I retired from the music business a few years ago after having forged out a respectable living for myself in a 20 year-long pursuit of fame and fortune. Captivated early on by The Beatles, like so many from my generation, nothing in life was as important to me as music. Even before the Beatles landed in America I was fascinated by the seductive sounds of pop music. Like most musicians who got their first guitar in the 60’s, I knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. As a matter of fact I almost didn’t finish high school because of it. You see I already had a gig that kept me up late every night playing for tips. At the time, I was a 17 year-old runaway and consequently didn’t have anyone around to inform me of how stupid it was to quit showing up for class only 3 months from graduation. As it turned out a concerned cousin found out where I was staying and talked me into finishing even though as far as I was concerned high school diplomas were useless, college was irrelevant and playing music was the only thing in life that really mattered. I’m sure at the time my parents had long since given up any hope of me ever amounting to anything respectable and spent more than a few sleepless nights worrying about my becoming part of the conscience-free counter-culture that made up the pop music industry. Needless too say, for the Proctor family my senior year was quite a bit different from that of my brother’s the year before, when he graduated valedictorian in a class of over 600 with a full scholarship to a major university.
After a couple more years in the fast lane I came to grips with my foolishness and mortality and gave my life to Christ. Over the next year I was discipled by the pastor of a little Baptist church I had joined while continuing my career in music. Of course I learned and sang the traditional hymns every Sunday with everyone else even though the simplistic melodies, rhythms, chord changes and piano/organ accompaniment didn’t appeal to me in the least. Though edified by the inspirational lyrics contained in them, I considered my own exotic taste in music much more stimulating and gratifying than anything sung in a sanctuary.
Two years later in 1978 I began writing jazz/rock tunes that combined that exotic taste in music with my Christian experience and testimony. I sang hard driving, adrenaline pumping, flesh-pleasing numbers that were more about ME, MYSELF and I than the Suffering Servant I claimed to love. Being ignorant and immature in my faith I failed to see the contradiction and hypocrisy of using a carnal mechanism of sensual gratification for Christian evangelism. Only now do I understand that music and rhythm have a message all their own… regardless of the lyrics.
I played my material for a Christian friend that owned a big recording studio in Dallas who upon expressing his excitement and support put me in touch with a well-known Gospel Music producer. With the co-signature of yet another Christian friend, I borrowed six thousand dollars from a local bank to record eleven songs that, at the time, were unlike anything else in Christian music. The goal was to record and pitch the finished product to Christian record labels in hopes of securing a contract for promotion and distribution. I also decided to forgo my pop music pursuits and limit my performances to churches and religious events, believing that I was being led by the Lord into some sort of innovative music ministry.
Over the next agonizing year, very few offers and invitations from churches came in and although my jazz/rock “Christian” sound raised some eyebrows, opened a couple of doors and turned a few heads, no one would actually sign me. Among the growing stack of rejection letters from record companies, one that stood out was from a well-known figure in Christian Music. He said that although the project was impressive and he really enjoyed listening to it, he didn’t consider it to be “music for the masses” adding that my “athletic” vocal performance actually distracted from the message. To say the least, I was crushed and spent the next several years paying off that $6,000 loan, (which in 1978 was an enormous amount of money) and mourned the death of my ill-fated career/ministry in Christian music. I just couldn’t figure out why the Lord allowed me to build and board a roller coaster ride to nowhere. For the next 20 years that treasured tape gathered dust on the shelf without so much as a word of explanation from the One I thought inspired it.
Out of fiscal necessity I returned to playing pop music to pay the bills, get out of debt and get on with my life. In time, after doing brief stints in a variety of music groups and genres I ended up with a band of my own playing country and rock in assorted honky-tonks across the fruited plain from the Urban Cowboy era until the Garth Brooks craze. Again I compromised and rationalized that my presence and performance in these saloons was justified by virtue of the fact that I needed to make a living and music was my God-given talent. I figured as long as I was a good boy amid all that drunkenness and carousing it was OK for me to be there because I was being a witness for the Lord just doing what He gifted me to do. The truth is, if you spend all your time at the lake, sooner or later you’re going to fall in.
By 1990 writing and recording country music had become a way of life. I made a half dozen brief appearances on Billboard’s Country music charts with independently released singles followed by a couple of music videos on the Nashville Network. In time, life on the road became an exercise in futility leaving me burned out, bitter and little to show for it. After retiring my band I moved to Nashville and became a songwriter and a sideman only to end up back out on the road again playing keyboards for a variety of country acts and wannabes in nightclubs, auditoriums, state fairs, civic arenas and on television. I never amassed much wealth or notoriety from all my exploits and ventures in music, but what I did gain, was a hands-on degree from the “school of hard knocks”. If experience is a good teacher then I suppose I got an education after all.
By 1995, I hit bottom spiritually and emotionally falling to my knees one night in tears and remorse, repenting and recommitting my life to Christ. The irony of this melodrama is that I would go on to join The People’s Church, a large traditional southern Baptist church that would soon be led astray by the same siren’s song I’d heard myself some 20 years earlier. It’s a sensual and seductive voice that whispers “THE END JUSTIFIES THE MEANS”. Those of you who have followed my series of articles on the seeker-sensitive church growth movement know what I’m talking about.
I finally understand why that innovative Christian music project I loved so dearly sits on the shelf where I had hoped a Dove award would one day be. It’s not because it was “too cutting edge” or “ahead of its time” or “the world wasn’t ready for it”. In Genesis, Chapter 4, the Bible says that Cain was wroth and his countenance fell when the Lord found his offering unacceptable. Well, I know just how he felt. In 1978 the Lord found my offering unacceptable. Why? Because sin is NEVER acceptable to a just and holy God, even if it is “for a good cause”.
And what about those corny old hymns I learned at church a quarter of a century ago? I find myself singing them all the time these days. They do more for me than any Contemporary Christian Music ever could. You see, it’s like author Kimberly Smith says in her new book entitled Let Those Who Have Ears To Hear, “Cool is not a fruit of the Spirit.”
Recommended Books:
Let Those Who Have Ears To Hear by Kimberly Smith
Crisis In Christian Music by Dr. Jack Wheaton
Related Articles:
THE PEOPLE’S CHURCH…A WAYWARD VESSEL
WILLOW CREEK…HEGELIAN DIALECTIC AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
WILLOW CREEK (PART II)…SOCIALIZING THE CHURCH
WILLOW CREEK (PART III)…CONVERTING CHRISTIANITY
WILLOW CREEK (PART IV)…AN EARTHLY KINGDOM