"CHRISTIAN" MUSIC FESTIVALS CAN DAMN PEOPLE

WHEN CONTEMPORARY CHRISTIAN MUSIC (CCM) FOUNDER KEITH GREEN (PROMINENT IN THE 1970S) REBUKED AN OREGON CHRISTIAN MUSIC FESTIVAL THAT HAD AN ESTIMATED 35,000 ATTENDEES

FIRST, WHO WAS KEITH GREEN?

Keith Gordon Green (October 21, 1953 – July 28, 1982) was an American pianist, singer, songwriter and contemporary Christian music recording artist. Originally from Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York, Green is known as a pioneer in the Christian and Jesus Music genre.^[1] His most notable songs are "There Is a Redeemer", which was written by his wife Melody, "Oh Lord You're Beautiful", "I Want To Be More Like Jesus", "To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice", and "(Until) Your Love Broke Through". - WIKIPEDIA

As it is Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) Summer festival season, I wanted to address the CCM from the perspective of one of its founders/pioneers. It is totally contradictory to what takes place at many CCM festivals today- and many ministries and churches for that matter.

*Disclaimer- Not all CCM musicians are bad. And yes, theologically, “damnation” includes more than music festivals…

I could type a lot about Keith Green. Worth noting is, he was discipled by, and greatly impacted by Leonard Ravenhill (a firey revivalist). Keith embodied an “on-fire” life for Christ, as opposed to “lukewarm” Christianity:

“So then, because you are lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit you out of My mouth” - Revelation 3.16, NKJV

Here is one of the most noteworthy songs his wife Melody wrote and that Keith sang, “Make My Life A Prayer to You”:

“I Could Hear People Sobbing and Choking Out Prayers to God…”

After being saved out of the 1960s/70s hippie culture and producing songs, Keith came to understand that most evangelism is unbiblical, and many “christian” concerts — wasted efforts.

His epiphany (answer to his prayers) was that, in Salem, Oregon, in July of 1978, before a huge crowd at a CCM multi-day festival that drew an estimated crowd of 35,000 people, a genuine move of God’s Spirit broke out. His wife Melody describes it in her biography of Keith Green, called No Compromise (Ch. 10, Kindle Version) :

“I looked at the young guy I'd been watching to see if his hand was up. Instead he was flat on his face right in the mud along with many others! Other hands were up everywhere. Thousands of them. Not only that, weeping and loud crying broke out all across the open, grassy field. It was awesome. I could hear people sobbing and choking out prayers to God…As we drove across the festival grounds on our way back to our motel, we saw lots of people lying before God out in the fields or on their knees-praying. It felt like a holy hush had descended and was still lingering... gripping every hungry heart…”

Keith had recently had doubts about whether he was too intense in his devotion to the Lord. During that time, Keith happened to pick up a book on someone’s coffee table called Why Revival Tarries by Leonard Ravenhill (a famous British Evangelist who had moved to America). The book confirmed that being “sold-out” and “on-fire” for Jesus Christ was the only way to live.

The account and details are below, so be sure to read them, but as I was typing this I did come across the original audio from the event (fast forwarded to 9:00 mins. picks up where Keith is preaching a heavy message):

Something’s Missing

While speaking at the Salem, Oregon, festival called “Jesus Northwest” in 1978, Keith was broken. He was the headliner of the multi-day event featuring the biggest stars of the “Jesus Movement” - B.J. Thomas, Second Chapter of Acts, and Andrae Crouch. Yet, something was missing. Melody describes the feeling:

…something seemed amiss to us. It was a huge success, and the promoters were blown away. But the real question was what the outcome would be from an eternal perspective. Would everyone go home thinking, Wow, that was a lot of fun! Or was there something God wanted to say to everyone?…The place was packed, but some were saying there had been no real move of God, that it was just one big party. Keith and Winkie [a famed evangelist who was there with Keith] felt strongly that if nothing happened it was a waste of a festival.

Keith crawled under a piano in a trailer home to pray shortly before he was to take the stage. To his surprise (and in answer to prayer), a young blonde girl with the YWAM (Youth With a Mission) knocked on the trailer Keith was praying in. She had tears in her eyes and said:

"Excuse me, but I've felt a little grieved during this festival because it doesn't seem like God has been given a chance to speak what's on his heart. There's been no breakthrough. We've had counseling tents and prayer meetings, but nobody from the stage has said anything about getting right with God. I don't know if you can give this to any of the leaders, but I was praying and, well, I really felt like God gave me this Scripture."

The Scripture was given to Keith. It read:

Amos 5:21…“I hate, I despise your feast days,
And I do not savor your sacred assemblies.
²² Though you offer Me burnt offerings and your grain offerings,
I will not accept them,
Nor will I regard your fattened peace offerings.
²³ Take away from Me the noise of your songs,
For I will not hear the melody of your stringed instruments.
²⁴ But let justice run down like water,
And righteousness like a mighty stream.”

A Real Christian

Keith got on the stage and, in between songs, he read Amos 5 and shared his grave concern with the crowd that they probably hadn’t even heard the real Gospel or been genuinely saved, and he called them all to repentance and faith in Jesus Christ:

“Does anybody understand what that means? Some of you do. Among thirty-five thousand so-called Christians there's always a remnant of real ones peppered in. My job as a minister is to make sure that every person here leaves a real one. But I can't do it. I'm nothing but dust.How many of us care about the people living next door to us? How many of your neighbors have never seen anything more than a little fish on your car? They think you work at the fish market… What's going on? As for me, I repent of ever having made a record or ever having sung a song unless it's provoked people to follow Jesus, to lay down their whole lives before him, to give him everything. It doesn't cost you much to follow Jesus-just everything!"

