Beneath the Cross of Jesus -- Keith and Kristyn Getty

 

This couple was most likely splitting time in 2005 between two continents, including in Europe where they live part of the time in Portstewart, Northern Ireland (see the coat of arms for Londonderry County, the location of Portstewart in N. Ireland, here). The Gettys, Keith and Kristyn, may need a map or a global-positioning device at times to keep track of where they’re headed (they also live part-time in Nashville, Tennessee, USA), but the place where they might say they were ‘living’ one day in 2005 was “Beneath the Cross of Jesus”. They value the history of their faith and the songs from centuries ago that speak of this faith, but Keith and Kristyn also want to be in the present with the exercise of their beliefs. It was the life of a believing community that spurred the Gettys toward what they would write. Read on.

 

Keith and Kristyn Getty appreciate the mark that hymns have made on Christians, and perhaps that best sums up why they engage in songwriting today. This Irish couple come from a faith culture rich in history spoken through hymns. How many of us appreciate how much we owe in our collective memories to hymnwriters from the British Isles? Indeed, the Gettys must have been mulling over this fact when they decided that a new version of ‘Beneath the Cross of Jesus’ was something they wanted to pursue. This 19^th Century standard by Elizabeth Clephane (see this blogger’s August 18, 2012 entry that relates the song’s development) must have been one they’d sung many times, including in their own church in Portstewart. After all, Clephane was one of their British ‘cousins’, as a native of Scotland. Maybe it was sung on one or more of the days that the Gettys remember that they were engaged in a bible study on the book of James in that church, an episode that the couple says went on for a couple of months. Their idea for the renewal of ‘Beneath the Cross…’ evidently emanated from that study, and from a desire to emphasize the community in which believers live. The cross He bore purchases an incredible inheritance for the believer anticipating the future, but Keith and Kristyn thought that He’s so much more than just a future. He’s also about now. And, we occupy this time together; we belong to each other. ‘His family is my own’ (v.2), is a powerful statement, one which the Gettys say bans selfishness and dishonor of each other. We are ‘one through grace alone’ (v.2). This community the Gettys saw in verse two was bookended by how that group of Christ onlookers respond to Him (verses 1 and 3); I, as the individual, am astounded by His gift to me (v.1), and we, this collective ‘bride’ of Christ, live hopefully and joyfully, awaiting the culmination of His perfect act of love (v.3). There’s a lot to love about this spot beneath the cross!

 

Did God plan it this way, that our position looking up at the instrument of Christ’s execution would upend our concept of life itself? So perplexing it must have been for Mary, John, and the others to watch Jesus confront death, to endure this sting, this insult of His deity. And, what about us mortals? How many centuries of humans did God watch confront death with nothing to feel but foreboding? No doubt about it, death is a menacing thing. But now, death has not won – Christ has. Life doesn’t have to be over, and mortality no longer has to terrorize humanity. And, I’m not alone now, nor will I be when I exit this place for another. Keith and Kristyn remind us that the spot beneath His cross is not a lonely dead-end. He changes everything.     

 

 

 

http://www.fbcspringdale.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/2015-03_HOTM-Beneath_the_Cross_of_Jesus.pdf

 

http://www.fbcspringdale.org/beneath-the-cross-of-jesus/

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_%26_Kristyn_Getty#Kristyn_Getty

https://www.gettymusic.com/

 

see here for some details on the song story: https://www.hymnologyarchive.com/beneath-the-cross-of-jesus

Above All -- Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche

 

This was definitely one collaboration that altered the course of a song’s history, in a way that totally staggered its authors-composers. Two guys, Lenny LeBlanc and Paul Baloche, decided that two heads were better than one in the 1990s, and yet they could not have predicted what would happen to a song named “Above All” that Paul had started and that Lenny finished. A studio in Lenny’s place in Muscle Shoals, Alabama (see map depicted here) provided apt surroundings for their musical project, but the collaborative effort took a turn that was truly exceptional. The song’s impact immediately overwhelmed them both, creating a memorable moment that they knew was no accident. It must have been a ‘goosebumps’ kind of episode; perhaps that much could have been expected, given the subject matter they were addressing.

 

The 40-something Lenny and 30-something Paul were both expecting to make some progress in their time together one day in the 1990s, but if asked today, they’d probably say that the way “Above All” emerged from that time was rather unusual. Paul’s initial effort at the verse captured Lenny’s attention, but it wasn’t until Paul was sound asleep later that Lenny’s contribution came to fruition. Perhaps this was a very incongruous recipe for success, but then maybe where this unconventional Savior was concerned, that was indeed the right method for successful songwriting. And, indeed this same contrasting theme was how Lenny’s chorus compared with Paul’s verse, something that Lenny recalls just knocked Paul for a loop when he heard it for the first time. How does one mention Him being ‘above all’ created things (v.1), and then wind up one’s thoughts by saying he’s despised, trampled upon, humiliated, and executed (chorus)? Two pictures of someone, especially the God of the universe, could not be more opposite. And yet, they’re true. Lenny says he and Paul had trouble singing the song’s chorus as they tried it out on themselves, because their emotions left them singing through their own tears. Perhaps you and I have felt it occasionally during an especially poignant movie, maybe in a war flick when the hero dies in an act of selflessness, saving a fellow soldier. Jesus is like that, isn’t He? Magnify that a bit – He did it for everyone on the planet across all of history. Try that on for size, and match it up with some music that penetrates to the spirit. That was what happened to Lenny and Paul in a studio in Alabama one day.

