Music as a mission tool
Karen Lafferty talks about her long life serving Jesus through her music
By Michael Ireland
IRVINE, CA (ANS) -- Karen Lafferty seemed set to have a good career in secular music -- until she went to a tent in Costa Mesa, California, and it all changed.
Karen Lafferty today
(Photo: Dan Wooding)
In an interview with author, broadcaster and journalist Dan Wooding, recorded for his Front Page Radio program on Southern California radio station, KWVE 107.9 FM, at an event called "A Look at The Jesus Movement," held at Concordia University, Irvine, CA, and organized by Ron Strand of Upper Room Ministries, Lafferty said she had always been a singer because she didn't know how to do anything else.
Lafferty recalled that when she arrived in California in 1971, [this part of] the Jesus People movement was still meeting in a little chapel on Sunflower in Cost Mesa and they were growing so fast that "up went that tent" while they were in the process of building the new sanctuary which is still being used by Calvary Chapel Costa Mesa.
"I've always been a singer, I don't know how to do anything else," said Lafferty. "I have a degree in music and I'd just graduated from college when God got ahold of me and brought me out to California.
"I thought to be salt and light in the entertainment world. I didn't know that God was really moving out here [in California]," she said.
The veteran singer said she was raised in a Baptist church, "and Baptist churches are good about teaching you the Gospel, so I accepted the Lord early but, like a lot of young people, I found other things I was interested in (but) never was non-believing, though I didn't know what it really was to walk strongly with the Lord."
Album cover
Lafferty said she was originally from New Mexico. "So after my university days I went out on the road entertaining and that was kind of my hard times and God saved me out of that," she told Wooding. "It was down in New Orleans that I got right with the Lord through Campus Crusade for Christ.
"God sent an old friend of mine that had gotten involved with what they now call Cru on college campuses, and came to visit me and share with me what walking with the Lord every day was about, and I got hungry for it, and that's when I responded."
Lafferty continued: "The Lord just spoke to me that I should continue to be an entertainer and be 'salt and light' in the entertainment world, so that's why I moved to the Los Angeles area to do that and I just happened to have an uncle that I could live with in Costa Mesa. And I was praying, I said, 'Oh God, if there's any Christians out there, I need to hook up with them.' I had no idea how God was really moving amongst young people there."
What were her thoughts when she saw all those hippies when she got to Southern California?
"It was the second day, I was there and my aunt and uncle and cousins were going to take me to San Diego Zoo. So afterwards we came back for church and we changed clothes and they said, 'Oh no, just go ahead and wear for church whatever you had worn to the zoo,' and I said 'Really? We didn't do that as Baptists.' But so I did and when I got there I saw them singing 'Love, Love, Love, Love' and all that, and I was blown away and just started fellowshipping there, and the rest is history.
"I was already writing songs about the Lord and got involved with the Musicians Fellowship there, and that's what really launched me into the music ministry. I did get a good entertainment job locally, but I remember the very night that I knew God was calling me to fulltime ministry, and so that's what I've been doing ever since for about forty years now."
What were some of the songs that she sang that became so well known?
"One of the main songs was one that the Lord used right after I quit my job and went from $500 a week to $15 dollars a week teaching some guitar lessons -- I just ran out of money eventually and God used the verse in Matthew 6:33, 'Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness and all these things will be added,' and it spoke to me so much that I wrote a little chorus to it and people remembered it and we put it on the first Maranatha! Music praise album. So that's probably the most famous song that I have written."
Lafferty recalled the first time she sang "Seek Ye First."
"At one of our Monday nights at Calvary Chapel, which was youth night, Pastor Chuck (Smith) let different ones of us, especially ones that were writing songs, share them, and so I got up and taught that to everybody and they remembered it!"
How long did it take her to write the song?
Karen pictured with Jesus People friends -- left to right: Tom Stipe, Barry McGuire, Karen
and Mike MacIntosh
"Minutes," she recalled. "I had just come from a Bible study at Calvary Chapel and we were going through the book of Matthew and came to that verse, and in those days we were writing a lot of scripture choruses. So I thought, 'I need to remember that one and I can't think of a song to it, so I'm just putting a little tune I wrote on my guitar and then I recorded it on a cassette player. And, as I was listening to it, I put this little hallelujah part with it and thought, 'Hey yeah, this can go with it too.' I just taught it at church the next week and God's really used that verse and that song to open a lot of doors in many places where they've never heard my name, but they know that song. So it's allowed me to come and minister in many churches."
Lafferty said the work continued and she eventually hooked up with Youth With A Mission, and now has an extraordinary ministry called Musicianaries.
"Well we call ourselves Musicianaries but (our mission is called) Musicians for Missions International (http://www.musiciansformissions.com). What happened is that Maranatha! Music sent me on some trips overseas with Children of the Day and in 1973 we went to Europe and then in 1976 I went with a group called Phoenix Sunshine to Australia. Then I went on a three month tour by myself and that was good and bad because I was kind of lonely, but I saw how the Lord works. I went to Europe again and just saw how the Lord was using Contemporary Christian music.
"So I just felt we've got to do this; that we've got to use contemporary Christian music in missions. I had been bumping into people from Youth With A Mission as I was traveling around Europe and there I met Floyd McClung who was in Holland and I ended up joining up with him and launching this ministry called Musicians for Missions."
