Teen Quest Article (July/August 1996)
faces
Jaci Velasquez
Jaci Velasquez likes to go shopping and hang out with her friends. She also describes herself as sensitive, dramatic, romantic, and "kind of a dork [who] tells really corny jokes."
This may not sound like anything too unusual for a sixteen year old. But unlike most teens, Jaci has been recording and performing music since she was ten, has sung at the White House, and now has her own recording contract and career in Christian music (she's the youngest artist on her label).
Jaci grew up traveling wiht her muscial family, and they all shared in the ministry that accompanied it.
"I think my family has instilled so many different thing in me," she said. "I had a pretty happy childhood, surrounded by a lot of love. I learned so much about music because of their involvement, but also why they were doing it. They were living it, too. That's how it shaped me. I know how important it is to walk the walk, not just talk the talk."
Jaci's new album is called Heavenly Place, and it has a definite adult contemporary/pop feel with lyrics that talk--in an encouraging, fresh, and realistic way--about living life with and for Jesus:
"You've got to live every moment/As though it was your last/Before the thief of always/Steals tomorrow from your grasp/Before the chance to know His love/Has somehow passed you by/Let your heart reach out right here, right now/For the Lord to touch your life," (from "Thief of Always").
Jaci said she knows, as a teenage recording artist, that she has a special opportunity to say something to her generation.
"I know what I want out of my ministry. I want to go and reach people my age that maybe even a youth pastor couldn't reach. To have a relationship with God, it's the most imporatant testimony you can have before people. It's not easy all the time. I have a hard time with it sometimes. But that's what is going to last--living right and taking your relationship with God very seriously."
-- Lisa
You can write to Jaci at 3100 West End Ave., Ste. 820, Nashville, TN 37203
Copyright © 1996. For independent scholarship and/or purposes of review only.
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