Meet Bonnie Keen

We were lucky to catch up with Bonnie Keen recently and have shared our conversation below.

Bonnie, we’re thrilled to have you on our platform and we think there is so much folks can learn from you and your story. Something that matters deeply to us is living a life and leading a career filled with purpose and so let’s start by chatting about how you found your purpose.

Finding purpose is an ongoing process in all our lives — and honestly the journey to finding purpose continues to unfold for me with each passing year.

Purpose encompasses just about every aspect in our days and the choices to be made.

What gets me up in the morning?
Am I serving work that is worthy and will bring something meaningful to the people around me?
As an aging woman in the West, what purpose do I have in a culture smitten with youth?
Am I setting boundaries and am I loosening boundaries? For better or for worse?
Am I pleasing the LORD with the intentions of my heart?

All of these questions revolve around purpose.

Cutting the the chase, I believe purpose is defined by what pleases God first and then my family and gifting and community.
These places and my role in them are ever changing and deepening over time.

I start and end each day reading the Word of God. It’s my fuel. It’s my barometer for what I am choosing. It’s literally the light to my feet and lamp to my path. All through the day I talk to the Lord, but early in the morning with coffee in hand I praise Him. I inquire of Him. I lament to Him. I pour my heart out no matter its condition.

When I was in my early 20’s I knew God had poured music and writing, performing and theatre into my set of gifts.
But I had no clue what the journey would look like.
Each day I would lay on the floor and say something like “God, I don’t know where my career will land. But I trust You will show me. Please keep my steps on an honoring path. Keep me close to Your heart. Please also make it clear.”

A career in the arts is a wild thing. It’s unpredictable. Full of potential land mines (and I’ve hit a few). It’s very much about trust.

Yet God has always honored the purpose-seeking prayers. The opportunities to use all of my gifts have been beyond my wildest expectations. I’ve been graced with writing, recording, singing, performing songs about HIS glory all over the world.
First Call is a pop/jazz vocal trio I recorded and traveled with for 25 years. We were blessed with a tremendous ministry.

Music is a mysterious thing. It flows in and out of the human heart without boundaries. First Call’s music has touched more people than we ever imagined. The awards and accolades felt good……but the purpose behind the music and how God has used it is the truest blessing.

I’ve recorded three solo projects, traveled as a speaker and performer with the freedom to tell my personal story of redemption. I”m almost finished with my fourth solo recording which seems to be layered with songs about what really matters in this world. With each project I’ve found great purpose in glorifying God, spreading the great mercy of Jesus by opening a vein into my own life. I’ve been through clinical depression, divorce, single parenthood. I know well the ropes of feeling purposeless.

The words of Jesus in John 6, after feeding over 5,000 men women and children touch me deeply;

When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.”

I have felt like a fragment, left over and wasted.
Yet Jesus intentionally tells his disciples to pick up the left overs. Nothing is wasted in His hands.

There is great freedom and purpose in telling others about the love of Christ in the toughest of circumstances.

One woman’s comment at a conference made me belly laugh, “After hearing your story I feel so much better about myself.
If you are still standing and believing then so can I.”

Then the more hidden, quiet and just as powerful purpose comes from time with. my children and two grandchildren.
As a ‘Bobbi’ grandmomma to two little bitty babies, I know part of the purpose in my life is to pray for them.
My purpose keeps broadening into more prayer for my family.

Prayer is everything.

Knowing where the Lord has me, for His purposes brings the greatest purpose. I guess it’s a circle. Staring with Him, following and finding each step is purpose-filled.

Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?

Diversity seems to be part of my journey in the arts.

First Call’s music is available online at all streaming platforms. (14 recordings)

My solo music is also on all streaming platforms under: Bonnie Keen

I’m very excited to launch my new project in early summer. Also included will be a short devotional describing the backstory of each song.

I have authored three books, available on Amazon under my name.

By this summer my new website will be online: bonniekeen.com

Feel free to join my public Facebook page where I love to interact.

I have a podcast online hosted by myself and Nan Gurley, ‘Women Who Dare To Believe’.
(Nan and I wrote a 2 woman musical and a 2 volume bible study based on the lives of women in the Word. For 10 years we presented the musical and spoke at events. In 2020 we began recording a podcast with a prayer it would encourage women to dive deep into the Bible with us — and to see how these women have so much to teach us. This podcast is on all streaming platforms. We also have a Facebook page called Women Who Dare To Believe).

If you’re ever in Nashville and want to hear a great tribute band, I sing downtown with The Eaglemaniacs Nashville.
We perform at Third & Lindsley every 6 to 7 weeks.

There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?

Listening/Practice

From a young age I listened to every piece of great music and theatre I could find. I listened to great vocalists, great actors, great speakers. I studied piano for 13 years, practicing long hours and began writing at an early age. Listening informed my own voice and artistic choices. Practicing piano sharpened my pitch center, opened up avenues for my own musical expression and prepared me to being a vocalist in the recording studio.

Suffering

Pain is a great teacher, Especially when pain is taken to God, it can be redeemed. No one escapes pain in this world. But we can choose what to do with the losses and fallout. We serve a Saviour who went through life weeping. Jesus is a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He will weep with you in the worst of times. And He will give you His strength to move on.

Isaiah 41:10 (Amplified Bible Translation)

“Fear not [there is nothing to fear], for I am with you; do not look around you in terror and be dismayed, for I am your God. I will strengthen and harden you to difficulties, yes, I will help you; yes, I will hold you up and retain you with My [victorious] right hand of rightness and justice.’

Note this translation specifies God will ‘harden you to difficulties’. Wow. This has been a lifeline verse for my life.

Only in suffering do we taste a bit of Gethsemane. Only in suffering are we connected fully to Jesus in this world.

The Word of God

Bottom line, whatever you are pursuing and laying before God in any field stay in the Word.
The Word will grow faith muscles.
The Word will convict and heal your heart.
The Word of God is JESUS. (John 1:1)

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

My parents belonged to a deeply closed off, legalistic church in the South. We were only allowed to sing a cappella hymns. The great irony of this is how God used those years to sharpen my ear training (without me knowing it). The theology of hymns has been the greatest gift from those years. To this day the words and melodies of hymns come to my mind and minister to my soul.

I was threatened and tossed about by the graceless theology of this denomination. You weren’t invited to learn the Word of God. There was a constant drumbeat of works, works and nothing at all about the mercy of God in Christ. For me this was extremely difficult. As a highly sensitive child I felt constantly condemned. I had tremendous anxiety even by the age of 6, throwing up with migraine headaches.

Yet, yet, yet, God in His wisdom and care used those years of intimidation to birth freedom in my spirit.
The more I learned of Him, the more I moved past the legalism into the grace He died to bring.
The Gospel broke through and claimed me.

For a while I could not thank God for these years. It was layered with physical and emotional abuse at my home.
But now I look at what He did to use the least likely place to burn great theology and music into my being.

Never underestimate what the Lord can use. ‘What was meant for evil, He used for good.’ Genesis 50;20

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