What's the most important thing children need to learn? The correct answer is not how they should behave. For Christians, the answer is to learn about Jesus. In starting a new week, don't miss Haven Today as Charles Morris is joined by Psalty, the singing songbook, on a program called Kids Meeting Jesus.

May 23, 2005

Kid’s Meeting Jesus (the story of Psalty)

Have you ever heard the name Psalty? You’re either saying “Huh?” or you really know who I mean. Welcome to Haven Today, for people who need Jesus, and that’s kids too. I’m Charles Morris where in the next few minutes we’ll have on the program Ernie Rettino, Psalty the Singing Songbook. No matter your age, get ready for a blessing. We open our worship time together praising the Lord with children.

Song: Praise the Lord Together
Performed by: Kids Praise
This is Haven Today and you either know who that is, or you don’t know and you’re going to know. Thank you for joining me. That’s the Kids Praise kids and the song is called “Praise the Lord Together”. And across from me in the studio is the man who got all of that started with his wife, Debbie. May I introduce you to Ernie Rettino and we’ll meet a sidekick of his a little later. Ernie, welcome to Haven Today.
ER: Thank you Charles. Good morning everybody it’s nice to be here.
CM: It’s good to have you on the program. We’ve been talking for more than a year about doing this and my kids grew up with you and your wife, and of course your alter ego that we will be getting to in a little bit. Ernie, the Lord has used this calling with you and your wife, and why don’t you just share with me – you’ve probably got some stories – how has the Lord used music to bring children to Christ? In fact, that’s what we’re calling the series, kids need Jesus too.
ER: Well, you need to understand that the Psalty series started in 1980, maybe that’s what you were referring to as of 25 years ago. And Psalty was born out of a need, a definite need. I mean, I was raised in the church through the Jesus Movement of the late 60s and 70s and 80s and we were teenagers then, and then all of a sudden teenager had kids and now what do you do with all these kids and how do you minister to them? Do you minister to them? Is it OK? And we finally decided that it was.
CM: That was a big issue back then.
ER: It was an issue.
CM: Do I have every right to share my faith with my child?
ER: Absolutely.
CM: So that’s what you and Debbie did. You reached out to children.

ER: Absolutely, We reached out to kids and we created the Psalty series which has sold over 6 million units and has been translated into 14 languages and gone around the world touring. And we’ve just seen literally thousands and thousands and thousands of children make decisions for Christ. And we’ve infiltrated homes and families that would have never come to church.
CM: That’s right. Billy Graham crusades for what, a dozen years or something?
ER: Psalty was the host of the Billy Graham “Kids Gigs” for 12 years and we’ll still actually do a few more as Dr. Graham continues. So, I mean that’s been exciting and it was –
CM: It’s kind of funny. Can you tell me, early on, some of the people in the Graham organization weren’t so sure about having Psalty on the venue to share Jesus with kids?
ER: Absolutely. People on the staff, high “mucky-mucks”, were very dubious about uh, “Can kids really get anything out of this?” And “I really don’t believe it,” and their kids accepted Christ and they would grill them and they would say, “Well wait a minute. Do you really understand what this is about?” And the kid is like 5 years old 6, 7 you know, and they did. The same with Luis Palau, they had the same experience, people on their staff as well and their kids would accept Christ and all of a sudden they were in the camp. So that was good.
CM: You’ve gotten letters from thousands of kids through the years.
ER: Yeah
CM: And by the way, this is Ernie Rettino, his alias is Psalty and we’ll meet Psalty a little bit later and we opened with “Praise The Lord Together”. Share with us, can you recall just something maybe that one of the kids –
ER: yeah, I actually I brought a couple of letters
CM: OK
ER: It’s you know, having the internet is like incredible, because now people can just fire you an email
CM: Right
ER: So that’s really fun. This one came by, I don’t know, about a month or so ago. And this lady says, “Madison, our 4 ½ year old granddaughter, she really enjoys your CDs and videos. She was watching Psalty’s Funtastic Praise Party when she came to her grandmother and said, “Psalty said you must be born again. A person can’t be born again! I’ll go back and watch it again.” And later she came back and she said, “Oh, I see what he means, I can do that!” And she did.” But, I can’t –
CM: The grandchild met Christ.
ER: Yes! I can’t tell you how many letter we have where grandmothers and mothers are having to pull the car over and the kid is saying, “I want to do what Psalty said and I want to do it now! No, you don’t understand, NOW!” I remember reading one letter where the kid was crying because his mother wouldn’t pull the car over and pray and, “NO!” and she had to pull the car over.
CM: Wow! You know, I’m thinking about this, kids meeting Christ listening to Psalty tapes, and you’re mentioning that it could even infiltrate even homes where maybe the Gospel wasn’t even believed and there have been instances of that too, right?
ER: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this letter is from this girl and she says here, “My mom is Unitarian and my dad is atheist. No one in my family is Christian. Even so, when I was little, my mom bought me all the Kids Praise tapes and we always listened and sang them whenever we drove anywhere. I believed the truths I learned from the Kid’s Praise tapes when I was very little. And when I grew up and went to college, I began to go to church and read the Bible and I was amazed at how much I already knew simply from learning your tapes. Your tapes truly are filled with the scripture and are making a difference in children’s lives. Thank you for producing them.
CM: Well,
ER: You know, it’s nice to see the effect.
CM: Yeah, we wore out a Chevy Biscayne station wagon listening to those tapes over and over with our three kids, but we were believers, my wife and myself. It’s amazing though to hear how God can just work. He does that all over the world and – well, we need to hear another song, I think.
ER: Go for it.

