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Wednesday, July 09, 2003

By Ann Rodgers-Melnick, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Tom Green, 55, a creative force and lovingly scathing critic in Christian media, died Friday after heart surgery in New Zealand, where he has lived since 1997.

Mr. Green was a longtime producer for Cornerstone Television in Wall, where he was best known as the host of the "Lightmusic" video show. He was also a co-creator of "His Place," a soap opera and talk show set in a diner.

With his wife, Candy, he wrote and recorded many songs, including "Forty Brave Soldiers," a Christian radio hit about Roman soldiers who were left to die on a frozen lake because of their faith.

"Tom was a groundbreaker, both as an artist back in the late 1970s and certainly as one of the pioneering Christian music video shows," said John Styll, president of the Gospel Music Association. "He was a real innovator who took chances."

Born in San Francisco, Mr. Green in the 1960s ran the lights at the Troubadour, a club on Hollywood's Sunset Strip. Many of the elite folk and rock artists who played there also came to see the art theater that Mr. Green produced.

After moving to Vermont, Mr. Green, who was Jewish, became a Christian, along with his wife.

"They almost instantly became Tom and Candy Green, the guitar-strumming evangelists," said Thom Hickling, a friend and co-worker.

After their first child was born, Mr. Green became head of the theater department at televangelist Jim Bakker's ill-fated Heritage University in North Carolina. They entered that world of clean-shaven Southern evangelicals as "a couple of hippie types from the Jesus movement," said Roger Wilson, a close friend and co-worker there and at Cornerstone Television.

Mr. Green was never comfortable in the evangelical media industry.

"He didn't care about fund raising and making a commercial appeal to the donors. Tom wanted to make good television that people who didn't love God would be willing to watch and maybe it would have an impact on them," Hickling said.

Cornerstone Television received complaints that he ran secular videos like Phil Collins' "Another Day in Paradise" on "Lightmusic." Mr. Green insisted that Collins' message about homelessness was biblical. After the show was nationally syndicated in 1985, not-yet-disgraced televangelist Jimmy Swaggart threatened to pull his preaching from any station that carried "Lightmusic."

"[Mr. Green] was on the cutting edge of contemporary music, not afraid to disagree with [the president] or the general manager or anyone about what we had to do if we wanted to reach young people," Wilson said.

In 13 years, Mr. Green produced more than 3,000 episodes of "Lightmusic." But he complained that too many evangelical hits sounded like last year's secular hits with the name "Jesus" inserted.

"The difference between art and propaganda is often blurred in Christian videos," he wrote. "Propaganda tells us what to think. Art allows us to come to truth on our own. Propaganda keeps everything easy. Art forces us to confront issues that we perhaps would rather not think about."

"Lightmusic" won three consecutive Billboard magazine awards for best Christian music video show, but in 1997, Mr. Green was offered the opportunity to run a pioneering Christian station in Christchurch, New Zealand.

The Christchurch station did not feature preachers. It ran old American sitcoms like "Leave It to Beaver." Mr. Green produced specials designed to make the faith appealing in a highly secular society.

When the station was purchased by American evangelicals, Mr. Green believed that his creative wings would be clipped. He left to produce independent videos. While he was preparing for a working trip to Antarctica, a physical revealed a leaky heart valve.

There was a lag of months before surgery, and he was extremely weak by the time of the June 30 operation, Hickling said.

During his last days, New Zealand was hit by the coldest blast of Antarctic air on record, Candy Green wrote.

"At the time of his dying we were not only praying for Tom but we prayed for the peace of Jerusalem and peace in the world. Our children had spoken forth great words of faith and prayers of healing for their father. It is now our prayer that these words were caught up with this blast of air which takes 10 years to travel around the world. I am going to be looking for answers to these prayers."

A local memorial service is planned for sometime in August. Details will be posted at www.lightmusic.tv.

In addition to his wife, Mr. Green is survived by two daughters, Shoshanna Hill of King of Prussia, Montgomery County, and Hadassah, at home in Christchurch; two sons, Joe and Nate, both of Christchurch; his mother, Dottie Green of California; and one grandson.