Lafferty said there were a few people in music missions, and she was looking for somewhere to join up, but she couldn't find anywhere to do that so she wrote down her own vision.
"I actually realized that we needed to be missionaries because I was still, in a sense, a professional musician trying to live by what I was making to be missionaries (and realized) we're gonna have to be sent by the church.
"So I shared my vision with Floyd (McClung) and he encouraged me to pursue it. I was a little scared to do that -- I saw myself just as a musician, not as a leader of a ministry or something. But I've always functioned best when I've had good leadership over me to guide me and to hook up with, and so they really launched me then in pioneering Musicians for Missions. Now we're a network of musicians around the world including in countries like India, Romania, Kenya, Latvia, in fact, all over the world."
Lafferty holds seminars for musicians and described what she teaches during them.
Chuck Girard from Love Song with Karen Lafferty
"Well, first of all we teach about three areas: We teach about ministry first of all, and especially identity because I feel like there's a danger of young people that are into music, and this happened to me, of having your identity as a musician. We need to have our identity in Christ first of all," she said. "We really teach what it is to be a servant musician as there's so much in the Word to teach about that.
"We also encourage high quality in your music -- do it as good as you can for the Lord -- and of course teach a bit about the music business, such as how to book tours, how to make albums, just everything that I've had to do through my life we teach people as part of our University of the Nations."
Lafferty said she has done this in more than 800 locations around the world, including in Eastern Europe just after the fall of Communism.
"We watched it all, and I remember being in Amsterdam where I lived for a few years and had a German secretary at the time, and we were watching the Berlin Wall come down in 1989. I remember saying, 'Let's go and be a part of that.' So I did go there right after that and I got a whole bunch of pieces of the Berlin Wall. After that we really started going into Eastern Europe quite a bit.
"My main countries ended up being Hungary and Romania, and I still go there as often as I can, and I have a lot of friends there. But it's been a lot of years now so I've watched some of these kids grow up and several of them moved to America."
Lafferty recalled what it was like in those days of Communism.
"I only went to Czechoslovakia during Communism and you certainly could tell there was a difference, but then afterwards there was such an excitement and it was kind of a window of time because they became westernized very quickly," she continued. 'It's not quite so fruitful in these days and it has become, more like Western Europe now in my observation.
"But, in the first few years, people were so hungry and if we were preaching the Gospel on the streets, they wanted to hear and churches grew very fast and a lot of churches got planted during that time."
Lafferty then told Wooding that she eventually moved back to the US.
"I don't do as many concerts as I would like, I actually am more into the mentoring mode of young musicians," she said. "I do still do music. I live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is also a mission field and is very 'New Age-y', but I have some vision there to help launch a Christian arts center, because it's the second largest art market in America.
"I still sing at convalescent homes, just normal things, but it needs to be about the Lord, our walk with the Lord, and all of that. In those early days, we had no idea (what we were part of) -- we just wanted to be close to Jesus and keep growing and to share it with our generation, and that's still happening."
Lafferty was asked her thoughts about big arena Christian rock shows that are part of today's music scene.
"I don't know," she said. "I just don't have any hearing anymore! I wear very serious hearing aids because I did too much rock and roll earlier in my life! So I can't musically appreciate rock and roll any more.
"Still, I think we need it all. I'm classically trained, and we need classical music, choir music, rock and roll and jazz. We need everybody that has a heart for Jesus to share it in their world. I just say just shine your light, be who you should be in Christ and you will influence people."
Lafferty added: "If you believe God has given you musical talent and being a serious musician is going to be your focus, it is a real discipline, and so do it as best you can -- be trained as best as you can -- but it's not like you've 'made it' -- it's like you just have to discover your own gifts.
"Music is not a spiritual gift, you either have the gift of evangelism or teaching, mercy ministries, and expressed in music is maybe one of the ways you could do it.
"Now some of us have been called to do this fulltime in our whole lives, you may or may not be called that, but I would say get some good feedback from people who will be honest. That's probably not your mother, she loves what you do!
"But I'm glad to have a mother that really encouraged me in it all. Do try to get some spiritual mentors who you can learn from that will be very honest with you. I tell a lot of people music is great and worship is great, but maybe you should minor in it, and maybe there's another area you should major in. Not everybody's to major in music ministry."
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**ANS would like to thank Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.
** Michael Ireland is the Senior International Correspondent for ANS. He is an international British freelance journalist who was formerly a reporter with a London (United Kingdom) newspaper and has been a frequent contributor to UCB UK, a British Christian radio station. While in the UK, Michael traveled to Canada and the United States, Albania,Yugoslavia, Holland, Germany,and Czechoslovakia. He has reported for ANS from Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Israel, Jordan, China,and Russia. Michael's volunteer involvement with ASSIST News Service is a sponsored ministry department -- 'Michael Ireland Media Missionary' (MIMM) -- of A.C.T. International of P.O.Box 1649, Brentwood, TN 37024-1649, at: Artists in Christian Testimony (A.C.T.) International where you can make a donation online under 'Donate' tab, then look for 'Michael Ireland Media Missionary' under 'Donation Category' to support his stated mission of 'Truth Through Christian Journalism.' Michael is a member in g ood standing of the National Writers Union, Society of Professional Journalists, Religion Newswriters Association, Evangelical Press Association and International Press Association. If you have a news or feature story idea for Michael, please contact him at: ANS Senior International Reporter
