Pass It On

Geoff Moore’s musical career started in the shower. Specifically, a communal shower at Taylor University in Upland, Ind., where Geoff was a student.

"It was all tiled, and the acoustics were awesome in there," he says. "My roommate, Arlan, would go in and play his guitar at night, so I’d go and just listen to him play. Arlan can’t sing very well, so he asks, ‘Why don’t you try singing some of these songs?’ So I started. Anybody can sound good in a tile-filled room."

And that was the beginning of the Christian rock band Geoff Moore and the Distance and a successful solo career.

But not right away. Geoff had no intention of being a musician; in fact, he was a business administration major and planned to take up the family business in Texas after graduation.

"I had worked there in the summers and then right out of school," he says. "It was hard work, but I was very into it — it was a birthright kind of thing."

Counting the cost

But still, after coming back to the family business, his heart was restless. He finally went to his wife, Jan, whom he met at Taylor, and told her of this. "I can remember telling Jan, ‘I don’t know what, but I feel like God’s calling me toward ministry, and it might be music.’ I had so little experience with music. It just seemed ludicrous."

It was, by his own admission, a very difficult decision, but his family was supportive. So with no real prospects, Geoff left the family business and moved to Nashville, Tenn.

And then the surprise came. "I didn’t know until after I had made the decision to leave that my father had a contingency in his will that left half the business to me and half to my brother," he says. "A paragraph said that if you are unemployed on your 27th birthday, you surrender your stock to your brother. He didn’t want people that didn’t work in the business to own it, which is reasonable. I went home and said, ‘Well, honey, this is going to cost us a little more than we thought.’ But it was the greatest thing that ever happened."

Geoff says, in retrospect, that he realizes it was God’s way to make him sure of his calling. With no safety net, they had only God to rely on. After two albums that had middling success, Geoff and his band changed record labels, and his career took off.

The chase

Today, with his musical reputation well established, Geoff’s priorities are different — his family.

Geoff and Jan met at an open house their freshman year at Taylor in August 1979. "My roommate and I saw a sign for open house at the girl’s dorm, and we went to check our options," Geoff says. "Jan was popping popcorn. (The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.) I remember the first time I saw her: Levi’s, hiking boots, flannel shirt. I was like, yeah."

They talked for a while that evening and met for lunch the next day. But, Geoff adds, "She kind of played hard to get for a while."

In fact, after kissing her on the first date, it was, as Geoff describes, "Eight loooong months before I laid a hand on her again."

"I really liked him, so we kept up a good friendship," Jan explains. "We spent a lot of time together, a lot of walks and talks. And actually we became very good friends because of it. That laid the foundation for a good dating relationship."

"Physical relationships, even just a casual kiss and holding hands, can really screw up the development of other areas of your relationship," Geoff adds. "I credit Jan with having the will power."

Geoff and Jan dated for the first three years of college, but at the beginning of their senior year, Jan suggested Geoff date other girls. He has to resist laughing as he relates the tale. "She said, ‘Geoff, I really feel like you need to date around, see more people. I just don’t want to be tied down and blah blah blah.’ "

Geoff, understandably, was hurt. But shortly afterward, Geoff’s roommate told him about a roller skating party, and he knew two freshman girls who wanted someone to take them. "One was like Miss Teen Indiana," Geoff says, "so we hooked up with them. I can remember walking into the roller rink with me and my roommate and these girls, and Jan was out on the floor holding hands with a boy. She took one look, saw me with this other girl, started crying, took off her skates and went home."

At this, Geoff holds his hands in the air triumphal, laughs and goes, "Whoohooo!" like signaling a score.

"I was very upset," Jan says, laughing herself. "Literally, I was sick to my stomach. Then I came to my senses. About a month after that roller skating thing, I knew he was the man I wanted to marry."

"There’s a weird dynamic at work when you pursue somebody so hard and all of a sudden one day they say, ‘You got it,’ " Geoff adds. "To a man that’s weird. That whole conquest thing is real, it’s significant. It took me a while just to get used to not having to pursue her so hard."

They were engaged all of their senior year and married June 18, 1983.

Living the example

Geoff and Jan now have two sons, Joshua, 13, and Justin, 11, and they recently adopted a 1-year-old girl, Anna, from China. A chief priority as a dad, Geoff says, is passing on a spiritual heritage to his children.

"There’s this deep abiding sense that part of why I am alive is to prepare those boys to be godly men in their world," he says. "If I entrust my kid to that computer, or to that video game or to my local church or his Christian school, he is going to be deeply influenced by all those things. But we feel that God has entrusted us with those children, and we have the responsibility to raise them."

His most important job, Geoff says, is being a dad. "My kids don’t need me to be their peer; they need me to be their father. Their friend, yeah, but I need to be a source that they look to for truth and for responsibility and for role modeling."

Such modeling goes far. "It was easy for me to embrace a heavenly father who loved me because I had a dad who loved me," Geoff says. "It was easier for me to understand respect and a righteous fear toward the power of God because when I screwed up, I was afraid of my dad. I knew he took discipline seriously. We feel there are elements in our lives that we want to really try to model that give glimpses to our kids about what God’s character is."

One way to give those glimpses is a strong marriage. "One day I was kind of a bonehead to Jan," Geoff starts.

"Kind of?! . . ." Jan interjects, laughing.

"Okay, a big bonehead to a little bonehead," Geoff laughs. "We got really sideways with each other. So I got a little card and flowers to try to buy my way back into her graces. It was amazing the impact it had on the boys. They really watch that stuff. And they watch what forgiveness really looks like, because this is where it matters to them.

"And that’s what chaps me so bad when people get divorced and I hear them discount the impact that it’s having on the children. It is a long road back to try to communicate you have a heavenly Father who will never leave you, never abandon you, never leave you if you can’t see your parents do that.

"Marriage is people who are willing to let God intervene in their lives, in their relationship, in a way that is beyond just a human desire to get along. Our kids see us demonstrating forgiveness or forbearance or discipline, which they don’t see naturally in the world around them. I think a kid knows when something is supernatural. In our lives that’s what we’re trying to communicate. It’s taught through the simplest things."

And the lesson seems to have taken with the boys. Geoff one day received a letter from Justin, and his eyes moisten as he reads it: Dear Daddy: You have been the best dad in the world. You have done so much for me, so today, I’m going to give you a 10-minute back rub and whatever you want me to. I can’t even count how many things you’ve done for me, like untangling my rod and you gave me yours. I’m sorry for all the times Josh and I have argued. I hope I grow up to be like you.

"Parenting is often a lot simpler than we think it is," Geoff says. "There’s a lot written about how to psychologically invest in your children and how to reason with them and all that. I just think it’s day-to-day with God’s help, because I don’t have the patience to do that stuff. And that’s why patience is a fruit of the Spirit."

For that reason, Geoff wrote the song "Pass It On" with his friend Steven Curtis Chapman to inspire parents to live their lives and their marriages for their children.