For the Love of Jesus Music

"Two thousand smiling faces
A thousand glistening eyes
Shining through the darkness of Satan's viscous lies.
Reflecting Jesus kindness and witnessing His love
That all might see salvation, grace from our Lord above."  Skip Temple, 1971

Earlier this week I drove by a church, a Clear River fellowship, in Dawnville, Georgia.  Dawnville isn't a town exactly but more of a community with a Dalton address. We have very good friends in the area. I have driven that road dozens of times. The fellowship is either very new or more likely I had just never noticed it.  And I couldn't help but wonder if the good folk of Dawnville had any idea where their church had come from.

The Jesus Movement officially arrived in Enterprise, Alabama in the fall of 1971 when Kim, Pat and Skip wound up at the Enterprise State Junior College.  Fresh from the official Jesus Movement  in Southern California, through their presence and their music they brought a rather radical Christian element to our college and our town. A movement of the Spirit, or of Something was already in progress in Enterprise. We drove our parents, Sunday School teachers and deacons crazy with our blazing fire and enthusiasm. We had no name for what we were feeling and experiencing. What started in one church with one group of young people spread like wildfire to area churches and even surrounding cities. Besides remaining active in our respective churches of all denominations, we got together informally and formally in hymn sings and youth rallies. The love we felt for Jesus and for each other was no less than the first Christian explosion related in the book of Acts.

In the fall of 1971 because of Kim, Pat and Skip we had a name for it. We were a part of a much larger phenomenon in progress from the west coast called The Jesus Movement,. Chuck Smith organized the Calvary Chapel in 1965 as an alternative to traditional church. The theology was a combination of fundamentalism and charismatic euphoria.  It was perfect for the hippie converts looking  for a place to coalesce in the late 60s as they were looking for a healthy and yet equally exciting alternative to psychedelic drugs and unbridled sex. They found that place in a personal relationship with Jesus and the Calvary Chapel. in Costa Mesa, California.

Calvary Chapel, as churches tend to do, became a loosely organized denomination called Vineyard churches.  Vineyard churches, the first to offer "Christian contemporary music", can be found all over the United States and the world. The Vineyard Fellowship split about ten years ago over issues about women in ministry.. The new denomination, Clear River, interpreted the words of the Apostle Paul  that women should not have places of seniority over men,.

In 1970 Chuck Girard encouraged several of his musician friends to leave their respective bands and they formed the very first Jesus band--Love Song.  I don't know how I found that music. It's not like I had Spotify or YouTube. I guess the music found me. This "contemporary Christian music" found me about a year before Kim, Pat and Skip found the Enterprise State Junior College.   Point is, when you're at your contemporary church and listening to your favorite Christian Jesus music it all started in California with the Calvary Chapel and then Chuck Girard's Love Song. You are reading this because some years ago there was a conception and a birth which became you. You are listening to contemporary Christian music because it was born in the hearts of a few who were full of they weren't sure what. But they wanted to sing.

Two years after our Jesus friends came to Enterprise I was living in Birmingham, Alabama and a music  student at Samford University.  Gone were the late night prayer meetings, the hymn sings, the youth rallies, the spontaneous and meaningful foot washings. Gone were the charismatic utterances at the House of Prayer and Praise.. Instead of arriving in musical heaven, I felt that I was in the valley of the shadow of death. I sought out a visiting chapel speaker from Pearly, England.  I talked and cried a bit of my spiritual loneliness and desolation.  He smiled, put a loving hand on my shoulder and asked, "David, have you ever wondered why God placed those angels with the flaming swords at the gate of the Garden of Eden so that Adam and Eve couldn't go back in?"  "No, I haven't"  "He didn't do it to punish them. He did it because there was something better.  He did it so that they and their descendants would go toward life and freedom in Jesus Christ.  You don't have to go back David. Go forward. God has something better for you. He always has something better."

On June 21st 1971, two days after my eighteenth birthday, the cover of Time Magazine was a hip picture of Jesus and the title The Jesus Revolution.  Two months later Kim, Pat and Skip for reasons I don't know enrolled at my junior college.    To this day, I miss all that. Unlike my physical birth,, I remember that birth. Jesus told Nicodemus, "You must be born of water and of the Spirit." When that water broke, my entire spiritual lifetime spilled out.

This Sunday when the good people of Dawnville, Georgia gather at their Clear River fellowship, if they feel Something from somewhere else, I doubt they'll know from whence it comes. But if Dr. Frank Cook of Pearly, Englad was preaching, he would say, "You feel that?  Do you know why? You don't need to know because He knows. And He knows you."

But this morning while listening to this beautiful Jesus music, I'm so glad that I know.  And for that I'm deeply grateful.  Thanks Hillcrest Baptist Church. Thanks First United Methodist. Thanks Jim, Frank, Joe, Susan, Lynn, Fonda, Kim, Pat and Skip and hundreds more. All that made all the difference in the world.

How appropriate that this distinctively contemporary music I've been listening to for about an hour and a half just now cycled to a beautiful traditional arrangement of the Doxology on a modern synthesizer. I can't think of a better way to bring my morning thoughts and feelings to a close." Praise God from whom all blessings flow. Praise Him all creatures here below. Amen."