Ashley Hess is a singer/songwriter and a member of The King Will Come, a worship collective composed of writers, artists, composers and other creatives.

PEER: How did you come to know Jesus?

ASHLEY HESS: I grew up in a very spiritual and religious household, so I was always taught about Jesus, and that’s just something that I was just very familiar with from a young age. I’m really grateful for that foundation, but I don’t think it was until I was in my early 20s and I was out on my own figuring out life, that I really came to develop my own real and honest relationship with Jesus. I really started to believe in Him and believe Him for myself, rather than just because it was something that my family believed, and something that I had been taught my whole life. I really put the time and effort into figuring out that relationship for myself.

P: Tell me about yourself and the group, The King Will Come.

AH: I’m a singer-songwriter. I have always loved music, but I didn’t always grow up doing music. I grew up in California and after high school I moved to Utah thinking I had my whole life planned out, like going to college. Music was always something I loved, but it wasn’t something I thought I could pursue seriously and be successful at. I was a little wary about the lifestyle and how to support myself and honestly realistically, if that was a responsible decision to make. But it’s always something that I kept coming back to.

I really started to pursue it (music), like in my mid 20s. I moved to Nashville. I lived there for two years. I now live in New York, and I’ve been pursuing it for a while, but I have my own music.

There’s always something more that I wanted in music. Music is something that helps me connect with God more than almost anything else. I had written this music about my relationship with God and my journey and building that relationship with God, and I had just been having conversations with a lot of my friends that were also artists that had done the same thing; they were releasing their own music that was considered secular, and not really in the Christian space, but we all had this music that we had written about our journey with God. Because that’s a part of who we are and as creatives, you write about everything that you’re feeling and going through and inspired by.

We just got together and started sharing this music that we had written, and at the time this was like a year into the pandemic and into the whole crazy COVID time period that just feels kind of like a blur. I was listening to this podcast I remember during the pandemic and somebody referred to COVID as a “divine timeout,” and I really loved that because I think that kind of put the whole world on pause and we all were in the same boat for a minute.

Live music stopped, performances stopped gathering. We all were so isolated, so I think it gave us all a chance to look in and for me, it gave me a chance to look in and look up and like really figure out like, “Whoa, like what am I doing with my life? What am I becoming? What’s important to me?” And it just kind of made me reset. I had had a lot of conversations with friends at that time, specifically who were leaving religion and were trying to find their way but still believed in God but didn’t really know what their place was, to believe in God without having it attached to a religion, or a community or an organization.  

My friends and I got together and started sharing this music about our experiences and inspired by the experiences of other people we had been talking to. There were about like 30 of us in this room sharing music. It was such a beautiful experience and we just thought, “Wow, this has been so powerful for us. We want to share this.” And so, we decided to just put on an event and invite anyone and make it open to the public. We posted about it on our own Instagram accounts and social media a couple days before the event.

We did it in the back of one of our friend’s yards; she has a clothing store and it (the event) was in the back of her warehouse. We called it Warehouse Worship because we’re like, you don’t have to believe a certain thing. You don’t have to have gone to church your whole life. You could have never gone to church. You could be believing in God your whole life or kind of figuring out where you’re at with that. We just want anyone to come that wants to connect with God, connect with the community and connect with themselves, and we basically did what we did in the in initial kind of meeting at our friend’s house just playing that music, and just played it for the people that came.

We ended up having over 150 people and we were like, “This is crazy. Clearly there’s a hunger for this.” Then we started doing that every month and it went from 150 to 300 to 400 to 500 to 700, and we were like, “Whoa, this is clearly there’s a need for this.” What started as Warehouse Worship that started accidentally—because it was something that we wanted—turned into what is now The King Will Come, which is a collective of believers that are just seeking a relationship with God. We come from all different backgrounds, from different faiths, different denominations, different places in the world, but it’s been really beautiful to have this community of people who are honestly just seeking relationship with God, so it’s been such a huge blessing in my life that was not on my radar at all. I’m really grateful that God had a bigger and a better plan.

P: What is the origin story of the group? How did it start?  

