Dear 2^nd Chapter:

We have been blessed by your music for 8 1/2 years now. Truly, your ministry is anointed by God. I can tell that your songs are from learning experience, not just beautiful words. We have been to 4 of your concerts in Albany, New York. Each of you has your own ministry within 2^nd Chapter but you already know that.

Matthew, you have blessed my 14-year-old son. At first, Christian music to him was "The Old Rugged Cross" which is beautiful, but he couldn’t relate to it. With your music, he could share it with his friends and not be afraid of getting laughed at.

Nelly, your love for the Lord shows in every way. When you sing, you don’t see the people-you see Jesus. Then He pours His blessing upon you and we get the overflow. It is a joy hearing you sing- but also a wonderful feeling watching you enjoy the very presence of God.

Annie, I love your songs. I praise God for your obedience and love. You’ve been a great inspiration for my own music ministry.

God bless all of you. Stay in His will and sight.

With love,

Joanna K.

Dear Annie, Matthew & Nelly:

Hi! My name is Marcy . I want to tell you how much I enjoyed Singer-Sower. Last year, I got The Roar of Love because I read the Chronicles of Narnia. The Lord really spoke to me through it. The words to Ocean Liner really helped me. There was something in every song that helped me. Even my sister liked it, which is a miracle because she is very picky about music groups.

God bless you all in everything you do!

In Christ,

Marcy R.

Dear Nelly & Annie:

I have recently attended two of your concerts. The day after the last one, I felt impressed to write this letter to Nelly simply because she has always been so very sweet and encouraging to us and also to Annie because it was her words from the Lord which helped in my own life. Besides, I really need to share with someone.

Many times I have listened to you say Annie on one of your albums "our minds are like a field, and if we plant bad seeds they will grow and produce fruit". Well you see I have been planting bad seeds, one in particular for quite a while. It seems like it has now grown up into a HUGE tree and has wrapped itself around me and practically strangled all the life and hope out of me.

I feel guilty, and this problem is extremely embarrassing and hard for me to admit because I feel so ashamed. The problem is homosexuality. The only reason I can write you is because you are the type of people who are loving and not will to pass judgment and condemnation on me.

Back in high school I can remember feeling guilty for the thoughts that would come in my mind but the only problem was that I never really did anything about them. Well now I’m 23 years old and graduated from college and married and this thing is bigger than ever. I would always try to rationalize it away and each time it became harder and harder to face my wife, my church and friends and to put it plainly I was confused, torn and depressed. I felt like I had two personalities or I was a Sybil or something.

Well in one of your concerts you told us that the Lord wanted to break the chains and smash the stony places in our hearts and lives. That night my inside felt like they wanted to scream out but couldn’t because it seemed the Holy Spirit wasn’t even there to help me cry out to God.

The next day I was worshipping God and the Lord made himself very real to me. I had wanted God to chop down this problem tree I had but He showed me that there was another way which He could work. I was going to kill the tree myself by choosing not to nurture it anymore. Starve it! Quit giving it water and feeding it. And after a while I would see it beginning to dry up and not produce fruit. And in its place would be planted a tree of joy, hope and gratitude and victory.

This may sound like a ‘kooky’ illustration, but when the Lord showed it to me I was so overjoyed and I just had to tell you.

This little letter cannot really express all that I have been through, but now I have hope. I love you guys. You have been such an encouragement to my wife and me.

With much love in Christ,

SH

Dear 2^nd Chapter:

Thank you for obeying God. He used you to save my life! I lived in Germany from 1983-1986 and saw you perform in Stuttgart. I sat on your right at the front and wept through the entire first half of the performance. It was the same day that I learned that my parents were remarried after several years divorced. I was blessed beyond sanity that night!

1985 was a devastating year for our church. Our pastor's wife ran off with the song leader, everyone was going through extreme trials including myself. When my best friend killed himself the chaos in the church stopped.

