Ryan Knudson

Some of the church's longtime members told CAM that when they started to question Mathis' leadership, they began to feel unwelcome.

In the letter, the church's attorney said, "...the members who were replaced as church leaders weren't pushed out.

They were simply replaced by the next generation, just as has happened in church bodies for thousands of years."

All of these changes started to come to the attention of the great-grandchildren of the church's original co-founder, A.M.

Burton.

One of those great-grandchildren is Amy Grant, as in six-time Grammy winner Amy Grant.

Around Nashville, Amy Grant is considered music royalty.

She's been called the queen of Christian pop, with a string of hits like her 90s single, Baby Baby, which my sister and I used to dance to when we were kids.

There's kind of a bit of a running joke on our podcast about how like when I have people on, I sometimes make a joke about trying to get them to sing.

But I think you might be the first person with the actual chops to sing.

Sadly, no, we are not singing today.

Amy politely declined.

Okay, back to the story.

Amy heard from her cousin Andy Burton, a local dentist, who had caught wind of what Mathis was doing at their great-grandfather's old church.

Even though Amy hadn't gone to the church since her great-grandfather's funeral, she often saw it when she played concerts downtown.

Why did you feel like it was something worth fighting for?

But Amy and the Burton family had found a way to fight for control of the church.

That's next.

When A.M.

Burton set up the Central Church of Christ back in 1925, it, like all buildings, had a deed to go with it.