public service announcements like this one. Long before there was Lifeline Productions, there was Chuck Blore Creative Services.

Some people say that today’s modern worship grew out of CCM, while others argue that with groups like New Zealand’s Scripture in Song, the two movements were set on a parallel track and modern worship simply overtook CCM and became the more dominant genre. Here’s an independent recording by Tom & Candy Green that is typical of things people were recording way back when.

We’ll do more of these, or you can visit the YouTube page and see more, but I need to warn ya, it’s an extremely eclectic collection. I have a couple of thousand albums I can access for this, and I’m willing to look at requests for songs not online, but the material has to be both (a) old and of historical interest, and (b) not on a label which may have renewed the copyright.