Song: The Waa Waa Song
Performed by: Kids Praise

CM: That is called “The Waa Waa Song” from Kids Praise, I don’t know, Ernie Rettino is that Kids Praise 1?
ER: Kids Praise 1, I think it was the very first one.
CM: OK, and we were just talking a minute ago, we’ve got the founder of Kids Praise, ministering for 25 years under that banner, but going even earlier. So Ernie, I think we better ask you a little bit about how you met Jesus?

ER: Well that’s a good question. I was an atheist at one time.
CM: OK
ER: And I was a backup singer in Hollywood, doing “oowa, shoobop, shebawas” and ultimately, I wound up being with Pat Boone. I got there, somehow I made the audition and it was great.
CM: And you weren’t a believer yet?
ER: Was not a believer, and the Boone family, was, they were really into ministering Christ to me. And at some point, Pat gave everybody a Bible - I haven’t told this story in a while, so I might, you know, I’m going to thumb though it here –
CM: OK
ER: But he gave everybody a Bible, it was a New Living Testament, if I remember.
CM: Yes
ER: And I remember being very rude and saying, “No thanks.” I handed it back. “I’m not into this, you know –”
CM: This was your bread and butter at that point
ER: Yes, I’ve been through this stuff before, because I was raised as a Catholic. I said, “No, you know, give this to somebody else, maybe they can use it.” And he just shoved it back in my face and said, “No, you know this is a gift from my family. Just keep it. You never know, you might just get bored.” Well, we went on a tour of the Orient that year and somehow or other it wound up in my suitcase. And sure enough, I’m reading this thing and I had questions. And I found it to be interesting, I thought it was an interesting history book. And at that time the kids were I think 11, 12, 13, 14 years old.
CM: The Boone Kids
ER: The Boone daughters, yes.
CM: OK, Debbie being one of them, sure
ER: Uh, huh. Sure. And so I would go up to them and ask them questions – anybody in the family.
CM: And they knew the answers
ER: And they had answers. They would fire back answers from the book. They knew the scripture. And I had never met people who knew the book. I just – that just astounded me, that they were young and they had brains and they, they just knew. And it was interesting. Well, insert back into the story. A while before that, we had been singing in Las Vegas. Pat was doing something, I think at the Frontier Hotel. And he would do his mail out at the pool. And one day, he was out there and both he and I, we were alone. I was swimming, sunning my beautiful body and he was doing his mail and all of a sudden he stops and he says, “Wait, come here. I’ve got to read you this letter.” And he had gotten a letter from a guy named Harold Brettison, who was in Canada at the time. And Harold said something like, that he had passed a home and he felt that God had spoken to him that he wanted him to buy this home and turn it into an orphanage. And he didn’t have any money and inside of 2 weeks he had had $110,000 given to him by two people who he didn’t tell the story to either and it was just an interesting deal, that suddenly he had the money for this home, it was the exact amount. And so Pat turns to me and he says, “You know, when you pray, be specific. Pray specifically to Jesus, because he is God. Pray specifically for what you need, and if your motive is pure, there isn’t any reason why God wouldn’t answer your prayer.” And that was the end of it and I remember thinking, “This guy is a kook! He believes this garbage, I can’t even believe, I just –.“ And I didn’t stash that away, I just forgot about it. It was just silly. Well, now we’re in Japan and at the same time, my dad was gone bankrupt, so my sister and I were helping to support the family and we were sending, I was sending money home from Japan. And I had gotten a letter from him saying, “Got a job, everything’s fine. Don’t send home anymore money.” So I went and spent my money there and at that time the economy was great, so I bought sound equipment, and cameras and whatever. Long story short, we got home and I’m staying in my house and got a knock at the door. It was my dad, and we said, “Hello.” At the end of the conversation he says, “Do you have any money?”
“Well, what for?”
“Well, we’re going to be evicted in 3 days if I don’t come up with 300 bucks for the rent.”
And I said, “Dad, I thought you got a job?”
He said, “Well, I was just telling you that, just cause I didn’t want you to-“ Blah, blah, blah.
And so, then I said, “Well, can’t you borrow from somebody else? I really don’t have any money. I’ve got 100 bucks.”
And he said, “Well, I’m all borrowed out and 100 bucks won’t do it.” And he left. And he was just broken. I had never seen my dad broken like this and it hurt. The door closed and the words came into my mind, “When you pray, be specific. Pray specifically to Jesus, pray specifically for what you need. If your motive is pure, there isn’t any reason why God wouldn’t answer your prayer.” So I looked up to the ceiling because I thought that’s where Jesus would be, and I said, “Jesus, I need $300.” I didn’t make the sign of the cross. I didn’t have a “Holy” sounding voice. I didn’t get on my knees. I just was honest from my heart. And the next day I went into Boone’s office to pick up my check and I had given Boone’s manager my $100 to hold because I was afraid I was going to spend everything, you know.
