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Three-time Grammy award winner Michael W. Smith will be recording another live worship album six years after releasing his second worship album, Worship Again (2002).

After producing two successful worship albums, Smith is taking on the third live worship project this Friday at Lakewood Church in Houston. The Christian music star will be recording with African Children’s Choir and leading a congregation at the prominent megachurch that is expected to exceed 15,000. With its weekly service attendance figure at 47,000, Lakewood Church is currently the largest church in the nation.

During the live recording, Smith will feature both familiar worship songs as well as original songs that he wrote for this project. Smith is regarded as one of the most influential artists in Contemporary Christian Music, working as an artist, composer, and worship leader. He also received success in the mainstream music industry.

Doors for the event will open at 6:30 p.m. and the worship will start at 7:30 p.m. The admission is free and tickets are not required, but offerings will be accepted.

“Christian” can be a loaded word of sorts in the world of rock music.

When Jars of Clay hit with the single “Flood” a dozen years ago, some secular fans didn’t realize that the band was made up of religious rockers. There was some backlash. On the other hand, some of Jars of Clay’s Christian fans didn’t appreciate the group touring with secular alternative acts during its tour.

But unlike many bands from that period, the Grammy-winning Jars of Clay, which performs Saturday at the Oregon State Fairgrounds in Salem, has persevered and prospered. Vocalist-guitarist Dan Haseltine talks about what it’s like to live with the Christian-rock band tag.

Labels in rock are often misnomers. “Alternative” is a perfect example. Even if you’re making Christian rock, “Christian” somehow doesn’t seem to cover it.

The reality is that Christian means so many things to so many different people that it sometimes doesn’t describe whatever it is you’re trying to describe. If you say some band is a Christian rocker, they might put you in with a televangelist. Others might think, “Christian rocker like (U2’s) Bono.” But what band wants to be labeled anyway? We don’t want to be boxed in. We don’t want to be put into a category. But today, everyone is slotted in somewhere. We always wanted to get beyond that.

But a lot of your songs aren’t overtly Christian. They’re just rock songs.

It’s interesting that when we hit with “Flood,” some people had no idea we were Christian. They just heard the song and didn’t dig into it any deeper.

Your last studio album, “Good Monsters,” is your boldest, most surprising album since it’s your most rocking effort.

We always had that rock element in our music. With “Good Monsters” we were looking for a new challenge. The prior albums were more soulful and contemplative. We needed to move into a new direction. We did that and it felt good. We stepped up the tempo and it really worked out incredibly well. We didn’t care whether there was a ballad or not. We just went right at it and the songs came to us remarkably fast.

What is perhaps most appealing about “Good Monsters” is that the songs sounded as if you don’t have all the answers, just more questions.

We’ve been at this for a long time (15 years) and we’re maturing, and the reality is that we don’t have all of the answers. We’re Christians but we don’t know it all.

“Oh My God” is one of your deepest songs. What inspired that track?

People have very different reasons for crying out to God. That’s fascinating when you look at it.

But one of the lyrics seems to question the existence of God.

One of the questions in the third verse does ask whether Jesus is real or not. Growing up in the church, I was scared to death of ever asking that question. I found that it’s normal to wrestle with that issue. It’s a question that needs to be asked, but I believe.

Jars of Clay spends considerable time in the studio, but the group has become a very good live band.

We want to be known as a live band. That’s huge for a band. We’re about playing live and we’re about playing music. When you break it down though, we’re a band, plain and simple. We don’t want to be known as a particular kind of band. We just play music.”

For Toby Penner, the fall from grace began with a greasy meal at an Edmonton Hooters.

In 2000, Penner was songwriter and leader of Jake, a fresh-faced trio he formed with his fraternal twin younger brothers, Josh and Marty that was based out of the small Alberta town of Three Hills.

Sons of missionaries that possessed the non-threatening good looks of teen idols, the Penners had been propped up as the great white hope for crossover success in contemporary Christian music.

With roughly 100,000 albums sold, a major record deal with a U.S. Christian label, a handful of Juno and Vibe nominations and a spot on a high-profile Christian rock festival in Edmonton, Jake seemed poised to fulfil the Christian entertainment dream combination of teen-baiting boy band and squeaky-clean role models.

