On this day 26 years ago, Keith Green and a number of others (including two of his children) were killed when the light aircraft in which they were travelling crashed shortly after takeoff. Green was just 28, but he had already had an extraordinary influence on the field of contemporary Christian music. He was a musical prodigy as a child, and began writing and singing his own songs at 6 years of age. At the age of 11 he signed his first recording contract with Decca Records.
Green had a Jewish background, but he embarked on a spiritual journey at around the age of 15, leading him to drugs, Asian mysticism and “free love”. After a bad experience he abandoned drug use and became cynical towards philosophy and theology, but then he had a conversion experience and became a born-again Christian. His girlfriend also became a Christian and they married on Christmas Day 1973.
Two years later the Greens began an outreach ministry in Los Angeles, providing housing and care for prostitutes, drug addicts and homeless people. The ministry subsequently was names Last Days Ministries, and relocated to Texas in 1979. Green became a very popular Christian contemporary musician and released a number of best-selling recordings between 1976 and 1982, including one called “No Compromise”: “No Compromise is what the whole Gospel of Jesus is all about…”