CM: OK
ER: Anyway, I go in to pick up my check and it was for $300. And I said, “Well, what’s this for?” and he said, “Well you did so good on the tour we decided to give you a bonus.” Well they fired everybody else, which was kind of cool. So, anyway, so then I come back and I was able to give the $300 to my dad. Well now I didn’t have any money. And then I started thinking you know, maybe there really is a God. So I prayed and I said, “Thank you, but I have no money, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” And walked in the house and on my kitchen table there was a check sitting there. It was for $175 and it was from a TV Show that I had done. It was an adjustment check, they had made a mistake.
CM: In your favor, so now you had some extra money.
ER: Yeah, it was something that was like 6 months ago, and apparently that check had been sitting there for a week and I never saw it. And so, then I thought, well, I’ve got to celebrate. I’m going to call up my sister and girlfriend and we’re going to go to Disneyland. So, they didn’t have any money, so I took them, we went. We drove my clunky old Ford and we had to actually, we ran out of gas so we had to push it into the parking lot.
CM: At Disneyland in Anaheim.
ER: Paid the way in. They were hungry, so we went to the Pirates of the Caribbean restaurant and as I’m sitting there, I’m thinking, you know, I wonder if I have enough money to pay for this? What a flake I was! Just total “zero-brain”. And I realized I had like, $18 or something in my pocket and the meal was $30 something or whatever and I thought, what am I going to do? And just about that time, I choked on a chicken bone. And I was eating Beef Grenadine which I thought was funny and a friend across the table who’s also funny, picked up this bone and as the waitress comes by she says, “Look! He found a chicken bone in his Beef Grenadine. Isn’t that funny?” I had been reading in that Bible that Boone had given me. And I read something where it said, in the New Living Testament, “Don’t complain – Don’t murmur, don’t complain. But rather trust the Lord.” So I put the bone down on the table and I said, “OK. Get me out of this one.” And that’s when my friend picks up the bone and gives it to the waitress, and then the waitress picks up the check and we had enough money obviously to do all that we had to do. And I thought, you know, I’ve got the formula here, I think I’d better become a Christian. And my wife and I have been living by faith ever since then. And, you know, I’m not saying that God is the genie in the bottle, but he is the Provider. And that I did learn, a major lesson. And God always, he grabs the listener, you know, where he needs to. And at that point that was where my heart was. I needed to hear that God was a provider. I needed to see that God was a provider.
CM: Jehovah Jireh. Ernie, thanks for sharing with us your testimony about how you met the Lord, how the Lord claimed you and then kind of, the rest is history. You’ve got an alias. You’ve got a sidekick.
ER: Yeah.
CM: And –
ER: Psalty the Singing Songbook is a great big blue singing songbook. As a matter of fact he’s here. We can call him.
CM: Yes, there he is!
ER: Psalty, come on in.
Psalty: Hi everybody! It’s me, Psalty the Singing Songbook. Praise the Lord! Oh, it’s so good to finally meet you all, page to face! We’ve got so many good things to tell you, and well, we’ll probably get to them sooner or later in the next day or two. But, it’s great to see you.
CM: That’s right. Psalty, it’s great to have you with us here in the studio. And, I don’t know, if you could tell us anything about your years as being Psalty, what’s the blessing for you?
PSalty: The blessing for me is that I’m a kid’s songbook! And that I get to hear and sing with kids. Oh, did you know, Charles, that they love Jesus? They are capable of loving Jesus with all their hearts.
CM: They certainly do.
Psalty: And I get to tell them. That’s the most special thing in my whole life!
CM: Wow. And Psalty, you don’t mind coming back with us another day too, do you? You can do that still?
Psalty: Oh, no. I’d love to, As long as I get to talk to the kids.
CM: Can I make a request please?
Psalty: Well, sure.
CM: When my kids were young, and we were on those long vacations, like I said to Ernie a little while ago, in our Chevy Biscayne wagon that we wore out coast to coast a few times. There was one song that we really liked to sing over and over again and I’d like to hear that. It’s that one, I think Ernie starts it off.
Psalty: I’ll bet it was “In my life Lord, be glorified”.
CM: Yes! Yes!
Psalty: I could tell that’s what you were going to say Charles! It’s a great song. Let’s do it.

