They Just Praise the Lord : Bill and Gloria
Gaither
Bill and Gloria Gaither are both poets and lovers of the world. Through the artistry of their Christian music they are reaching the world with the message of God's love.
The Bill Gaither Trio, which includes Bill, Gloria, and Gary McSpadden, has become one of America's most sought-after Christian singing groups. Bill and Gloria are among the best known husband and wife songwriting teams today. Their more than 250 songs include "He Touched Me," "Let's Just Praise the Lord," "Because He Lives," "The Family of God," and "There's Something About That Name."
These, plus "The King Is Coming," "Something Good Is About to Happen," and dozens of gospel songs written for children, like "God Loves to Talk to Little Boys While They're Fishin'," have been turned out at the Gaithers' living-room Baldwin in their hometown of Alexandria, Indiana, a midwestern farm community of 6,000.
Success certainly has come to songwriter, bass, and
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pianist Bill, and blonde, lyricist-alto Gloria. But you wouldn't know it from talking to them. They are not apt to tell you that the Gaither Trio has dominated the Gospel Music Association's annual Dove Awards for the past few years, or that Bill was Songwriter of the Year for five years running. If you pressed them, they might mention that they won Grammy awards in 1974 and 1975 and that "Because He Lives" was the 1976 Gospel Song of the Year.
JUST PLAIN FOLKS
Bill and Gloria Gaither are just plain folks. Christians who are part of the family of God, they say. And they would rather talk about living the Christian faith in practical ways — loving each other and their three children and trying to be more like Jesus — than anything else.
"The number of copies of sheet music and records are not the big thing to us," Bill told a reporter for the Saturday Evening Post, which did a four-page spread on the Gaithers in April 1977. "It's the knowing that there are people out there who've been through the things we've been through, the things that have changed our lives, and that somehow we're able to communicate with them — to share."
Christian faith has been central to Bill and Gloria ever since they were tiny. Bill, born in March 1936 in Alexandria, and Gloria, born six years later in Battle Creek, Michigan, were both raised as church kids, they told me as we visited at the Indianapolis airport, an hour's drive from Alexandria.
Their conversions, as such, were not big and dramatic, though Gloria vividly remembers making a commitment to Christ when she was not quite five years old.
"A child really can understand and be saved at a young age," she said earnestly, crinkling at the corners of her blue eyes. "I heard the Bible read aloud every night in my Christian home. But one night, when it was time for me to
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pray aloud at my turn, I couldn't do it. I knew I wasn't a Christian in my heart."
Once that had been explained, she was able to invite Jesus into her heart. Her conscience has "stayed very sensitive ever since. I went to the altar many times."
Gloria was reared in the Church of God and Bill in the Church of the Nazarene. They both attended Anderson College in Anderson, Indiana, and became teachers. But they didn't meet until Bill had been out teaching high school English for four years. Gloria occasionally substituted at Bill's school.
TIME OF INTELLECTUAL QUESTIONING
For both Gloria and Bill, college was a time of intellectual questioning, a time of reexamining the Christian commitment they had made as children.
Bill described the mental rebellion of his early twenties, though it was nothing really overt. The result was a "definite commitment in a crisis experience," however. "It was time to get serious about this whole matter of being a Christian, and doubts are a hard thing for an evangelical kid to explain to others," Bill volunteered.
From that time onward, Bill's decisions have been based on his commitment to Christ.
Gloria described going through a labyrinth of doubt and upheaval in college. The heart of it was wondering whether she had accepted Christ as part of her cultural context rather than because of the reality of His salvation and power.
"What tipped the boat for me were the 'old saints' I had known as I was growing up," Gloria said. She compared the final outcome of their faith to the final outcome for people who embraced cynicism.
"It was not so much the flashy people," she continued, "the preachers or evangelists, as much as the old people who had served the Lord for years and years.
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I had seen the final outcome of that commitment and what it had made of them and I also saw what nonbelieving finally did. It was the closest thing to a test tube to see the lives and the final results."
Gloria's best crisis didn't happen until she was well into adult life. The struggle, she said, was "just being a Christian. I used all my energy just keeping on an even keel. I was a nervous Christian. I reviewed my life nightly."
Then it dawned on Gloria that though she had accepted Jesus as her Saviour, she had never really made Him Lord of her life.
THE LORDSHIP OF CHRIST
"Resolving the Lordship of Christ was a giant thing," she stressed. Doing so gave her an anchor. It took away "so many nebulous, gray areas that took so much strength and energy." She was able to lie back in the love of God and channel some of her energies into helping and nurturing others.
"I realized I was not just a consumer, but a vessel," she said succinctly.
"Letting go and letting God wasn't easy," Gloria remembers, "because it meant releasing Bill and the children and things I had been dealing with in my own power."
Looking back, she observed: "When you let go of everything and invest everything — sink or swim, live or die — in the Lordship of Christ, then I really believe the only kind of growth that happens comes as a result of obedience.
"He who believes, obeys; and he who obeys, believes," she said, referring to a basic tenet of the German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer. "It doesn't matter if your whole world falls in, financially or socially or even professionally, for you can look God in the face and say, 'I did what
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You said,' and there's a joy. You take the gut-level risk, and then comes the joy, happiness and assurance."
