NEWS FEATURE: Christian singer Michael W. Smith finds he needs church

c. 1999 Religion News Service MOBILE, Ala. _ After a harried year of recording, writing, composing and touring, Michael W. Smith the husband and father found Michael W. Smith the Christian superstar needed a break. So instead of spending the recent winter weeks playing to tens of thousands of people in cavernous arenas, Smith went […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

MOBILE, Ala. _ After a harried year of recording, writing, composing and touring, Michael W. Smith the husband and father found Michael W. Smith the Christian superstar needed a break.

So instead of spending the recent winter weeks playing to tens of thousands of people in cavernous arenas, Smith went back to church. For two weeks the mega-star sang and played solo piano in nine sanctuaries around the Southeast.”I love playing by myself,” Smith said. “I have so much fun. … I do requests.”


Sometimes, he said, his fans know the words to his songs better than he does.

It doesn’t matter. When he forgets, he said, “they pick it up.”

It’s that don’t-worry-God-loves-you theology that shapes his music and, perhaps, that can allow him not to sound flustered by the recollection of forgetting his own lyrics in the midst of a performance.

And it’s the articulation of such belief that’s garnered him masses of devoted fans who appreciate the fact that one of their mentors talks about the same spiritual angst that they experience.

“I’ve never been really afraid to talk about my struggles,” Smith said.”Fans … just go, `I’m so glad I’m not the only one who feels that way.’ Sometimes that can be a bigger encouragement than lifting somebody’s spirit with a really hopeful song.” For Smith, it’s all a part of living. More specifically, it’s a part of living the life he believes he’s called to live.

In his recent album, “Live the Life,” Smith includes a quote from St. Francis of Assisi: “Preach the gospel to all the world and if necessary, use words.”

The ethic is one Smith said is practiced by too few Christians.

“I think we talk too much,” he said.”If God is the most important thing in your life, you can go into a room and not say anything about God and people will see it.”

In an interview, he told a story of getting ready for an appearance.

“A girl was doing my makeup,” he recalled, and said she told him,”There’s something different about you. … You just seem to be really at peace. I want to know what it is.”


Then, Smith said, he told her of his faith.

Christianity is “loving,” Smith said. “It’s sacrifice, … it’s a simple little thing of putting somebody else before yourself, it’s being genuinely concerned about somebody else.”

It’s a message he said he’s committed to living out.

In the title song on “Live the Life,” he sings: “For the world to know the truth

There can be no greater proof

Than to live the life, live the life

There’s no love that’s quite as pure

There’s no pain we can’t endure

If we live the life, live the life

Be a light for all to see

For every act of love will set you free.” Smith said the importance of lived Christianity didn’t really strike him until “Place in This World” from his 1990 album”Go West Young Man”became a pop hit. He realized then, he said, that Christians make a mistake when the “only people (they’re) around are the people who share the same faith.”

When that happens,”You find that most people end up living in a subculture. I believe we’re supposed to take the gospel to the world.

“When `Place in this World’ became a hit, I was thrust into the mainstream. I developed a heart for people by being around nonbelievers.”

Byron Cutrer, minister of music and worship at Dauphin Way Baptist Church, applauds Smith’s mission to reach Christians and non-Christians alike.


“It’s wonderful, him being used in the secular world,” Cutrer said. “All of it belongs to God.” These days, though, Smith readily admits that music and career aren’t the most important parts of his life.

“My family’s the most important thing in my life,” said the father of five. “It’s not important to me whether I have another top-40 hit.”

And, despite his super-stardom, he said he has learned to define success differently. If at his life’s end, he said, people describe him as a “God-fearing man who loved (his) wife and kids well,” he will have succeeded.”I think I’ve gotten wiser,” he said. “I think that happens as you get older. The joy is in the journey.”

DEA END CAMPBELL

Donate to Support Independent Journalism!

Donate Now!