Country singer-songwriter Eric Church is receiving kudos, not for new music, but for his faith-filled commencement speech at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. At the May 9 ceremony, Church used his guitar’s six strings to represent six pillars of life.

Faith is the foundation, he told graduates, urging them to nurture it “not just when you’re broken but when you’re whole.”

The 14-minute speech took Church months to write, he admitted. On “Fox and Friends” Friday (May 15), the musician recalled experiencing extreme frustration and writer’s block. After picking up his guitar one night, Church was inspired by its six strings, which he compared to the pillars of faith, family, spouse, ambition, community, and self.

Eric Church: Faith Is the ‘Foundation’

Country music star Eric Church, 49, began his UNC commencement speech by emphasizing that all six strings of a guitar and life must be in tune. “If even one is off, the whole chord unravels,” he explained.

The first string, low E, is “your foundation,” Church told graduates, because it’s the thickest and heaviest, and every other chord relies on that string being in tune. “Your faith is the low E of your life. The thing that sits at the very bottom of you,” he said. “Your belief about what this life is for, what you owe, what holds the universe together, when science reaches the edge of its own explanation and shrugs.”

Church continued, “The people who tend to their faith in ordinary seasons do not come undone in extraordinary ones. They still hurt. They still sit in hospital waiting rooms asking unanswerable questions at 3 in the morning. But they have a foundation to return to.”

After warning that “the world will try to untune this string through busyness,” Church told listeners, “Tend to your faith. Not just when you’re broken but when you’re whole.”

The second string of family is vital every day, not just for holidays, Church said. Next, he called choosing a spouse “the most important decision you will ever make outside of your faith.” The fourth string, ambition, requires perseverance after failure.