Cory Asbury took a near six-year hiatus from worship music because he saw a lot of sin in the industry.
He didn’t want to be a part of it.
“I don’t want anything to do with an industry of worship, meaning the business of worship,” he told Church Leaders. “I don’t have any interest in that. I’ve never had any interest in that.”
He witnessed artists “abusing” their platform. He realized they had forgotten what worship is about.
The singer recalled conversations about song chart positions like, “’Oh man, we just got to get that CCLI No. 1, man. If we get that, everything’s good.’ I’m sitting here going, wait a sec, that can’t be the goal.”
He’s also very concerned about celebrity culture in the church — which should have nothing remotely to do with it.
Asbury said, “Like, get rid of all that crap. There’s no ‘man of God.’ We’re all here trying to love Jesus.”
So what does he want out of church and worship? A place of healing. A place where God speaks.
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“There’s a space that comes in worship where healings take place, where the heart gets healed, and knowing that the Lord desires for that to happen in every one of our services,” Asbury said.
His detox period from the industry helped get his heart and mind in the right place again.
“It took about three-and-a-half years for me to be able to go, okay, I can come back to this space,” he said. “Know it’s not perfect. Know that I’m not perfect.”
His new album, Outsing the Angels, will come out on Sept. 18. His last worship album, To Love a Fool, came out in 2020.
He said of his new album, “I want people to get enraptured by the glory of God again” His favorite song from it is “Holy God,” because he hopes listeners will “just get fired up about the beauty of Jesus,” after listening.
In a video on Instagram, Asbury shared that he got back into worship for “the one” in the crowd who needs to hear about God’s love. He showed a video of a girl crying with her father as they sang to “Reckless Love” at one of his concerts.
Someone commented on Asbury’s post, “I was an atheist/abandoned God until I heard this song. I believed that everything bad that ever happened to me was me being punished. Someone sent me a YouTube video of you with Reckless Love and you explaining it at the end….. I watched it over and over and over.”
This motivated him to research Christianity and scripture. The last thing that convinced him about Christ’s existence and love was A CASE FOR CHRIST.
“I now have Luke 15:4 tattooed on my arm…. Everything about my life is leaving the 99 to find the 1. I recently started attending church and in February Myself and 5 of my 8 kids got baptized. I was the ONE,” he wrote.
Asbury has gone on tour with Forrest Frank on his The Jesus Generation tour the last few weeks. Aug. 1 was their final performance on the tour.
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