AH: That’s when it started, but it’s evolved so much even since then in the short like two and a half years that it kind of initially began just from the pandemic.

We got together at our friend Henry’s house, and we were playing that music, and then we started what is now Warehouse Worship and putting on events, just singing this music that we’ve written. Since then, we’ve added a lot more people into the group and it’s expanded. Last September, we put on our first official retreat. We all came together, and it was the first time The King Will Come Collective was all together in the same space, and that’s kind of intimidating when you haven’t met these people, but you’re coming together to worship and create this music together, and you haven’t met.  

But there was still that, “We’re still kind of getting to know each other vibe,” and then we started singing and the first song that we sang is the first song we actually released called “Yet,” and the second we started singing that song, I felt like all the walls were broken down. All the barriers, the awkwardness of meeting people for the first time, were broken down. That bonded us so quickly.

We’d obviously turn this into something much bigger than the first little Warehouse show of just us playing one song each. Now we turned it into a full production type of thing, but we had so many sacred experiences and we been just rehearsing in the basement of this house, and so we always just refer to it as like, “We got to get back to the basement.”

There’s so much symbolism around that, but it just was really beautiful to me to see how the Lord was working in each of our lives individually for so long, to get us to the point where we were all together in that room just hearing everybody’s different stories of how they got to that point in their lives. It was just so beautiful that the Lord is just such a divine choreographer of our lives and is so involved in the details. It’s been really cool to see how He brought this family together.

P: Who writes the songs? You mentioned that it’s a collective of songwriters. What is the inspiration behind songwriting?

AH: What’s really unique about this group is it is a group of all creatives, artists, producers, writers, photographers, videographers. There are so many different creatives in the group, but with songwriting specifically, so many people within the group have written their own songs about our relationship with God. We have a lot of different album ideas and themes in mind already and so many songs, but for this first project that we’re releasing, we’re calling it “Conversations With God, Volume 1,” so these are songs that we have individually written that are our conversations with God, that are things that we’re working out with the Lord and speaking to the Lord about and praying about.

What’s cool about that, and what’s interesting about that, is a lot of that is worship, and a lot of that is questioned. A lot of that is doubts. A lot of that is praise. A lot of that is celebration. A lot of that is frustration, so it covers a lot of the different aspects of what it’s like building a relationship with God, because it’s not always rainbows and butterflies. There are moments when our humanity kicks in and we have questions and doubts and fears and frustrations, and so we’ve just written a lot of music that kind of touches on all of those different aspects of building a relationship with God and have approached it as our individual conversations.

You’re hearing all the different voices of people in the group and their different conversations because a lot of us are on different paths and a lot of us are on different places in our relationship with God. It’s really cool to hear each individual’s perspective of their relationship with God and the conversations that they’re currently having with God. There’s not one person that’s writing for the whole group. A lot of us are writing our own music and then coming together and then making it a huge collaborative effort, and some people will chip in and write on each other’s songs if they’re not finished, but then we’ll bring it together and depending on what’s best for the song, like have the choir jump in on it.

It’s really beautiful to just have a community that is so loving and safe, but that’s also creative where we can kind of just explore these parts of our relationship with God and turn that into music.

P: What was the inspiration behind the song “Yet”?

AH: I honestly think “Yet” was written from one of the lowest points in my life. It was in the middle of the pandemic. I felt like before COVID hit, I had a pretty clear idea of what my trajectory was going to be, and I was just like, Wow, God is so good, this is amazing. I could never have dreamed all of these things that were happening in my life at the time, and then I felt like all of that was lost. I had been on American Idol the year before, and so that kind of gave me this big platform that was so amazing, and I had been in this serious relationship that I was like, “Okay, like I have all these things happening.”

I was living in Nashville, I had all this music stuff planned, I was feeling so excited and confident, and then I couldn’t perform anymore, and then that relationship ended and then just I had realized I put a lot of my identity in things that could be taken away. I quickly realized, “Oh wow, my focus has been a little bit off.” I had been alone, and I had just been feeling so defeated. I was in a place where I felt really disconnected from God, and I was starting to question that (faith) in a way that I never had before because God has always been a really, really important part of my life. And in those moments, I’m grateful that I was just taught a foundation of faith that I would always turn to faith.

