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Todd Agnew is a jeans and T-shirt kind of guy. He'll get to the point and tell you how it is without apology. He does that partly because of the way God made him, and partly because of his 12 years playing as an indie musician before signing with Ardent Records. His national debut CD, Grace Like Rain, has had wild radio success, but that wasn't even the plan. Rarely will you find anyone who consistently turns nearly every conversation back to a story about God's work in his life, but Agnew is one of those guys. He plays numerous styles of music with quality, sincerity and transparency—traits that marked his comments in our recent interview with him.

How would you describe yourself?

Todd AgnewI try to be about Jesus Christ and his cross as much as I can. There's not a whole lot about me that's really worth knowing, so I try to be as normal, real, and as transparent as I can be. Part of that is just being who I'm made to be. That's what I want people to encounter; I want them to encounter God in what we do. Sometimes we do that musically, and other times it's just sitting around and hanging out with people before or after a show. I hope that's something that will happen throughout my life—even out of music.

You say you try to be transparent. How?

AgnewJust be honest about who I am and about what my life's like—especially my mistakes. I just admit, even from the stage, that I struggle. It helps people to think, Okay, you're real. For me, it's about finding out who I am and being that person.

For a long time I thought, The rock star thing is fake, so I'm not going to do that. But what I've learned is that it's not. Some people are legitimately rock stars; that's who God made them to be. They want to fix their hair when they wake up in the morning and put on glasses like Lenny Kravitz, and a British flag jacket, even if they're only going to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. That's just who they are. And for them, that's real.

For me it's not. I just throw on a T-shirt and jeans and go do what I do. That's who I try to be all the time, whether I'm on or off stage.

Can you tell us about a "defining moment" in your life?

AgnewSure, and I'm gonna choose one that's different than what you'll probably expect. Because it happened when I was a few days old, when I was given up for adoption. When I was born, my parents just left me at the hospital. So I was just hanging out there in the little tanning bed—basically a kid who would eventually end up going to some orphanage. Not a whole lot of hope or future for me there. But a couple came in and they said, We love you. Not because of anything you've done, and you can't earn it. But we want you to be a part of our family.

That's a huge defining moment for me for two reasons. For one thing, it's because I'm no longer that baby who was born there—that hopeless person without a future or a family. I am an Agnew. I'm a result of that family, I resemble them; their input into my life is who I am. So it's definitely defined who I am. My parents are godly, amazing people, and their choice of taking me into their family formed who I am.

At the same time, as I grew up, it was really easy for me to understand adoption into the body of Christ because I know what it means to not have anything to offer—not to be able to deserve that and just to be adopted because I'm loved.

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