(This picture really reminds me of the last time I saw him.)
“For Him Who Has Ears to Hear”
"What a long title," I thought when I first saw the album at a friend’s house. It was one of the best-selling Christian albums of all time. In fact, it was in circulation for some twelve years. My friend bought it in 1977 and I saw it in stores as late as 1987. When my turntable didn’t work anymore, I put my vinyl away and almost forgot about it. There were however, some of Keith’s songs that I still sing at the piano today.
Then, my husband turned up with the Keith Green anthology on CDs. of course, the music brought back a flood of memories, some of the best times of my life and some of the most difficult. God had spoken to me through that music, but it was now that I really saw the impact a man some six years older than me—a man I never really met--had on my life and my music. As I’ve already discovered, there are many people who could say the same.
My first year of college began in the fall of 1977. There was a guy on campus on whom I had a terrible crush. One late-November day he came up and asked if I’d like to go to “the Keith Green concert?” The who-what concert? I thought. I’d never heard of Keith Green. When I asked what the tickets cost and was told the concert was free, I thought it must be some third-rate ametuer, but this was a night out of sorts with my heart-throb. I wasn’t about to pass up the opportunity.
A bunch of us piled into my friend;s van ad headed for Vancouver, some ten miles away from Portland. He put in a tape as he was driving. I was immediately captured by what I heard, beautiful piano music backed by an orchestra. The music and the words were unlike anything I’d ever heard. Contemporary Christian music was just beginning to gain momentum, but most of what I’d heard was the kind of stuff you wouldn’t want to play for your non-believing friends, bland, folksy and goody-goody, dorky in some cases, shallow lyrics with little in the way of musical depth.
Not so with this artist. There was something about the entire presentation that grabbed my heart and emotions. It seemed it would be impossible to have the music without lyrics or vise-versa.
“My son my son, why are you weeping?
You will not have to wait forever
That day and that hour are in my keeping
The day I’ll bring you into Heaven.”
A lot of contemporary Christian music was one person talking to another. This was God, speaking directly to a much-loved, troubled heart, something I could strongly relate to.
“For whan I hear the praises start, my child
I want to rain upon you
Blessings that will fill your heart
Oh I see no stain upon you
Because you are my child, and you know me
To me you’re only holy
Nothing that you’ve done remains
Only what you do in me.”
Only what you do, only what I am doing. Every morning is new. Every prayer from an honest heart bringing a fresh breath of grace, no matter what I had done the day before.
The man’s voice was beautiful with a distinctive, somewhat melancholy, haunting quality that seemed to reach from the singer’s soul into my own. I didn’t ask who it was. I was totally obsorbed. The driver was singing along. “Whoever it is,” I thought. “He must be pretty popular.” Something set this artist apart in a way that still defys description. We charasmatics call it, “an annointing.” If anything else played on that tape, I don’t remember. I wanted to hear it again and again. I longed to hear more. It replayed in my mind. It is there still. The van got very quiet as everyone listened.
A guy walked out onto the stage, taking a seat at the piano. He looked to be tall, wearing tasteful, trendy clothing and sporting a beautiful curly head of hair like few I've seen. There was no band, just him and us. When he began to play, my jaw dropped. It was the guy on that tape we'd listened to. He was all over the piano, singing another impacting song. This one was upbeat and catchy, reflecting the joyful side of the artist’s faith.
“Sometimes it’s hard to see
Sopmetimes it’s hard to get through to me
But I wanna do all that you ask me to.
Help me to follow through
Make every day a devotion to you
Cause it’s dust-to-dust, until we learn how to trust.”
He didn’t need a band. In fact, it might have taken away from the performance. He went from the humorous to the serious and often intertwined the two in a way that few people can. He had a skill for communicating with young people and a hard-hitting message about the sacrificial life that God truly calls us to, and the complacence of God’s people in America, a great message for us church-bred boomers who, although we loved the Lord, were mostly wrapped up in ourselves, It was all about what God did for us. We were reminded that true Christianity was about serving God, not Him serving us. It brought me up short.
There was a period near the end of the concert where a lot of people felt convicted of the Lord to the point of tears. I was definitely one of them. Apparantly, three young men in the front were mocking the signs of brokenness they observed around them. Keith stopped mid-song, still playing the piano and told them in no uncertain terms to leave. He told them a second time.
“You three boys down in the front, leave! You cannot mock the Lord and stay!”
I suspect that if they hadn’t complied, he might very well have left the stage and put them out himself. There was a sense of authority about him that compelled them to cooperate. A lot of people would have just let it go and kept singing. I’d never seen anything like this.
