New Documentary Explores Story Behind Nashville’s Contemporary Christian Music Scene

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Pictured (L-R): Michael Passons (Avalon), Crystal Lewis, Jennifer Knapp, Nate Cole and Chanel Haynes. Photo: Chrissy Yoder

A new documentary, Safe for the Whole Family: How to Make a Christian Superstar, is spotlighting the untold story behind Nashville’s Contemporary Christian Music boom.

The new film examines the rise of CCM from a faith-based subgenre into a billion-dollar business, and the personal cost paid by many of the artists at the center of it. Directed by filmmaker Jason Ikeler in his feature directorial debut, the documentary is set to bring one of the music industry’s most complicated eras back into focus as it follows three CCM artists as they revisit the industry that launched and sometimes rejected them. Through first-hand accounts from Jennifer Knapp, Michael Passons (Avalon) and Nikki Leonti, the film explores how artists operating inside the Christian music system were often expected to embody strict evangelical ideals, both onstage and off.

Marketed throughout the 90’s and early 2000s as a “safe” alternative to mainstream pop, CCM became deeply intertwined with Nashville’s music business infrastructure, building a powerful ecosystem of labels, radio networks, bookstores, touring circuits, and media outlets. Safe for the Whole Family reveals what happened to the artists who stepped outside the industry’s strict moral expectations, whether they were deemed “sexually impure,” accused of living a “homosexual lifestyle,” spoke out politically, or questioned the systems around them.

The documentary includes interviews with CCM and faith-adjacent artists including Leigh Nash (Sixpence None The Richer), Matt Thiessen (Relient K), Crystal Lewis, Derek Webb (Caedmon’s Call), Nate Cole (Plus One), Chanel Haynes (Trin-i-Tee 5:7) and Semler, whose stories trace the complicated legacy of an industry that helped define evangelical culture at the turn of the millennium.

“CCM wasn’t just a genre – it was an industry built largely out of Nashville,” says Ikeler. “The film looks at what happens when faith, fame, and commerce become inseparable, and what it costs the people inside that system.”

Lorie Hollabaugh
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