Born: March 21, 1894, Den­ton­ville, Penn­syl­van­ia.

Died: Jan­u­ary 15, 1985, Roll­ing Mea­dows, Il­li­nois.

Buried: Ridge­wood Cem­e­tery, Glen­view, Il­li­nois.

Latham is best known as the co-found­er of Awana® Clubs In­ter­na­tion­al. But in Christ­ian music cir­cles, “Doc” was re­nowned for his mu­sic min­is­try. He dis­played a pro­pen­si­ty for mu­sic at an ear­ly age, start­ing les­sons at age three. He was soon play­ing songs by heart, as his mo­ther called out page num­bers from a hymn book. Af­ter he grad­u­at­ed from col­lege at age 17, mu­sic took cen­ter stage in his life. He re­ceived pi­a­no train­ing from Maur­itz Leef­son, di­rect­or of the Phil­a­del­phia Con­ser­va­to­ry of Mu­sic, and earned cri­tic­al and pop­u­lar praise per­form­ing through­out the Phil­a­del­phia area. His ris­ing mus­ic­al ca­reer played a part in his sal­va­tion de­ci­sion. At age 21, he was in­vit­ed to play for Wil­liam Ni­chol­son’s evan­gel­is­tic cru­sade in Ches­ter, Penn­syl­van­ia. On Sept. 18, 1915, af­ter hear­ing one of Ni­chol­son’s Gos­pel pre­sent­a­tions, the young pro­di­gy re­ceived Christ as his Sav­ior.

Fol­low­ing con­ver­sion, Latham be­gan put­ting his mu­sic­al gifts to use com­pos­ing hymns. He soon was “dis­cov­ered” by Paul Rader, Amer­i­ca’s first na­tion­wide ra­dio preach­er. Rader hired La­tham to join the mu­sic­al staff at Moody Tab­er­na­cle and to tra­vel with him on evan­gel­is­tic cru­sades. When Rader be­came pas­tor at the Chi­ca­go Gos­pel Tab­er­na­cle in 1922, he in­vit­ed La­tham to serve as an as­so­ci­ate. La­tham lat­er or­gan­ized a mu­sic­al group called the White Shirt Bri­gade. This all boy choir per­formed and taught at church­es through­out the Mid­west and South. He al­so was af­fec­tion­ate­ly dubbed with the nick­name “Doc” for an out­fit he once wore to a youth club mas­quer­ade par­ty. One mem­ber of the Bri­gade was Art Rorheim, who lat­er be­came Awana co-found­er with Latham.

In 1934, Lance Latham be­came pas­tor of a new church, the North Side Gos­pel Cen­ter in Chi­ca­go, Il­li­nois. He served there for 40 years. Dur­ing his days as pas­tor, La­tham drew huge crowds to his “du­el­ing pi­a­nos” con­certs at the Gos­pel Cen­ter.

Music

  1. Blessed Calvary
  2. Harvest Time
  3. I’ve Found a Refuge
  4. Only Jesus