Unfortunately, as with many in their early 20s, the boys also had a sense of humour.

So in 2000, Josh — while suffering from a bout of indigestion — let slip to a reporter that the trio had dined at a Hooters restaurant earlier that day. When questioned further, young Josh joked “Christians have hooters, too.”

The Christian rock community was not amused.

When the story ran, the boys were dropped from the youth festival and a subsequent tour that was being planned by the same promoter. According to Toby, the Christian rock industry lambasted the Penner brothers, both for the comment and for being in such a Godless establishment in the first place.

And while Jake didn’t officially break up until a couple years later, Toby looks back on the uproar as an early lesson in the politics of faith-based music. “It cost us a lot of money and a lot of downtime” says Penner, now a 31-year-old session musician in Nashville. “There was a lot of negativity, especially in the Christian market press, for both us and our label. We thought it was pretty weird, that a little joke would have such drastic ramifications for our financial situation and our popularity.”

The Hooters’ story is well-known in Three Hills — the farming town of just over 3,000 two hours northeast of Calgary that is home to the Prairie Bible Institute. For 80 years, the college produced generations of missionaries, church leaders and Christian idealogues.

But, for a short period beginning in the late 1990s, it also helped spawn Jake and other notable faith-based acts such as Matt Brouwer, Tim Milner and Juno-winner Jill Paquette.

Even though the brothers had lived in various parts of the world, including a short stint at a mission school in Belize, the Christian press has always named Three Hills as the band’s hometown. This both helped play up the boys’ wholesome, small-town image and forever link the central Albertan town with the Christian entertainment industry — that parallel universe that generates billions of dollars in the U.S. while remaining mysterious to most of the secular world.

And, in a strange way, the fortunes of Three Hills as a Christian rock mecca seemed entwined to the fortunes of the Penner brothers.

Raised in a conservative Christian home, Toby, Josh and Marty were playing in separate bands when Steve Rendall — an ambitious producer and the son of the former president of Prairie Bible Institute — decided they were more marketable together as a Jesus-loving boy band.

But, ironically, the brothers spent little time as a band in Three Hills. According to local lore, they rumbled out of town in a shaky 1985 Mercury Topaz in 1999 and never looked back.

Still, to this day, Jake maintains an almost mythical status in the small town. To some, the band is still a beacon attracting students to the college and representing the epitome of success for God-guided acts.

For others, their failure to launch to world-wide fame is a painful reminder of a missed opportunity for the small farming town and college to become Canada’s centre for Christian music.

“Jake had the potential to go pop,” sighs Rendall. “They had this compelling story — three brothers, two twins. They were good-looking kids and Toby wrote hooky, compelling tunes.”

“At the end of the day, I’m not sure it was within the boys themselves. There wasn’t really the want to make it big. And I think (the Hooters) incident probably played a role in them realizing what they were up against.”

It’s not hard to see why Three Hills became a hot spot for Christian-based bands in the mid to late 1990s. The college has always produced a steady stream of young people eager to latch onto popular music and a healthy supply of parents and teachers eager to ensure their tastes stayed appropriately God-fearing.

The school also has a long history as a leader in Christian entertainment.

A few years after L.E. Maxwell — a circuit preacher from Kansas — founded the Prairie Bible Institute in 1922, it became known for exporting music from its tiny, farmland base. Brass quartets, trios and small choirs fanned out across the Alberta countryside in horse and buggy on Sunday mornings to entertain rural congregations.

In the 1960s, the school boasted a choir of 300 voices and a 50-piece orchestra that toured throughout the province. Prairie became the centre for Christian entertainment in Western Canada, with an auditorium at the heart of the campus that fit 4,000 people and attracted a who’s who of sacred music entertainers and Christian speakers.

But the college’s acceptance of modern music wasn’t nearly as enthusiastic — at least not at first. For years, a good deal of modern music was prohibited on the campus. Rock ‘n’ roll — even when played by bands that had surrendered unconditionally to Jesus — was viewed with deep suspicion.

