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Youths from across the region are invited to a free Christian event Saturday at the Volunteer High School football field for music and spiritual presentations to help kick off the summer with some praise and worship.

The event is being organized by members of the Soul Surfers (Students United in Real Faith), a youth group composed of members of the First United Methodist Church of Church Hill.

The First Freewill Baptist Church of Church Hill is also helping organize the event.

The contemporary Christian music group Elijah Ride will be the headline performer, and local performers will provide the opening musical entertainment.

There will also be a presentation by spiritual guest speaker Jeff Hall, former placekicker for the University of Tennessee football team.

Michelle Hensley, who is SURF’s adult adviser, said the entertainment and presentations Saturday will be aimed at young people, but people of all ages are invited.

“The goal is just praising God and all to his glory,” Hensley said. “We’re inviting anyone in the region - Tri-Cities, Southwest Virginia or anyone else who wants to attend. It’s a youth event, but you don’t have to be a teenager to attend - maybe a teenager at heart.

“We’ve got two churches involved in organizing this, but it’s not a Methodist event. It’s not a Baptist event. It’s a Jesus event.”

Although admission is free, those who attend are asked to bring a nonperishable food item to the event, which will be donated to the local food bank.

Gates open at 6 p.m. Saturday, and the event begins at 7 p.m. and will end around 10 p.m.

Christian singer plays at church

Photo contributed
Carolyn Arends admits her new album explores darker, edgier themes.

Carolyn Arends performs Saturday in Saanich

Christian songstress Carolyn Arends will “have a conversation” with her audience when she performs at Lambrick Park Church in Saanich this weekend.

This Vancouver-based singer has raised more than a few eyebrows over her decade-long career that includes nine albums and two books.

Fifteen of her songs have become top 10 radio singles on the Canadian pop and U.S. Christian charts, and she has earned two Dove awards and two Juno nominations.

She’s even been credited as “one of the most affecting communicators in any genre” by Billboard Magazine.

Regardless of the commercial success, the highlights of her career are much more personal.

Her most memorable moment was back in the mid-90s, when she was performing songs from her first album. She launched into “Seize The Day” from her 1995 release I Can Hear You and the audience spontaneously started to sing along.

“That still blows me away,” Arends said modestly during a telephone interview from her Lower Mainland home. “That stuff I wrote because I couldn’t help myself has become a small part of who those people are.”

She likes to communicate with an audience, rather than just perform.

“I aspire to be first and foremost a communicator. Of all the different things involved, that’s closest to my heart.”

On Saturday evening she’ll communicate - through songs and speech - with the audience at Lambrick Park Church, a venue she played when her first album was released.

“I’ve had a chance to play some big arenas and festivals and I’ve also done the coffee house circuit,” she said. “Whatever the venue, I try to make it into a back porch or a living room.”

At Lambrick Church, Arends will sing as she plays her guitar and a bit of piano to the accompaniment of Spencer Capier on violin, mandolin and bouzouki.

The concert will celebrate the release of Pollyanna’s Attic, Arends’s ninth album, which is promoted as “an unvarnished, passionate set of soul-searching, hearth-wrenching organic pop songs.”

While the bulk of Arends’s work is relentlessly hopeful and optimistic, Pollyanna’s Attic is a bit darker and edgier than her previous material.

For previous albums, she wrote a few songs that didn’t quite fit. The idea of Pollyanna’s Attic was to compile those darker songs into one album.

“It’s still about hope, but about hope that shows up in our brokenness,” she said.

One of the new album’s themes is the importance of community and how people are not meant to live like lone wolves - a sentiment expressed in her song, “No Trespassing.”

Since the album was released last Tuesday, she has already received feedback.

“People are telling me that even when I’m being dark, I’m not all that dark,” she said.

Like her other albums, Pollyanna’s Attic is deeply grounded in the idea that there is a God who wants people to know he’s there.

“My faith is so foundational to how I see the world,” she said. “I think God is alive and is making himself known to us in everything that happens.”

Also like in her other albums, her new songs are very personal.

“One of the big themes that keeps coming up for me is this idea that everything that happens to us is really important.”

She attempts to pay attention to her life and things going on around her, then writes about it.

Her eight-year-old son and four-year-old daughter have been an enormous source of inspiration, particularly with respect to her 2002 release We’ve Been Waiting For You.

However, being an entertainer and a mother has its challenges. Before motherhood, Arends was on the road for months at a time, but now she leaves the nest about every other weekend.

