The Servant Story

[please note, this is far from complete. It's also almost all beginning & end, with little in the middle. Some of the chronology may be faulty. If you have more info or input, please send it along. Thanks!]

Origins

The origins of Servant are found in the Jesus Movement of the late 1960s and 1970s. To understand how Servant came into being, it helps to understand the earlier involvement of its members.

Jesus People Milwaukee

The recently-divorced Jim Palosaari and his girlfriend Sue were drawn to Christ in the summer of 1968 [1969?] at a tent meeting revival in Maltby, Washington. The evangelist who gave the invitation was named Russ Griggs. The revival was organized by the Jesus People Army, an organization in the Pacific Northwest based in Seattle and headed by Linda Meissner, a former Teen Challenge worker.

Jim [Sue too?] traveled with JPA from Oregon to Vancouver to Seattle. He joined the group after meeting Linda Meissner, and he soon married Sue. Jim soon became part of the leadership of the Jesus People Army. (The JPA would later join with the Children of God, before the heretical teachings and immmoral sexual practices of COG founder & leader David Berg were brought to light.)

In early 1971, Jim and Sue felt called to the midwest to start a similar outreach. They settled in Milwaukee where they began a number of successful outreaches, including such Jesus movement standards as a band (named Sheep), a coffeehouse, and a street newspaper. Jim’s concern for discipleship of new street Christians, who were often very enthusiastic but not very Biblically-literate, led to the establishment of The Jesus People Milwaukee Discipleship School. JPM grew to about 200 members living together communally. Their goal was to train Christians and send them out to form new groups.

Sheep, Europe, and Lonesome Stone

However, itinerant evangelism had long been important to the Jesus People, and the members of JPM became restless. In 1972 they agreed to take the summer and split into four groups which would do travelling ministry, and then return together at the end of the summer. There never was a re-uniting at the end of the summer. A number of factors, mostly related to the desire to have independent teams of traveling evangelists, led to the demise of Jesus People Milwaukee. (One of the four groups went on to become Jesus People USA, the Chicago-based church community most knwon as the people behind Resurrection Band and the Cornerstone Festival.)

Jim’s group, The Jesus Family, included the band Sheep and about thirty of the older members of JPM. They set out to evangelize Europe. Important to this was an evangelistic rock musical titled “Lonsesome Stone”. Among those who were part of this group were future Servant members Owen & Sandie Brock and Matt Spransy. They had a difficult time until they settled in London. Eventually the Lonesome Stone rock opera became the sole focus of the group, with some concerned that the emphasis had become art more than evangelism. In late 1974 Lonesome Stone returned to the US. They performed a few more times, but the musical was too tied to the 1960s to remain culturally relevant.

Victoria to Oregon

Late 1975 found Jim Palosaari and Owen & Sandie Brock in Victoria, British Columbia. Victoria was the ministry base of Russ Griggs, the evangelist under whose ministry Jim had been won to Christ. It was here that the initial members of Servant met each other through the Upper Room drop in center. Servant took shape in early 1976. The initial makeup of the band was somewhat fluid, but a core membership formed consisting of David Holmes, Rob Martens, Bruce Wright, and the Brocks.

As the band was emerging, there was also emerging an intentional community. The members of the band were part of the community and some members of the band were also part of the leadership of the community. Thus, the future of newly-formed Servant and the newly-formed Highway Missionary Society were intimately intertwined.

Servant began playing places like Christian coffeehouses and colleges. Soon they expanded their concert ministry to bars and other secular venues. They then found themselves playing together with some of the (relatively few) other Christian rock artists of the day.

The band moved to Grants Pass, Oregon, where the Highway Missionary Society was laying down roots as a Christian community. [Date?] The band’s lifestyle and music reflected their beliefs about the world and the church, including passionate evangelism, the importance of Christian community, simple living, and compassion and justice for the poor.

Vocalist Bob Hardy join Servant in 1979. [Details?]

The “Other” Servant

Matt Spransy had been part of Sheep, the JP Milwaukee Christian rock band which went to England as part of The Jesus Family and the rock musical Lonesome Stone. In 1977, after returning from Europe, Matt and others formed a Joliet, Illinois-based prog-rock band named Servant (hereafter referred to as “Joliet-Servant”). Members included Doug Pinnock, would would later co-write Servant’s hit song “I’m Gonna Live” and eventually become best known as part of King’s X.

Although the band received critical praise and was well-admired by fellow musicians, it never grew popular and was never a commercial success. The band members called it quits in 1980. Shortly after then end of Joliet-Servant, Matt went to a concert by Servant in Chicago. He gave a truck and the music and sound equipment belonging to Joliet-Servant to Servant. This included several keyboards. Servant didn’t have a keyboardist at the time, and Matt was soon invited to join the band.

