more on KATE MINER

YOU REALLY SAID THAT?

Yes. I totally loved God, but I totally hated people at church. He kept working on me, though, and every few weeks, he would call me and say, “Change your mind yet?” Finally, I said, “Fine. I’ll have a meeting with you, but I’m going to do all the talking.” SoI went in and told him my story, my experience with church, how I had been excommunicated. And when I got to the end of the story, he said, “OK.Do you want the job?” I told him, “No,” but he took me down to Munger Place. And at the time, it was a hot mess. There was no air. There was no heat. It was in really sad shape. I walked in there, and this sounds really stupid, but I just took one big breath through my nose and said, “This is it. I’m home.” I have four kids, and two still live at home. So we moved from the Grapevine area to Lakewood, and we feel like we’re at home here.

YOU’RE FROMLOS ANGELES, RIGHT?

I’m from SanDiego, and for six years, I had been trying to get back home to San Diego. But I had not yet decided which bridge I would like to live under, because that’s the only way you can move back to SanDiego, right? But now I feel like I’m home. We’re averaging about 450 people in church every Sunday. It’s amazing.

TELL US A LITTLE BIT ABOUT YOUR MUSICCAREER.

I had my season of being the darling of (music publishing association) ASCAP. In 1992, I was named Female Acoustic Artist of the Year by the National Academy of Songwriters. I was pursuing all that and doing a really good job. I was in my 20s, and it was all going really great. I was going to church in Malibu, at the Malibu Vineyard, which is nondenominational. I was raised Baptist, so it gave me a different idea of what church could be like. I ended up leading worship there, but I didn’t know enough to take what I was doing in the clubs and clean it up and make it churchy. So we ended up having a church whose music was really just rock-n-roll. And it created a movement. This