Country superstar John Rich grew up around Christianity. His father was a brave man who started preaching at age 19. “But he didn’t preach in big churches,” the singer said. “He was in prison ministry and street ministry — and you want to talk about a guy with some conviction, bravery, courage; he preached on the street corner in New Orleans during Mardi Gras for 34 years in a row.”
Rich drew inspiration from how his father remained committed amid chaos and debauchery. While his dad was preaching to strangers, the singer was making his way into the music industry. “My decades in the music industry … that became what I worshiped, even though I gave my life to Jesus at a young age,” John Rich said. “When I got out there and started selling millions of records … that became my focal point.”
However, once he got married and started a family, his perspective changed. “I started looking at how I was living and what was important to me,” Rich said. “And I thought, ‘Is that how I want my boys to live? Do I want them to wind up like I am right now?’ And I was horrified by that notion.” The musician spoke about how he felt “subservient to some wicked industry like the entertainment industry” is that it becomes difficult to hear God amid all of the chaos and noise.
Explaining how that felt, he said “You can’t even hear Him, because your ears are full of your noise,” he said, noting he felt “convicted” by the recognition of that reality. “So, over those next few years, little by little, I started separating … from the music industry and stepping further, and further, and further out into speaking the truth.” Eventually, he couldn’t make peace with the lies he was seeing in the music industry. He abandoned lucrative record and publishing deals and struck out on his own.
He went on to say that “I felt like [God] went, ‘You can say whatever you want, and I’m going to give you some stuff to say that I want you to say,’” he said. “I said, ‘Well, let’s rock and roll. What do you want me to say?’ And when I took that attitude on and re-yielded myself to Him for real, here it came.” Since then, he has started unashamedly sharpening his mind by discussing both current events and his Christian Faith.
John Rich recently released a song “Revelation” inspired by the book of the same name. He described how the chaos on the world stage had prompted him to think deeper. “I think we’ve all been thinking about that, but I didn’t set out to write a specific song about it,” Rich said. “It just kind of came out of nowhere. It was kind of downloaded to me.”
According to Rich, the words to the song popped into his head and it was finished within an hour. “I tell people it’s not lyrics; it’s Scripture that I just made rhyme,” he said. “Like, I took what it says, and I figured out how to build that into what would be a song, and then I didn’t know what to do with it.” He hopes the song will inspire people to “pick their Bibles up and start reading it for themselves”
The country performer advised Christians to speak up for what they believe. “It is put up or shut up time,” Rich said. “You cannot scream and holler about what’s happening around you If you’re just gonna ride the fence, keep your mouth shut, and go along to get along.” He concluded, “Christians are not commanded to do that. We’re commanded to do quite the opposite of that. We’re supposed to go forward, not retreat … it’s not always the most comfortable thing to do, but it is the right thing to do, and it’s what I feel moved to do.”