FORWARD

Once upon a time, in a generation steeped in much emptiness and spiritual darkness, a boy was born who was given a great gift. Deeply talented, trained as a musician, he had a unique ability (some would later say genius) to take spiritual truth and put it in the language and vocabulary of the common people of his time.

His biographical writings (now available for others to see) record the intensity of his struggles, his early odyssey into pathways that promised so much but sadly led nowhere. These records chronicle the search of a young man seemingly out of step with his age—who was not afraid to risk everything for what he had found to be real and right. He was nothing if he was not intense—and in that intensity, he questioned everything and everyone that seemed to hold a key to life and reality. And once he found that Answer (as we know now he did), nothing could turn him from it.

That commitment given, he began a lifelong crusade to see his world likewise transformed. No one who knew him would deny that he offended many. He often especially shocked established religious people in his youthful zeal to bring compassion, honesty, and reality back to the Church. Perhaps the truest practical test of a real prophet is this; “Does he make me uncomfortable?” If he does, he probably is. If he doesn’t, he probably isn’t. After all, you never read in the Bible of a popular prophet except the false ones who always went around telling people the things they wanted to hear.

He was blunt, he was funny, he was tactless, and sometimes even crude. He steadfastly refused to accept the spiritual status quo. He quietly mocked hypocrisy with laughter while he laid bare his own struggles and fears with tears. Many of his songs are simply sermons set to music—prophetic pieces in harmony that set standards for a generation. He was controversial. He was criticized. He was cut off by some and almost canonized by others—but he was impossible to ignore. His life and his work literally affected millions around the world. Although gone from us now, he impacted his generation like a spiritual H-bomb, and the reverberations of his life, courage, and commitment will still be felt for generations to come.

Most people today who have never before had the opportunity to read his writings and journals know him only by his music. (After all, not everyone can write a song that will still be sung five centuries after his death!) We remember him today as the man who launched the Reformation; the musician with the hunger to know God and to make Him known by faith; the man called Martin Luther.

And this, of course, is not his story. But in another century, another culture, and in another country, with not as much time to accomplish a task, on a smaller scale, it might have been. Keith loved Jesus. He did what he could in the few intense years I was privileged to know him. If you have never had the opportunity to share in the life of someone like him who LIVED for Jesus, you will catch a glimpse of that love in this, his story. He was my friend. I miss him. Thanks, Mel, for this “inside track.”

Winkie Pratney
May 1989