Gospel Music Innovator’s Journey Not an Easy One : Faith: Today’s success had its roots in arranger-conducter Ralph Carmichael’s efforts to modernize songs 40 years ago despite resistance from religious leaders.

With 400 albums to his credit and a body of work performed by artists ranging from Elvis Presley to Count Basie, arranger-conductor Ralph Carmichael has spent more than four decades combining the sounds of popular music with the gospel message.

The result has been a Christian music revolution that today embraces performers as varied as gospel artist Andrae Crouch, pop singer Amy Grant and the rock band Petra.

Tonight, at the Pond of Anaheim, Carmichael conducts “The Young Messiah,” the highest-grossing Christian music tour in history, and an example of the creative turnaround Carmichael helped bring about.

“We fill an average house of about 15,000 and include a 40-piece orchestra and a 200-voice choir,” Carmichael said. “The appeal, I think, is that it brings those great lines of Handel right into the ‘90s.”

“The Young Messiah,” featuring Cece Winans, Carman and Steven Curtis Chapman among others, has been seen nationally by more than 1.2 million people. This Southern California visit is its final stop.

The journey from traditional church hymns to the contemporary “Messiah” has not been an easy one for Carmichael, whose dual careers in gospel and popular music have spanned more than 45 years.

In 1950, the 23-year-old Carmichael won an Emmy presented by then-California Gov. Earl Warren for a weekly television show featuring contemporary gospel arrangements. But for more than 20 years, Carmichael’s efforts to modernize Christian music would be resisted by the church establishment, “which preferred a robed choir, a Hammond organ and little else,” he said.

Still, it was Carmichael’s early gospel recording sessions and his scoring of Billy Graham’s feature films that propelled his career in popular music. While the sessions were being recorded in Hollywood studios, recording executives “would stop by, hear a few cuts and later recommend me for secular jobs,” he recalled.

During the 1950s and ‘60s, Carmichael arranged and conducted for Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Nat King Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Bing Crosby and Peggy Lee, and worked on television programs such as “I Love Lucy” and “Bonanza.”

But his first love remained the music of the church and he continued to press for change, incorporating rock ‘n’ roll rhythms into the gospel songs of the mid- and late-’60s.

“There was nothing in the church repertoire that kids could call their own,” he recalled. “My daughter Carol was buying secular rock, and while much of it didn’t appeal to me musically, I knew this form could reach kids with the message of God’s love.”

He formed his own company, Lexicon Music/Light Records, which introduced gospel performers such as Crouch, the Winans, Walter Hawkins and Reba Rambo, and produced pop-rock musicals for churches nationwide. And popular singers such as Elvis Presley and the Carpenters began performing his gospel music.

As Carmichael’s music gained acceptance among the churchgoing public, it divided church officials.

“At an NRB [National Religious Broadcasters] convention, I was told that I was misguided and a bad influence on the church and young people,” Carmichael recalled. At workshops he hosted, “opposing factions would break out into verbal fights,” he said.

But widespread acceptance of the music in the 1970s trivialized much of the opposition, and his company became the industry’s leading producer of the contemporary form of Christian music.

In the 1980s, a changing market made Carmichael a victim of his own success, as competition spawned a growing number of music publishers and pushed Lexicon/Light from its perch. The company was ultimately sold.

Today, in an industry that produces MTV-style videos, interactive software and a range of musical styles, from heavy metal to hip-hop, Carmichael is working to pioneer yet another form: big band gospel.

His new release, “Strike Up the Band,” combines jazz-rock crossover and swing on several of his best-known songs. It won the gospel Music Assn.’s Dove Award for best instrumental album of the year.

With five albums planned for next year and a contract to tour with “Hymns and Voices,” a contemporary show from the producers of “The Young Messiah,” Carmichael, 68, remains philosophical about his music.

“In 1947, I made a commitment to God that my music would glorify him,” Carmichael said. “And if I’ve helped open creative avenues within the church, all the effort . . . has been worth it.”