Her performance this weekend at Lambrick Park Church, 1780 Feltham Rd., takes place Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $12 in advance at Christian Book & Music or $15 at the door.

For more information and tickets call 477-9721 or visit www.theplace.ca. Visit www.carolynarends.com to find out more about Arends.

By Michelle Martin
Victoria News
May 19 2006

Orangeburg , New Christian Radio Station - Orangeburg)- WPOG 710 AM is housed in the Grace Baptist Church in Orangeburg.

Church Pastor Darrell Wilkins said, “We moved to Orangeburg, and we knew there wasn’t anything as far as Christian radio around.”

Delivering the word from the Bible to the airwaves was Pastor Wilkins’idea.

He said, “Our goal was to get the gospel out and that’s what we’re doing.”

What might surprise you even more is the size of the station. It’s only one room, and there are no hosts. It’s all automated. Most of the programming comes from a broadcasting network in Newport, North Carolina.

Three area ministers provide local programs during the week. There’s a mix of Bible-based preaching and traditional Christian music. Wilkins calls it an alternative.

He said, “Much of the Christian music today is just an adaptation of the world’s music like Rock ‘n Roll and Rap with Christian lyrics.”

Some ask him why he won’t jump behind the mic.

Wilkins said, “I’m not a radio man. I’m a preacher so we’re having to learn as we go. We’ve learned a lot. Our desire is to appeal to the inward soul of man and to lift up the spiritual man.”

Pastor Wilkins say it cost the church more than $200,000 to buy the station and monthly operating costs are close to $3,000.

A legendary white gospel pioneer of the ’50s FERN JONES is remembered. Mike Rimmer spoke to Fern’s daughter Anita Garner. Fern Jones probably isn’t a name that you’ve come across at all and yet she was responsible for producing a seminal gospel album at the birth of the rock’n'roll era. ‘Singing A Happy Song’ was released in 1959 where, backed by Elvis Presley’s latest studio band, she cooked up a storm mixing country, rockabilly and gospel in a thoroughly contemporary style. Listening to the album nearly 50 years later, one thing that comes across very strongly is the power of Jones’ voice. People have compared her to Patsy Cline and quite rightly but instead of singing sad songs of love and loss, Jones’ passion was to sing truth-filled gospel songs, challenging her listeners and bringing enough of Saturday night musical values to place this gospel record at the cutting edge in 1959.

When she stepped into the studio in 1959 to record for Dot Records, she already had 25 years of singing experience under her belt and at the age of 36 was a veteran of the southern revival circuit where she and her husband Ray Jones and their family travelled around and held revival meetings. Sometimes they would take time out and pastor a church but music was always at the heart of their ministry.

In 1959, religion and the newly emerging rock’n'roll weren’t as far apart as a lot of white preachers were intimating in their pulpit dismissals of the new music. Pioneers like Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard brought huge church influences into their music and while Jones stayed on the other side of the musical fence, staying true to the message. Her early music had been non-religious and had been performed in the honkytonks before she gave it up to sing with her husband and support his calling to ministry. Listening to her album, you could say that you could take the girl out of the honkytonk but you couldn’t take the honkytonk out of the girl and something of that wild side remained in her gospel music.

My interest in her music began with the re-release of ‘Singing A Happy Song’ in 2005. The album, now renamed ‘The Glory Road’, had a CD release and included some bonus cuts from Fern and Ray’s custom recordings made in the early ’50s. Sadly, Fern didn’t live to see the release, even though she’d been fighting since 1968 to buy back the masters from the record label. She passed away in 1996 but the work to have the album re-released was continued by her daughter Anita Garner. After I wrote the review of ‘The Glory Road’ for the Cross Rhythms website, Garner contacted me and I had the opportunity to quiz her about her mother, her childhood on the road at the revivals and some of the extraordinary events of her mother’s life.

Effectively Anita was born into the family “business” of travelling evangelists. She remembers, “In the Deep South, we covered medium-sized cities to rural areas, travelling the same circuit as say a Billy Graham or an Oral Roberts. But they went on to become sort of ‘mega evangelists’ and daddy was much more comfortable with the country. He was a country boy. He worked to become ordained in the Assemblies Of God and later so did mother. So for about half our time we were in the evangelistic field. The other half the time the church would ask my father to pioneer a church in a town where there wasn’t one. That was quite a particular set of skills. So we did both.”

