The Anchor Holds

Lawrence Mendel Chewning Jr. is a Christian recording artist, songwriter, and speaker.  He was born in 1949 and grew up in rural South Carolina. He was the son of a cotton farmer, ginner and merchant.   At the age of eight he accepted Christ at a country church in South Carolina.  After he graduated he moved to Anderson, Indiana to attend Anderson University to major in Religion and Social Work.  During his junior year a massive revival outbreak spread throughout colleges which became known as the Asbury Awakening.  It started one morning in 1970, without warning, what has been described as a “divine visitation” broke loose during Asbury College’s 10 am chapel service in Wilmore Kentucky.  Dr. David Hunt, a Louisville physician who was then a student stated, “You just walked in and sensed that God had indeed sent His Spirit.” The service, a routine meeting, was scheduled for 50 minutes. Instead, it lasted 185 hours non-stop, 24 hours a day. Intermittently, it continued for weeks and spread throughout many colleges. 
During this same year Chewning started travelling full time with a group of his friends that formed a gospel band known as the Fishermen.  They witnessed on the streets, spoke and sung in churches all over.  This was the time that Chewning began song writing, and within a couple of years this band evolved into a music group singing original songs he wrote.  The group was based out of Anderson, Indiana but travelled performing in coffee houses, college and high school campuses, Jesus festivals and outdoor concerts throughout the Midwest, the South and the New England states.   They were right in the middle of the Jesus Movement that began on the West Coast of the United States in the late 1960's and early 70's and spread primarily through North American and Europe until about the early 1980's.    In which a new genre of music was born that we know as contemporary Christian music today.  The Fishermen were together from 1970 to 1977.  It is stated that a teenage boy named Ray Boltz accepted Christ while attending one of the Fishermen's concerts at a Christian coffeehouse in Hartford City, Indiana.  He is now known as an award winning Christian recording artist. 

A new band was formed in 1978 called Lawrence Chewning & Eastland Band.  They moved to New England and did a number of concerts there for a couple of years.  He moved there with his wife living in Marlborough, Massachusetts.  In the beginning of 1979 Chewning and his wife moved to Clinton, Massachusetts and resided there for 16 years where Chewning co-pastored a non-denominational church. 

The year of 1992 became known as the year of sorrows for this family.  It was a trying time as it seemed like an accumulation of one sorrow after another during this time.  They had become discouraged and depressed after their third miscarriage which was a little boy.  Chewning took a six month sabbatical from pastoring in which he started playing the piano once more to get closer to God.  He read some things about the long dark night of the soul when it seems that you just can't find God anywhere.  He stated he had experienced this void for few months.  He would play the piano for hours at a time.  Then one day he started playing a song he realized he had never heard before.  He realized that it was because he was in the process of writing it.  It was truly a song coming from deep down as he sang after awhile he realized he had a song over ten minutes long.  It was a therapeutic song for him personally that helped him through his discouragement and depression.  This song is titled "The Anchor Holds." 

In the spring of 1993, Chewning  went to Ray Boltz concert in Maine where he told him about this song during a time of sharing together after the concert.  A few months later Boltz called him to see if he could sing it. Chewning sent the song to Boltz "in the rough" and told him that he was free to adapt it for his purposes. Ray reworked some of the lyrics, shortened it a bit, and added a musical bridge.  Finally in 1994 this song was recorded on Boltzs' "Allegiance" project.  "The Anchor Holds" was later released for national radio airplay and quickly rose to #1 position on the Inspirational charts. It remained #1 for three weeks.

Since 1994 Chewning has been employed by the State of South Carolina as a social worker, serving at various times as a foster care worker, child protective services intake worker, and for over fifteen years as an adoption specialist.  For two years, from 2004 to 2006, Lawrence worked part-time with the agency as a free-lance adoption home evaluation writer, while he travelled throughout the United States performing concerts and speaking in churches.  He continues to accept speaking and singing engagements as his work schedule permits.  His most recent recording, entitled "The Road Back Home", was released in the summer of 2011.  Lawrence and his wife, Trish, reside in Florence, South Carolina.  They have three grown children and one grandson.

Also featured on the WOW 1996 project. In 2003 "The Anchor Holds" was featured on Bill and Gloria Gaither's"Red Rocks Homecoming" and performed by Donnie Sumner.  It has also been recorded by Karen Peck and New River, as well as Jimmy Swaggart and Shara McKee.


The Anchor Holds
I
I have journeyed
Through the long, dark night
Out on the open sea
By faith alone
Sight unknown
And yet His eyes were watching me

Chorus
The anchor holds
Though the ship is battered
The anchor holds
Though the sails are torn
I have fallen on my knees
As I faced the raging seas
The anchor holds
In spite of the storm

II
I've had visions
I've had dreams
I've even held them in my hand
But I never knew
They would slip right through
Like they were only grains of sand

III
I have been young
But I am older now
And there has been beauty
That these eyes have seen
But it was in the night
Through the storms of my life
Oh, that's where God proved
His love to me
 

 

"The Anchor Holds" written and performed by Lawrence Chewning

 

This is one of my favorite singers who happens to sing this song as well.

Shara McKee a Pastor's wife in Texas

other songs sung by Ray Boltz and written by Chewning:
At the Foot of the Cross
I Wouldn't Go Back
Carry On


sources: 
http://www.lawrencechewning.com/index.html