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For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Testify to Love: Avalon's Untold Story | For the Love

For The Love With Jen Hatmaker Podcast

Jen Hatmaker

Relationships, Society & Culture

4.6 • 6.4K Ratings

🗓️ 10 June 2026

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary


Description:If you grew up on Christian music in the '90s, there's a good chance Testify to Love wasn't just a hit song—it was the soundtrack to a season of your life.

Three decades after Avalon first released the iconic anthem, Jen sits down with original Avalon member Michael Passons, longtime Avalon vocalist Melissa Greene, and country music star Ty Herndon to talk about the remarkable re-release of a song that has found new meaning for a new generation.

But this isn't simply a conversation about music. It's the untold story behind one of CCM's most beloved songs.

Michael shares the painful reality of losing his place in Avalon after coming out as gay. Melissa reflects on the faith journey that transformed her understanding of inclusion and belonging. Ty opens up about his own path through addiction, recovery, faith, and finally living fully and truthfully as himself. Together, they revisit the song that connected millions of listeners and explore why its message of love, acceptance, and human dignity feels more relevant now than ever.

Filled with laughter, tears, hard-earned wisdom, and more than a few moments that will leave you reaching for the tissues, this conversation is a beautiful testament to friendship, healing, and the courage it takes to live loud.

Whether Testify to Love has been on your playlist for thirty years or you're hearing its story for the first time, this episode is a powerful reminder that love's truest testimony is not who it excludes—but who it embraces.

Thought-provoking Quotes:

  • “I lost my community, my family, my career, all within a couple of seconds. That’s a lot to process.” - Michael Passons

  • "The people I loved and the fullness of their humanity butted up against my theological positions. I had to ask myself: Do I keep creating fences and becoming more exclusive? Or could it be that my views of God, humanity, and the world need to change?" – Melissa Greene

  • "What I've noticed in the lives of people who have allowed themselves to evolve and change their mind is that that process pulls us toward an expansiveness that is just magical." - Jen Hatmaker

  • “You don't live in the church, the church lives in you. You have an opportunity right now to start your own church and decide who sits at your table. No one can kick you out of your own church.” - Ty Herndon

Resources Mentioned in This Episode:

Melissa’s Links:

Website - https://www.melissagreene.net

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Hey everybody, welcome to the For the Love podcast.

0:10.3

It's me, Chen.

0:12.0

Okay.

0:14.4

This is a special interview today, you guys.

0:16.9

I have three people in my virtual studio, and I want to let you know right up front, I cried.

0:24.8

You probably will too. So let me, I'm not going to give you too much information because they

0:31.3

tell this story so beautifully and with such like heart and honesty.

0:39.7

If you have been like kind of around CCM and the Christian music scene, particularly like,

0:49.2

sort of frankly, in some of its heyday, like in the 90s, you might remember 1997 when the song called

0:57.0

Testified of Love came out. And this was by Avalon. Remember? Avlon was huge. If you were anywhere

1:06.7

near this world, you knew this song. It's been weeks and weeks and weeks at number one.

1:11.8

So at its heart, like, lyrically, it was a song about love without exception. Literally,

1:18.8

like lyrics, it said, love that reaches every corner of creation. And a ton of us sing it,

1:24.6

just full with our full chests for years.

1:27.9

But what we didn't know at the time is one of the founding members of Avalon,

1:33.4

who put that song out, Michael Passens, was quietly pushed out a few years later out of the group. And in 2020, he told the world why.

1:49.4

He was a let go for being gay. So the song kept going, but he did not. Okay, without giving too much away, it is now 2026, and Michael is back at the microphone

2:05.8

for the first time in over 20 years, and he re-recorded that same song with his old bandmate,

2:13.1

my friend, Melissa Green, who has done, had her own reckoning, her own spiritual reckoning.

2:21.0

And this was all done in partnership and in production with the incredible Ty Herndon,

2:26.5

who has also gone through his own story. There's so much in here. And so as of just, I mean, in this last month, really,

2:37.1

Testified of Love has shot to number one again.

...

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