Granger Smith Defends Retiring From Country Music To ‘Serve’ God – ‘Huge Feeling Of Relief’

Earlier this week, we reported that the singer Granger Smith had announced that he’s leaving country music to pursue ministry. Now, Smith is speaking out to make it clear that he has no regrets about ditching his music career to “serve” God.

Smith Has No Regrets 

Smith, 43, announced earlier this week that his upcoming “Like a River” tour, which is named after his late son River, will be his last so that he can instead devote his life to ministry at his local church that is located just outside of Austin, Texas.

“I have a huge feeling of relief now that … I’ve been able to tell the world exactly what my intentions are and what I’m going to do,” Smith told Fox News. “For the last few years, a handful of people had known that [I was] probably leaving country music.”

“[And] it’s difficult to get on stage in different environments, in different cities and play music for people knowing, as I’m looking into their eyes, that I’m probably going to tell them in a few months that I’m not doing this anymore,” he continued. “That’s a difficult way to live. And so, there’s a big sense of relief now that I’ve told everyone.”

Backstory: Granger Smith Announces He’s Leaving Country Music For Ministry

Smith Has Been Considering This For Years

Smith went on to say that he’s longed for a new sense of purpose in life in the years since he lost his three year-old son River in a drowning accident back in 2019.

“I wrestled with the idea for a long time that this doesn’t feel right,” Smith confessed. “A lot of people will probably think, ‘Why don’t you just sing country music, but talk about God on the stage?’ Or, ‘Why don’t you sing a couple of hymns on the stage? And that fixes everything.’ I wrestled with that for a couple of years.… A lot of pastors and preachers told me, ‘Country music is your ministry, brother. You’re in a dark world. You’re bringing light to a dark world. You’re going into bars and stages where people might not have heard the message of Christ, and you get to speak it – that is your ministry.’”

“I believed it,” he added. “And part of me still does believe that. But here’s the deal – it wasn’t ever about that. It wasn’t ever about finding the best platform to tell people about Christ. The first thing that needed to happen was I needed to make myself smaller because I was exalting myself on the stage. I was glorifying myself. I was seeking praise from people.”

“And by doing that, it doesn’t matter if I was proclaiming Christ, because I was doing it the wrong way,” Smith explained. “I was proclaiming Christ from a self-exalting platform. And that was the contradiction I finally had to come to terms with. I might have a stage down the road, but right now I need to completely surrender that and give it over to God.”

Related: Granger Smith’s Wife Shares What Happened to Their Son’s Organs

Smith Will Miss Country Music 

Though he is ready to put country music behind him, Smith knows that there are things about it that he will dearly miss.

“There’s a lot I’m going to miss in country music,” he said. “I’ve been doing it for a long time, for multiple decades, for a reason. It wasn’t because I was collecting a paycheck, because most of those years I wasn’t. I do it – and I did it – because I loved telling stories through songs that people could relate to.… That’s what I loved most about it – seeing those reactions from people as we took them on a journey.”

In the end, Smith is hoping that his story will give hope to others.

“There’s a kind of joy that can coexist with grief,” he concluded. “You could be grieving and yet joyful and hopeful and have peace about that. That is my journey. A lot of people have different journeys on how to get to that location, but this is my journey on how I got there.”

The fact that Smith is willing to walk away from a lucrative country music career to spread the word of God by pursuing ministry should be seen as inspiring to Christians everywhere. We wish Smith the best of luck with his new journey, and we can’t wait to see how it goes for him!