A Dawning Future for Worship Music
An Interview with Cory Asbury on time, pain, and artistic collaboration
This Weekend Edition of Ecstatic is by Conor Sweetman
Cory Asbury is a singer & songwriter whose albums include Reckless Love & To Love a Fool, which have earned him two Dove Awards and a 2019 Grammy nomination. His fifth studio album, Pioneer, will be available on September 15 via BEC Recordings. Cory lives in Middle Tennessee with his wife Anna and their four children, Gabriel, Lily, River, and Willow-Grace.
Ecstatic spoke with Cory about growing up, navigating a strange industry, and being honest with God in your art. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Conor Sweetman: I won't take much of your time, but I'd love to dive in deep and quick if you're up for it.
Cory Asbury: Let's do it, man.
Sweetman: I get a strong sense of nostalgia in your music. How do you think about the passage of time as it relates to you and your family?
Asbury: Oh, yeah, time—gosh, that's a big topic. I mean, I feel like I'm victimized by time. Time doesn't stop. I always want it to. I got little kids, and I always tell my Lily, “I want you to stay my little girl forever.” I've been telling her that since she was, like, three, and she says “Okay, Daddy, okay.” And now she's nine. And I keep asking her, “What happened? You told me you were going to stay a little girl!”
The truth is, time moves on. It doesn't care about us. It's aloof, it's unconcerned. It just keeps on going. It just marches on. Doesn't matter what's happening with us. It's like, “Oh, your dog died.” Time's like, “I don't care, I'm still going… You lost a family member? You want to stop and grieve now? I'm going to keep going.”
And I think there's a hard beauty to that, because when you realize that time is our most valuable commodity, then I think you treat it differently. I think hopefully you live differently. It's the only thing we can't get more of. We can get money, we can work, we can get houses, we can get more kids… You can get more of pretty much everything except time. Our days are numbered. We've got so many, and then we’ve got no more. I think that makes me live differently.
Sweetman: Was there a season of your life where the onslaught of time became a lot more real to you?
Asbury: Yeah, I think having kids does that. Honestly, watching them grow up is so beautiful and painful. You want to see them get big. You want to see them go off and do amazing things and be successful and live their lives, but at the same time, you're like, I don't want you to leave. That's difficult and that's painful, but that's also life, and it teaches you to appreciate what you've got while you've got it. At least hopefully it does. Some people listen, and some people don't. But for me, having kids, it was “Oh my gosh, this is going fast, and I don't get it back.”
Sweetman: Going back in time, I was first acquainted with your music at the International House of Prayer KC (IHOPKC), over ten years ago. Tracing your journey from that point until now, how have you changed in your outlook on life, where you were finding your vocation to kind of being very much in the thick of it now?
Asbury: That was an incredibly beautiful season. I feel like that's where I kind of grew up in the Lord, planted roots and really got grounded. That's where I met my wife. We had our first kid there in Kansas City. It was a wonderful time, and I think life was a lot easier back then. It was just about spending time with the Lord; being in the prayer room all the time, singing worship songs, and leading sets.
It’s kind of what we were just talking about—there was this excitement about life. And I'm not going to say that life sucks now, but we've definitely experienced a lot more difficult stuff, whether it's almost losing a kid, where there can be some really devastating things that happen. I think of my sister who's lost a number of kids, miscarriage and things, and I'm like, wow. Life can really rip your heart out. But I think if you're rooted and grounded in the right things, then you choose to find the kindness of God in the middle of all of it. And that's the moral of a story, man. That's the story of life: bad stuff happens, and we reconcile those bad things with the goodness of God.
Sweetman: As a worship artist, I feel like your work holds a unique place in the landscape; it seems more welcoming of that rawness and honesty; the not so sunny view of our faith, not just the praiseworthy parts. Have you always had that kind of raw impulse?
Asbury: I think it's always been there. That's my personality. That's just kind of who I am, how I can't shy away from the realness of stuff that happens in life, because I think that's a farce. That's fake. To pretend like real stuff doesn't happen is silly. “I'm a Christian, so I don't talk about the fact that my best friend of 20 years is getting divorced?” Are we going to fake like it doesn't exist? I'm like, let's just hit it head on. Let's talk about it. Let's deal with it. And I think that's how I am with everything. If there's something I really am scared of and don't want to do, I'm hitting that sucker head on.
I think that's how I am with everything. That's how I am with the writing as well: Let's just talk about it, let's bring it all to the forefront and let's not put up some facade, some little perfect whitewash veneer of how things are. Let's just be real, because that's what people need, man. People all over the world are struggling with different things. Why would we not validate the fact that those things are real?
And I think even the worship leader, worship artist thing, that's who I am in my heart. Like, I'm a worshiper. That's who I know I am in a very sort of “David” way, where everything I do is always dialoguing with the Lord. But I think in my writing, I'm less worship leader than anything. In my writing, I want to talk about real issues, and not just necessarily “holy, holy, holy.”
Like, we worship you, Jesus—I feel like that's my lifestyle. That's how I try to live every day, and that's where I try to keep my heart. But the writing tends to be very raw and very real and way less, “Oh, that's a worship leader,” than, “That's just a guy who's experiencing life and inviting us into every part of it.” So it's weird. I get an interesting rep like, oh, he's the worship guy, but wait a second, he writes some different things. And I'm like, well, that's because the worship guy is who I am, but it's not necessarily what I do all the time.