TUNESMITH

Servant was offered their first record deal, and became the first artists on the fledgling Tunesmith records. The owners of the label would later be criticized by some former artists as being inadequate businessmen, or perhaps even as lacking in integrity. However, this young Canadian label (a business which would expand into “Praise Industries Corporation”), introduced such legendary 80s Christian rockers as Barnabas and Quickflight, and also issued the first North American release of Australian rocker Randall Waller.

SHALLOW WATER

ROCKIN’ REVIVAL

REMIX

THE ROOFTOP YEARS

Hoping to take home a larger portion of the proceeds from record and tape sales (labels notoriously paid a dollar or less per album to the band, much of that due to songwriting credits), the community formed its own label named Rooftop Records. Rooftop’s distribution deal with Benson meant wider availability of their albums in Christian bookstores.

WORLD OF SAND

bigger production budget

CAUGHT

Following the vision that Servant would become a Christian rock supergroup which would not only be a highly successful evangelistic endeavor, but would also be a financial force which could support the Highway Missionary Society in its evangelistic and other ministries, the band set out on the Great American Album Give Away Tour. The thought was simple. Every person who bought a concert ticket would receive a free copy of Servant’s album, “Caught in the Act of Loving Him”. This would entice people to come to the concert to be evangelized, award fan loyalty, and place the music of Servant in the hands and hearts of much larger audience than every before. Unfortunately, it was a financial catastrophe. The extensive months of touring led not to the anticipated financial gain. Rather, it led to tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Some had taken to referring to the Great American Album Give Away Tour by its initials, GAAGAT. They called it the “Gag It” tour.

WORD

LIGHT MANEUVERS

SWIMMING IN AN (ALL TOO) HUMAN OCEAN

Vocalist Bob Hardy left Servant in 1984, shortly after the band returned from a European tour.

For a variety of reasons, the Highway Missionary Society began to come apart. HMS began looking for a place where members of the community could become engaged in inner-city ministry, and also where the band could economically fly to their concerts. In 1985 the remains of the Highway Missionary Society moved to inner-city Cincinnati, Ohio and renamed themselves The Servant Community.

With new member Eric Odell on vocals, Servant holed themselves up at Sandy Cove Bible Conference on the northern shores of the Chesapeake Bay to record their final album with producer David Perkins, who had grown up spending his summers at the Bible conference with his musician parents, Horace and Carol Sue. Dave had returned from trying to make it in New York City with his pseudonomous band, and was gaining significant respect as a producer. He would later be a member of the legendary Chagall Guevera.

Drummer David Holmes, bored after laying down all his tracks first, was frequently seen hanging around the campus of nearby University of Delaware, where he sat in with some student bands. This led to a one-night performance at a southern New Jersey dance club where Dave sang vocals on a song named “Clouds”. The performance was awful, and Dave pleaded that the recording of the evening never be made public.

Lead guitarist and songwriter Bruce Wright left the band in 1986 to return to Victoria.

Members of both the band and the Servant Community began going their own way. The reality of communal living can be difficult, particularly as members of the community age. With a common purse, disagreements over questions like “How much money is it reasonable to spend buying plane tickets to visit my mother?” are both understandable and painful at the same time.

Owen and Sandie Brock remained until the end. After the other members of the band had left, they attempted to continue the band by adding new members Linford Detweiler, Rich Hordinski, and Brian Kelly. This configuration of Servant lasted over a year, including taking a tour of Australia. The band recorded a handful of songs, but there were no future albums in store. It became obvious to those involved that it was God’s timing for Servant to end.

After the end of Servant, the three newest members went on to become 3/4s of the band Over the Rhine, named after the impoverished Cincinnati neighborhood in which many members of the Servant community ministered.

AFTERGLOW

Owen Brock is now a designer. He worked for many years for Cincinnati’s Zender and Associates and has done all the visual graphic work for Over the Rhine. He has now starting his own visual design/photography business – Visual Fluency.
Sandie Brock is a massage therapist and has her own practice.
Both Brocks are active in Vineyard Central, a fellowship unifying Cincinatti-area house churches.
Bruce Wright died of cancer in Victoria in 1993.

---

With the exception of a few details gleaned from my own brief interaction with the band and the Servant Community, I make no claim to originality in this history. It was compiled from a variety of different sources, including:

http://one-way.org/jesusmovement/leaders/leadrs1.htm
http://pnwbands.com/servant.html
http://www.overtherhine.com/orchard/lofiversion/index.php/t3144.html
http://www.geocities.com/jmb5b/jp.html
http://www.jpusa.org/jpusa/lessons/
http://lifeindeath.freeservers.com/issue1/page4.html

Filed under: Uncategorized