This was Jennifer Knapp's first website. As for where she is now...

LAST UPDATED SEPTEMBER 5, 2007 FEB. 5, 2006 I probably should've written this a long time ago, but things have finally come to a boiling point for me, so I'm going to speak my mind whether or not anyone likes what I'm saying. This was Jennifer Knapp's original Web page. I took over Jesusfreak.com in 2002 and since that time have kept this page online to offer information to anyone looking for JK. I haven't heard anything new in a long time, but what I've heard and read makes me want to puke: Christians gossiping and speculating unsavory things about Jennifer Knapp's whereabouts. I'm much less concerned about any rumors I've been hearing than the fact that so many Christians seem to be immersing themselves in the rumor mill. I don't care if any of this gossip is true. I just want, for the sake of our witness, for all of this to stop. In light of what the Bible says about gossip, I don't see how any of us who call ourselves Christ's followers could have a clear conscience if we take part in it. Whoever it was who started spreading allegations at least five years ago about JK needs to face up to and repent of the gossip trail they've started. And they need to do so publicly. It wouldn't undo the damage of years of rumors, but it'd be a good start. I've got a visitor tracking system on this site that tells me what search terms people type in to find this site. And from what I've been seeing more and more in my visitor information, I can't believe that people whom I'm guessing are Christians are utterly wasting their time seeking out "dirt" about other Christians. It doesn't even matter what those rumors are or if what they have heard is true. If we claim to be Christians, gossip should have no part in our lives. How many of us have heard negative, private or sensational things about other Christians--or about anyone else--that we've repeated, whether what we heard was true or not? We might as well just flush that conversation down the toilet. What if instead, when we hear stuff, we were to pray for people instead? As it is, we're acting just like the rest of the world when we gossip--and this is about one of our fellow believers! How does this affect our witness to others? How does this show the world that we are different? What does it do to show the world why they should know this same God we know, if we are acting just like them? Pray for Jennifer Knapp to grow deeper in her walk with Christ. Pray this same thing for everyone else in your life. Are you praying for others? If not, why not? It doesn't really matter what the unknown details of anyone's life is. The Lord knows. And wants people to come to Him and freely offers them grace no matter what they've done. If you'd like to talk, please feel free to e-mail me. To go to the main page of JesusFreak.com, click here. UPDATED MAY 15, 2005 I've been getting a lot of questions about Jennifer Knapp's site, so let me offer a little bit of background information, and then offer a few thoughts. Read this all the way to the bottom of the page, and bear with me if I start waxing philosophical, because I think there's probably a lesson in this for all of us: First of all, the practical details: JK's original web page was on the old JesusFreak.com, (click here to check out the new site), which I discovered when I took over as webmaster of JesusFreak.com back in August 2002. The site JenniferKnapp.com was and apparently still is owned by her old booking agent and promoter, whom she is no longer with. I don't as of this point know of any "official" Jennifer Knapp site, although JenniferKnapp.net is a pretty good one, even though it says on that site that it is unofficial. If any of you come across any OFFICIAL Jennifer Knapp sites, please e-mail me at chad@jesusfreak.com, and I'll post that information on this page. Having said that, I know that a whole bunch of us are probably baffled and a bit concerned that JK has more or less fallen off of the face of the planet, musically speaking. People are speculating over what's going on, and anyone who understands human behavior (which is to say, probably most of us) knows that rampant speculation without any facts that can be immediately grasped sometimes leads to less-than-desirable conclusions, gossip or worse. And I don't think any of us want to go down that road. But imagine what it's like when society (especially Christians who meet Christian "celebrities") treats a person differently because they've been more visible for whatever reason and sometimes seem not to be just "regular people." I had "15 minutes of fame" in local and national media in 2001 for something that the Lord told me to do, and quite frankly, the attention for its own sake really sucked. Dozens of people came up to me over a two-month period to say that they'd seen me on the news, which was fine and dandy, except that my being on the news wasn't as nearly as important as the message that put me in the news in the first place. Heck, I was just a lowly taxi driver in Birmingham, Alabama who did what the Lord told me to do at that point. I won't go into detail on this page, but you can click here and here to read about it. I think I can appreciate what other more visible Christians might feel when dealing with the Christian community.