“There were no guitars or drums — heaven forbid,” says Ron Berg, vice-president of organizational development for Prairie. “There wasn’t even drama. Drama was Hollywood — the pit of hell itself. But the shift started to happen when the missionary opportunities with music became apparent.”

Rendall, who’s father remained president of the school until 1990, is credited with helping usher in an acceptance of modern music. In the mid 1980s, he helped resurrect Harvest Music, a long-dormant record label that was attached to the school, and began releasing traditional Christian music that had been recorded decades earlier.

“There was a lot of enthusiasm at the time and I had a lot of hope for the future,” Rendall says. “We put our heads together and decided we could start a record company and fund it by rereleasing old Prairie music on (vinyl). I knew you couldn’t sustain a record company on that catalogue. So we said, ‘Let’s get going on something new.’

“Things were progressing along nicely. But there was a component in the school that raised its head. They thought we were pushing the envelope for what they believed was wrong music.”

Eventually — after clashing with this old guard of the school — Rendall bought out the label and began operating it off campus, while still drawing much of the talent from the student body.

By the late 1990s, he was certain he had found a number of acts to launch his career — and Three Hills — into the big time.

Meanwhile, equipped with a modern recording studio from its days of broadcasting Christian radio shows across Alberta, Prairie continued to attract musical students from around the globe.

In the mid-1990s, when indie music was in its zenith in the rest of the country, bands began to sprout up in Three Hills. Music was everywhere — in coffee houses, on campus, in churches.

“There was an awesome thing happening there at the time,” Penner says. “There were all kinds of crazy talented people who lived there and went to the college. For some reason, a bunch of us got record deals and stuff.”

Three Hills became the place to be for ambitious Christian musicians.

“I can remember hearing Jake on satellite radio,” says Craig Learmont, a 36-year-old producer and musician who took over the studio where the Penner brothers recorded their two albums. “I had this Christian station on from Texas. And here was this song that was produced three hours away. God was telling me, ‘You have to move to Three Hills. Go to the Bible college to work and teach and start the studio.’ ”

Learmont continues to produce Christian-based music at the studio, which he dubbed MuzikHaus. Bands such as Kiros, Paramedic and Winter’s Longing have all recorded there.

But, to this day, there is a picture of the grinning Penner brothers on Learmont’s cluttered wall of his studio — a testament to the role he says they played in convincing him to move to Three Hills from his home outside Medicine Hat.

The idea that God took the time to actively intervene in the prospects of Christian entertainers may seem a strange concept to the uninitiated. But it’s a common theme in the legend surrounding Jake.

One article in Christianpost.com about Jake’s quick rise credits “the hand of God” for leading the Penners away from the “safe haven” of Three Hills to the world at large. An early article in the evangelical tabloid Living Light News says the band’s success was “God’s work, not theirs.”

But God, it turns out, works in mysterious ways — at least where Three Hills and rock ‘n’ roll was concerned.

“Jill (Paquette) and Matt Brouwer and the (Penner) boys were all living here with their parents and it just made a lot of sense to focus our energies on the production side and let someone else do the marketing and that,” says Rendall, who still lives in town.

“I had the vision of developing Canadian artists here.”

Anyone watching Jake’s early career would be hardpressed to argue that the Penners weren’t the chosen ones of Three Hills thriving scene.

After arriving in Nashville in 1999, the brothers almost immediately signed a deal with Reunion Records — one of America’s largest faith-based labels.

But, according to Toby Penner, the ensuing ride to “stardom” was uncomfortable from the get-go.

In Canada, the act was represented by the secular Zomba Records - whose roster included a pre-breakdown Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and N’Sync.

As a result the boys found themselves straddling two different, but equally wholesome markets, neither particularly nourishing for a young songwriter who was beginning to develop an edge.

“It got so confusing,” says Penner. “Jesus ends up being your girlfriend in some songs and your girlfriend ends up morphing into Jesus. It was weird.”

Nevertheless, the Penner brothers were urged by their American managers and label representatives to play up the Christian angle when discussing their personal lives in the press.

Along with listing boy-band tidbits such as favourite colours and food, Christian magazines and websites would also include the boys’ favourite Bible passages and long quotes from the band about Christian living.

