By Grace and Together

        By grace, and together.

       That is how David Best, Michael Pitts, and Greg Morse describe their lives as Christians, servants, and musicians.  On Friday evening, during the Homecoming Variety Show, they performed an original song, “Cowboy for Jesus,” followed by a roar of applause from the thousands of PLNU alumni, students, family members, faculty, and staff in Brown Chapel.

    “It was awesome,” said Albert Sutrisno, a freshman.  Carli Cosentino, a sophomore, also enjoyed the song.  “Everyone was into it, clapping along,” she said.

        Friday’s performance was one of many in their long history of more than 35 years.  The band Mountain Glory formed in April of 1971 in Pasadena College when Best overheard a trio performing at a reception. 

         “I began talking with them, and at some point in the conversation I asked, ‘Hey, mind if I get my guitar?’” said David Best, now the lead singer and guitarist of Mountain Glory.  “We sang until 1 or 2 in the morning and they invited me to join them.”

The band also included Dana Walling, who played bass.  For the rest of that year and the next, the country/California folk rock band toured and performed at various locations, and Best’s grandfather provided resources to record their music in 1972, the same year that Best, Pitts, and Walling graduated.

“I’ve got the original on vinyl,” said Dr. Karl Martin, professor and chair of PLNU’s literature department.  “When I was 10 years old, my older brother brought home [Mountain Glory’s] first record from college.  I was excited to hear the music of college students.” 

To Best, Mountain Glory were pioneers. 

“We were part of the Jesus Movement of the West Coast,” Best said.  “At that time, Christian music consisted of choirs and quartets.  Drums and guitars were sometimes not that well-received.  We knew music was powerful, especially to youth, and was also a barrier.”  

However, Best knew the barrier could be broken. 

“Our goal was to let music be our way to express our faith and the good news of Jesus Christ with others,” Best said.  “We knew we were carving new ground, drawing people in.  Even if there were guitars, even if our hair was long, if older people gave us a shot, we knew we’d win them over.”

After creating their first record “Happy is the Man Who Knows the Lord,” the members departed:  Best, Pitts, and Walling went to seminary to become ordained ministers, while Morse continued school at Pasadena College.  During the summers of 1973 and ’74, the band reunited in Pasadena to continue performing while working at day jobs, and then broke up a second time.

That was not the end, though.

“The weird thing about Mountain Glory is that we kept on singing every once in awhile during the last 35 years,” said Best. 

In 2000, Mountain Glory began recording a new CD.  During the process, the group lost Walling to a rare form of cancer.  Walling had been the Vice President of Spiritual Development at PLNU. 

Included on the CD, later entitled “One More Ride,” was the song “By Grace and Together.”

“I wrote that song as a part of my grief journey,” Pitts said.  “[Walling] had been our best friend for 30 years.  It was an awful, awful loss.” 

The song describes how God comforts us during grief.

“I believe that’s how God designed us to go through life:  by the power of grace, and by leaning together, encouraging, supporting each other,” Pitts said.  “I don’t know how to separate God’s touch from the touch of our loved ones.”

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