Former Country Star Granger Smith Shares Joy of Quitting Music Industry for Ministry

By admin On Jan 19, 2024

Former Country music artist Granger Smith recently shared what his life has been like after he retired from the music industry last year to pursue ministry.

“I’m just so excited about it,” Smith told CBN Digital in a recent interview. “I have so much joy just even thinking about it.”

As Christian Headlines previously reported, Smith announced that his summer tour last year would be his last one to pursue ministry.

“And this doesn’t mean I’m going to start a church or a crusade or a revival. This means me and my family are going to serve our local church,” he said at the time.

So far, the musician shared that he has already started talking to audiences about Christianity.

“I’m used to air travel; I’m used to hotels,” he said. “But I have a different message to give, and it’s a life-giving message. It’s one beggar — me telling another beggar where I found bread.”

Per Faithwire, he also spoke about how he wants to share his testimony of coming to saving faith in Jesus Christ despite being once a “really bad place.”

“I don’t know what the future looks like five years down the road, 10 years down the road,” Smith said. “But, right now, immediately, it’s writing books, it’s taking speaking engagements, Lord-willing, when the right ones come around, it’s attending seminary, and it’s going to church on Sunday mornings with my family, and sitting under teachings of my pastor.”

During the interview with CBN, Smith spoke about his new memoir “Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward after Loss and Heartache”, where he highlighted moments of hardship in his life, especially when his 3-year-old son, River, died in a drowning accident in 2019.

“The book’s called Like a River, and so it starts with losing my son to drowning in my backyard when I was there with him,” he said. “A lot of times, when I was talking about writing the book and people would say, ‘You’re writing a book? What’s it about?’ And I would say, ‘Well, it’s about losing my son.’ …And as I continued to write, I learned, ‘Well, that’s not really what this book is about.’ It’s really not. That’s how it opens and the catalyst to it — that’s how the curtain opens — but really, it’s about me dying and me being reborn and the new path that followed.”

Smith hopes that his story of struggle would likewise encourage others to persevere. The musician also shared that reading the Bible has allowed him to not only transform his heart and mind, but to see what the God of the Bible is like.

“We have the Word of God revealed in Scripture; that just blew my mind,” he said. “I know I don’t have to search for the clouds or have some kind of spiritual experience in some kind of dark desert. I could actually just sit on my porch with a cup of coffee and open up the Bible and turn to any book and see who God is as revealed on those pages.”

“That changed my life then and it continues to change it,” Smith added.

Image credit: ©Getty Images/Rick Kern / Stringer

Milton Quintanilla is a freelance writer and content creator. He is a contributing writer for Christian Headlines and the host of the For Your Soul Podcast, a podcast devoted to sound doctrine and biblical truth. He holds a Masters of Divinity from Alliance Theological Seminary.

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