A lot of concerts I’ve been to have somewhere in them, a sort of lull that tends to make me hope it will end soon as things got monotenous. This was not the case at this concert. I couldn’t get enough of that music. In fact, I got a copy of the tape my friend made of the concert. This was the norm then on campus, the ritual of tape-passing. In those days a lot of Christian artists were too generous in my opinion, with their rights to their music. Since a lot of us couldn’t really afford to go out buying albums, we swapped and duplicated one-another’s records and tapes. I listened to the concert tape until it literally wore out.
I remember coming back to the dorm the following year with Keith’s new release. We had hovered around the local Christian bookstore like vultures, waiting for the tape's arrival. I think I must have been one of the first to buy one because a large cluster of us gathered to listen to it. I would imagine the second album for most any musician must be a challenge equal to a movie sequal, especially when the album following one as popular as the first.
Was it going to be as good? We were not disappointed. In fact, we played it through twice in succession. It had a hard-hitting, no-nonsense assessment of the lack of urgency in God's family toward what He has called us to and concern for those yet outside the faith. Word got around pretty quickly and pretty soon, the duplication guy at the school’s library found himself with a stream of people wanting copies.
After I flunked out of college, I went on with my life, settling in Portland and working at a factory. A lot of other artists were out there and I bought their albums too—and they were great, but it was Keith’s music that I listened to the most. There was simply nothing like it. The melodies and piano style often reminded me of Elton John. The message was as hard-hitting as his concert, but there was plenty of humor interspursed in his works.
“Well I believe in Jesus and what he said he’s gonna do.
He’ll put an apple in your lying mouth and cook you in a sulfer stew
WOOOOOO! One that'll never be through! Is it soup yet??? NOOOO
Oh but if he hadn’t rescued me, then I’d be down there cookin’ too
Oh if Jesus hadn’t rescued me, then I’d be cookin’ right noxt to you, OOOOOO!”
As with the first album, it wasn’t long before I knew the entire thing by heart.
Then one weekend in 1981, he was giving a concert in Battleground Washington and, once again, a bunch of us piled into cars and went early to get a good seat. We were definitely early—how early? There were six of us just standing around talking when a tour bus pulled into the parking lot. I thought it must be a group of attendees, but to my surprise, the door opened and Keith stepped out, followed by his wife and two young children, an infant in her mother's arms and an adorable little boy with abundant blond curls who came up to me smiling, trying to start up a conversation, though he was mostly babbling. He couldn’t have been more than two years old.
I went into the auditorium and sat on the bleachers listening to Keith practice. I dearly wanted to just go talk to him, but I didn’t have a particular reason to do so, other than to find out what I should do with this musical gift of my own I’d so recently discovered. I was often frustrated at my lack of opportunity to express it publicly.
I’d read his article about people constantly walking up to him asking how they could get into the Christian music business. I suppose I was just plain too shy, but I figured he must be weary of people approaching him as they so often did. As a musician myself, I also figured he ought to have uninterrupted practiced time, so I just sat and drank it in. I had the feeling that I was saying no to a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. In the end, this was true.
When the concert started, he announced that there were so many people still outside that he was going to give two concerts. In hopes of getting started right away, he was pretty zealous and, truthfully, impatient about the slow process of filling up vacant seats. There was a sense of urgency about him that lasted the entire concert. He was passionate about people coming to Christ and about the rest of us getting off our laurels and taking a much more active part in spreading the gospel. He talked about how watered-down it often was and how dishonest we were about the adversity walking with God in a wicked world can create.
It was like he was going to run out of time at any moment. It was a zeal and urgency that was far beyond the concert itself As I watched him, my heart ached somehow. I had the distinct impression that this was the last time any of us would ever see him. Strange, I thought, but this sense was overwhelming and I wondered if anyone else perceived what I was hearing and feeling.
I was right and I learned just recently, that I was far from alone in this awareness. In the summer of 1982, they’d announced that he was giving a concert in Portland in September which, of course we planned to attend. One day at work, a Thursday, a co-worker approached me. “I think that gospel singer you like was killed.”
“WHAT!” I asked.
“It’s on the news. I think he died in a plane crash.”
She must have had him mixed up with someone else. He was never in the news. If I had any doubts about the report, they were dispelled the moment I walked into the church sanctuary that evening. I attended a church where a lot of us arrived an hour early just to fellowship. There was laughter, lively conversations, spontaneous prayer groups and announcements of marital engagements. This evening was nothing like that. You could had heard a pin drop on the carpet. Everyone was there, but we all talked in half-whispers, the way you would at a funeral. Some of us just sat there looking at one-another. When someone walked in and asked what in the world was going on, some of us began to cry as we explained what had happened.
