We tried to major on good songs, theologically sound-but with expressions that were bright, fervent and with energy. The book came together over weeks of reflecting on what was being blessed-what God was evidently using to draw people to himself. It just reflected a unique leading of the Spirit of God as we drew from experience songs that ministered to us. The songbook wasn't really designed to combine styles. Then the kids would go back to their home churches providing stepping-stones for spiritual refreshment in the rest of the church. We'd lead music at camps like Forest Home and Mount Hermon. Actually the list of songbook selections largely took shape as my wife Billie and I were living in our car on the road. It came together in a relatively short time. Frank Phillips, director of Portland YFC (a veterinarian-later, I believe, associated with Bob Pierce and World Vision) and Dr. George Sandville, music editor and compiler for the Rodeheaver Hallmark Publishing Co in Winona, Indiana, knew more about editing Christian music than anyone and secured the copyrights. He used to say, "Let the people sing!" In our early crusades, Billy and I would invite him to come for a night and lead songs with his trombone. I was close friends with Homer Rodeheaver, earlier the songleader with Billy Sunday, who liked this different kind of book, and agreed to publish it. Each one provided his or her own unique inspiration. As the movement grew, we saw the necessity of a book that would draw together great hymns of the church and new songs from different regions, and furnish that to the hundreds of YFC groups (often in Saturday night meetings) nationwide. I was at the Youth for Christ organizational meetings in 1945. We simply saw that generation's need for new mediums and melodies to express their worship and fresh texts in their hands as tools to help it happen. We all knew each other and there was no competition. Hermon Conference Center, published Youth Sings at about that time in Minneapolis.
Cyrus Nelson, known especially for his leadership at Mt. Percy and Ruth Crawford, at Pinebrook in Pennsylvania, put together their little "Pinebrook Praises" songbook. The Jack Wyrtzen meetings at Word of Life in upstate New York are a great example. In the later 1940s, groups in each part of the country had their own musical favorites. After church, Sunday night "sings" would pack the auditorium for an hour or so. Eventually, I led songs at the First Baptist church in Ceres. My aunt Helen Griggs (composer of "Gone, gone … yes my sins are gone") taught me the importance of congregational singing and praise. I grew up in the San Juaquin Valley in California. The account presented here is the fruit of our conversations over the past four years, with his warm reflections of evangelical conviction and creativity. He is best known as the songleader who has served with Billy Graham worldwide in evangelistic crusades and missions for the past six decades. The story behind this gem is wonderfully told by one of its editors, Cliff Barrows. Three years earlier, YFC had been organized at a meeting in Winona Lake, Indiana, seeking to reach post-war teenagers and military service personnel with the gospel through a program "geared to the times and anchored to the rock." Stepping beyond narrow cultural boundaries (and hymnals), the innovative songbook offered a resource to youth meetings (and ultimately churches) across the country, presenting 115 selections inviting a healthy expression of both the old and new in Christian music. Singing Youth for Christ songbook of 1948. Bob Cook, president of Youth for Christ International, offered a foreword to the spiral-bound
They will stimulate your thoughts, turning them to Calvary and the Christ of God." These songs will warm your heart, for they comprise tried-and-true favorites of our generation. "I will sing with the spirit, I will sing with the understanding also." (1 Cor 14:15) The components of any spiritual experience are heart and mind-the heart to will and the mind to grasp the heart to sense and the mind to comprehend.
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