LEWISTON — Grammy-nominated Christian singer-songwriter Matthew West will bring his “The Story of Your Life Tour” to Pathway Vineyard Church on Friday, Oct. 14.

Opening the concert will be Jonny Diaz, a 2010 GMA Dove Award nominee for New Artist of the Year.

The tour name comes from West’s best-selling album released last October as well as his newest book, “The Story of Your Life: Inspiring Stories of God at Work in People Just Like You,” written with best-selling author Angela Thomas and Harvest House Publishers.

West found inspiration for both projects in real-life stories solicited from his listeners. He received about 10,000 from every state in the country plus 20 countries, with topics covering bullying, divorce, adoption, abuse and more.

West began collecting stories in February 2010 and spent March and April in a cabin outside of Nashville turning them into songs. “I had a big dry erase board and I would write down ideas. I would write them down in red and whenever I would finish a song, I would write that title in blue,” West said in a prepared statement. “At the very beginning, there were hundreds of titles in red and then slowly but surely the scales began to tip more towards the blue.”

West, who wrote 36 songs and began writing at least 100 more, said he learned a lot about people while writing the album. If you ask somebody to describe the defining moment in their lives, nine out of 10 times, they won’t share the happiest time, he said. “The mountaintop experiences, the joys that we have, those are all defining moments in our lives, but the stories people were sharing with me were the weakest moments — the greatest trial they’ve ever faced, the illness that they suffered, the loved one that they lost, the abuse that they were a victim of or the addiction that they were dealing with.”

Among the moving songs on the album is “To Me,” which West wrote in response to a letter from a mother distraught over the way kids cruelly treated her son in middle school; “One Less,” a song about adoption; and “Broken Girl,” about women who shared their experiences of abuse.

The most difficult song to write, West said, was “My Own Little World,” because he had to be honest about his life. “The song says, ‘I turn off the news when I don’t like what I see. It’s easy to do when it’s population me. But what if there’s a bigger picture? What if I’m missing out? What if there’s a greater purpose that I could be living now outside my own little world?'”

“That song was really written as a personal response to the stories that I had read and the questions that I started asking as I was looking into their world and looking at my own as well,” West said.

Since its release to radio in July, “My Own Little World” has continued to receive a lot of airplay. The album has gained attention from CNN Online, Fox News, Billboard Magazine, Country Weekly and American Songwriter.

Recently, West’s song, “More,” from his first studio album, “Happy,” was played as part of a wake-up call for the Atlantis space shuttle crew on the fifth day of its mission.

On Sept. 6, West released his newest music video for “Strong Enough” exclusively with iTunes. “Strong Enough” was inspired by one of the many stories West received in the making of “The Story of Your Life.” The song has been a mainstay on the radio charts, placing in the Top 5 on the National Christian Audience, AC-Monitored and AC-Indicator charts.

West is scheduled to release his first, full-length Christmas album, “The Heart of Christmas,” in October with Sparrow Records/EMI CMG.

The Oct. 14 concert at Pathway Vineyard church, 9 Foss Road, will begin at 7 p.m. Tickets are $20 general admission, $40 gold circle. Call 232-0966 or visit lighthouseevents.com.