“The only thing I remember when I woke up was that I was already screaming…I was in a full scream, and I thought I was on fire.” By all reports, Kelly Kopp and his band mates should have been killed when their van crashed into a guardrail in 2007.
At 23 years old, Kelly had strayed far from God, and attributed his and his band’s close call to luck.
“I was taking the credit now,” Kelly stated. “Now I had this awesome story to tell. More people are going to pay attention to me, more people are going to be interested in what I have to say…because now I have this story.”
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Kelly grew up in a Christian home, was homeschooled and went to church every Sunday with his family. Overall, it was a happy childhood. “I don’t remember a time where I didn’t know Jesus.” He said. “I was in love with God from right out the gate.”
Then at eight years old, he found out that the woman he called ‘mom’ was not his biological mother.
“I felt rejected from my mom. My stepmom never treated me any differently, but in my mind, I was different,” he states. “I was an outsider, an outcast and I internalized that and thought that they didn’t love me as much…my mom didn’t love me…I wasn’t her son. So now I’m in the middle. All I wanted was for somebody to love me. I want somebody to like me.”
Despite feeling rejected, he started spending time with his biological mom, who wasn’t a Christian. It opened a different lifestyle to him. At 14, he asked his parents to be enrolled in a public school because he wanted to be a part of what the other kids were doing.
“I would see all my friends and they were partying or doing different things that I wasn’t allowed to do,” he says. “It looked like they were having a blast and that they were having more fun than me.” So, Kelly decided to join in on the fun by smoking weed and drinking. He also got into rock music and playing guitar. Still, he couldn’t shake God’s call on his life.
“Every single night when I would lay down in bed, I would hear His voice saying, ‘Kelly, I have a plan for you. I have a call for you,’ since I was 14-15 years old,” Kopp says. “Every night that I was away from Him, I would hear Him say that before I went to sleep, ‘I have a plan for you. I have a call for you.’ So I never really ran from Him…I just ignored Him.”
Throughout high school, he lived a double life. On one hand, he was constantly fighting with his parents and at times, getting into trouble. On the other, he was the good Christian kid who went to church. In fact, when Kelly was a senior in high school, his pastor tried to convince him to go into ministry, but Kelly had other plans, to start a band and hit the road.
“The next day after I graduated, I left. I was gone, and that was it.
“All I wanted was to be a rock star! I wanted to be famous and wanted people to love me…because I felt empty on the inside. I thought that if everyone in the world loved me, then that would fill that hole.”
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Reprinted with permission from cbn.com. Copyright © 2025 The Christian Broadcasting Network Inc. All rights reserved.
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