In 2001, all three Penner brothers had walk-on parts in Left Behind — a movie based on the controversial, evangelical series of books by Rev. Tim LaHaye. Toby played a security guard and also contributed one of his songs to the soundtrack, a deal that bought him a nice car and house in Nashville.

It was all part of a larger plan to set up Jake in the billion-dollar Christian entertainment industry.

“Management and publicists were concerned with (our image),” Penner says. “They would set us up with media coaches and try to dream up role model-type stuff for us. For instance, at the time there was a real fad about abstinence and all these pledges going around. Christian artists were heavily into this movement about abstinence and they would have loved for us to jump on board. We kiboshed that. We said, ‘We don’t want to be that band.’ ”

By 2003 — worn out by the stifling list of Thou-Shalts and Thou-Shalt-Nots they were expected to live by, the Penners called it a day. They asked to be released from their record contract. Penner says he still has boxes of Jake CDs stashed away in his garage.

Representatives from Reunion Records declined an interview request for this story.

“I think the main thing was we were really sick of the Christian music industry,” Penner says. “We loved making music, loved hanging out with each other and we loved that whole life. But we thought, ‘Do we really want to be this mediocre Christian band 10 years from now?’”

Ten years later, dreams of pop stardom seem to have faded from the halls of the Prairie Bible Institute. According to students, there are decidedly less active bands in the school.

Late last year, the college even cancelled its long-standing fine arts program — citing a lack of interest from students.

According to Rendall, the real problem was that the school didn’t capitalize on the momentum that had been building through Jake and others.

“I think if they had a little more marketing moxy they could have gone further,” says Rendall.

“They had all these artists coming to the school to take advantage of whatever it is that’s in the water. . . I can tell you tons of artists who hoped to go through this whole process left sorely disappointed.”

Which isn’t to say that music is absent from the school these days. But performers tend to be a little more modest in their ambition and certainly less conflicted about what the role of a Christian entertainer should be.

“We want to show people who Christ is and our relationship with him and to point them towards Christ,” says Ben Geleynse, the 18-year-old guitarist of North of Tomorrow, a band partly based at the college.

Led by Ben and his similarly coiffed brother Sam, the act began as punk rockers in the boys home state of Wisconsin before serendipity (divinely inspired serendipity, they say) landed all the band members in Alberta. Half of the act are Prairie students, while the other half live in nearby Lacombe.

And North of Tomorrow’s four members have no problem with the notion that their message trumps their music.

“I don’t think it’s a rebellious thing to play rock and roll music ,” says vocalist Sam, 19, who is studying at the college. “It’s not the music, it’s the message. You can use rock as a lousy influence — as a lot of rock has been — or you can use it for a good message. Music is music, it’s just a tool given to us by God to express things to people.”

During a concert in Three Hills last October, the performance was heavy in prayers, scripture reading and general pontificating about Jesus.

Strict rules at Prairie have been toned down a bit in the past few years. Students are allowed to listen to rock music — although anyone attempting to blare a Marilyn Manson disc can expect an intervention and lecture from fellow students. But that doesn’t mean Christian entertainers aren’t held to higher standards by the student body.

“If they are living for Christ and have given their lives to Christ and made a commitment to Christ,” says Jordan Pelland, a 20-year-old early childhood education student at Prairie. “Then living in accordance to what God has called them to do is, for lack of a better word, an obligation.”

What role such scrutiny played in the disintegration of Jake is unclear. But one gets the distinct impression that straying from the flock can be difficult.

There are major advantages to playing the Christian rock world — even at the lowest rung of the ladder. A network of Christian book stores, media and large youth groups provide automatic audiences and place bands in venues their secular counterparts could never dream of.

But there are rules to follow.

“In the Christian subculture there are gatekeepers,” says Rendall, who remains on good terms with the Penner brothers. “There’s youth pastors, book store owners, people who control the Christian media and they do have certain expectations. I don’t know if it’s good, bad or indifferent. But if you are going to play in that arena, you have to play by their rules.”

When Toby Penner released a decidedly secular collection of songs after Jake’s breakup, he heard from a number of fans who bemoaned his abandonment of Christian entertainment.

