Singer Kaya Jones commits to 'working for the Lord' full time after experiencing 'life changing' baptism
A famous musician known for her former membership in a secular band has undergone a “life-changing” baptism as she continues to work toward her goal of “working for the Lord.”
In an interview with The Christian Post, singer Kaya Jones, a former member of the 2000s girl group Pussycat Dolls and an outspoken supporter of former President Donald Trump, elaborated on her baptism and her decadeslong faith journey as a whole.
Jones shared pictures of her baptism, which took place at Pastor Paula White’s City of Destiny Church in Apopka, Florida, on May 23, on her Facebook page. “I’ve sung with Jagger, Britney, Fergie, Katy Perry & many others. Nothing & no one compares to singing with Jesus!” she exclaimed.
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“I’m finally now serving the Lord. It was a dream come true to be baptized by this woman who brought me to Christ through the TV,” she added. Jones noted that she first encountered White at the age of 16, when her ministry aired on BET and that it “struck a cord.”
Rise to fame
However, she recalled that a year later, “I joined the Pussycat Dolls and was not serving God but rather myself. I knew I wasn’t following God’s plan for me.” She stated that such behavior was not uncommon in the entertainment industry because it is a profession that is “always just about glorifying yourself.”
Acknowledging that “our industry pushes [faith] away so much and shuns it away,” Jones expressed optimism that “more and more [entertainers] now are coming forward, which is wonderful to see.” She specifically mentioned “Justin Bieber doing a Christian album” and Carrie Underwood and Dolly Parton doing the same as examples.
Jones contended that the entertainment industry’s hostility toward faith is “rooted in a lot of satanic teachings.” She characterized the fact that the industry calls on people to “sacrifice who you are” to idolize oneself as the most pervasive “satanic” teaching.
She told CP that many in the industry subscribe to beliefs that “you can’t be a wife” and “you’ve got to stay skinny, so don’t get pregnant.” Lamenting that “abortions are championed in the industry,” Jones recalled that “I was told to get rid of it when I got pregnant.”
Jones ultimately did have an abortion when she was with the Pussycat Dolls in the early 2000s. The regret she has experienced as a result of that decision has informed her pro-life activism: “The Lord told me when I needed to speak on that and I started to speak on it, and I’m speaking from a place that I’ve done it, I’ve lived it, it’s very painful.”
“As someone who’s had an abortion and I can contest to other women that I know who’ve had as well, we regret not having our child, our children, so … I do think that … it’s a really important issue to be speaking on now more so than ever because people are glorifying it and they’re really giving you horrible advice,” she added.
Jones suggested that the culture has changed somewhat with regard to the acceptance of notable female entertainers deciding to get married and have children. “I come from the generation of when Britney Spears decided to get married, and she did and had a child … two of them.” The singer recounted that “they put her through hell.”
“It wasn’t like it is now ... where Kylie Jenner’s having a baby and everyone’s like, ‘Oh my gosh, so cool.’ There was a time where … it was looked down on, and industry people would tell you that’s something you don’t want to do and if you did get pregnant, you could be fired.”
Jones was raised in a Christian household, but her church attendance dwindled after her parents’ divorce. She told CP that she was “completely serving myself” after joining the Pussycat Dolls.
“I didn’t realize at the time that I was falling away from anything,” she said. “I didn’t think I’d fallen away.”
But when she looked back in retrospect, Jones realized, “I was completely not serving the Lord.” She rejoiced that in spite of her failure to serve the Lord, “He had never left me.”
Ostracized for her faith
Jones eventually left the Pussycat Dolls and continued her career as a solo artist. She emerged as a supporter of Trump and began making appearances on conservative media to discuss her views. During an appearance on Tomi Lahren’s show on The Blaze in 2017, Jones discussed her faith in a moment that she now characterizes as a turning point in her relationship with God.
Lahren, she said, asked her a question to the effect of, “You’re a conservative and you voted for Trump and what does that mean?” The singer responded with a lengthy answer, which included a proclamation that “I pray to Jesus.”
“That was the first time in a public way I actually claimed very publicly who I pray to, and I remember the heat that ran through my body, and this is while I was on camera, of course, and nobody knew this because I didn’t say anything when it took place. There was a heat that ran through my body at that point because it was very intense to publicly say what has been my … saving grace and … who I … believe to be the creator of everything in existence.”