 

When one is trying to adequately describe the Messiah’s life, is there really an expectation that one will succeed? Maybe that’s what Lenny and Paul ultimately were hunting as they talked about and sang together their finished product the first time. Tell about His pedigree, and then about how He surrendered all of that. Tell about this contrast. What they sang stunned them, evidently overpowering the human inclination to sing the words and music, and to do what musicians do. They really needed to see if this blend worked, right? But, what they found by happenstance was that their own reactions provided the only answer they needed. Telling each other about Him is all any of us really need.         

 

The song story is found in the following book: I Could Sing of Your Love Forever, by Lindsay Terry, Thomas Nelson publishers, 2008. 

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenny_LeBlanc

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Baloche

Boundless Love -- Dennis Loewen

 

This rocker evidently had a transformation, at least musically. He and his high school/college buddies achieved some fame, but as so often happens with musical acts, the union of their paths did not last, and so Dennis Loewen found another avenue following his early rock and roll days. He was a native Kansan (see the state’s seal here), most likely the place and the influence that helped trigger his song about a “Boundless Love” he proclaimed by the late 1970s. Dennis evidently felt by 1979 that his life, despite its pitfalls, was one in which he could rejoice immeasurably. Nothing could overcome the touchstone of this faith he’d encountered. It was a love that may have left him with questions, but its lure had an enduring quality. Mystery, yet illumination – that may best describe Dennis’ response to the One extending this bit of grace in his direction.    

 

Dennis Loewen found life after his high school/college days of the 1960s and early 1970s did not mean desolation, even after his rock and roll band split up. Dennis was a lead vocalist, and he also played keyboards and guitars, while seven of his high school friends in Hays, Kansas provided a variety of other instrumental background for a hip rock-and-roll group called the Fabulous Flippers, which was known in a 10-state area of the American Midwest. Although the group was successful for several years, it ultimately went through some evolutions and eventually disbanded after 1972. Nevertheless, the fellowship and notoriety of the Flippers stuck with Dennis and the others, so that they performed again as recently as 2011, with Dennis revising his role as lead vocalist (see one link below). It’s evident that they must have really loved what they had experienced together. In the time between their breakup and reunion, Dennis expounded on another love, the ‘boundless’ one that had his attention in 1979. Though what moved Dennis to write and sing about this Divine love is unknown, some elements of his rock-and-roll beginnings lingered on the album called Profile, in which nine other songs are included. The album was described as being in the Folk Rock/Soft rock style when it was released in 1979. Dennis mentions a couple of themes in ‘Boundless Love’ that give us clues about his frame of mind. He was a confessing struggler, mentioning being ‘weary’, ‘fall(ing) down’, and going ‘astray’ (v.1); and, he felt at times like his world was crumbling, ‘fall(ing) all around’ (v.2). Prayer (vv.1 and 2) was Dennis’ refuge, the place where he could find ‘Him’. Loewen is not shy about admitting that he didn’t ‘understand’ everything about God (v.2), and perhaps that is part of the secret draw of discovering God – finding Him to be bottomless, ‘boundless’ as Dennis reiterates throughout, with His gift of love. Friends in a band may separate after a mountaintop experience that lasts a few years, but the relationship with God never has to reach a parting of the ways.  

 

Dennis would probably admit he loved making music with his Fabulous Flipper mates; perhaps that was part of why he was extolling God for ‘my life’ and ‘select(ing) me’ (chorus of ‘Boundless Love’). Indeed, one of the things in Dennis’ life that is apparent is the long-lasting nature of his friendships with those bandmates from his youth and early adult years, including a time in 2017 when some of them gathered at the deathbed of their drummer-friend, Jerry Tamen (see link below). That’s a bittersweet moment, remembering a friendship of over 50 years that is at its end. Wouldn’t it be great if friendships didn’t have to end? In ‘Boundless Love’, it seems that Dennis had encountered such a friendship.          

 

This site provides a brief profile of the author-composer: https://www.discogs.com/artist/3090388-Dennis-Loewen

See here also for information on album on which the song appears: https://www.discogs.com/Dennis-Loewen-Profile/release/5180419

 

Here’s a version of the song by the artist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9JBDi8A_zTo

 

See here for description of the band the author-composer helped form in the 1960s: https://www.pipestonestar.com/articles/rock-roll-memories-those-amazing-men-from-lawrence-the-fabulous-flippers/

 

See the reunion group of Fabulous Flippers performing here in 2011: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGzU0d4KN0M

 

Article describing death of one of the Fabulous Flippers: https://www.hutchnews.com/fcebdfab-5599-5ced-bfaf-467efce93c9f.html