Coming from an extremely poor family, Fern Jones first started singing at the age of 12. Garner explains, “She was tall, quite matured physically and very, very poor. I’ve spoken to a lot a of people about how one person emerges without any money or any hope of success and sort of dazzles. I think she just had such a faith or such a drive to get out of extreme poverty. So she lied about her age. She got a Sears Roebuck guitar from a catalogue, learned a few chords, had an enormous voice and looked mature. Every one in the South just turned their heads and pretended she was old enough to be in the those joints.”

She married at the age of 16 and very shortly afterwards became a Christian. Garner tells the story, “Daddy went down to the altar and turned his life over to the Lord. The story that they tell is that he went home, got her - she’d never attended church - took her by the hand and prayed with her all night.” Ray Jones began pastoring a small church in Arkansas while working a day job to pay the maintenance bills on the church. People would come to the little church, hear Fern sing and almost immediately the invitations began to pour in so she started her singing evangelistic ministry.

I observe that this was a big calling for a young woman barely saved. Garner shares, “I think there was a lot of conflict with her attempting to grow into a woman. She was a mother at 16 and then I was born when she was 18. I think daddy in a sense was helping raise her. He was nine years older. He was the eldest of 10 and he was crazy in love with her. So she had these mature gifts, but she was still a teenager.”

Anita Garner’s own upbringing involved a great deal of travelling and she had to try and fit into plenty of new schools along the way. Her parents also had their own radio shows whenever they settled somewhere. Anita soon joined the family act and at age three she made her debut on a radio station in Georgia. She remembers, “My family always had a radio show. So it was the family business. Just as if you’d been born to a plumber and he would teach you to use your tools, my parents would pile us in the car, we’d travel to a revival and in the back seat we would learn to sing our harmony parts.”

The radio exposure and their custom albums helped to bring Fern Jones’ music to the masses. There is one song on her album that also worked to bring her music to the masses. “I Was There When It Happened” is credited as a co-write with Jimmie Davis who added himself to the credits in exchange for publishing the song and attempting to make it popular. Anita tells of her mother’s struggle with this. “This is a dilemma mother wondered about until she passed; would it be better to have 100 percent of nothing and have no-one ever hear your song? Or to sell half of it and have a famous gospel star record it? And she’ll never know the answer. But she regretted forever that she sold half the song. And later, she was talking with both Rick Nelson and Elvis about recording her music. Each of them had chosen a song. Both of them insisted on half composer rights or they wouldn’t record it and she did say no.”

“I Was There When It Happened” became one of the favourite songs of the young Johnny Cash. If you’ve seen the movie Walk The Line then you’ll have heard the song! Garner explains, “John told me this story himself in the 1960s. And then I’ve recently spoken to one of the original members of his backing group The Tennessee Two, Marshall Grant, who confirms that Johnny really planned to record only gospel. The movie depicts him showing up for an audition at Sun Records, being told to sing something, anything other than gospel and immediately being signed. Marshall says that when they went to sing for Sun Records they only knew “I Was There When It Happened”. They’d been performing it at a few little places - churches, high school dances. So John said, ‘Well, I want to be a gospel artist so we’ll sing that one.” And Sam Phillips really sent them home for a few days to write another song. But John told me that he sang “I Was There When It Happened” as a personal testimony in every performance that he could.”

Listening to ‘The Glory Road’, the one thing that immediately strikes the listener is that unlike many anodyne white gospel albums of the time, this one is very bluesy. It sounds wild. Garner agrees, “It was. It was so wild. She was following her own instincts with those recording sessions for that Dot album. It was so wild that it almost killed her for airplay. She’d been a favourite performing live on radio in six States. They couldn’t play many of the cuts from this album on white stations because she sings so black. And this was during the time of segregation in the South that we came up with her singing like that. She would have fit on race stations much better but she was too white for them!”

And that’s where the problem lay. The album fell between two stools and despite the fact she’d turned in a great album, the lack of airplay stymied its success. Garner observes, “She turned out this amazing album with some of the most famous studio players; the ones who toured with Elvis. To this day no-one knows how she pulled all that off. And I don’t think she knew she was a pioneer. I never heard her say any words to the effect that she was breaking new ground. I think she’s one of those innovators that you read about and hear about who simply heard a new way to do something and didn’t know she couldn’t.”

