Christian Music Pioneer Jimmy Owens Has Passed Away

Christian music pioneer Jimmy Owens passed away peacefully in his home on Sunday. He was 93.

Owens was a composer who published over 250 recorded songs, including a dozen musicals. An acclaimed songwriter who also founded the now-defunct School of Music Ministry International, he and his wife Carol gained some acclaim when their children’s album Ants’hillvania was nominated for a Grammy award in 1981. Other well-known projects include the musicals The Witness, Come Together, and If My People, a sample of the latter which can be seen below.

His son, Buddy Owens, wrote on social media:

All the music from the hundreds of songs that flowed from his pen and spread across the nations for the past 93 years was simply a prelude to the new song of praise he is singing to his Savior . . . bursting from his soul at the moment his soul was birthed from his weary body . . . an eternal melody that he has never heard before . . . but is so deeply familiar.
We will see him again someday, resplendent, glorious, eternal. The Bible promises, “The man who does the will of God will live forever” (1 John 2:17). I think my dad was the man God had in mind when he told John to write those words.