“A worship leader is the facilitator of the activities that go on in the presence of God,” Ron Kenoly wrote in his 2008 book, The Priority of Praise. Kenoly, one of the first celebrity worship leaders to rise to prominence as a recording artist with Integrity Music, changed the sonic landscape of contemporary worship music during the early 1990s. Kenoly was an energetic performer and song leader, celebrated for his ability to engage a crowd or a congregation and inspire participation.
His 1992 album Lift Him Up featured high-energy praise songs like “Ancient of Days” that blended gospel and Afro-Caribbean style characteristics and became popular with congregations across denominations and continents.
“He wanted everyone to be singing,” William McDowell, Kenoly’s former music director, told CT. “He cared deeply about everyone in the room experiencing God in worship.”
Over the course of his career, Kenoly toured in 123 countries, gaining notoriety as a worship leader in the United States, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, and Ghana. His music blended genres and regional styles, ushering contemporary worship music into a new era of experimentation and expansion. He changed the way worship music was produced and marketed; he was one of the first worship artists to have their face featured on the cover of an album.
“Worship in spirit and truth requires more than fancy vocal aerobics, beautiful poetic lyrics and sweet or hot musical passages on the instruments,” Kenoly wrote. “God is pleased with our talents, but He is not impressed by them. … God is always looking at the true heart of the worshiper.”
Ron Kenoly died on February 3, 2026, at the age of 81. He is survived by his second wife, Diana, and three sons.
Kenoly was born in 1944 in Coffeyville, Kansas. He grew up with an often-absent father (a sergeant in the Air Force), five brothers, and a mother who was committed to getting her family to their Baptist church most Sundays. After graduating from high school, Kenoly joined the Air Force and moved to Hollywood. During his service from 1965 to 1968, he performed with a pop cover band called the Mellow Fellows.
In 1968, Kenoly married his first wife, Tavita (with whom he had three sons), a fellow musician who shared his aspiration to make it in the music industry. He found mixed success, landing record deals with A&M Records and MCA, and started performing and releasing music under the name Ron Keith in the mid-’70s. It seemed like his big break was on the horizon, but it never came.
Chasing success in the music industry took a toll on Kenoly’s personal life. His marriage deteriorated until 1975, when his wife rededicated her life to Christ at a Foursquare church in Los Angeles, which sparked Kenoly’s own spiritual reckoning. “There wasn’t any more fear, only courage, and a joy that I had never seen,” Kenoly said in a 1997 interview. “I wanted what she had, so I did what she had done. I surrendered, turned over all of my dreams, hopes, talents and abilities and said, ‘God, please change me.’” His first marriage lasted 42 years.
Kenoly subsequently gave up performing in nightclubs and took a job as a locker room attendant at the College of Alameda, where he started taking courses and working on a music degree. When administrators at the institution learned of Kenoly’s recording and performing experience, they offered him an accelerated track through a degree program and hired him as a voice teacher.
Kenoly turned his attention to Christian music in the 1980s, accepting a job as a worship leader at the Jubilee Christian Center (now Redemption Church) in San Jose, California, in 1985. He gained regional popularity as a church musician, and in 1989, then–vice president of Integrity Music Don Moen visited Jubilee and invited Kenoly to record an album with the label.
His first album with Integrity, Jesus is Alive (1991), sold 400,000 copies. His second, Lift Him Up (1992), sold more than 450,000 copies and spent 70 weeks on the Billboard contemporary Christian chart.
Lift Him Up was a surprise success, initially proposed as a straightforward recording of a live worship service with a very limited budget. Two of the songs (“Hallowed Be Your Name” and “We’re Going Up to the High Places”) were written or cowritten by Kenoly; the others were selected by Integrity producer and keyboardist Tom Brooks, who also helped assemble a backing ensemble with impressive industry bona fides.
Drummer Chester Thompson, who played for Genesis, Phil Collins, and Frank Zappa, was in the Lift Him Up ensemble. Respected Latin American percussionist Alex Acuña was also featured, and the team of backing vocalists included heavy hitters like Olivia McClurkin. The quality of the music and the live performance captivated listeners.
The popularity of Lift Him Up catapulted Kenoly to celebrity status in the contemporary worship world. It also demonstrated that fans of contemporary worship music were enthusiastic about Kenoly’s fusion of global genres.
“Kenoly transformed people’s imaginations for culturally coded praise and worship,” said Adam Perez, assistant professor of Worship Studies at Belmont University.
Perez added that, in the 1990s, artists like Marcos Witt were helping expand Integrity’s reach into Spanish-speaking markets, but Kenoly was one of the first Black worship leaders whose music was marketed to a general Christian audience rather than being steered toward the gospel niche.
Kenoly actively sought to record music that resonated across racial divides, expressing a desire to produce albums and songs for an audience that looked like his diverse congregation.
“This whole thing was born out of a multi-racial congregation. Jubilee is about 45 to 50 per cent Caucasian, probably about 25 per cent African American and the rest is Hispanic and Asian,” Kenoly said in a 1994 interview. “Somehow, we’re able to present ministry that touches the lives and hearts of all those people … people have come to realise that worship has no colour, age, ethnic or cultural barriers.”
Stephania Andry Wilkinson, a former Integrity Music marketing executive and founder of Red Alliance Media, told CT that Kenoly was the “ultimate unifier.”
“He showed that worship has no boundaries or color lines,” said Wilkinson. “He was one of the greatest psalmists of all time, and his music still works. It holds up today.”
British gospel singer Muyiwa Olarewaju said that popular worship artists like Maverick City Music have built on the foundation Kenoly laid with his music.
“He showed worship leaders that you could be high-energy and orchestrated, yet deeply intimate and scripturally grounded,” said Olarewaju. “There would be no Maverick City today without Ron Kenoly. There would be no Brandon Lake, no Michael W. Smith as we know them today.”
Recording artist and worship leader Israel Houghton told CT that seeing Kenoly lead diverse congregations in worship in a musical style that pushed the boundaries of the genre was an inspiration.
“To see a Black man lead millions of people from multiple cultures in 1991 quite literally ignited a flame in me,” said Houghton. “He gave me permission to be my cross-cultural self and not have to assimilate into a copy or caricature of someone else.”
Following Kenoly’s death, worship leaders around the world posted tributes to his music and influence. Worship leader and producer Noel Robinson, who served as music director for one of Kenoly’s tours, called him a “bridge builder” and a leader who was “fearless in his delivery, confident in his calling, and utterly secure in the God he served.”
Kenoly’s most recent album, Set Apart Is Your Name YaHuWaH, Vol. 2 was released in 2015, but Kenoly continued to tour, teach, and write music into his final months. McDowell said Kenoly was writing songs until the week he died. Kenoly told him that he was experimenting with using the AI platform Suno to arrange some songs that he hadn’t been able to record yet. In January 2026, he led worship at a conference in Jakarta, Indonesia.
“He’s been all over the world,” McDowell said. “But you’d never know he was that big, talking with him. He was genuine and unpretentious. He had personal and ministerial integrity. And I had a front seat to that.”
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