[Bridge of Clay]

Thanks to Sheila from PBF for sharing it. It's a good read!

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Date of Interview... AUGUST 16, 2004

"I Was Running From God"

Before Scott Stapp became the lead singer for one of rock music's biggest bands of the last decade, he got a crash course in roch 'n' roll politics from an unlikely source.

"The perfect preparation for fame was to be involved in the church that I grew up in. It was funn of gossip and backstabbing and jealousy and people who tore other people down," Stapp says. "I don't want to say that it was the whole church, but it just seemed like that's what I was exposed to."

If Stapp's name doesn't ring a bell, his former band's moniker -- Creed -- probably will. During the late '90s, Creed helped resurrect the rock-music scene and sold 30 million copies of its three albums in the process. Despite an onslaught of attacks by music critics, Creed delivered songs--such as radio hits "With Arms Wide Open" and "Higher"--that elevated the group to stardom.

But long before Stapp's brooding, posturing onstage style captured the hearts of the masses, a series of childhool events had laid the foundation for what would come in the singer's adult life.

When he was 5 years old, Stapp's biological father walked out on the family. For the next six years, his mother, Lynda, worked two jobs yet still required welfare assistance to take care of her son and two daughters, Amanda and Amie.

Another defining moment occurred when Scott's mother remarried, to Steven Stapp, who she had met at church. Steven was a retired Air Force man and a practicing dentist in Winter Park, Florida, near Orlando. In his younger days he had played baseball and basketball for the University of Alabama and was drafted by the Pittsurgh Pirates.

Scott, a three-sport athelete at the time his mother married, Steven, immediately bonded with his stepfather.

"I just fell in love with this guy," he says. "He came in and really shaped me spirtually. I learned how to write lyrics by being told to write Psalms and Proverbs. I had to write a commentary on each chapter and what they meant to me. And then my father checked them for spelling and grammar, and if there was anything wrong I had to rewrite it."

Scott's church experience during his youth also shaped his future in a way that he wouldn't understand for years to come. His family attended a Pentecostal church where "a lot of people spoke in tongues and did all of these other things", he says. "I would always pray as a kid, 'God let me do that.' I was kind of asking God to show me a sign," he explains. "I remember being a 9-year-old kid and lying in bed praying 'God, please turn my light off. Aned if you turn my light off, I'll be a preacher.' I was putting God to a test."

Those youthful feelings of being drawn to God but not understanding how he fit in with His plan became even more self-evident to Stapp, now 31, as he pursued his music. As Creed gained popularity, the mainstream press took bits and pieces of Stapp's past and proceeeded to paint his parents as religious fanatics. The rock star played along at times but now realizes that he was going through the same thing many other church-raised young people have experienced.

"I was running from God," Stapp says. "I really felt like I was called into the ministry, and I didn't know what it was and I ran from it. I think it's pretty normal--and maybe I'm wrong, but I'll say it anyway--for young teenagers to rebel. And I rebelled, I ran as far away as I could from the church and ran right into a rock band, which was about the most evil thing that I could call my dad and tell him I was doing... I think that was the ultimate form of rebellion for me."

Steven admits he was greatly concerned by the prospect of his son chasing after rock 'n' roll glory. But he also knew there wasn't much he could do to change his mind. He simply advised Scott to "always honor God, yourself and your family." Those encouraging words combined with lots of love and prayer were what helped the rock star's parents keep the peace.

The elder Stapp also was unfazed by the mainstream press and its negative portrayal of his and his wife's parenting skills. Seven found it amusing that most reporters claimed he was "a minister" when actually he had been a deacon and Sunday school teacher at Calvary Assembly of God in Winter Park. He now attends nondenominational Church in the Son in Orlando. "The story wouldn't have been good enought if I was a dentist," he jokes. "It was juicier when I was a Pentecostal minister."