For that matter, when I was in college, I went to church with a guy named John Cooper--who is now the lead singer for one of the top Christian rock bands in the United States, Skillet. While I haven't had conversations with him about the trap of "Christian celebrity", I did notice at one concert I went to that tons of people were waiting in line for autographs from him and the band. When I got to the front of the line and gave him a sort of high-five-slap-on-the-back-hey-how's-it-going and stood there chatting with him for a couple of minutes, someone behind me in the line asked me if I was going to get John's autograph. I replied, "I went to Sunday School with this dude! He's not a celebrity! He's just...!" ...my former co-worker at McDonald's who's now a really good musician I hear all the time on the radio. So it really doesn't matter. I remember the first band he was in, before that band merged with another band to form Skillet, and believe me, they've has come a very long way. So if knowing him was no big deal back when he was just my co-worker at Mickey D's and some guy I went to church with, why should things be any different now that a lot more people hear his band's music every day?


But speaking of McDonald's, I was working on the front counter at Mickey D's during the summer of 1992 when in walked Eddie DeGarmo, who at the time was still a pretty big name in Christian music. Eddie went to the same church my family went to, in the Memphis area, when I was in college, so I'd see him at church from time to time and I thought that was pretty cool. But it amazed me to actually see Eddie DeGarmo EATING AT MCDONALD'S!!! What's wrong with this picture?? Absolutely nothing--as long as you realize that no matter how bright the spotlight gets, people like Eddie, or John (who is such a regular guy that he WORKED at McDonald's!), or Jennifer, or whoever, are just regular people. For that matter, I'm a pretty big Bride groupie, almost on a first-name basis with the lead singer because of my groupie-ness (well, he remembers my tattoo, taken from a line from their song "Hired Gun", more than he remembers my name), and I've told Dale at a couple of concerts when I thought some riffs just didn't quite work and I offered my suggestions on what I thought might be good to change. (Anyone who has heard "Hired Gun" knows that it just doesn't work as a straight acoustic piece--which is why a live acoustic version of this song they recorded around 1996 or 1997 wasn't that great. At least I thought so.)


How could I even think of offering my unvarnished opinon to Bride???? Well, to me, these guys might be performing as Bride, but actually they're just Dale, Troy, Lawrence and Mike who happen to call themselves Bride when they're playing music together. Bride is their collective identity on stage--but their lives are more than just the band.


But we think that just because we hear these people on the radio all the time or see them in concert or whatever that it means that these people are "different" or maybe even "better" in some nebulous way that none of us can really pinpoint, except for the amount of attention these people get. And that misses two important points I hope we will grasp with regard to Jennifer Knapp: First, she's just a regular person--one of us. And second, as with all of our other friends--I hope that we would regard her as a friend before we'd regard her as a "star"--we should regard her highly enough to pray for her, to pray that no matter what trajectory her life might be on at the moment, and no matter what she's doing, that she would continue to seek to know God more and more, and to become more like Jesus each and every day. What does the Word of God say about everything else in our lives? That if we draw near to God, He will draw near to us (James 4:8); and that if we seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, then all of the other details of our lives will fall into place. (Matthew 6:25-34) I think this is probably the most unselfish thing we can pray for any person we know, or even someone we just know about or hear about a lot. We pray for our friends. Jesus commanded us to pray also for those who aren't our friends--in fact, to pray for our enemies. (Matthew 5:43-45) So for those people who we don't regard as personal friends, and for those we don't know well enough to make enemies with them (I'm not suggesting that we make enemies)--it seems to me a pretty good conclusion that we are to pray for all people who are significant figures in our lives.


We love Jennifer Knapp's music. We should love her as well. Pray for her, that Christ would make her life a glowing example of His love and grace that He offers to all of us. And until she appears next in the spotlight, or even on the sidelines, trust that God is still in control.


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