Directory of Contemporary Worship Musicians - Way of Life Literature

had a solid testimony of salvation and who were grounded inScripture and committed to sound doctrine.Maranatha Music acted as a change agent to broadensupport for Christian rock in that the early “praise” music wassoer rock & roll. It was folk rock and rock ballads. Further,Calvary Chapel held to a more conservative theology,avoiding the extreme elements of Pentecostalism which werestill unacceptable to most churches at that time.In spite of Maranatha’s more “conservative” image,Christian rock was riding a wild and untamable spirit. Itsradicalness is seen in its association with the Roman CatholicChurch and the fact that it has become permeated with darkheresies and the most outlandish charismatic nonsense. (See“False Christs and False Gods” in this Directory ofContemporary Worship Musicians.) In order to gain a broaderfollowing, early CCM needed the more conservative imagethat Calvary Chapel and Maranatha Music provided. ecutting-edge hard Christian rockers of the 60s and 70s--suchas Larry Norman (whose debut album Upon is Rock wasbanned by Christian bookstores), Petra, and, ResurrectionBand--were too radical for most churches then. Barriers hadto be broken down.It is important to understand that the Calvary Chapel Jesushippies loved every sort of “Christian” rock even from theearliest days. Chuck Girard of Love Song says, “We wereamazed to see and hear the album ‘Upon is Rock’ by LarryNorman.” ey loved any type of “Christian” rock, butMaranatha published the “soer” stuff and thereby increasedthe contemporary music’s popularity and broke down thebarrier that existed widely in those days against using rock inChristian music. Even the soer rock was commonly rejectedby churches in the 1970s but the resistance was graduallybroken down through the process of incrementalism.rough the influence of the soer rock CCM, the leavenof Contemporary Christian Music spread and the vastmajority of churches are now addicted to rock of all types and39