It’s not every day you would run into Gwyneth Paltrow at a party. When Steele Croswhite did, he accidentally dumped his beer all over her.

Besides that one beer, Croswhite had it all. In just a few short months, he had gone from nothing more than a local name to a celebrity rock star with his band, Silvercrush. The band’s album, Stand, was climbing the charts. They appeared in Rolling Stone, met with MTV and VH1, and toured with Maroon 5 and Train. In a 2002 Cosmik Debris magazine review of Stand, associate editor Shaun Dale wrote, “These guys should have lighters waving in the air from coast to coast soon.”

Croswhite started Silvercrush at age 17. And he did it all: lead singer, guitar player, and writer. By its second show, the band started selling out at clubs all over Salt Lake City, Croswhite’s hometown. Although he was a Christian, music became the most important thing in his life as the band gained momentum. “That’s when Jesus just kind of took the back seat,” he says.

Once he had established himself as a local celebrity, Croswhite took the band to the next level. They were accepted into a music festival in Las Vegas, an event Croswhite described as a “musical draft for unsigned bands.”

But on the day before the band was set to play in Las Vegas, tragedy struck. Croswhite’s dad—the band’s manager and Croswhite’s best friend—died unexpectedly. The band decided to play the show anyway as a tribute to his dad. “It was the most emotional, the most difficult show that I’d ever played,” Croswhite says. “And I walked out on that stage, and I cried myself through a 25-minute performance.”

The band met overnight success. Croswhite had offers from several record companies: Epic, Sony, Interscope, Iman. He signed with Redline Records, an independent record label owned by Best Buy. Three months later, the band’s album hit number one on Billboard’s New Artist Mountain Region Chart. Even though his dream was coming true, Croswhite looks back on it as one the most miserable times of his life. “I was so mad at God,” Croswhite says. “It was like, Who makes you God? Why would you do that? Why would you take away my best friend?”

He plunged deeper into celebrity life. That meant parties, drinking, girls—anything that could drown out the anger and sadness Croswhite felt over losing his dad. He remembers thinking, “You’re supposed to be here, Dad, and you, God, you’re the one who stole him from me. And so I’ll enjoy my success. I’ll drink, and I’ll have sex, and I’ll do all these things that rock stars are supposed to do.”

But then something happened that would forever change Croswhite’s life. His sister invited him to a church in Salt Lake City called The Rock. “So I go to this church, and I walk in, and instantly I experience this love of the local church. Something in my heart, it just starts to change,” he says.

He returned to The Rock a second time. And a third. And a fourth. Pretty soon he began playing music at the church. “I start to feel excited about things that don’t have anything to do with sex, drugs, and rock and roll,” he says. “I start to feel excited about Jesus again.” In the meantime, his record label falls apart. “I’d done all these things that are supposed to be shiny and great, but suddenly I’m like, This is what I want to do,” he says.

As Croswhite changed, so did his view of hope.

“I used to put my hope in music, and I tried to fit Christ into it,” he says. “But then I realized that music is my tool. Christ is my driving force. He is my vision. If I’m running hard after the Lord, music becomes secondary.”

He says his dreams for the future look different than they did a few years ago, too. One of his dreams is to see the best bands in the world at local churches, not out on tour. “If that happens, people won’t be famous. Jesus will be famous,” he says. “There’s no hero at that point. The hero is Jesus.”

But Croswhite doesn’t pretend like he never thinks about the celebrity life he once knew—and gave up. “It’s always a temptation to want to be famous,” he says. “It’s a daily struggle not to go to LA and sign a record deal.” But he says he doesn’t because every decision he makes is guided by the help of other Christians, confirmed through prayer, and filtered through the Word of God. “My hope is in Christ. He says that one day He is coming back. Nothing is going to last, so I’m going to spend the years of my life running after him.”