His brother Josh has since become a chiropractor in Portland, Ore. Marty works for a think-tank involved in conflict resolution on the West Bank. But, according to Toby, strange rumours about the brothers’ post-Jake activities persist in the industry.

When told that one townsperson had whispered to the Herald about Josh’s embrace of the Wiccan faith, Toby could barely contain his laughter.

“That’s probably the funniest rumour about us that I’ve heard so far,” he says. “And there have been some funny ones. . . Rumours have always abounded about us being in various cults, so I guess it’s not that surprising. There’s also a lot of rumours about us and strip clubs. I don’t recall the specifics. It’s all a bunch of silliness.”

And while Penner says he has no regrets about his short journey into Christian entertainment, he admits his devotion to Christianity has dwindled in the past few years.

Just what is his relationship with the faith that supposedly guided him from the smalltown of Three Hills to Music City? Is he still a devout Christian?

“I would say no,” he says. “I still go to a church every week that I’m involved in. It’s a cool bunch of people. I don’t want to disregard everything. I don’t live an irresponsible lifestyle. But I would say I definitely don’t have the same beliefs I had back then.”

Phil Keaggy describes himself as having been a cocky kid back in 1970, a ”little hot guitar player” with a critically acclaimed rock band.

The guitarist and vocalist had leapt right from high school in suburban Youngstown to touring and recording with Glass Harp, a band that would open for the Kinks at Carnegie Hall before Keaggy even turned 20.

Then, with one tragic event, his world changed.

His mother’s car was hit head-on on Valentine’s Day, and she died several days later. During that time of anguish, his sister, Mary Ellen, led him to Christ.

It was an experience that transformed his life and his music.

Keaggy found himself on the vanguard of the emerging Christian rock movement. He left Glass Harp in 1972 to pursue a solo career that has resulted in more than 50 albums, including the one considered his masterpiece, The Master and the Musician.

That all-instrumental album from 1978, described in his press materials as ”worshipful without lyrics,” is being celebrated with a 30th anniversary tour that stops at Akron’s E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall at 7:30 p.m. Thursday.

Akron is special to Keaggy. It was here he met Bernadette Markwell in 1971 at a Glass Harp gig at Odin’s Den, a University of Akron hangout at Brown and Exchange streets. And it was here they married in 1973 at St. Martha’s Church in North Hill. They now live in Nashville.

What’s more, Akron is part of the region that embraced Glass Harp and its progressive sound, he noted.

”That’s my home state, you know,” he said. ”There are people there who appreciate me.”

Keaggy, 57, spent his early years in Hubbard, then lived in Youngstown from age 6 until his family moved to California when he was in the fourth grade. The family went back and forth between the two states during his teen years, but he spent 10th and 11th grades at Austintown Fitch High School.

He started his senior year at Boardman High, but left for the road when the band got a recording contract. He ended up getting his high school diploma via a correspondence course.

Keaggy will be performing in Akron with six other musicians, including his Glass Harp co-founder and longtime friend, drummer John Sferra. ”They all have a heart for the music, and they put their hearts in it,” Keaggy said.

Keaggy’s own love for music was fostered by a family that appreciated a diversity of musical talents, and encouraged by the gift of a Sears Silvertone acoustic guitar for his 10th birthday.

He started by learning the surfing music popularized by the Beach Boys, he said, but his interests changed when the Beatles burst into prominence. He described his own music as still ”Beatlesque” and fondly recalled jamming with Paul McCartney after the wedding of McCartney’s sister-in-law (Keaggy sang at the wedding and the former Beatle was a groomsman).

Today Keaggy is praised as a great among guitar players, despite losing half the middle finger of his right hand in a childhood accident. Legend has it that Jimi Hendrix — or, in other versions of the story, Eric Clapton or Eddie Van Halen — once proclaimed Keaggy to be the greatest guitarist of all time, but he dismisses that as rumor.

Still, he chuckled at the story. ”Who knows? It might get me some gigs in the future,” he said.

Keaggy’s faith is central to his music. Christianity made him a free man, both spiritually and musically, he said, and ”it’s still the best news I’ve ever heard.”

That’s what he seeks to share with his audiences. He never tries to push his religion on people, he said, but rather he tries to convey something ”that might lift their hearts and their spirits.”

