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Sometimes it’s as hard to say thank you as it is to say goodbye.

I only met him once, and God willing, I’ll never forget it.

Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) legend Chuck Girard passed away last week following a battle with cancer. He was 81.

To borrow from C. W. McCall, Chuck Girard was an original “long-haired friend of Jesus”, otherwise known as “Jesus Freaks”.

Chuck was to Christian music what Brian Wilson was to the Beach Boys: a pioneer — uniquely musical, extremely talented, and highly respected.

Becoming a major part of the early ’70s Californian Jesus Movement, Girard embraced Christ, dropped the drug scene, and walked away from the empty promises of false religions.

God had adopted Chuck, and he grabbed that newness of life with both hands.

So powerful was his conversion that Chuck, who once thought the ’60s mantra of “turning on, tuning in, and dropping out” would set him free, became a forebear of the Jesus Music genre.

The Jesus Music scene was more than a social phenomenon; it was a bona fide, full-on, Spirit-led revival.

Chuck eventually ended up at Calvary Chapel — the famed epicentre of the Jesus Revolution — leading worship alongside his Love Song band members Tommy Coomes, Jay Traux, Bob Wall, and John Mehler.

Love Song was born in February 1970.

Contemporary Christian Music had arrived, and Love Song, which only ever released two distinct albums, played a major part.

Songs like Little Country Church and Welcome Back set the new genre in stone.

Reverberations

Illustrating the enormity of the movement’s impact, Jesus Music even caught the ear of Elvis Presley.

The late Joe Moscheo from The Imperials recounted Presley’s keen interest in his 2007 book The Gospel Side of Elvis.

There’s also a discernible likeness between Love Song’s dynamics and Presley’s 1972 album He Touched Me.

Bob Dylan’s decade dedicated to Jesus Music mirrored a similar impact.

As did Johnny Cash, who fell into the Jesus Revolution’s orbit.

He performed at Explo ’72 in Dallas, Texas. 75,000 people attended, forming what is referred to by some as the peak of the Jesus Revolution, and by others as the movement’s explosion onto the national agenda.

At the time, Explo was described by The New York Times as “the Christian Woodstock”.

Cash joined Love Song in a line-up that also featured Larry Norman, Andrae Crouch, plus evangelists Billy Graham, Bill Bright and others.

Reflecting on those years, Chuck Girard would state, Love Song was “just a bunch of hippies in the right place, at the right time”.

A new docuseries about “the band, the ministry and the movement” will be released in September on Amazon Prime.

Grounded in God

Paying tribute to Chuck Girard on her podcast, his daughter Alisa Childers said,

“He knew he was blind, and then he saw.

“Chuck searched through so many different types of things to try to find God. Then he heard the simplicity of the Gospel, and that’s when he knew he had found the explanation of all reality.

“I don’t think he would’ve worded it that way,” she added, “but when he trusted in Christ and knew that he could be saved from his sins – reconciled to a Holy God – he lived the life of becoming more Christlike, until the day he died.”

He was, Alisa concluded, a genuine example of the “true Christian life”.

For me, the Jesus Movement, Chuck Girard, and Love Song collided with my own journey towards Christ in the late 1990s.

What God did through them, I found alive and still at work decades later.

Always dressed in black, I had too much baggage to move beyond the back rows of Christian institutionalism and “performative Christianity.”

I was the heavily burdened guy from the wrong side of town. Someone to be avoided, not invited to share small talk with over a cup of tea or two.

Outside those walls, God adopted me into the fold.

He planted me in a community where fellowship before the cross — under the Lordship of Christ — was as come as you are and back-to-basics as the Jesus Movement ever was.

Like Chuck, it was the first time I’d heard the simplicity of the Gospel, without religious overexertions and “to and fro” expectations all weighing it down.

This was my Jesus Revolution. To this day, Love Song and Chuck Girard remind me of my first real encounter with the Church, stripped bare of pretence, paraphernalia, and pomposity.

Far-Flung Fruits

Long after this fellowship folded, hearing Little Country Church still opens the door to that: you come just as you are, but you’ll never stay that way, through the transformative power of the cross.

This was why I connected with Chuck in the mid-2000s.

During my goofy 20s, I was still managing our local Koorong.

He was in Australia at the time. So, my wife and I, with three very young kids at the time, (and little money to spare), decided to pay him what we could afford to do a meet and greet in-store.

Chuck graciously agreed to take the time out of his busy schedule to hang out.

This included a free performance that night at the COC, thanks to Ps Barry Crowe, who always had my back for a Gospel event that needed a hall or an engineer for lighting/sound.

Over 120 people turned up, Chuck shared his testimony, prayed for lost loved ones, and gave what he could with what he had.

Afterwards, Chuck hugged us, signed an album, and went on his way.

Such was God’s impact on the man, his ministry and music, which brought him to life in the early 1970s.

Such is the long-reaching, transformative impact of the Jesus Revolution.

Today, others share a similar story.

Speaking with CEO Warwick Marsh, I discovered that even the Canberra Declaration is a product of the Jesus Movement.

Warwick said, he looks back with gratitude at how God used a revival on the west coast of California to inspire fresh interest in the life-changing power of the Gospel here in Australia.

Warwick and Alison Marsh, co-founders of the Canberra Declaration, were deeply touched by Chuck Girard’s love for Jesus, which was expressed in his music.

Their band, Living Water, performed a cover of the song co-written by Chuck Girard called “Two Hands” at a recent reunion concert. Here is Warwick Marsh in his own words:

“In 1972, the ‘Jesus Movement’ was flourishing, and the Lighthouse church in Wollongong appealed for volunteers to help them disciple the new converts. In 1975, I married the girl of my dreams, Alison Lackenby, and together we played in a Christian rock band called Living Water up until 1979. We ended up recording a soundtrack for a surfing movie also called ‘Living Water’. We played at the Sydney Opera House for its release. Alison played keyboards, and I played guitar. Both of us were vocalists and involved in songwriting.

The band we played in was greatly inspired by Chuck Girard and the group he was the main vocalist for called Love Song. In fact, we covered almost half a dozen of their greatest hits, as well as singing our own songs in our performances. Chuck Girard’s love for Jesus and his passion for the Gospel was infectious. Part of that inspiration from Chuck Girard to make Christ known in a relevant and creative way lives on in the founding of the Daily Declaration and writers like Rod Lampard, even to this day.”

For these reasons, I was genuinely hit hard by the news of Chuck Girard’s passing.

Yet, despite the jolt, for those of us who are in Christ, as Chuck might say, death is never simply a cold goodbye.

It’s just a goodbye for now.

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you would like to support Chuck Girard’s widow and family, go to this link to donate. The Canberra Declaration salutes Chuck Girard and has made a donation to help his widow and family. If you would like to do the same, donate here.

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Image of Love Song courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.