While becoming an R&B sensation, Jordan lived a double life. Few people know that Montell Jordan was married to his manager. The reason that the information wasn’t public knowledge is because his record label suggested he would be more marketable as a single man. So when the question of whether he was in a relationship or not, Jordan responded by saying he was married to his music – an answer that he ended up regretting. “If I professed with my mouth ‘I am married to my music,’ that makes my wife my mistress. I am now putting myself and my marriage in a detrimental position because I am claiming that the woman in my life is my music and therefore, I have now taken the music and placed it above the order that God ordained things to be.”
Jordan recalled that in the beginning of his career, he had a conversation with God. “God, if you let me do the music, I don’t care if I’m performing for 70,000 or 7. I’ll always give my best performance.” He was literally performing in front of 70,000 in places like the Georgia Dome. But nobody is on top forever. There are always newer artists that enter the business and take another person’s place. Gradually, ticket sales began to dwindle. “I can remember, I was performing at a venue that held 2000 people. Literally, six people showed up. And all the while I was performing, I was saying ‘Ah God. I know I said it, but you’re really going to hold me to the 70,000 or 7. You’re really going to hold me to that.”
While this was happening, though, Jordan’s spirits weren’t crushed. He and his wife were involved in a “great” church: Victory World Church in Atlanta. During a religious fast in July 2010, God told Jordan that he would be leaving the music business. “I did not want to hear that. I wanted to hear, ‘I‘m gonna’ let you do another album’, or ‘this time it’s gonna’ work’. All the different things I wanted to hear; I did not hear any of those things,” Jordan said.
On his last days of being an R&B artist, Jordan would perform in clubs that held a couple hundred people and later he would sign autographs. The church would ask him to come in on Sundays to lead worship. Paradoxically from his fans at the clubs, “There would be 1500 people in there with their hands raised, worshipping God…They’re not seeing me. They’re seeing God.” This led to a profound thought: “How is it that I’m an R&B singer out in the club and this church would open the door for me to come and love on me to sing for God’s glory. And I didn’t really understand that. I mean they saw I was serving. They saw my heart. They saw our marriage. But they also saw what I was doing in the world and still embraced me and loved on me and kept on feeding me Word.”
To deal with the dilemma of whether or not he should quit what has made him rich and dig deeper into his faith, Jordan talked to God. He knew he couldn’t do both. He told God that He had to help him become who God wanted him to become. Importantly, he also told God that God would have to eliminate a way for him to continue his old life. So when the church let Jordan know that if he put his past behind him, they would embrace him taking his worship to the next level the choice was obvious.
Reminiscing about the day he accepted his new position in the church, a smiling Jordan revealed, “January 1st, I woke up, and I think I felt more free than I ever have my entire life. I felt like I had functioned as two people, and when I woke up I was one man. I was just husband, father, and lover of God.”
Currently, Montell Jordan is the Leap Worship Pastor according to Victory’s website. If you see footage of Montell Jordan preaching, he isn’t dressed like many pastors – in a suit or religious clothes of various sorts. He said that the reason is, “If I’m ministering to somebody that’s from that R&B world like me, I can’t come into church suit and tie’d up and ‘Look at Montell, now.’ You’re not going to see me do that…I’m still going to keep my blessed experience that God gave me but use it for his glory…”
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Pastor Montell Jordan: From The Church To R&B To Church Again was originally published on blackdoctor.org
