Larry Norman

Larry Norman passed from this world and into heaven early this Sunday morning.

If you are not nearly as old as I am, that might not mean much to you - or might not mean much to you as you realize, but were it not for Larry Norman and others like him, we might have all been singing hymns in church today, instead the wonderful praise and worship music most of us were singing.

Larry Norman was a pioneer in contemporary Christian music. Larry, along with others like Phil Keaggy, Randy Stonehill, Randy Matthews, in the midst of the Jesus Movement of the early 1970s began to put Christian lyrics to rock/pop music. They endured a lot of criticism from many mainstream Christian leaders for the songs they wrote and preformed, but through that music, they reached a generation of young people with the saving message of Jesus Christ - and in the process changed Christian music forever.

Larry asked the question in one of his songs "Why Should the Devil Have All the Good Music?" and he and his contemporaries set out to change that - and did they ever!



I had met Randy Matthews at Ozark Bible (now Christian) College in Joplin, Missouri in the late 1960's. Randy was in a gospel quartet, but it would not be long before he began writing Christian lyrics to rock music. I lost track of Randy for a couple of years, but heard that he was doing a concert in maybe 1971 or 1972 in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a guy named Larry Norman. What an experience that was! Randy had let his hair grow pretty long, but Larry Norman had long blond hair well past his shoulders. Both of them were doing their own songs and they were like nothing I or any one else had ever heard before. One of the songs Larry did that night was "I Wish We'd All Been Ready." Now, if you are more my daughter's age, then you may think that is a DC Talk song, but the truth is that if I had not been for the courage of Larry Norman and Randy Matthews and others like them, there might not be a DC Talk or a Steven Curtis Chapman or any of the other great Christian contemporary artists of today and we might still be singing hymns to organ accompaniment.



So on this day, even if you have never heard of Larry Norman, you ought to say a little prayer of thanks to God for Larry Norman and for the amazing way God used him in his short time here on this planet. And, when you're in church singing the wonderful contemporary songs that have taken us from just singing songs to truly praising and worshiping God with our music, every once in a while, think about Larry Norman and Randy Matthews and the other brave servants who had the vision and the courage that would launch a new era in Christian music.



See you in heaven, Larry!

(He'll be the guy with the long blond hair!)

Love in Christ Jesus,

Jim