Most of us had never met him, but it was like losing a friend. That grief spread quickly through much of the Christian community. He died along with his two oldest children and the other nine passengers in a small plane. I thought of that beautiful little boy and his mother weeping over his picture. The questions about how God could let this happen were asked. It didn’t make sense, a man just twenty-eight years old with a fourth child on the way just yanked out of the world like that and why with two of his children? I could only imagine how devastating it must have been for his wife.
Suddenly, everyone was talking about him in the context of his ministry and his calling to us believers to higher ground and a sacrificial commitment to the Lord. He was on the cover of Christian magazines. There were memorial concerts all over the nation in conjuction with YWAM, (Youth with a Mission), a wonderful organization he had begun a partnership with, promoting the opportunity for young people to take part in short-term missions work.
Often, people were quoting the scripture about a grain of wheat falling an in its death, growing much more wheat. This is exactly what happened and is still happening. One thing I discovered when Paul brought home that anthology was how much Keith’s music was reflected in my own. My skill at playing the piano is nowhere near his, but the style is unmistakable. Some of my music is so similar in style that it’s almost embarrassing. I never set out to imitate anyone. It just happened.
When someone once asked me who I wanted to sound like, I said “I want to sound like Shelley.” It is true though, that one musician inspires and impacts the music of another. It’s something like grafting one tree to another—and there’s nothing wrong with that.
At the time I first listened to the CD Paul brought home, I hadn’t heard that music in quite awhile, I was now amazed every time I listened to myself. The similarities unmistakable and I think Paul was equally intrigued. It wasn’t intentional, but there it was nonetheless. The subjects of my songs are far different from Keith’s, but there is no doubt I emulated the style without even trying.
I once read an article Keith had written. I was a fledgling musician at the time--banging on the doors of prayer begging God to tell me what He wanted me to do with this new-found gift. I got no answer except to wait. It was at this time that I read, “Music or Missions.” Which begged the question, If you want to minister in music, are you willing to do it in obscurity? And are you ready to walk away from it altogether if God asks you to? I had opportunities to pursue ministry, but I never felt right about doing so—and looking back now, it was the better part of wisdom, difficult as it was to let go of my heart’s desire.
I was not a team player. When I became a part-time church pianist at my church, I really struggled for months with submitting myself to someone else’s way of doing things, namely the pastor. It took a long time for God to break me out of this self-centered mindset and I am so grateful He did. I wanted everyone to “play the song right” and would try to, by using the piano, get the rest of them to follow me. I learned that this was not ministry, but selfishness. I learned to do the opposite, cover for others when they make mistakes, making them look as good as possible. In the end, I found this much more rewarding, partly because I was so often thanked for covering others in this way. There is real joy in this that I never expected.
I still weep sometimes, when I see pictures of Keith and his family. I don’t like what I saw happening in the Chritian music industry once his influence was gone. Some artists are apparently accountable to no one. Here we all thought Phillip Baily had gotten saved. It turns out he changed genres to contemporary Christian music to make money. When it was no longer lucrative, he went back to secular music. In my limited experience giving concerts, I’ve seen fellow-believers do dishonest and, sometimes, downright ungodly things in the interest of looking good and saving money.
It’s a world that, as much as I love performing, I have no interest in being part of. There’s no one to speak out about a higher standard in the way that Keith did. That grain of wheat I talked about is still growing. I recently visited a friend of mine who has several teenage children. I’d seen on Youtube, an interview with an elevel-year-old Keith Green by Steve Allen. When I asked the kids if they’d ever heard of him and told them about this video clip, I got a surprisingly enthusiastic response. I’ve had young people ask me on occasion, about Keith. Had I ever met him? What was he like? Had I been to his concerts?
After all these years, he still is not forgotten and I’m amazed at the amount of young people who listen to his music and read articles he wrote. What a legacy. Thanks to him, a lot of young people have gone overseas, ministered in third-world contries and countries where most of the population is unchurched. YWAM is still a thriving ministry and a lot of people of all ages have a better understanding of God’s heart for His beloved creations and how easy we really have it in this country. Along with many others, I credit this to Keith’s outspokenness about rolling up one’s sleeves and serving God in places where people living in darkness need God’s love.
He was a tremendous gift to us all and I’m thankful that God was able to cram so much ministry and calling into one short life. His wife Melody is still in leadership of the pro-life movement, something he encouraged her to do. If my life was so impacted by his music and message, I’m sure many others still are. There’s rarely a day that goes by wherein I don’t think on these things. One man and a piano practically turned the Christian world upside-down and is still reminding us to this day, what serving and worshipping God really means, for we are saved by grace as scripture says and intended for good works. Good works, should be a natural outcome of our faith and God’s grace. We are not idle if we’re not growing. We are, in fact, dying if not growing.