Bill and Gloria seem absolutely convinced the Lordship question is the primary one for every Christian. Until that is settled, they feel, a believer is bound to be bothered by indecision and the tug of wanting to follow Jesus while at the same time desiring approval from the world.
"The risk of being misunderstood by people is not fun," interjected Bill. "We all want to be loved."
"Yes," said Gloria, "but you don't say to God, 'You show me so I won't make a fool of myself, and then I'll believe.' The leap of faith comes first, and then comes knowledge."
As was true for many of their hymns and gospel songs, the words to "I Believe; Help Thou My Unbelief" came out of the daily experience of living their faith:
I long so much to feel the warmth
That others seem to know;
But should I never feel a thing,
I claim Him even so!
I Believe, Help Thou My Unbelief,
Copyright 1975 William J. Gaither
"Hundreds of times we have felt that melting presence, in an almost tangible touch of a wave," said Gloria with a natural touch of poetry. "But when the tide flows out, we have to know it's there just the same."
Bill and Gloria believe that once they settled the Lordship question they have been able to deal with everyday issues "more rationally, more fairly, and more head-on" because of the inner security they feel.
According to Gloria, her doubts and questions now center on procedural points, like, "How should I work with You, God? How long should I wait? How, Lord, are You going to do this?"
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DOUBTS NO LONGER OF GOD
"My doubts," Bill added, "are at the point of saying, 'Did I do that for the right reason?' Our doubts are no longer on God, but on ourselves. Now, it's choosing between better, best, and 'best of best.' "
The Gaithers see the stewardship of time as a major problem with which they must constantly battle. When Christian values do not coincide with those of the world, how do they judge the most important things in life?
For example, the day I interviewed Bill and Gloria at the Indianapolis airport they had just returned from a short — and unusual for them — vacation trip without their kids.
The big decision on that morning, the first time they were back together as a family, had been to plan family time together. They decided to spend the morning going out to their pasture with their children, aged twelve, eight, and seven, bridling up the horses and riding, and then going over to Bill's parents' home for the noon meal.
"We have to schedule time to make things like that happen," noted Gloria.
"How do you know you are making the right decisions?" I asked this friendly couple whose personalities seem to complement each other so well.
"Decision-making takes a lot of energy," replied Bill. "Also time. And some decisions need to be made — and finished. It's senseless going over the same ground once a basic decision has been made.
FINDING GOD'S GUIDANCE
He went on to relate how he and Gloria had just made a major decision that involved their professional careers. They followed a series of steps which he said they had
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found practical at other times to determine God's guidance:
First, consult three or four spiritual people, counselors whose opinion you trust: "Surround yourself with persons who will be honest."
Second, consult the Scriptures: "There's so much wisdom there."
In particular, Gloria and Bill said, there is wisdom in the Book of Proverbs, the Prophet Isaiah, in studying the way Jesus dealt with problems, and in Paul's instructions to Timothy.
Third, said Bill, pray!
Fourth, ask yourself some hard questions, such as "Do I measure up?" "Am I doing this for the right reason?" Check your motives.
Fifth, "sleep on it." Reexamine the matter again four or five days later.
And finally, make the decision, "even if it involves risk and it might appear to be failure in the world's eyes."
Regarding a professional decision he and Gloria had made that he did not want to share, Bill said they had thought it through very carefully, making sure the reasoning process they had used to arrive at the decision had been right in God's sight.
"The decision was right," Bill concluded. "We have peace in our souls."
"To make spiritual decisions where not everyone is happy is difficult," Gloria broke in. "Discipleship may not be the popular thing, but the Word of God has to be our bottom line. It is the absolute authority against which we measure everything, not what is going on in the world.
"We live in a world, a culture, that has no bottom line. The social bottom line is now gone. If you don't have some kind of a lifeguard stand to measure against, you don't even know you've drifted."
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It was Bill's turn to break into the conversation. He backed up Gloria's point by quoting from one of their songs — "a fun song, with a barb" — which speaks about the absurdity of "arranging the pictures on the wall when the house is burning down."
Our values can become twisted to the wrong standards at home, too, the Gaithers assert. Always reassessing their priorities, they put serving the Lord as good parents at the top of their list, followed by writing music, recording, and performing, in that order. That ranking means that Gaither Trio turns down nine out of every ten invitations to sing, and they rarely travel out of town during the week.
It also means that the decision-making process the Gaithers use for professional-type decisions also applies to ones at home.
BASIC DECISIONS APPLIED DAILY
Basic decisions were made long ago, though they must be applied daily, Gloria explained. Thus the Gaithers' emphasis on developing strong Christian character in Suzanna, Amy, and Benji is applied when it comes to settling an argument, or planning for piano lessons or a Little League ball game.
"Our aims for the kids are that they become mature Christian people in a real world," said Bill. "And make decisions even though they're costly," said Gloria, adding that she recognizes that it is not possible to expect immature people (children) to make mature (adult) decisions.