Song: In My Life Lord, Be Glorified
Performed by: Kids Praise

Even if you’ve never heard of Psalty the Singing Songbook and Kids Praise, I know you’ve been blessed by the last few minutes. In fact, Rick Warren who is a pastor near me and he’s the author of that famous, “Purpose Driving Life” book says, “I highly recommend Psalty as a tool to teach children about God and introduce them to Jesus Christ.” Well if I could just add to the words of Rick, I would say not just children. I would say all of us and I think that probably came through in our few minutes that we’ve had together today with Ernie Rettino who is Psalty the Singing Songbook. He’ll be back on the program with us tomorrow. Now we have mentioned the Kids Praise CDs. We have for you Kids Praise 1 and 2. You can get it that way as a thank you for your gift to Haven Today, or we have a “Vacation Pack” available for you with Kids Praise CDs 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5. If you want to know a little more about it, just go to haventoday.org. That’s haventoday.org. Or would you give us a call in a moment? Toll free in North America, at 1-800-65-HAVEN, 1-800-65-HAVEN. And if you’re on our website, haventoday.org, you can also check out the two DVDs or VHS’s that we have of Psalty’s Funtastic Praise Party. It’s been a party together hasn’t it? And it’s going to be again tomorrow. There’s nothing like someone who reaches children for Jesus Christ to encourage all of us. So, with that in mind, I can invite you to come back again with us tomorrow. I’m Charles Morris. Thanks for being with me and with Ernie Rettino, Psalty, and just in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, come back again tomorrow, here on Haven Today.