A Nice Piece on Amy Grant

I made a new friend today - Matt Johnson of Doxologist and Mars Hill Seattle.  So, I'm checking out his blog and came across a great post called Leadership Lessons from Amy Grant.  It was great to read since I have followed Amy since I was a teenager.

I think Amy and I are about the same age and she was becoming famous in the CCM scene when I became a Christian, and basically, if you wanted Christian music it was her or Sandy Patti or the Imperials (come on folks, some of you have to remember those days).  In my circles they were somewhat safe, you know, we didn't want to go off the deep end and listen to people like Larry Norman and Steve Taylor who were on the edge, if not over the cliff, of compromise.  But I liked Amy's music and yes, she was pretty easy on the eyes too.

It's been interesting to follow her career - first she was the darling of Christian music then she became persona non grata when she "went secular."  I can remember her doing a concert in Jacksonville sometime in the early 80's when we all knew she was flirting with the world and this was concerned when she came out for her second set in these tight red leather pants.  We were all scandalized, of course I wasn't so scandalized that it kept me from staring at her.  It was pretty soon after that she "went secular" and for the most part I stopped listening to her. 

It was also during that time when I was in my Gothardite phase and found out that rock music was evil, so that was another reason I had to stop listening to her and listen only to the pure and spotless Sandy Patti - and of course you could just forget about the Imperials, and Larry Norman, well we just won't talk about him.

But I always kinda liked Amy and was only half-hearted in my disapproval of her.  It was supposed to be bad that she "went secular," but to me it seemed like kind of a good thing.  But then came the divorce and I just figured that this was another example of a Christian seduced by the world.

I've come along way since those days and I'm pretty ashamed of my reactions to her and others, and the days of extreme separation from the world and looking at secular music as evil in and of itself seem like a bad dream.  Also, the judgmentalism I had about her divorce and things like that are things I am ashamed of - I'd like to say I was a product of my fundamentalist environment, but I was more contributor than product.

But as you read the piece in Doxologist you will see that Tim Smith, another worship pastor at Mars Hill met her and he says this about her:

What was so refreshing about her was that she was so authentic and real. It was realness in a Johnny Cash, King Solomon ala Ecclesiasties kind of way.  In effect she said, “Look, I’ve made a lot of mistakes and messed up a lot of things and, when it’s all done, Jesus is still the only thing real to me and his word is all I can depend on.”  It was refreshing and unexpected that Amy Grant would end up talking more about the importance of scripture than almost any other speaker at the conference.

It occurs to me that maybe Amy is the kind of person that ought to be our role model.  I mean let's face it, she may have made mistakes but she's never done anything as bad as say David, or Solomon, or Paul, or any number of bible heroes.

And I say that in a bit of a joshing way - I don't think we ought to judge people by some kind of moralistic litmus test.  In the bible the heroes are the battered and bruised who need Jesus, not the spotless and pure. 

I do hope Amy continues to do well and I do hope she stays secular and I do hope that, even if you don't like her music, that she can be seen as an example of how Christians can be involved in the world around us.