The runner-up of American Idol’s 7th season says he’s postponing his music career while he serves his church as a full-time missionary.
While on his My Kind of Christmas tour’s stop in Utah in his childhood home of Salt Lake City, Archuleta announced that once his tour is complete he will be taking two years off from his music career to serve as a full-time missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.
At the concert Monday night, Archuleta, shed a few tears and told the crowd that he was not pursuing this path because he was pushed to by someone else, or because he was getting sick of the music world. He’s doing it because of a feeling that he needs to move on to the next thing in his life.
“It’s just the same feeling that I’ve always followed, tried to follow in my life,” Archuleta told the crowd. “It’s the feeling that has allowed me to have the opportunities that I’ve had, the challenges that I’ve overcome and the blessings, too. And I’ve learned to trust that feeling, and I’ve learned that I need to answer when it calls. And that is the reason why I know I need to do this in my life.”
Mormon missionaries are usually about Archuleta’s age – he turns 21 on December 28 – and missions tend to last about two years.
In 2007, Archuleta became one of the youngest contestants in American Idol history, and made it all the way to the finals, coming in second to David Cook – whose birthday is coincidentally today, December 20th.
