Music Pioneers of the Faith

in genesis 26 18 it tells us isaac dug again the wells of abraham [Music] welcome everybody to revival radio tv i'm gene bailey glad you're here well today you're in for a treat i say that because this is my generation stuff that i'm so excited we get to dive into special guest today rebecca freelander thanks rebecca for coming back oh thanks for having me you know some of our most favorite programs out there we're on the celtic revivals and everything that you did yeah well you've done something else and we dove into these pioneers of christian music back in the 70s the 60s and the 70s actually so what made you want to jump into this and find out about all these guys well as a filmmaker i was working on another television program and just happened to interview several of these pioneers of christian music the people who were doing music back in the 60s 70s and i was struck by the wealth of wisdom that they carried and i was like man i need to capture this to share this with my generation um being a singer-songwriter myself i was like wow i just want to sit at the feet of these people this is amazing and so i did like a series of road trips to go around the country and interview 12 of the pioneers of christian music and so what makes these people really interesting is they were revivalists of their time and so during the jesus movement which was this this mass revival that took place around the world and all these people were getting saved it carried a sound that radically affected their generation and the generations following and so what i discovered is that the christian music that we enjoy today you know the worship movement chris tomlin hill song jesus culture none of that would have happened unless this this group of just singer-songwriter people these pioneers were passionate to go after the lord in their generation and then what i discovered was that these people didn't just go after lord in that moment but they ended up ministering for decades and interviewing uh impacting like millions of people so you're saying they you're saying they spoke to the next generation expand on what you mean by that sure well i i went to some friends of mine who were singer-songwriters and wanted to use their gifts for the lord and i just sat down with them and i said hey if you could talk with some veteran christian artists and ask them anything about music what would you ask them and they were like how we would love to do that here's our questions but we don't really think anyone cares what we have to say and then i went to the pioneers of christian music and i talked with several of them and i said hey would you be interested in responding to some questions from young gen musicians and they said yeah but we don't think anyone cares to hear what we have to say wow and i thought what a great opportunity to be a bridge builder and connect the generations and actually glean from the wisdom of these elders and then speak directly to the hearts of the next generation and so really i sat down and interviewed a bunch of these young artists on film and i took those questions to 12 of the pioneers of christian music and they responded to them and they were deep questions that really spoke to the heart but you just didn't set up an interview and ask them questions you actually spent time with them what was that like oh it was life-changing how so how was it like well 12 of these people for instance um you know think of people like uh second chapter of acts and keith green and randy stonehill i just reached out to them some of them i knew already from different connections um people like melody green and was like hey you know would you be willing to do an interview and some of them said yeah just come and stay there home for a couple days well that's awesome and and we just want to spend time with you and then yeah we'll do interviews too all right so let me i want to dive i mean we've got a bunch to cover here i want to dive into this first one uh second chapter of acts you know these are you people's favorites i know my good friend mylon lefevre got saved in a second chapter of acts concert second chapter of x what was it like with them well they were abandoned that started in the 70s and they were a massive part of like the jesus movement culture and this whole revival music era that was going on and i remember listening to them when i was a little girl because they were my mom's favorite group you know listen to them on vinyl and running around the living room to their music so i reached out to one of the members of the band and and really even before i reached out i wanted to see just being really honest i wanted to see if they were legit you know like me and my generation going i want to talk to like a jesus movement pioneer but i kind of want to know if they're the real deal right so i went to a concert that annie herring from from second chapter of acts was doing and um went to her concert and she was singing one of her songs and on stage i saw tears streaming down her face and i just realized she's not just going through the motions even after decades and thousands of concerts this is so real to her and it made me want to meet her all the more and so when i started doing interviews i reached out to her and she said yes why don't you just come and spend the night in our home in colorado and so i met with them and i found out that her husband prays with her every concert they do before she goes on stage and says god help this song be as real to annie as the first time she played it and so really god was answering that prayer and making it real to me and then i just got to sit with her and ask her all of these questions as she shared her heart [Music] he takes things that are impossible and opens the doors lay your heart out before the lord and just say you know i don't get it but i cannot shake i cannot shake what i have inside of me so come and ignite it in me come and breathe upon me fresh today so that i can not just procure your blessing but i want to live your life through me just sit down and just sing the first words that come out of your mouth just sing it doesn't matter okay so i sat down and i got he loves me it didn't rhyme it didn't do anything like i thought it would do but it expressed my heart he loved was the first song i received from the lord what you are doing is is it's like a prophecy it comes out when you do it what i do is just sit there play play and then a song comes out i remember just just one more quick story that was life-changing when i was in her home