The Life We Lose In The Secrets We Keep

How Good Lawn-Care Can Do More Than Just Keep You Off The Roys Report

Jun 10, 2025

I spent the last week at a family camp retreat where I had very limited access to the internet and no phone service. It was a beautiful place with wonderful people and more than five hours of sleep a night. It was glorious.

I got home and found that over the course of that week, seemingly every day, someone of note was having their secret life exposed:

Elon Musk’s secret families and drug addiction.

The actor Jared Leto has been preying on young women for 30 years.

Closer to home, Christian nationalist worship leader Sean Feucht has been playing loose with tax law, dominating volunteers, and writing off mansions as ministry expenses.

The big headline here in Nashville, of course, has been about Michael Tait of dc Talk and the Newsboys, now being accused of decades of sexual assault and drug use.

Apparently, it has been an “open secret” in our industry that he had been living this life. I think that phrase might be twisted just a bit. I’m pretty sure we all heard rumors about his sexuality, but this was the first I’d heard of assault or the other behaviors being discussed now. To be honest, though, my career and his have been on far opposite sides of the Christian music tent, so I’d never given more than a passing thought to “If he is gay, that’s got to be a tough situation for the guy.”

I was almost as surprised to learn he’d been the Newsboys lead singer for 15 years. Has it really been that long?

Not trying to be flippant, though. The allegations are serious and heartbreaking, and I know some of the journalists who have reported this story. I know that they do their research and have the highest integrity.

They wouldn’t report these stories if they couldn’t back them up.

I’ve stopped doubting headlines like these, anyway.

I looked in the mirror today, and I know who I am. I’m pretty confident that all of us are capable of some pretty awful things.

Between my early 20’s and mid-30’s I spent about 15 years moving between a community of churches and church plants. I still have a lifetime’s worth of friendships there and am thankful for so much of that experience. I remain involved with, and support in various ways, many of the ministries and activities I got to know during that time. Moving on did not at all mean throwing it away or cursing on the way out.

Eventually, though, I started to feel that those clothes didn’t quite fit for me and my family, and we went through a long, confusing, winding path that has led us to the Anglican church a couple of miles away that we now call home.

One thing that was stressed over and over to us in that community was our utter depravity. We couldn’t learn enough about how bad we were.

Some days it’s hard to disagree. The headlines of the past week prove that point to hold significant merit.

So did the mirror today, if I’m honest. Not even a scandal, just the usual deep sigh of “why did I do that?” that it always seems to be asking of me…

Our speaker at the camp we were at this week was a pastor from Austin named Mark. He was an incredibly gifted communicator, with a welcoming and inviting conversational tone.

He told us this story a few days ago, and the image has stuck with me—maybe because we’re both 46, and men at our age all of a sudden find ourselves staring out the windows at our lawn for minutes at a time, just watching the grass grow. Mark began to talk about his lawn, and my ears perked up.

I’ve got some patchy spots, and maybe I could get a tip or two.

Apparently, Mark’s neighbor feels the same way, and he (the neighbor) asked him, “How do you get your grass to look so great? Why does mine have so many weeds in it? I’m constantly pulling them up and spraying them, but they keep coming back.”

Mark replied, “There are two ways to keep the weeds out of your lawn: constant, back-breaking, never-ending weed chasing, or growing really, really, really healthy grass.”

If you have strong, healthy grass, there’s no room for weeds to get started.

It’s taken me a long time, and the gift of fatherhood, to start to understand some of my motivations for making the church move a decade ago. Eventually, I realized that part of my moving on was that the emphasis on my depravity, while true, was incomplete.

Genesis does not start with the account of God creating things and calling them depraved. He called them—you and me—good.

Broken and in need of help, yes, but still lovingly made in the image of our Creator and sustainer.

Imago Dei—made in the image of God.

There’s some good grass right there.

The Hill Country in Texas is mostly desert—the kind you’d find in an old western story. Short, dry brush and lots of dirt. Endless sun over the rolling hills.

We spent our time last week deep in one of the canyons there in the Hill Country, at the headwaters of the Frio River. There, you find that all along the river it’s lush and wild. The water is so crisp and clear, and with all that sun, everything grows.

It’s just wild to see it as you drive into that area.

Mile after mile after mile of desert, desert, desert—and then, all of a sudden, vivid green hills…

I don’t know Elon, and I don’t know Jared Leto. I can only begin to imagine how warped and weird their daily lives are, and how easily that Imago Dei we might see in the mirror and in one another gets overlooked in the flash of the cameras and the big bank accounts. (Not an excuse, by the way—just an acknowledgment.)

I don’t know Sean either, and I’ve only met Michael in passing once or twice. I don’t know about their circles of friends or their communities, but it sounds as if they’ve made choices that have put them on islands of their own making. I get the impulse. (Again, not an excuse.) I’m thankful I have friends who have been willing to press into hard conversations with me, and I’m thankful that the Holy Spirit has occasionally given me ears to listen.

