When she spoke with ChristianMusic.com, Kelly Minter was preparing for a mission trip to the Amazon and was working on a book on Ruth – and those were just two of her activities, which span writing, singing, composing, speaking, worship leading, and even putting together recipes.
Kelly Minter is so self-actualized and such a Renaissance woman – and fulfilling God’s purpose in so many ways -- it’s hard to imagine that she wasn’t always like that. Twice, though, she was turned around in a big way from what she thought was her dream, or her career path, to answer God’s calling.
Growing up in Virginia, the daughter of a pastor, Kelly was on her way to a college basketball scholarship, which had been her dream. When, one day, the college coach called her to tell her that there wasn’t enough money to give her a scholarship, Kelly was devastated. Her whole future seemed like it came crashing down in one swift moment.
"This disappointment taught me that God is so much more interested in our hearts than He is with so many things we set our sights on,” Kelly explains. “He wants to truly fulfill us, and only He knows what will do that for us.”
The new God-sent direction was music. Kelly took up the guitar and began to express herself in song. Her beautiful voice and meaningful, potent lyrics were combined on two successful major-label albums, “Good Day” and “Wrestling with Angels,” and the number-one song “This is My Offering.”
Once again, God called. Kelly had, as she puts it, “hit a wall.” She became disenchanted with the way her life was going with contemporary Christian music. “I just kind of laid the music down,” she says, “gave it up to God. And he resurrected it.”
Her music took a turn into worship leading, and she hooked up with the Kingsway record label to record “more worshipful music.” Kelly has released the beautiful album “Finer Day” and has performed with Kingsway artists at the Beatles’ Abbey Road studios, and in the accompanying album, “Worship at the Abbey.”
Kelly has also continued and expanded her writing into a book, “No Other Gods: Confronting our Modern-Day Idols,” and the accompanying, inventive Bible study guide, an eight-week session that includes homework, multimedia links and recipes. It’s the first of her “Living Room Series.” The book on Ruth will be the second. “They’re written for women,” she explains, “The next one, on Ruth, is called ‘Loss, Love and Legacy.’” A core group of friends helps her test out the lessons as well as the recipes.
Meanwhile, as Kelly’s music is recorded by a heavenly host of Christian artists, including Sandi Patty, she is off virtually every weekend, often with guitar in hand, to the far corners of the country, leading worship services or speaking at women’s conferences, proving the title of her first book, “Water into Wine: Hope for the Miraculous in the Struggle of the Mundane,” and bringing God’s will to a nation, grateful for her two-time miraculous resurrection.
-- Nate Lee and Julie Carr