i was i remember i was just having a quiet moment with the lord after spending some time with her and the lord just gave me this word and he said these are my cathedrals right and i thought okay what is the cathedral why is that important i began to think cathedrals they're these beautiful places of worship from a past generation right you know but nobody goes into a cathedral and says oh this is outdated right or this is you know not something interesting to us they go in a cathedral and they go wow and and i realized that that annie herring and all of these pioneers of christian music like they represent a pattern of worship and a beauty from their generation and it may not look exactly like how we would do it today but the effect is still there and it's still amazing well and i remember uh the concerts and really it was a very moving and i was a teenager i guess still probably at that point but the the reality is i mean it was real and you know everybody talks about your generation really want to make sure it was real well that was our generation too we were like yeah seriously but you know they they tapped into something that the rest of the world didn't have so and then they were putting it in music that we were we were drawn to so i mean it really it was really an amazing an amazing season of worship i i want to one of my i have lots of fun friends in christian music but randy stonehill uh now he's a riot but tell me about randy what did you learn from randy randy is amazing because he's kind of like this folk rocker guy and guitarist and he can be super hilarious and funny and cracking jokes and then be real serious and just get real hardcore and he shared just some real intimate moments of his journey as i was filming him and just even a moment where he said you know you know god i don't really want to deal with all these church people i just want to go out and play my music you know because back in the day i mean there was persecution for doing papers i remember when drums in the church was not a good thing yeah i mean they would go out you know they'd get shut out from churches and and randy was real honest he's like i don't want to deal with this stuff and and god just spoke to him and said yeah you can go out and just do your own thing in music and you might have some measure of success but you will never experience the peace and the fulfillment of doing what i've called you to do yeah and he began to realize whoa this isn't just music this is a calling and and all of these guys really talk about that how you know it's so important to find what god has called you to do right rather than just going out and doing what you want to do and and that itself is a real valuable takeaway do you think do you think this era and i'm not in any way putting down christian music today but you think they had an insight into something that maybe is missing today or not as well exposed just because of you know the growth of contemporary christian music back then just kind of really exploded on the scene and it brought in so many different aspects of it do you think they they saw something or knew something we don't know necessarily in mass today well one of the questions from the young artist was how do you keep your ministry pure with the pressures of the industry because no doubt there are a lot of pressures when you really get into it and and these guys just i mean basically they were doing it when it wasn't popular right so that kind of they were doing it as missionaries really without support you know so they really responded and i think the authenticity and the purity that came through some of that early music can be felt right uh because you weren't writing for a radio you weren't writing for a platform you were doing what god called you to do with integrity because you believe he was calling you to do it yeah and we let the chips fall and i think that these guys carried that a lot i think so too all right some of my favorites here keith and melody green you know i mean this guy tore up the piano and you know you can still find stuff on youtube and other other channels that you can hear of what they did but keith green was an amazing uh you know you called earlier before we started recording uh revivalist he really was he really fits that bill of being a revivalist he captured the heart of his generation and he was so passionate just to see god show up like that's what he wanted he wasn't into the fame although he really did kind of get to celebrity status i think within that community at that time right um but i mean this guy he would pack out stadiums you know these guys were like such a force for god that they were impacting people and he would say things that were not comfortable right and he would poke people where it was uncomfortable for them well i remember and i was telling you i was in a keith green concert in washington dc area uh washington for jesus in the 70s and he was and it was exactly that a packed out stadium and he just came out and put everybody in their place and what are you looking for and i remember feeling so convicted you know because i just came to hear the concert and good music and i was like oh my gosh he's right i need to get i need to get this right and that right so i mean he really he really was an amazing amazing well tell me about melody because you were able to spend time with melody well melody is is amazing and she carries on the ministry um you know keith died in a plane crash in the early 80s and when he was at the height of his career and so while he was impacting the masses um and his ministry was huge for for that time things came to a real standstill and his wife just really carried the ball and just you know kept moving and so she invited me to come to her spend a couple of days in her home and and just sit with her and she's really big into carrying the heart of worship just like keith was and encouraging people to really search their hearts and find out why they're doing what they're doing he had such a heart for god and for people but at the same time if somebody walked up and which this happened more than once they wanted to talk to keith about god or jesus i mean we literally said to talk to him for a while then he'd say hey i gotta leave i'm in albuquerque tomorrow what are you doing you want to come and we put people on our bus and take them with us and some of the people we took home home with us or brought to the ministry with us or we drop them off at some place and give them bus money to get back i mean we always had time and you have to