In that moment I was turning to fear and to doubt. I was getting sucked into that, and I just remember one night, it was the first time I had really knelt down in prayer because I just felt like I didn’t feel like myself and I didn’t recognize myself. I didn’t recognize the constant sadness I was feeling, and I felt like I was disappointing God—that was the heaviest part for me. It was just feeling like, “Man, I thought I was doing all these great things and now I don’t feel like I’m doing anything and I feel like I’m wasting the gifts and the opportunities that I thought God was giving me.”

I felt that shame really heavily, and it was the first time I knelt down to sincerely pray. I was weeping and the first thing that came out of my mouth was, “God, like please don’t give up on me yet. I’m really trying, and I know that it’s not nearly enough, but this is all that I feel like I have to give right now.” I just remember feeling so overcome and so overwhelmed with love, which I wasn’t expecting in that moment because I felt like I was at my lowest, and so I sat down at my piano, and it was one of the coolest writing experiences I’ve ever had.

It felt like I was praying and I was finally getting the prayer out that I was trying to pray for over a year, and honestly like throughout so many different phases of my life, I felt like I was co-writing it with the Lord, like the Lord was giving me the words to finally be able to say that I had been seeking for, for so long, and also just giving me the permission to say them because I felt so guilty, because I’m like, “No, I know God is so good. I know God never gives up on me.”

I know all these things, but I’m doubting it in this moment. Even though deep down I know it to be true, part of me is just like, is it true? And so, it was such a beautiful experience for me to feel God’s grace so purely to be like, “I know this is how you’re feeling and it’s okay, and I’m still going to be with you and sit here with you and give you these words to say, even though the words feel scary and feel hard to say.” That experience just transformed my relationship with God because it feels so much more personal and intimate now after having an experience like that, and that song feels just as much as a gift for me.

I get really emotional and even just talking about it, but just anytime I sing that song, I’m back in my room at that night when I was praying and at my lowest and feeling God’s love and His grace.

P: The song talks about a relationship with God and feeling broken and unworthy. What advice do you have for the Christians who maybe feeling too broken for God?

AH: That is a great question. I even sometimes feel like if I’m equipped to answer that, but in my experience, I feel like the moments that I have felt the closest to God is when I have approached Him and when I have allowed Him in my brokenness and in those feelings of unworthiness.  

I remember feeling like my brokenness was where He needed me to be at in order to reach me in the way He was trying to reach me and I had it twisted. I was like, “Well, I’m so broken, so I need to distance myself from God because I can only be perfect, or I can only show up as X, Y and Z for God to accept me and to be worthy of Him.” But it’s the opposite. The Lord meets us exactly where we’re at. There’s a line that we ended up using in a song that we’ll release in the future, that stemmed from this idea and it’s one of my favorite lines that we’ve written.

It says, from the perspective of the Lord, “I know you never wanted to be broken, but I need you to be broken to be open,” and that to me is what I’ve shifted my mindset about brokenness—that it’s openness. It’s finally allowing the Lord to get in in places that we’ve shut Him out of, or where we haven’t fully let people in, specifically Him in, and so I feel like in those moments when I’ve been broken and I finally humbled myself and allowed myself to open up to God, that’s when I’ve seen real transformation and that’s when healing has come.

I would say to anyone that’s feeling that way, it is valid and it is okay that you’re feeling that way. You’re not alone in that. You are absolutely not alone in that, but also God is not upset about that or He’s not ashamed of that. He’s waiting with open arms to meet you there and to actually step into your brokenness and to heal and to love and to fill you up in ways that you might not expect, and so don’t shy away from the brokenness. God uses that, at least for me, He’s used that way more than any success or where I felt like top of the world. Yes, I felt God in those moments, but in that brokenness, that is where so much transformation and healing has come for me.

P: What does worship mean to you? Not only in a church setting, but also in everyday life.

