In the first part of a personal history, LARRY NORMAN, Christian music pioneer, charts the rise of Christian music from its roots and, based on his experiences, gives his own perspective on the collision between creativity and commerce.

If reform is needed then I'm ready and willing to head up a committee of like-minded, concerned Christian artists to expose the record industry!

No, not really. I'm being facetious. Lest I be misquoted in my levity, let me reiterate: I am NOT willing to be involved in ANY REFORMATION of the industry. WHY? Because God doesn't even NEED a music industry.

God doesn't need leaders, He seeks followers. God is looking for a willing servant, like a young boy with baskets of loaves and fishes who only needs to say "yes" to God and he will use the smallest of gifts or talents or abilities to the greatest effect to carry out and fulfil His work.

Additionally, why reform a business structure into a sleeker, more trustworthy model if this just inures a more sophisticated kind of thievery? Anyway, the most assured scenario is that nothing will ever happen in this regard. No artist will have the courage to jeopardise his recording contract or his standing in the community by speaking up, especially over money issues. And this is somewhat laudable. Money shouldn't matter to a Christian if it is God who promises to supply one's needs.

But then, also, an increased profit margin shouldn't matter to a gospel label if it is only accomplished through theft. Artists should be willing to "suffer for their art." They should make tents like Paul, make furniture like Joseph, sweep office buildings if they have to. But this should be voluntary, not enforced labour caused by the outright theft of their daily bread.

Artists should be willing to minister without payment when led to. They should give freely what they have received freely. Travel to China, go to Liberia, journey to India and don't charge anything for your ministry there. Sing in a prison. Do six nights in a nightclub for minimum union wage instead of the usual $10,000 you get in a church concert. But if artists should be willing to forgo their usual wages, so should record executives. Explain to the stockholders that not everything needs to be done for profit. What happened to the idea of ministering, "as unto the Lord"? Is the only measurement of God's involvement and approval the mammon of the secular? Because God rewards us with a coin of another realm.

In the New Testament, we are told not to go into court against our brother. I don't know if the secular corporations, which now control the majority share of the gospel recording industry, can be esteemed as "Christian brothers" - but a certified public accountant quietly burrowing through tangled, obfuscated royalty statements is not equivalent to inveighing against the injustice of a brother in the arena of an open courtroom.

SoundScan reportedly stipulates that no person other than a subscriber can look at the national sales figures. So if an artist ever wanted to verify his record sales at the desk of the president who signed him, he apparently could not do it through SoundScan - without first paying thousands of dollars to become a SoundScan subscriber.

Ineluctably, and perhaps unknowingly, artists were already courting decline in the '80s when they tried to "cross over" into the secular mainstream. Songs about Jesus usually omitted the personal nouns "Jesus" and "Christ" in favour of a more universal "you". Lyrics like "I need you in my life" and "I want to be with you forever" could serve as a love song to non-believers and encoded statement of faith to the converts. A few of the gospel labels even set in place their own strategic in-house promotion teams to court the favour of industry mags, use their expense accounts to provide dinner and drinks for important connections and relentlessly pursuing national hits on secular radio. And when MTV emerged, the clumsy shuffle toward tube-time was absolutely peripatetic within the gospel industry.

If it appeared to me that some artists and companies were willing to "sell out" by hiding more and more of their light under bushels, I also had faith that in small towns all over the world, practising in garages and basements, young musicians with a fiery spirit and open heart were being watered in the garden of God and would soon blossom and spring forth. New music would appear. New hope and evangelistic zeal would administrate a change. Two steps backwards, but three steps ahead. God is not defeated by the double-minded believers. His message may often be tarnished by a messenger, but the Truth within His message is incorruptible.

Institutions, like civilizations, often fall apart rather slowly and there are many indicators in the rise and fall of both. I was in a restaurant one night in the late '70s when a young man leaned over the back of his booth announcing his presence with great enthusiasm and excitement.

He told me, "I've decided to start a Christian Billboard magazine, like Cash Box and Record World. It will have monthly charts. It will have record reviews. It will be a trade magazine but it will also have a few interviews and articles so that young people will want to read it. What do you think of my idea?" (I am paraphrasing - but this entails the manner and matter of his greeting.)

I did not really know him but scanned my memory banks, looking for the file marked "opinions and cultural analysis." And then I wound up for the pitch and said (again, paraphrased): "Well, I think it's a destructive idea. Right now records sell according to how each community feels about an artist. There are records that sell in one part of the country and nowhere else. I think that's healthy. Store owners refuse to put my records in their Bible bookstores because they don't like what they hear and they want to protect their community from what I am doing. I think that's healthy, too. If I owned a store I would be selective, too. If I respected my customers, I would want to protect them, not exploit them.

"Right now, communities are being uplifted by music they consider relevant and spiritually on-target, and they remain isolated from the music which lies outside their cultural needs and moral ambience. But if you create a national sales chart you will create a Normative Standard and store owners will be pressured to buy music that they've never heard because if they're being told it is selling everywhere else, they will assume that it must be sanctified and safe and they will order it without fist listening to it. I believe that censorship is a healthy part of how culture is formed. If Jesus rock music causes controversy in a little town, and doesn't get any radio airplay, I think that's fine. Then the cultural pressure builds up as individuals discover the censored music until it explodes from its own force.