Instead of coming back together we all silently went our own way and the church disintegrated. I became suicidal. I was driving down a long hill one day listening to a local German rock station. I had decided that when I reached the turn at the bottom I would just go straight and crash.

Suddenly You guys come on the radio! "You don't know which way the wind blows so how can you plan tomorrow." I just pulled off the road and wept and decided to wait till tomorrow. When tomorrow came I wanted to live.

More than once I've been in a dark place and your ministry came out of nowhere. I've prayed for you often and thanked God for you. I hope to get to see you again sometime and shake your hands and thank you personally.

DW

Well, much has been said about that awesome time when God poured out such rich blessings through 2nd Chapter, Phil Keaggy & a band called David in the How The West Was One concert. It truly was a rich experience. Many of us, who made music their "god" in the 60's & 70's, found such redemption in enjoying music again while learning to see it glorify the Lord and bring us into worship.

I was so excited when a friend of mine came to California from New York with this bearded fellow on an album cover for me to check out. He looked like a leprechaun with this enchanting look to it, (I must admit I was cynical). I couldn't get enough of it once I listened to it. It brought such healing to me as did Love Song, 2nd Chapter and others who were breaking though with music that honored the Lord.

When "Love Broke through" came out, I was hooked. So when the "How the West was One" tour came to the SF Bay Area, somehow we found a way to get there, even though my wife was very pregnant with our first child. It was amazing how much that little baby, (two months later, we named him Philip!), was rocked in the womb as we had seats so close to the stage. My wife couldn't believe how much he was kicking! I will never forget that experience. I have experienced so much "live music" but that was the highlight for me.

I also will never forget the concert with the 2nd Chapter & Barry McGuire in Oakland! It was such a liberating time and it freed me up from being wary of what was being sarcastically called "sanctified rock n' roll". It was sanctified all right! I was a long time fan of 2nd Chapter & Phil Keaggy, that to see them together was like heaven come down to earth. It truly was a refreshing worship experience, which is so commonly taken for granted today with the modern worship teams and musicians who are taken up with the worship movement (thank God for that)!

There was not a great deal of live Christian music here in Northern California in those days and worship music was nowhere near what can be found today. Those guys were truly the forerunners and I am thankful to have had a part of that history be my experience. Praise God from whom all blessings flow!

D.M.

I just found your website today, and listening to the clips from your albums of some of the songs, brought tears streaming down my face. I grew up listening to your music. My mother played the Easter song every Sunday after we got back from church as loud as she could in our apartment without upsetting all the neighbors. I must have been about 10 or 11 then, maybe a little older.

I am 33 now, and last year was able to come across the Rejoice CD in a little old Christian bookstore. Amazingly- I still knew all the words to your songs. Thank you for the opportunity to buy your CD's now, there has never since been Christian music that spoke to me in the same way yours did so many years ago when I was a child. Hearing your songs again bring back some of the warmest memories of my childhood with my mother that I had forgotten, and makes my Spirit cry, and reach out to Jesus.

I am in a marriage struggling to find its way back to God, and put God first in our lives-! hearing those songs again, reminds me of the feelings of true joy in being a Christian. Thank you so much, I haven't felt like this in so long. Praise the Lord for you all and your precious love songs to Jesus.

After all these years, your music still amazes me, touches me, and causes me to rejoice at the top of my lungs to my Father in Heaven. Thank you so much. I can't wait to save the money to buy the entire collection of your CD's for my very own now. This music is eternal. God Bless to you all, and again- Thank you.

Anon

The 2nd Chapter of Acts was the first "Christian" group I ever listened to. I came from a very traditional church background. What an amazing thing to listen to you sing and feel the presence of the Lord! To this day, whenever I listen to your music, I just want to fall on my face and worship the Lord! I thank the Lord for your obedience to His will.

After seeing you a couple of times in concert, the Lord began to lead me to intercede for your ministry. One particular concert, held in Dayton, I was the first one in line to get in. My friends left me to go to dinner. I just wanted to pray. Once we were allowed in to be seated, the Lord pointed out a guy. The Lord told me that he was going to get saved during the concert. It was totally awesome to see that come to pass. I am and will remain a faithful supporter. I thank the Lord for the blessings I have received because of your ministry.

