Granger Smith Is Leaving Country Music to Focus on Ministry: 'A New Direction for My Life' (Exclusive)

Granger Smith is ready to embark on a new chapter.

On Tuesday, the musician announced on his social media pages that he's leaving country music in order to focus on ministry at his local church outside of Austin, Texas. When his upcoming Like a River tour — named for his 3-year-old son River who died after a tragic drowning accident in 2019 — kicks off April 13, it will serve as his farewell.

Speaking to PEOPLE exclusively about the decision, Smith says that he's "excited" to pour himself into his church after the tour comes to an end on Aug. 26.

"Being a musician was never a prison, but this is a new passion, a new focus, a new direction that I believe is going to allow me to focus more on individual people and their lives, which is ultimately why I started music touring in the very beginning," he says. "This is an even more micro-focused position in that. I'm not going anywhere."

While preparing to make the announcement, Smith says he's been anticipating four different kinds of reactions to the news: "The first group will say, 'Oh, praise God, that's amazing. What an example.' The second group's going to say, 'Oh no, I'm going to miss your music. I'm going to miss your touring.' The third group is going to say, 'Oh, go follow your little sky God. You're probably just making money that we don't know about as a preacher.' Then the fourth group is going to go, 'Granger who? No one cares.'"

"That's why I just want to be as honest as I can," he explains.

Currently working towards a master's degree from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Smith makes clear he's "not Pastor Granger."

"I could deceive myself thinking, 'Oh, I got a calling from God to go off and start a church,'" he says. "That's like the equivalent of a young athlete in college going, 'I'm going to declare for the NFL draft.' You need to learn under the players and the coaches until it's time, and then they'll all affirm that it's time to go into the NFL."

RELATED VIDEO: Granger Smith Reveals Final Special Moment He Shared with Son River That Suddenly Turned to Tragedy

In tandem with the announcement, Smith also revealed on Tuesday that his upcoming memoir, Like a River: Finding the Faith and Strength to Move Forward After Loss and Heartache, will be released on Aug. 1. It'll follow his emotional journey through the ups and downs after River's death.

"I remember turning in the manuscript for the first time, and I called my wife Amber, and I said, 'Well, I'm about to send this manuscript out. There's no stopping it now.' Like, you can't put the toothpaste back into the tube," he recalls. "There's things in here that are extremely vulnerable. It's very personal. But the overwhelming feeling was that if my story could help others, then it's worth it, then it matters."

It was important to Smith that he bill his final music tour the same title as his book.

"I don't want the tour to end and then all of a sudden, 'Oh, now he's got a book,'" he says. "I just want it to be very cohesive to the sentimental side of what this journey has meant — not even river in terms of my son, River, but just the life river that we're traveling right now. I feel like these last few years I've really learned to surrender and just go with the flow and stop fighting against the stream that I did for so long in the music business and in life."

Smith says that "go with the flow" mentality will extend into his tour, which will very much be about the fans.

"This tour's not about me," he says. "This tour is going to be about the people that have supported me for so long. And, selfishly, I will enjoy it more if they're enjoying it more. I think they're going to enjoy it more if I just make it, 'Hey, what's an old song we haven't done in a long time? Let's play that. Let's make sure that we get as many people on the stage as we can. Do you want to sing one of my songs? Has your dream always been to sing the chorus of my song? Come on up. Here's a microphone. I've done it a thousand times, now you get to do it.'"

Though he struggled to do meet and greets in the time immediately after River's death, he's since found healing in talking with people about their own experiences with loss and grief.

"I walk away going, 'Wow, this loss is not for nothing, because it mattered today. It mattered to that person. I just talked to them, and they smiled because we had something in common and we embraced each other,'" he says. "Then I could go to sleep that night and go, 'OK, we're making progress. We're moving forward with something here.'"

He's also learned that "we have no way of seeing or understanding what light is until we know what dark is."

While Smith identified as a Christian prior to River's death, it wasn't until after that he started to develop a different connection with his religion.

"As I was reading the Bible, I was coming across things with a new heart and eyes opened," he says. "During my healing, I was reading things like Mark 8:36, where Jesus said, 'If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it. But whoever loses his life for my sake, and the gospel, will save it.' Then he goes on to say, 'For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?'"

"I was sitting there looking at that through my broken healing," he continues. "And this was during COVID, and I wasn't touring, and I was reading this like, 'Where in country music am I modeling that for other people? Because all I'm doing as far as I see — and I'm not speaking to any other artist — is glorifying myself.' That's a contradiction that has built up within me over and over until I had to come to this conclusion that there's now a turning point, a new direction for my life."

Though Smith is steadfast in his decision, he wants people to know he's not "advocating that they quit their jobs or trades."

"Ministry is not for everyone," he says. "Once again, I have to just say that with me, with the direction I was going in my self-fulfillment of music, it was crippling to me, and it was taking my life."

Amid his tour and studying, Smith will continue hosting his iHeartRadio show After MidNite and his Granger Smith Podcast.

"These next six months will probably be the busiest of my entire life," he says. "I have a lot on my plate, but I love it."

On the tour, he plans to bring his wife Amber and their kids London, 11, Lincoln, 9, and Maverick, 20 months, along as much as possible. The tour will mark Maverick's first time getting to "know Daddy as a singer."

"Mav still hasn't been to a show, so he'll get to go on the last weekend of me touring," he says. "We'll take pictures, and he won't remember it, but we'll show him one day and say, 'Look, Daddy was a country music singer.'"

In between this transition phase, Smith and his wife have also had to deal with the weight of bringing Maverick to ISR, or Infant Swimming Rescue, classes.

"He's on his second round, and we're trying to make our way through that," he says. "It's not an easy thing, but having him learn to swim is very important."

RELATED VIDEO: Granger Smith's Son, River, 3, Died in a Drowning Accident at Home, Singer's Rep Confirms

Through it all, Smith says he's been lucky to have a partner like Amber.

"That's a really big part of the story, because if she wasn't supporting in this way, this whole conversation would be so difficult," he says. "This whole move would be so difficult if she wasn't fully supporting me, because she's my best friend, and she's my first point of counsel for everything. She's not always my yes man. She's very thoughtful, and I trust her."

With 10 studio albums, one live album and two EPs already under his belt, Smith says the decision has come at just the right time.

"My career was going to start going down at some point, so there's something kind of neat to say that I will have never experienced the downward career spiral that would inevitably have happened to me," he says. "It'll be neat to say that when we walked off, it was to full applause and to a bunch of love from the audience."

And while he'll no longer have a career on stage, Smith says that "does not mean I'm putting up the guitar."

"The guitars are a big part of our house, and singing and dancing and kitchen parties," he says. "That will never go away."