Granger Smith has no regrets as he transitions from country music singer to full-time ministry. “I’m just so excited about it,” he says. “I have so much joy just even thinking about it.”
“I have felt a strong desire to pursue ministry,” he said in a video previously posted to Instagram talking about his plans. “And this doesn’t mean I’m going to start a church or a crusade or a revival. This means that me and my family are going to serve our local church.”
Smith said he already has begun speaking before audiences about his Christian faith. While he once traversed the nation and world sharing his music, he now plans to carry a different message. “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 lifegiving message. It’s one beggar — me — telling another beggar where I found bread.”
Smith said he wants to share his journey to faith, explaining how he was once hurting and in a “really bad place” but how he found hope in Jesus.
“I don’t know what the future looks like five years down the road, 10 years down the road,” he told CBN. “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.”
Smith’s recent memoir, “Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward after Loss and Heartache,” chronicles how he handled grief and sorrow and found faith. In 2019, the singer’s 3-year-old son, River, died in a drowning accident.
In August, Smith talked about that loss with an audience at Liberty University,
“When you hold a lifeless child in your arms, one that you love more than most things in this world, it will change you. You will question how much control you really have in your life,” he said.
He says the book starts with that loss. “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 said scripture has transformed his heart and mind.
“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.”
–Dwight Widaman | MV