BIND rndc problem

[Mike Kinzie]

hello,
I have Redhat 8 with BIND 9.2.1
rndc has stopped working and I cannot ping my domain or 127.0.01
I have checked my /va/log/messages and found the following with regard to
the named server startup on a reboot:

-couldn't find rndc key for use with command channel: 127.0.0.1#953
I have the following in named.conf:

controls {
        inet 127.0.0.1 allow { localhost; } keys { rndc_key; };
};

all the zone files loaded okay.

I do not understand the command channel and how to correct the rndc failure.
Mike