love people they're not just an audience are you doing your calling just because it feeds your ego somehow you know and or because you we want to look good or whatever or are you just willing to serve jesus in whatever he's called you to do and do it to the best of your ability and that's and that's good rules to live by even if you're not in music i mean what is your motivation yeah i want to talk about this guy who was one of my favorites i i remember being mesmerized by uh phil keggie and how well he could play the guitar and all that he was doing so tell me about phil well phil is a legend today yeah as well as back then and he really is amazing the cool thing about phil is that he's actually he's missing a finger right and so on film he shared a little bit about the story of how that happened to him as a kid [Music] i lost my middle finger on a water pump accident where you know one of those kind of pumps you crank the big handle and it's big iron pump and the water comes out the spout i i i think as a kid missing a finger was something that was a conscious thing that i was dealing with you know kids look they wonder you know what happened to you and i was a little embarrassed i was odd odd because i was going to be in front of people the rest of my life playing but what happened was around the time i was born again i just said lord thank you for the other nine fingers i have and i want to make these hands uh to be a blessing to you and to to your people and so actually what happened what happened was i accepted that little small what you call a blemish or whatever it might be i never looked at it as a handicap because i was just so into guitar and playing and learning how to sing that when i became a christian i just dove more into music and more into spirituality and more into finding out what god says in his word and and it gave me encouragement and i just became more confident [Music] i think one of the earliest challenges i had was feeling a sense of competence and [Music] that i could actually fulfill the dreams you know or see my dreams fulfilled as a musician [Music] do yeah i think music is a very spiritual thing and i think it's uh in the idea of melody and what's communicated through the vibrations of strings and it reaches the heart strings it's like there's a resonant resonance that takes place and i do believe that there's music that god inspires that i think can't really define what it is but you feel it you know god has used this music in a powerful way an amazing man dennis jernigan tell me about dennis well dennis has an amazing story he uh really started his career more in the 80s and but i put him with this group because of how foundational i believe he was for the worship movement he wrote songs like you are my all in all and we will worship the lamb of glory that really helped influence christian music as well and his whole story was that he came out of a homosexual lifestyle and god radically saved him and actually touched him at a second chapter of acts concert and began to give him songs and so now he's married has nine children and i got to spend i got to be really connected with both he and his wife and their home in oklahoma and they're just really precious people and again they really challenge people just do what god has called you to do don't worry about what other people are saying or the pressures of what the industry may or may not want you to do just go after god and release that pure authentic stream of what god's called you to do yeah amen okay one of one that was extremely popular that i remember was this lady honey tree anybody that knew anything of christian music during that time it was honey tree was was way up there talk about who she was oh so she was a self-proclaimed hippie of that generation and just got radically uh touched by the lord and so she would write songs with her guitar and just sing and coffee shops and pretty soon you know she was signed a label and began to touch people around the world with her music and just again that just simple authentic faith that she would just write songs to minister to people and and even after the jesus movement she's done things like she's learned to sing her songs in different arabic languages oh wow and in spanish and so that she can minister uh to people in the nations so again you see this kind of depth in these people that they really were ministers they weren't just oh i'm just gonna you know sing and be on stage with a microphone like they had a passion for the gospel and they invested their time into getting the word out so so much these people you said this really were they were a part of the jesus movement and what was happening there and there's so many lessons that we've talked about even on this program about things the church did right things the church did wrong about the jesus move but i want to hear what's your take on it when you look back through the eyes of these all these artists that you've you've seen and met with what stands out to you about it we certainly don't want to idolize anyone or any certain time of history but at the same time we can look back and see what god was doing right and humans are messy people yeah and and so sometimes even when god is showing up that doesn't mean that everything looks perfect but what it does mean is that god is showing up and i think we can see the fruit of of what he does through faithful people who even through their flaws and through their cracks they just say god use me and i think that's what we see with these people yeah and what about this man who is really one of the founding fathers is uh paul clark jesus movement tell me about him yeah paul is super fun i went to interview him because he was my dad's favorite singer and my dad had a head injury from a car accident and um walked with the limp but we decided that we wanted him to be a part of the interview when we went to paul's house so he just invited me to his home in kansas city so my dad and my brother and i decided to do a road trip okay and one of our favorite memories is sitting in paul's home with my dad and um paul just said here let me play your dad's favorite song and he and my dad are singing this song from the 1970s yeah it's just this beautiful moment and my dad has passed away now but we have that oh and so you were able to have it oh how special but yeah paul has just influenced incredible amounts of people he did music for derek prince in the early days and later went on to have his own solo career it has just been around the world uh and just been really faithful to