Oh, just one more thing. My niece and her husband have spent the last 3 years stationed at Okinawa. She e-mailed me to tell me that she and her husband were going to get baptized. She told me that the only things she ever new about the Lord came from me. Then she said she could still remember riding in my red pinto listening to Mansion Builder! Isn't that cool?

May the Lord bless you all!

K.

Just wanted to say that your music, which blessed me so much as a teenage boy, has been coming to my mind again after all these years. It's been almost three decades since I got my first 2nd Chapter album--"In The Volume..." and I played it time and again in my room there in Panama, Central America (I was a missionary kid). I don't know how I got the album--I think a friend gave it to me just before we hopped in the car for our weeks-long car journey through Central America. But once I played it, I was hooked. I had never heard such amazingly tight vocals, and your songs touched me and stayed with me. As it turned out, they stayed with me through many tough times, even when I thought I had forgotten them.

Two weekends ago I found that old record, and I played it (more than once). And since then those old songs (from "Volume") have toured my head all day long as I sit at work, and at night as I lie in bed, reminding me of the treasure I have in Jesus. You are timeless, because your message and talent were so beautifully given by God. Thank you for getting a teenage kid... and this now a middle-ager... through the seasons of life. For reminding me and others, over and over, that God truly loves us and that we need to live for Him. And may God bless you all.

D.W.

I know you've heard this all before, but I felt the need to let you know how very much the 3 of you have ministered to me over the years.

I was involved in a Charismatic coffee house ministry while in college at the University of Oklahoma in Norman, OK when I first became aware of your ministry in 1974. A good friend of mine gave me a copy of "With Footnotes" as a present. One listen and I was a goner! I could go on and tell you how I obtained every LP the group released, but what I truly want you to know is that, while I loved your music and ministry, truly what I love even more to this day is the example I always saw in you.

Today, just as it was back in the early '70s, I can begin to listen to a song of yours and the Holy Spirit automatically does two things with me: He causes me to "give myself the once-over," seeing as to whether or not I'm right with God and He also encourages me to see that I stay that way. I'm not placing you on a pedestal--I'm just saying God uses you and the example that I've SEEN in you as sort of a yardstick, if you will.

I told a friend the other day that if I thought of just one word that comes to mind when I recall Second Chapter, that word would be PURITY. No higher compliment could be given.

Blessings,

S.K.

I started listening to "Acts" back in the late 70's as a pre-teenager. My parents didn't think much of the music, so whenever they were gone, we'd crank up the volume and play "Yawaeh" as loud as the old console stereo would go.

Now, some 25 years later, I'm still listening to "Yawaeh" as loud as I can stand it. I just read the history of "Acts" to my children and, thanks to re-releases on CD can play their music for years to come.

Thank you, Annie, Nellie and Matthew, for years of faithful service to the King and the Kingdom. We are the blessed recipients of the Lord's precious gift of music to you so many years ago.

Thanks too, for being used by God to sow seeds of personal worship that can still be found in today's modern worship and praise music genre. Your singing songs TO Jesus, instead of just songs ABOUT Jesus has carried over into the Matt Redmonds, Sonic Floods, and Third Days of today's Christian music scene.

God bless you all as you continue your respective ministries. Thanks for the memories.

D.G.

About 22 years ago my life was absolutely, totally transformed by the Lord, and in large part through the music of 2nd Chapter of Acts...I wish I had the words to thank you all! I've been listening to old albums and cassettes for the past 22 years and was so happy when someone gave me the First Love video's a few months ago! What a sentimental spiritual journey....thank you for producing it. I have cried, rejoiced, and thanked God over and over again for you all and your obedience to the call.

As a result of the spiritual transformation a few decades ago....the Lord led my husband and I to pioneer a church about 8 years ago. Thank you and may God richly bless all of you!

B.J.

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