Sweetman: Was it hard to navigate that impulse within an industry that might want to cast you in a certain way?
Asbury: I think you have the impulse to correct perceptions. But I don't ever feel like I was pushing up against something in a way that was really difficult or a big hurdle. Because, like I said earlier, I can't not be who I am. And I typically don't apologize for it. And I typically get myself into trouble because of that. I think it’s who God created me to be to a certain extent. Obviously, you don't want to just be offensive for the sake of being offensive. You want to be who you are. And if God called you to be who you are, then I think you could deal with not feeling like you have to apologize for every little thing.
But yeah, I don't know, I never felt like I'm pushing up against a wall that the industry tells me I can't be. I think I just don't care. Truthfully, I just could care less what the Christian music industry thinks I should or shouldn't be. I feel like I know what God's calling me to be; I know what God's calling me to write about and sing about and I can be unapologetic from that place.
Sweetman: How do you feel like the Christian music industry has changed or is changing over the last five years or so?
Asbury: I'm encouraged by some things that I'm seeing recently. I think there are some young artists coming up who have that same sort of mindset that just says: I want to write about real stuff, and I don't want to pull any punches. And I think that's meeting real people, people that are maybe post-church or outside of the church or grew up in church and then said, “You know what? I'm good. I don't need this.” because I think those are the folks that need to be reached. So, I'm encouraged when I see young artists coming up who are doing that and writing songs that can reach more people than just the super on fire, conference going type, you know what I mean?
I think maybe we're seeing a bit of a shift there. I think the move from mega worship—you got your Bethels, your Hillsongs, your Elevations—they were kind of dominating things there for a bit. Everything was one of those big conglomerates, and you didn't necessarily know who was singing the song, but it was like, oh, that's Bethel, or that's Elevation. And you see the stuff happening with Hillsong, and you're like, this is crazy. And now it feels like the pendulum's kind of shifting to some real raw stuff, away from the very polished, where it's like people got a hold of this formula that if I write a big worship song, I'm going to make a lot of money. And I think maybe there's some correction there. Because that formulaic sort of worship song thing just is not it.
And again, I'm encouraged by some of the young artists I see coming up who are just creating from a place of intimacy with Jesus that doesn't necessarily look like a big worship banger. I'm down with that. I think that's beautiful. As long as it's pure, I'm happy.
Sweetman: Do you have any names at the top of your mind?
Asbury: Yeah. There's this young artist named Sicily who is amazing. I love what she's doing. She's just kind of said, “This is my experience with God I'm going to write it.” That kid Montell Fish, I don't actually know him, but I love what he's doing, and somehow that music just popped you know?
There’s that artist Abbie Gamboa from Upper Room. Dude, that record that she released—I listen to that sucker on repeat. And it's beautiful, it's worshipful, it's amazing. But it doesn't feel the same as your typical big worship anthem. That's what I want. I want that song that I can put on and encounter God.
Sweetman: What’s it like for you to collaborate with other artists? What's the process?
Asbury: I love being with people, I think because there's something special to shared experience. I think with every session, whether it's art, photography or just writing a song, it always starts with relationship—especially if you don't know the person, you're going to sit down and a full hour is probably going to be just connecting and talking about life, seeing where you have that shared experience, seeing where your lives line up and where they don't. And there's something special, I think, that happens in that place. And usually, that's the launch pad for what you're going to write about.
I think that's pretty cool: you're just talking, you're having a little drink, you're hanging, whatever, and all of a sudden it's like, oh, that's what God's doing in both of our lives. Maybe that's what we need to hit today. And that's always such a fun moment, to look and go, wow, God's orchestrating this whole thing, and we've got some beautiful common ground right here, and you're both crying or whatever—you're just having an experience together.
And from that place, you hopefully make something honest and authentic and something that other folks can relate to. Because the truth is, if you sat 100 people down in the room, 50 of them are going to be like, dude, I know exactly what you're talking about. The other 50 might be like, man, no clue what you're saying.
But a lot of people are going to think wow, that really connects to me where I'm at. And I think that's the beauty of art, that's the beauty of music: it gives people permission to feel. That gives me some confidence to go, yeah, I'm human, too. Yeah, I have those experiences as well, and I think we find solace in those places.
Sweetman: How do you see the prophetic and the artist intermingled?
Asbury: Oh, man. I think hopefully they're one and the same. Art should speak of the future. It should speak to the past. It should speak to what people are actually experiencing. And I think the nature of the prophetic, or whatever you want to call it, is that it's the testimony of Jesus. And I think the testimony of Jesus is just what he's doing, saying what he's done, what he said before.
And I think if we can hit that in our art and give a voice to Jesus through our own voice and through our songs, our writing, our paintings—that's the goal that people would find him in the middle. That is, I think, the spirit of prophecy. It's the testimony of Jesus. It's what he said, it's what he's done, what he's doing, and what he's saying right now. And we get to give language, existence, or manifestation of that, hopefully, with our art.
Conor Sweetman
Editor of Ekstasis
Conor is a special projects editor at Christianity Today and the founder and editor of Ekstasis. He lives in Toronto with his wife, Hannah, and enjoys thinking about artistic and literary things.
What did you think of this interview? What do you think of the past and future of worship music?