The album was made in Nashville and featured some amazing musicians who had just been recording sessions with Elvis Presley before backing Fern. Garner shares, “I speak now and again to Hal Bradley, who’s the president of Nashville Musicians Union. Hal and his brother Owen owned the studio where mother’s tracks were laid down, The Quonset Hut, now owned by Sony. Owen Bradley produced Pasty Cline. Hal said to me that he went back because his sister had preserved a lot of the log books from recording sessions. He can’t find mother and those musicians during the year in which they would have to have recorded it but he said for sure, it’s at his studio because there was only one other RCA Victor studio and they wouldn’t have let her in there. Plus those 18 musicians only worked at The Quonset Hut that year. So we’ve pegged it to where she did it and when she did it.”

Stockton native Darrel Wells is blazing a new musical trail in Reno, and he’s intent on sharing it with fans here in the future.

Wells, 42, is a singer-songwriter who plays several instruments, and he released the smooth-jazz Christian album “Praise Awaits You” in February. While smooth-jazz Christian still is a developing genre, Wells said some Christian radio stations are playing his songs.

A tour is forthcoming, and although dates have not been set, Wells said he wants to come back to Stockton to perform. Unlike other musicians who have left Stockton seeking fame, he credits the city for helping him grow as a musician and person.

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“My entire musical development and personal development happened in Stockton,” he said.

Wells was the worship leader at First Baptist Church in Stockton before moving to Nevada to serve at a growing church there.

“I like starting new things,” he said. That is reflected in his music career. The University of the Pacific graduate left a job selling investments to perform Christian music.

His career began as a part-time worship leader as the former Calvary Baptist Church, now the Bridge at Stockton. Wells said although he’s been writing music and singing in church since he was young, he never considered himself a “church musician” until he was at Calvary.

But from there, he began to find other opportunities in Christian music. “God had the plan all along,” he said.

Calvary led him to a full-time position as a worship leader at First Baptist Church, where he also directed choirs and bands. That, in turn, led him to the opening at the Nevada church and to record “Praise Awaits You.”

His latest challenge is promoting the CD, and he’s also working on starting a new church. In the future, he hopes to tour the country reaching out to fans through his music.

“The worship music’s where my passion is,” he said.

Contact reporter Ian Hill at (209) 943-8571 or ihill@recordnet.com

Lakelands-area youths rock out to Inhabited guitarist Chad Carouthers at the Hero of My Soul Tour concert Sunday at Grace Community Church in Greenwood. Inhabited was one of three Christian rock groups who played at the concert, which was organized to give youth exposure to the genre and give them an alternative to today’s secular music.

The green and blue spiked hair might have fooled you at first glance.
But the masses of teens who packed Greenwood’s Grace Community Church on Sunday weren’t there to hear a punk rock concert.
They were there to hear the message of God.

And that message was delivered through three Christian rock music groups on a stop of the Hero of My Soul Tour.

The event, featuring groups By the Tree, Jonah 33 and Inhabited, was organized as an attempt to reach youths, said Allen Bishop, director of Greenwood Youth Ministries, which partnered with Greenwood First Baptist Church, Grace Community Church, Faith Family Harvest Church, South Main Street Baptist Church, Woodfields Baptist Church, The Shepherd’s Shoppe and Quick Copies to bring the concert to Greenwood.

“We are really trying to educate Greenwood County on Christian rock — that it is a viable form of music and it is as good as its secular counterparts,” he said.

Chris Fox, youth pastor at First Baptist Church, said that music saturates the lives of teenagers, and can be a powerful medium through which they express themselves.
“What it boils down to is that this generation uses music both as an in and an out. It gets them into a world and it allows them to escape. Music can change an outlook on life and can change how you view life,” Fox said, adding that current music trends in country, rock and rap have brought racier lyrics and videos. “We wanted to provide music that was a positive alternative — great sound and lyrics and very positive.”
Bishop said the positive alternative was one he wanted for his own children, who were among the about 400 people filling the church Sunday.

“As a parent, do I want my kids driving down the road singing praises to God, or do I want my kids driving down the road singing about sex, drugs and rock and roll?” he said. “If I can find music that they will listen to with vocals that I don’t object to, then I feel like, as a parent, I’m fulfilling my responsibility.”

For the teens who attended, the music was more than just something their parents wanted them to hear — it was something they enjoy.

“I love Christian music,” said 14-year-old Wright Middle School student Alyssa Wyatt, of Abbeville. “It’s fun to sing to and it has a good beat … and it doesn’t have any cuss words.”

Aaron Chapman, 17, an Emerald High School student, said the concert was an opportunity for him to spread God’s word.

“I feel like God called me here tonight so that I can lead someone to Him and share what I believe,” he said.