continue for decades and it continues even today to spread the gospel through music yeah well that was special that your father got to be there yeah chuck gerrard if you knew anything about christian music during that chuck girard was in the right there in the middle of it so tell me about him yeah well he really was part of the jump start of this whole movement i would say he's one of the real fathers of contemporary christian music and that whole revivalist music movement that was going on at that time so he would have started in in california uh with calvary chapel and uh the pastor chuck smith had actually connected with them and they said we want to sing our songs and so pastor chuck invited them into his his studio back in the day or back into his office and uh he's like yeah i really like your music can you come and sing you know sunday evening or whatever one of the next meetings were and they said well you know our guitar is just getting out of jail on bail that morning so hopefully we'll be able to do it but it worked they all turned up and and that's how they started their career was just you know we just all got saved and we're just all hippies but we're going to sing for the lord now and so that just became a huge nobody knew at that time the momentum that it would it would create yeah and you know i hadn't really thought of that until you said it you know there was no growing up in the church and being on the worship team and then going out you know like there is today you know with a lot of churches recognize that back then it was really the piano and the organ and if you need something more in that then you need to check your motives i mean in church that's just the way it was yeah it sounds silly now but i mean and it was but i mean these guys they had to come from a radical background of getting saved and having a real encounter with and that's what made them so believable because they had had a counter with jesus right because they went from the culture which was there was so much upheaval so many political things that were going on and they were right in the thick of it and then all of a sudden boom from darkness to light yeah they were all about encountering jesus so it did make it very believable yeah amen all right so anything we have just listened folks we just skimmed over the top anything you want to add about the jesus movement what you've learned and these guys as well i think it was inspiring to see their passion and how this was a revival that didn't just go on for a couple of years and then peter out like these this revival burst some key people whose momentum carried through generations and is impacting us today like what you said before this movement it was all hymns in the churches yeah and with a piano or an organ and there was no worship movement and so what they brought is something we're continuing to enjoy today right it looks a little bit different but everybody who's doing music now is all standing on their shoulders that's right so for me it was a way to go honor the fathers and mothers which scripture talks about and also to capture what they carry so that somebody else can pick this up and go oh i want to be inspired by by some of the genuineness that they carry the other thing just one more thing that i noticed with these guys was that what they carry and was able the wisdom that they carried was not just something that worked in the 70s you know when you're laboring for the lord and that you carry a maturity that applies to anyone anywhere who also wants to follow the lord so it really felt down like i was sitting felt like i was sitting down with some apostles and prophets and just saying hey what are you just speaking in my life and the lives of the next gen and capturing that on film yeah that's great well listen that's exactly what she did uh with this uh dvd pioneers and they can get this on your website right yeah rebeccafreelander.com listen you guys you really should get this you know if it's not you you know anything about it your grandparents may have known about it uh or your parents listen this is great and what do you go into a lot more obviously a lot more depth in these you went to their homes and you did a lot of interviews and if you would say what what was your final takeaway when you look back on this project that you did what was your final takeaway from that oh inheritance it's a rich inheritance from revivalists who witnessed a move of god and are still with us on earth today and can impart to us so it really doesn't matter if you're a musical artist or not right what they share is something that anybody can apply to their own life and really i mean you think about revivals and be like i wish i could talk to somebody who is from well we can yeah and and this is one way that we can access some of the wisdom that they carry good all right rebecca i'm going to ask you to pray for people because i really think there are those out there that maybe even their kids or grandkids that are wanting you know to move into music and they need to know but really you're talking about igniting the passion of christ within you and that's really what has been would you pray for the folks and just look at this camera right here and and pray for him sure well father god i thank you that you have put passion inside your people god and your anointing is always pouring out in different ways it may not look like the wine skin of one generation but you are always calling us to focus on the principles to keep the vision and the calling you placed on our life pure and clean and ready for you to use us and so god i pray that there be a quickening and everyone who hears this prayer that you would so anoint and stir up the gifts and callings that you placed inside of them and give them the passion to be discipled and mentored so that they can run and finish the race well that you've called everyone to finish thank you and praise you for your glory father amen amen thank you so much rebecca thank you so glad you're here all right listen don't forget revivalradiotv.com watch any of our past episodes you can watch that and find out more about how you can be the one we'll see you next time you

Channel: Revival RadioTV

Views: 3,610

Rating: 4.9310346 out of 5

Keywords: Gene Bailey, Revival Radio TV, Eagle Mountain Church, Faith, Revival, awakenings, miracles, history, prayer, music, pioneers of the faith, worship music, history of christian music, Rebecca Friedlander

Id: o2p4V2WJjeo

Length: 28min 30sec (1710 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021