A self-described “old redneck from Texas singing Jewish music,” Ted Pearce puts scripture (in both Hebrew and English) and expressions of worship to music in songs that are enjoyed by Messianic Jews and Christians throughout the world.

In 1989, Ted was an atheist fronting a successful rock band when he got into an argument with a Seventh-Day Adventist over which day the Sabbath is. This led him to start reading the Bible, having no idea what it said, to prove that it was wrong. That didn’t exactly go as planned. Instead, he ended up discovering that Jesus was completely different than he’d thought. So in January 1990, he put his faith in Christ.

He was still puzzled by one thing, though: these people he was reading about in the Bible were all Jews. What happened? After calling random churches to ask if they had any Jewish members, he was directed to a local Messianic Jewish congregation, where he began attending. There he developed a heart and a burden for the Jewish people. He left his rock band and began writing a new kind of music that embodied this newfound passion.

Though he has participated in some Christian rock projects (Big Methuselah and Ted Pearce and the Nomadic Farmers), his main focus remains expressing God’s heart for Israel through Messianic music.