And This Is Love (Ken Medema)

Here is one from the 1970's. Rick Powell was bringing the new electronic sounds of the Moog Synthesizer into the sanctuary with new songs as well as old hymns. Ken Medema was a fresh voice in Christian music, and a prolific songwriter. "And This Is Love" is one of my favorites from Ken Medema, and I love the arrangement that Rick Powell brings to it here.

   

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As the Ruin Falls (Phil Keaggy)

Phil Keaggy wrote music to accompany a poem by C.S. Lewis, "As the Ruin Falls." Keaggy was a pioneer in the Contemporary Christian music genre. C.S. Lewis's words gave more depth than one usually found in the emerging genre back in the 1970s when this was recorded. Scroll down to see the lyrics. If you really want the full depth of Lewis's poem, read his novel Till We Have Faces. This song is a good meditation for Holy Week.

As the Ruin Falls

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.

I never had a selfless thought since I was born.

I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:

I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,

I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:

I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--

But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.

I see the chasm. And everything you are was making

My heart into a bridge by which I might get back

From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains

You give me are more precious than all other gains.

                                                    ~ Clive Staples Lewis

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Andraé Crouch (I'll Still Love You)

Last week we lost a pioneer in Contemporary Christian Music and a legendary Gospel artist when Andraé Crouch died at the age of 72. I'll never forget the morning at breakfast in my college cafeteria when one of my classmates mentioned a new album by Andraé Crouch and the Disciples, Take Me Back. "Finally!" he said, "Christian music is as good as anything you can hear on the radio!" 

Andraé Crouch was a crossover artist in many ways. Virtually the only African American on the "Jesus Music" scene in the 1970s, he was recognized as one of the best in the field of what became known as Contemporary Christian music. He was schooled in "Black Gospel" growing up in The Church of God in Christ (which has produced many talented black musicians). Crouch became a Grammy award winner and a mainstay in the music industry, doing music for television and movies, and working with many of the luminaries in the business.

Here is the opening track from Take Me Back, released in 1975, "I'll Still Love You."