He said he finds that same comfort both through his own music and that of others. The Master and the Musician, in particular, was a cathartic work that helped him through the despair he experienced after he and his wife suffered several miscarriages and lost another child just three days after his birth.

Despite the strong spiritual and emotional elements of his music, though, he has difficulty defining it.

”I can’t describe it. It’s never fit in any niche,” he said. The best he can come up with is ”Heinz 57, with a little spirituality thrown in.”

And a whole lot of staying power.

Concert: Phil Keaggy’s Master & Musician Tour

When: 7:30 p.m. Thursday

Where: E.J. Thomas Performing Arts Hall, 198 Hill St., University of Akron

Tickets: $25-$35

There are many major artists in gospel and Christian music, but only a select few manage to get their names out of the church pews and into the public consciousness. Artists such as Kirk Franklin, the legendary Mahalia Jackson and Christian alt-rock band Jars of Clay all have been able to take their message out to the mainstream. But arguably the biggest family and one of the biggest names is the Winans.

David ”Pop” Winans and Delores ”Mom” Winans produced 10 musical children who, in various groupings and solo, have been a force in gospel music. Child No. 8, Priscilla Marie Winans, known to friends and fans as CeCe, has been one of the most successful crossover members of the family, releasing six albums (plus a scheduled 2008 release) with her brother BeBe and eight on her
own. She’s received six Grammys, 20 Dove Awards and numerous other accolades and honors.

On Friday, Winans will perform a rare area concert at the House of the Lord. The concert will serve as the annual spring fundraiser for the Emmanuel Christian Academy in Springfield Township. In its six-year history, the spring concert has welcomed popular Christian singers such as Damaris Carbaugh, Wintley Phipps and Babbie Mason, but Winans is easily the biggest name the school has corralled.

The concert will benefit the academy’s scholarship program, with a goal of raising $60,000 to help the more than two-thirds of the student body that receives financial aid. Tickets for the show are available at Berean Christian Stores and at Emmanuel Christian Academy.

Winans, who has two grown children — including son Alvin Love II, who co-produced her latest album and has written songs for his mother in the past — says that though she doesn’t seek out benefit events, she welcomes any opportunity to help.

”You know I haven’t really tried to find them; they find me, which is always good. I think it’s exciting to be a part of great, great causes and definitely, I really get excited about children because they are the future,” Winans said.

For the school, the timing couldn’t be better, as this year’s star is coming to town with a fresh new album called Thy Kingdom Come. Some critics and her own record label have called it a return to the church for the singer, whose previous album Purified had a strong pop/R&B contemporary edge and won a Grammy for best contemporary soul gospel album.

”That’s so funny to me when they say that, but I understand what they mean,” Winans said.

”Within the church or within Christian music, there are different styles of music. You have those sounds that are more contemporary and those that have a more traditional praise and worship sound. So whenever you’re more traditional [in your music] these are things that are more ‘inside of the church,’ where the other music lends itself to other formats.

”But I’ve always been in the church,” she said, laughing.

Musically, Winans’ eighth album does contain several praise songs, such as the ballads We Welcome You (Holy Father) and Thy Will Be Done, which builds in intensity to a string- and choir-buoyed crescendo. Forever features classic gospel call-and-response, but there are contemporary touches, such as the funky, syncopated beat of Worthy, and the gutbucket, staccato, horn-laden, gospel-funk groove that is underneath the inspirational ‘’stay strong, God’s got your back” lyrics of It Ain’t Over.

Also, Thy Kingdom Come doesn’t bother with the lyrical obfuscation that some contemporary Christian albums use to help cross over to the pop charts. Winans’ words (she co-wrote more than half the album) leave no doubt that the subject of her songs is not some earthly ”him” to whom she gives her love, but the heavenly ”him.”

But Winans says that reaching people is more important than adhering to any particular musical tradition.

”Even as a kid I loved the contemporary as well as the traditional. It’s important because different sounds will reach different people,” Winans said.

”There are different ages as well as different races, and different people who only appreciate one type of music. So you have to have the good news wrapped up in all different types of packages, so that it will be something people will pick up and give a listen to and their lives will be blessed.”