The Gaithers' interest in improving the self-image of their own children has worked its way into some of their songs and into Gloria's two books based on experiences of home and children, Rainbows Live at Easter and Make Warm Noises.
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One of the Gaithers' children's songs says:
I am a promise, I am a possibility.
I am a promise, with a capital P.
I'm a great big bundle of potentiality.
I Am a Promise, Copyright 1975 William J. Gaither
Bill and Gloria trust God to take care of their children. And that if their home life is meaningful, the children's future will be, too.
"Just because we're Christians, we're not infallible," commented Gloria, as we turned to the topic of overcoming anxiety and where Christians can find spiritual resources in time of need.
"We need to go back and say, 'We were wrong.' We need to be sensitive to God's will. For the oil of the Holy Spirit to flow back into our lives we have to do that," Gloria asserted.
ANXIETIES FOLLOW DISOBEDIENCE
Anxieties follow disobedience to God, Bill believes. "We don't always trust the processes of God. We get impatient and anxious. We sometimes say, in a joking sort of way, 'I sure hope God knows what He's doing!' "
Bill went on to talk about doubts in the framework of his "beating on some doors, finally breaking them down, just to see if God really knew what He was doing."
When Bill had forced God's hand, however, he realized that he should have been willing for God, in His time, to open the doors that He had closed.
In that case, Bill declared, he approached God in confession and asked forgiveness, saying, "I'm sorry, I was out of Your will."
Waiting is the hardest thing for Gloria. "It's that internal struggle that just kills you because it saps so much of
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your energy. Once God shows you what to do, the doing is never that hard."
She also finds herself "taking things back after committing them to the Lord" — a failing with which many of us can readily identify. "I shouldn't worry, but I do!" confessed Gloria.
"I think the devil is the accuser in getting you generally frustrated," chimed in Bill. "When you feel that great, gray, nebulous ball of something wrong, it's generally Satan. But when God accuses, it's specific — who, what, where. But wallowing in a problem doesn't help anything."
Gloria added an insight she and Bill gained from reading old diaries that described events in the Gaithers' lives six or seven years earlier. In retrospect, she observed, things that appeared to be major crises at the time the diaries were written turned out to be less important later. But the happy "little incidents" — as seen then — turned out to be "the big, giant things we almost missed, they were so regular, so daily."
What seem so often to be big, dark, rain clouds now, turn out to pass overhead with only a few drops of moisture. "But if we are absorbed by the threat of the storm, we may miss seeing the rainbow."
"At the ripe old age of forty-one," concluded Bill, "I know there are some things in life I cannot change. All I can change is my attitude to them."
Then, pausing, he added that he did not mean that he should not do his best to effect change. And, he admitted, it's always hard to know when he is waiting on the Lord, and when he's copping out: "Have you knocked long enough, or do you now have the crowbar out to break in the door? What is knocking long enough? What is trying hard enough? What is walking away too soon?"
The couple concluded that the only way to know the
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answers to questions like these is to "test the spirits" — after looking at whatever objective data is available.
READ THE WORD
"You have to read the Word over and over and over," declared Gloria. "That's the number one thing."
She singled out the Old Testament Book of Isaiah. "It's been pure honey to me this summer," she said, "and the Gospels, which feed the reader with what Jesus said, what He was about, what He told us to do, how He felt, how He reacted. Really get to know the overall Person of Christ, and then stack that up against the situation you face."
Both Bill and Gloria cautioned against putting too much emphasis on feelings, though they are important to corroborate or deny objective scriptural data from a spiritual standpoint.
"When there's hocus-pocus chemistry in the air, God gets blamed for a lot of things He didn't do — like the person who eats twenty-five green apples and then has someone pray for his belly ache," added Gloria with a laugh.
Next to the Scriptures, the Gaithers rank going to the family of God — mature, wise, stable believers — as the most important spiritual resource available to Christians.
"We need to be nurtured along in the family. The family of God has to be directive," explained Gloria. "The family of believers is where you go for help."
Although the third source of spiritual help Bill and Gloria mentioned would be natural for two songwriters, it is equally available to all Christians — hymns by lyricists of the past like Fanny Crosby and Philip P. Bliss.
And, it might be added, the Gaithers' songs have been an inspiration and source of strength and comfort to millions of contemporary Christians.
Bill and Gloria, aware of this, nonetheless are awed by it.
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"We knew our songs were special and God-given," said Bill. "We knew that in our souls when we were struggling songwriters. But the important thing was that we had emptied our souls of something special."
Once the Gaither Trio grew successful, there was the added "excitement of being used."
Realizing that a crowd of 10,000 people at a Gaither concert are singing their songs because the melodies and words have become a part of their lives can be most rewarding.
Bill told of a young father who came up to the Gaithers after a concert in Toronto to thank them for the contemporary song of praise "Because He Lives."
"We just buried our six-year-old son," the man said. "He was run over while he was riding his bicycle. If it hadn't been for that song, I wouldn't have made it."
"When the honest sounds of Gaither music become a resource to pull others out of crisis, well," says Gloria, "that's the greatest pleasure, the biggest thrill of all."
