From ministry to music: Jaime Hatcher’s journey of faith, identity and redemption in ‘Prone to Wander’
Story by William J. Ryan
Photos by Anna Terry and Rachel Howard
For Jaime Hatcher, it is nearly impossible to separate the church and her love for music. The drive from home to church is where she first began singing along to the radio; getting the lead in West Hartselle Baptist Church’s children choir production of Candy Cane Lane in the fourth grade is where she first got the bug for singing live.
“I took piano lessons when I was pretty young, but when I was fourteen, I got my first guitar. Once I knew how to play three chords, I would just sit in my room writing songs for hours,” Hatcher said.
While other teenagers were writing love songs and broken-hearted ballads, Jaime was putting her faith to music with original worship songs as her experience with church music evolved into a dream of one day being able to equip the church with her own music.
Her dream brought her to William Carey University in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where she initially pursued a degree in Music Therapy. However, after winning first place in the Southern Region National Association of Teachers of Singers competition, she gained the confidence to switch her major to vocal performance. This decision eventually led her to transfer to Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn., where she earned a bachelor’s degree in commercial music, focusing on voice and specializing in songwriting.
“My love for the church and for music took me to a lot of places, from teaching music and leading worship in England to getting a job at a Christian music publishing company in Nashville. No matter where I went, I was involved in some sort of music ministry,” Jaime says.
In 2018 Jaime, her husband and their children moved back to Hartselle where she jumped right into ministry like she had always done. For years Jaime served the church, but over time she says ministry began to become an identity. “I didn’t realize it, but I had made serving the church an idol,” Jaime says. “I was doing good things, but the focus was on the wrong place.”
In late spring of 2024, all those years of ministry, education experience and music came to an abrupt halt when she found herself face to face with a personal crisis. Amid the darkest season in her life, Jaime decided to do what she had done as a teenager: She got alone with her guitar and began to write.
When she emerged on the other side of that season, she had written three worship songs, which she combined with Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing, a hymn she had grown up singing in church, and the contemporary worship song Refiner to make her new album Prone to Wander.
Recorded with David Vest of E320 Studio in Decatur, Jaime says this album symbolizes a season of wandering, wilderness, waiting and worship. Additional musicians include Greg Shumake on keys and organ, Austin Jones, Adam Zink, as well as Scott Bernard on electric guitar, who is currently touring with Kansas, among other bands.
“It’s about crashing headfirst into a brick wall that I built myself,” she says of the album. “A wall that should have destroyed me, but instead I watched as my merciful Jesus walked through the rubble and layers of bricks of self-righteousness, idolatry and unfaithfulness. He dusted me off, cleaned my wounds and helped rebuild – not the wall, but me.”
Jaime’s favorite song on the album is called All for You, even though it came from the most painful place. She says it exemplifies the heart of the album and helps remind her what this project is about: Jesus.
“Every now and then you work on a song that is born in such a place within somebody that is so deep that it moves you,” producer David Vest said. “It is beautiful. It’s one of those songs that just stops you in your tracks.”
“It’s tricky and conflicting to try and promote an album that is all about dying to self, repentance, humility, focus shifting and casting crowns,” Jaime says. “Casting the crown is a shift in focus back to the savior, who is more precious than any jeweled ornament on my head; if the crown becomes what hold my gaze, then I am not gazing where I should. I look to Jesus and give the crown back.”
Jaime says that after a life spent on stages singing worship songs, she is getting back to the root of why she fell in love with music to begin with, and that is to glorify God and make not take any attention away from Him. “My prayer is that in all of this, my name would be hidden in the shadows and out of sight. I pray that on Jesus’s stage, not even an inch of His spotlight would seep onto me but that His glory would shine, and His heart would minister to earthly hearts in need of healing, refocus, revitalization and an encounter with Him.”
Prone to Wander was released Feb. 21 and can be found on all streaming platforms.
