Most Christians probably know the feeling on Sunday mornings during worship: your mouth is singing, but your mind is somewhere else.
For Tiffany Hudson, that realization has become difficult to ignore.
“Somebody said this, and I will never forget it,” Hudson told RELEVANT. “They said, ‘Who you’re mostly thinking about during worship is who you’re mostly worshiping.’ And that shook me to my core.”
Hudson, a worship leader with Elevation Worship, said the line did not feel like an accusation aimed at someone else. It exposed something in her own life.
“I’m totally at fault at times to be thinking about myself during worship,” she said. “And I’m like, that can never be the goal.”
That conviction runs through Hudson’s new solo album, When You’re in the Room, a live project that grew out of Presence Nights at her church. The gatherings were designed as unrushed nights of worship and prayer, with the church gathered around a cross and no pressure to manufacture a moment.
“There’s no pressure, there’s no rush, there’s no clocks,” Hudson said. “It just is like time to just come be with the Lord.”
The album was not part of a long-term rollout plan after her first solo project, Hidden Here. Hudson said she was not sitting on a strategy for another release. She was simply leading these nights, collecting songs and beginning to feel that if another album ever happened, it should happen there.
“I feel so at home here,” she said. “We can just come and be in His presence.”
That shaped the recording. Hudson wanted the night to feel like worship first and a live album second. The team prepared, but she tried to keep the project from becoming too controlled.
“I really wanted this night to feel just very true to what it was,” she said. “Let’s just worship and go for it and see what happens.”
If the recording did not work, Hudson said they would not release it. The point was not to force an album out of a spiritual moment.
“I just don’t want that to be the driver,” she said. “Let’s let true, just authentic worship be the driver.”
The songs on When You’re in the Room are mostly directed toward God rather than centered on the worshiper. Hudson said she values songs that encourage the Church, and she points to “Fire in My Bones” as a song meant to activate believers toward bold witness. But the heart of this project is different.
“I feel like they all feel very like singing to the Lord,” she said. “There’s beautiful songs that can kind of encourage one another, and that’s part of it as well. But I do feel like the heart of this is really just like singing to the Lord.”
That is where Hudson believes worship has to begin. Before worship gives people language for their own feelings, it should reorient their attention toward God.
“It helps us see Him rightly,” she said. “He’s the only perfect One that’s worth looking at. And I think when we see Him rightly, everything else comes into place.”
Since Hidden Here, Hudson’s own life has changed significantly. She became a mother, and she said that shift has deepened her relationship with God in ways that show up across the new album.
“So much has changed in my life,” she said. “I became a mom, which is like such a massive change. And then just honestly my relationship with the Lord, I feel like has gone so much deeper and it’s gotten sweeter and sweeter and more beautiful.”
Hidden Here was her first solo project, which made it a season of discovery. When You’re in the Room feels more settled, less like exploration and more like a reflection of where she is now.
“I feel like it really is like a true reflection of just my heart for the Lord and where I feel like I’m at in this season with Him,” she said.
Still, Hudson said releasing music under her own name has required courage. She loves being part of a team and said there is something “beautiful and biblical” about serving as one member of a larger body. Even a solo album, she said, is never truly solo because of the writers, musicians, producers and other people involved.
But standing behind songs with her own name attached feels different.
“I can’t hide behind my team or my church,” she said. “It’s like, no, this is something I feel from the Lord to put out. So it requires a lot more courage.”
That courage, Hudson said, does not come from self-confidence. It comes from knowing when to move.
“Unless the Lord gives the green light or the yes, I don’t want to do it in my own strength,” she said.
Hudson said she could probably make something happen on her own. She has the experience to do that. But that is not the kind of work she wants to release.
“If the Lord says yes, you have to actually take the step and do it,” she said. “And that’s the scary part.”
Hudson connects that kind of obedience to revival, a word she knows can be overused. She is not interested in reducing revival to a branded church event. For her, revival means spiritual life returning where something has gone cold.
“The truest form of revival is like the dead coming back to life,” she said. “So the dead heart, the heart of stone, being made a heart of flesh that can truly like come alive for the Lord.”
She saw that kind of revival growing up. When she was in high school, her church planned a few services with an evangelist. The services continued for 28 days.
“The church was coming to pray, and people were coming to get saved, and we just saw God’s power on display,” she said.
Hudson was the pastor’s kid, and she remembers being aware of what people at school thought of her. But when classmates started showing up and responding to the Gospel, something shifted.
“Something was just like lit in my spirit,” she said. “I’m living for God. I’m standing up for Him.”
Years later, that hunger still informs how she thinks about worship. The lesson she is carrying from When You’re in the Room is not that worship needs to become more impressive. It is that Christians may need to stop assuming Jesus needs to be dressed up in order to be enough.
“We’re not needing to make more of Jesus,” she said. “We’re not needing to exaggerate Him or set Him up. He is all in all in Himself enough.”
That is the clearest thread through Hudson’s new album. Worship does not have to move past the cross to find something more compelling.
“Let’s actually look at the cross and not get bored,” she said. “Let’s actually look to Jesus and not think that we’re missing something else or we have to move past to like get to the next thing. He’s the point.”
