Ryan Knudson

When Sean Mathis showed up in 2017, all of those assets, the building, the parking lots, and the savings, were being managed by a very small group of aging congregants.

After he took control, the church was renamed the Nashville Church of Christ.

And according to court filings, it started paying both Mathis and his father six-figure salaries and gave them housing stipends.

And under his leadership, the church stopped its weekly services.

In a statement provided by its lawyer, the National Church of Christ disputed that the church had been shut down.

The letter also said, "...changes to the church's leadership happened according to the same regular processes that had always occurred at the church."

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.