AH: Oh, I love that you said that. I love that you said not only in a church setting but in everyday life. I’ve learned so much about worship because I grew up in a Christian background where worship is very reverent and it’s very focused on stillness and quiet and just allowing space to really kind of meditate and create a quiet sacred space for the Lord to come in and enter, but my vision of worship and my understanding of worship and my experience of worship has expanded so much that it’s not just this quiet reverence.

Sometimes there are moments when I want to praise, and I want to scream. I want to shout and I just want to praise the Lord in that way, and then there are moments where I want to be a little bit more still and quiet, but also I’ve realized that worship is not just an action for me, it’s become a lifestyle where it’s not just a Sunday thing where I’m going to church and I’m worshiping, and then every other day is separate from worship. True worship is a lifestyle.

I can find the Lord in everything if I’m looking for it, and so it’s really shifted my perspective that worship is not just something you do at church, that it is something that you can do in your everyday life. It’s a lifestyle that I’m constantly seeking and that I’m not perfect at, but that I’m learning and that I’m growing in. It’s been so beautiful to learn about the way different churches and denominations and cultures worship, and it’s so beautiful that it’s shifted my perspective of, wow, worship really is a lifestyle and there’s so many different ways to worship.

P: What excites you about being a part of the King Will Come a Worship collective in 2023?

AH: I know we’re almost in 2024, which is wild to me. What excites me? This is something that I feel so passionate about. I think the most exciting thing for me is just there’s this sense of hunger and just even how The King Will Come started and the trajectory is heading. We’re being connected with so many people that are honestly seeking the Lord and that I feel like our world has been so divided, especially over the past couple years. It’s been insane at like the things that are just dividing us.

I feel like there’s this sense of unity and this of just coming together that I feel like so many of us are trying to achieve and trying to get to that place which is kingdom. We want to be experiencing true kingdom, and so what excites me about The King Will Come is that we come from different denominations, different backgrounds, different life experiences, but we’re all coming together united in one thing and that’s God—seeking God and seeking relationship with God and then gathering as many people as we can to do it together.

It’s not like we haven’t figured out where we’re like, “Okay, we figured this out. We’re going to teach you guys all how to do this.” Like, no, we are imperfect people seeking the same things, and so what’s exciting to me is how we’re just focused on gathering and learning from each other. It’s not like, “Well, we have this truth, and you have this truth, so ours is more truth than your truth.” And it’s like, “No, let’s bring all the truth together and let’s just seek and grow and learn together.”

I’ve already experienced that just within the little community that we’ve created so far, so I’m just, hoping if it’s in God’s will that we can just continue to expand that and grow that community, and just really help people not feel alone, and help people find community in building an authentic relationship with God and an authentic relationship with the community and with themselves, and I’ve experienced that already and so I’m just so excited to try and share that and create that opportunity for other people as well, even if it’s just one person.

I can’t even explain to you how much just being a part of this group and being a part of this work has changed my life already, and so I’m just really excited that if I’ve already seen this much transformation in the past two years, I’m like, “Well, what else is coming?” So, I’m very excited and very grateful.

P: What are you currently listening to?

AH: One album that I’ve been listening to on repeat. It’s by Madison Ryann Ward and she released it earlier this year. She’s amazing. It’s called “A New Thing” and it’s a worship album, but it doesn’t sound like worship music. It’s so good and it’s so cool, and I’ve been listening to it on repeat. It lives rent free in my head right now.

P: What is your go-to self-care tip when you’re feeling stressed?

AH: Oh, being in nature. I live in New York City and I love it. It’s amazing, but there are times that I feel stir crazy and I’m like, “I need to be in nature. I need to just like be with myself and be in nature and just disconnect from everything.” I’ll turn my phone off even if it’s just in Central Park; or sometimes I’ll rent a car and go upstate and just be in nature, but that’s really important to me is just having a moment with myself and being in nature. I feel very connected to God in nature.

P: What’s a Bible verse that’s been on your heart recently?

AH: I actually just read this yesterday and I’ve been thinking about it ever since, but it’s Psalms 91:1 where it says, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (NKJV).

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To stay connected with The King Will Come, follow on Instagram @thekingwillcomemusic. Follow on Instagram @ashleyhessmusic.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.