Then Keith elaborated on true service, besides listening to Cheistian music:

The best exercise I know is hitting the streets for Christ- door to door, ghettos, prisons, old age homes, orphanages, high schools, colleges— why don't you do it? You say, ''Cause I don't feel led.' You feel lead all right, it's just a different kind of led.""Hey look, I've heard all my songs and God's heard all my songs too. I don't think he's that interested. Don't worry, I'm gonna sing again, but it's the least important part of what I've got to do tonight.

“You've Gotta Give Up Your Dope”

Keith continued with describing surrender:

The rich young ruler came to Jesus, and Jesus said, "You still lack something. Go away. I can't take you right now." Who today would say, "I'm sorry, brother, I can't lead you in the sinner's prayer. You've gotta give up your dope, your selfishness, your love of possessions, your clinginess to family and friends—and your life"? Aren't you a little disappointed at how Jesus handled such a sinner? Didn't the Lord know how to lead a soul to himself? The requirement for salvation is not just a prayer. The requirement is an open, totally empty heart that's ready to be full of Jesus Christ. After saying the sinner's prayer, if in a few months your friends can't tell that you're born again, if your relatives can't see a change in you, if your teacher can't see that you're a Christian, you're probably not!

“It Changes the Way They Live”

Keith really unleashed on the crowd, telling them there is no middle-ground:

Because let me tell you something, when someone's born again they get excited! It changes the way they live, what they do, how they speak, how they act, what they do with their money, their cars, their girlfriends-it's all different! Then how come it looks the same? How come Christians are trying to ride the line? I challenge anybody who calls himself a Christian, which means "little Christ," to live as Jesus did. Or else sometime Somebody might say, "I never knew you." I'm gonna get on my knees every day and say, "God, search my heart and see if there be any wicked way in me. I don't want to go astray. I want to be with you."

“Nicest Guy in Hell”

You can't get to heaven by being a nice guy. You might end up to be the nicest guy in hell! If you're here tonight and you don't know Jesus it's because of two things. One, because of your sin. Two, because of the hypocrisy in the people around you, including me. If you don't know Jesus, you've got two choices— and I'm not gonna say "heaven or hell." I'm gonna say you can follow Jesus or you can hate him. You can't sit on the fence. Those who are not with him are against him.

Lord of Your Life

Then Keith asked people to commit their lives to Jesus:

If you want Jesus Christ to completely take over your life, you're willing to die for him, give him every possession, every friend, every loved one, every plan, every hope, every dream. You're willing to give it all up if necessary. I'm not saying that's what he wants you to do, but you are willing. If you're willing to come before his throne empty-handed, raise your hand. If you can't look him in the eye and know you've been living a pleasing life before him, get your hand up and make it right. Jesus Christ is not your Savior unless he's the Lord of your life, and Lord means he owns and controls-lock, stock, and barrel-your destiny, your future, and your present. And he throws away your past as far as the east is from the west.

Melody, as mentioned at the beginning, described what happened next: “I looked at the young guy I'd been watching to see if his hand was up. Instead he was flat on his face right in the mud along with many others! Other hands were up everywhere. Thousands of them. Not only that, weeping and loud crying broke out all across the open, grassy field. It was awesome. I could hear people sobbing and choking out prayers to God. Then Keith asked everyone who was making Jesus Lord of their life for the first time to stand. To my shock, almost everyone in the crowd stood. Keith was so surprised he thought they must not have understood him. So he clarified it.”

Here was Keith’s clarification:

"This is not a rededication. This is the first time, the first time you've ever understood what making Jesus Lord really meant. Do you really mean it? Wow! How many people here realize that when they get home they have a lot of things to get rid of and a lot of things to change in their lives? A brother down front here says he has to remodel his whole bedroom. You've gotta remodel your whole heart, then the outside's gonna change!"

The result was, as named above:

As we drove across the festival grounds on our way back to our motel, we saw lots of people lying before God out in the fields or on their knees-praying. It felt like a holy hush had descended and was still lingering. gripping every hungry heart.

“I Just Need to Figure Some Things Out”

This event left Keith deeply disturbed at this Biblical, new to him, method. Was everything else a lie? Had he, and others, misled thousands of people before? Melody describes what Keith was thinking at the time:

Keith's quick rise to popularity had been unsettling enough. He was worried about getting entrenched in a system that might eventually cause him to forget about God— or cause others to focus on him instead of the Lord. Keith was also worried about the power of his own natural charisma. He knew it was a gift from God, but what if he was unknowingly making things happen in his own strength even though he didn't want to? How did he know if people at any given concert were responding to a move of the Lord or if they were just responding to the performance skills he'd acquired over a lifetime of training?

For Keith, these were more than passing questions. They were deep concerns. He had major questions about the Christian music industry, but even more troubling were the questions he had about himself. Keith really felt he needed to take some time off to sort through everything. We'd been on a nonstop schedule of traveling and recording for months. Besides, Keith figured it would be a great time to do some studying. Winkie Pratney had recently bought Keith a whole library because of his hunger for the Lord and confusion over the intensity of his feelings. Winkie felt that Keith needed to study church history. Winkie told him, "Lots of Christians have felt like you do. They've written some really great stuff. You need to read what they had to say." Then he took us to a bookstore and bought Keith a whole shopping cart full of books. So, shortly after we returned home from Jesus Northwest, Keith announced, "I'm taking a sabbatical-starting right now!" "For how long?" I asked. "I don't know. Maybe a year. I might do a few concerts but no major touring. I need some time. I want to get into the Word of God more-and all those books Winkie gave me. I just need to figure some things out."

I don’t have time to go into a lot of what took place after that. But Keith continued a sold-out life for Jesus Christ and died in a tragic airplane accident in 1982. His wife Melody still continues to share the Gospel of Christ to this day - Last Days Ministries.