How God Helped Worship Leader Jon Reddick Overcome Perfectionism

Published: October 12, 2023

How God Helped Worship Leader Jon Reddick Overcome Perfectionism

By Movieguide® Contributor

Worship leader and songwriter Jon Reddick joined Matthew West to discuss how God guided his career and helped him overcome perfectionism.

Reddick was always interested in art. Growing up, his mom would have him practice singing in the car, and he would paint and draw whenever he had the chance. While he was still interested in art when he started college, Reddick pursued science instead because the “starving artist” stereotype scared him.

God, however, had other plans. Reddick returned to music after a chance encounter with Sheryl Crow, who offered him access to her home studio.

“The biggest thing for me was that God had a purpose for me and I couldn’t quit that purpose. I think that was the biggest thing because I kept trying to say, you know, music won’t do this,” he told West. “I feel like God was saying, ‘No, it doesn’t matter about all this. This is a path I’m trying to get you to walk down. When I give you a purpose, I need you to walk through that purpose and forget everything else.’ So that’s the kind of road I’ve been walking down… just walking through the doors that God [has] opened for me.”

While comforted by knowing he’s living out God’s plan, Reddick struggled with perfectionism, which has led to a paralyzing fear of making mistakes.

“I actually spent a lot of my adult years being very apprehensive of making a decision unless it was a perfect decision because what I realized was if I don’t make a perfect decision, it can go haywire and I can be responsible for something I shouldn’t have been responsible for,” he explained.

While therapy and vulnerability helped Reddick begin to overcome the problem, his real breakthrough came in 2020 as the world shut down.

Because everybody was struggling during the lockdown and nobody could maintain the façade of perfection, Reddick began to feel the freedom to release projects without the pressure of perfection.

“That actually changed a lot for me. That was really monumental in my life—that time of realizing that…we just need Jesus,” he shared on Snapshot Testimony.

Another realization about his perfectionism came while he was painting.

“I remember I was painting this picture and I was doing this thing called an art crawl down downtown Franklin and so, I’m painting live and in my mind I’m gonna paint this layer and I’m gonna do this and it’s gonna look like this and I’ve got eight steps to get to,” he told West.

“I’m on step two [and] people start walking up and they’re like, ‘Oh my gosh, can I buy that right now.’ I was like, ‘It’s not finished at all.’ ‘Well it looks finished to me.’ I was like, ‘Are you kidding me. I’ve got like six more stages to go,’” he continued. “I realized in that moment I’m trying to get something to eight stages that people are actually loving the second stage of. I am just over doing it.”

“That kind of helped me,” he added. “I’m probably doing that in my music too, trying to take it to stage eight when stage two is what the people are actually needing.”

This shift in his thinking has helped Reddick trust God and allow Him to work through his music.

He and West recently released a remix of West’s song “Changed My Name,”

“It’s been an honor to write with Jon and get to know him better, and it was no question he would be the perfect fit to help reimagine this worship song all about identity,” West said on Instagram.

He is also joining TobyMac on his Hits Deep Tour, starting at the end of January.