As much as I sometimes want a lot of success and money, it’s probably good for me I don’t have more than I have. I could probably justify an island, too. It would end up being a little drop of desert in the middle of the ocean, most likely.

No, I need to live along the river. I need fresh water every day. I need to sink my roots deep into it.

I know myself well enough to know I will most likely—stupidly and selfishly—fail to choose to dip my roots in the river, so I need to be planted as close to the banks as I can. Where the soil is rich, and I get fed on the days I want to and the days I don’t.

Here’s what you don’t see in any of these stories: one of the most successful musicians in Christian music history, another riding the wave of the political dynasty of the day, one of the biggest, best-looking movie stars in Hollywood, and the literal richest man in the world.

Not one of them living a life I would describe as “flourishing.”

The Bible is clear, and history bears it out: the secrets we keep will come to light.

For nothing is concealed that won’t be revealed, and nothing hidden that won’t be made known and brought to light. - Luke 8:17

That’s either terrifying or freeing, depending on the state of your lawn. (Cut back to the mirror…)

Just like Mark’s grass, there are two ways to avoid our own personal day of headlines like these. One is to spend our lives focusing on our depravity—whether engaging it and trying to hide, or constantly putting up boundaries and rules and trying to white-knuckle it to the grave without a giant failure.

The other is to grow really, really, really good grass on the banks of the river. Building habits of rest and prayer and friendship and Scripture and beauty and kindness and nature. Not creating room for other habits to grow in the cracks.

I’ve spent most of my life in a circular state of managing, failing, hoping no one would find out, trying to manage even harder—over and over—and it has also been a life I would not describe as “flourishing.”

Here’s the thing: a life that simply avoids landing on the Roys Report is not the legacy I want to leave. I want to live a life of joyful, honest, vibrant health—for me and for those around me.

Addendum:

I should also say this, in regard to my greater Christian music community and in response to some of the comments I’ve read under all the posts and articles flying around this week. For all my criticism of CCM and the worship music complex (I criticize because I care!), I grew up on this music. Amy, Steven, Michael, dc Talk, Jars of Clay, etc.

I’ve had the incredible joy and honor of sharing the stage or studio with a number of those artists now. We’ve been on the bus together for months, sometimes years. I ended up in a small group for over a decade with one of those guys. His band’s poster hung on my wall in high school.

Steven and I once got stranded in the San Antonio airport, just the two of us, for 36 hours.

I listened to him all the time when I was in high school. His CD The Live Adventure came with a giant wall calendar poster, and I hung that one up, too. Years later, I got to play that blue Peavey guitar he had in the picture. It was awesome.

I’ll tell you this, too. That man is a *beast* of a musician.

You want to know if a guy is who you hoped he’d be when you looked up to him as a kid? See him at hour 32 when he’s still not home, not showered, hasn’t slept, and every single adoptive parent flying through Texas that day recognizes him and wants to give him their life story because of how his nonprofit, Show Hope, changed their family forever.

I love that I’ve gotten to know some of my heroes enough to be annoyed by them. To smell their bad breath. To understand that they actually are real people still living their daily lives, with actual real issues like everybody else. And to know that I absolutely admire them more now than I did back when I was a kid, only seeing them from afar.

Because now I know it’s real.

Yeah, there are some snakes out there. Some charlatans. There are also good people who have made some bad decisions, frantically trying to figure out what to do next. Who hasn’t found themselves there?

But mostly, my experience has been people working their butts off for not a lot of money to make music they really care about, hoping that enough other people will care about it too, so that the music can keep being made for a while longer.

For every person in this business I swore I’d never work with again (after 27 years, I think I can count 3, maybe 4?), and those I just haven’t been interested in working with (hence my relative distance from Tait and Sean), there have been hundreds of artists, musicians, engineers, marketing directors, record company executives, radio DJs, concert promoters, and more—trying to do their best in an incredibly broken system to make beautiful music that inspires and encourages people, and to take care of their own families and communities through the fruits of that labor.

For all I critique—and will continue to—I’m incredibly thankful to be a part of this community and to call so many of its members dear friends.

—

So here’s a prayer for those whose weeds have overtaken their grass, and for all those they’ve hurt in the process.

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Father of mercies
Have mercy on us.
Reveal to us what we have hidden
from ourselves.

In the goodness of your mercy,
and if it be your will,
would you give us another Fall to plant,
a Winter to wait,
and a Spring that awakens with the good you have sown
in the fields where once were disarray and discontent?

Have mercy on those our actions have harmed
and our excuses have not cared for.

Restore to them the joy we have taken,
and to us the hope crushed by evil.
And though we don’t deserve it,
restore to us the dignity we have stolen from ourselves.

In the name of Jesus,
who plants, waits, and grows in us
as he died, was buried, and rose again for us.

Amen