Christian Music's Most Enduring Star

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Christian pop star Michael W. Smith is limping a little. His knee surgery to repair an athletic injury is barely a week old, and he knows he shouldn't be standing up to sing. But he believes today that worshiping will help ease the pain.

He adjusts the acoustic guitar strapped to his back. "I wrote a new song this morning before I left for church," he announces with the strum of a chord. "And I think it sounds pretty good."

"But, ya know what?" he adds. "Y'all might not like it at all."

The teasing tone in his good-natured West Virginia drawl lends support to his engaging blue eyes and warm smile--the disarming smile that for 17 years has greeted millions of people from magazines, posters, LPs, TVs and CDs.

On this cold, rainy Sunday morning, about 75 people of all ages sing with him, some with hands raised, inside Smith's rural farmhouse near Nashville.

After 40 minutes in song, a gentle hush settles over the congregation, and Smith seals it all with a softly spoken prayer. He is leading worship at New River Fellowship, a church he and a few others dreamed into existence little more than a year ago.

Behind the pop curtain is a man who says he would rather encounter God in his music than sing his greatest hits. He's a Christian believer who recently weathered a tempest of self-doubt and loss of creative passion. He's a man of faith who is pioneering a church he believes God inspired him to plant. And he's a dreamer who wants to impact culture and create music that's so God-inspired no one will worry about whether or not it sells.

Since Smith got his start in contemporary Christian music in 1982 as Amy Grant's keyboard player, he has logged 26 No. 1 songs, a platinum and six gold records, two Grammys and career sales of more than 7 million records. If anything, the passage of time has developed rather than eroded his appeal. He remains one of Christian music's most enduring stars. Only last year he added Artist of the Year and Producer of the Year to the 20 career Dove Awards he already had.

It would be easy to assume, then, that at age 42, Smith might be content to rest on his laurels. But he isn't. He was a worship leader before he was a pop icon, starting first at the charismatic Belmont Church in Nashville in the 1980s under his longtime friend and mentor, Don Finto, the retired senior pastor at Belmont.

Yet it was only last summer, Smith says, that God touched him in his music in ways he had never felt before. Deep emotional encounters with God occurred at the end of his live concerts in 1999.

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