Prior to her conversation with Lahren, people in the industry had repeatedly discouraged Jones from discussing her faith. Following her appearance on The Blaze, she experienced a “real ostracizing” from people in the industry who called her and told her that “you can’t walk this back.”
Jones maintained to her critics that “I’m not walking it back” before asking God to “bring people forward into my life” to enable her to continue her music career because she “couldn’t get work” as a result of her public declaration of faith. Shortly thereafter, she discovered that “God did want me to continue working in the music world and … was going to position the right people into my life.” Specifically, she ended up collaborating with singer Jason Crabb on his Christian album “Unexpected,” which won a Grammy Award in 2019.
Coronavirus accelerates ongoing transformation: ‘I’m all in’
Following her appearance on The Blaze and subsequent appearances on conservative media outlets, Jones would frequently post about her faith on social media.
However, Jones remarked that during the coronavirus pandemic, “my posts started to change. What I posted about, how I was speaking, it had started to really hit me at the core where I was reading the Word every single day. I was sending out emails and text messages to family, friends, even acquaintances of scriptures and positive messages every single day because I knew that people needed it.”
Additionally, Jones spent the coronavirus pandemic living with her boyfriend’s stepfather, Angel, who had terminal cancer. Because of the pandemic, nurses could not come into the home, so Jones and her boyfriend ended up serving as aides to his terminally ill stepfather.
Shortly before his death, Jones went to check on her boyfriend’s stepfather, who was calling out in his room: “He was talking at the foot of his bed, there was nobody at the foot of the bed, and he’s talking, and I said, ‘Angel, are you OK?’”
He asked Jones, “do you see them?” When she asked, “see who,” Angel told her that “they’re celebrating people, they’re celebrating.” At his funeral service, the Deacon referenced a scripture passage about “the grand celebration in Heaven” that greets new arrivals, which led Jones to conclude that “what Angel was seeing was 100% real.”
From there, Jones began reading the Bible intensively and abstained from her old habits, including drinking alcohol and posting pictures of herself on social media laying out by the pool. She began to experience “something different,” adding, “I can’t attribute it to anything other than the Holy Spirit.”
Nearly two decades after she first saw White on BET, Jones actually met the former president’s spiritual adviser “through being a conservative.” Jones was taking a tour of the White House around Christmas time when she encountered White, whom she described as “very kind, very cordial, totally spirit-filled and smiling, glowing with the radiance that is the Holy Spirit and … the peace that’s within her.”
Following the 2020 presidential election, when “everything went in a very different … way than everyone believed it would,” Jones frequently posted on social media, attempting to share with her followers “the insight that I was getting from what I was reading with the Word.” After seeing her posts on social media, one of White’s producers reached out to Jones and asked her if she would like to do a podcast on White’s Life Network for Women. Shortly thereafter, Jones launched her weekly podcast, titled “Messages with Kaya.”
After the launch of “Messages with Kaya,” Jones visited White’s City of Destiny Church, where she began interacting with members of the congregation and “really getting into the Word and living in that.” The singer inquired about whether the church was doing baptisms, which had stopped because of the coronavirus. When she found out that the church was going to resume baptisms, Jones was excited and expressed a desire to “receive the purification by water with the Holy Spirit.”
Describing her baptism as “life changing,” Jones credited the experience with taking her “walk with the Lord from what was already pretty strong and steady to … really just saying ... ‘I’m all in.’” Jones now sees it as her mission to “work for Him” and “write for Him.”
Jones explained that her baptism has had a positive effect on the spiritual health of her closest friends and family members. She attributed her mother’s return to church and her boyfriend becoming “more immersed in the Word” to “the change within me they’ve seen,” reiterating that, “I can only attribute that to the Holy Spirit. It’s not me. It’s Him.”
Other ventures
In addition to hosting “Messages with Kaya,” Jones serves as vice president and executive producer at the Florida-based Conflix Studios, which seeks to attract creative professionals who “feel stifled by the current constraints of Hollywood” and wish to “make the types of movies and television programming that reflect [their] convictions.” Jones told CP that the goal of Conflix Studios is to “ultimately make great films for Christians, for conservatives that are done in an edgier scale.”
The studio is working on a film called “Trail Blazers,” which Jones described as “rooted in showing the magic of God,” while also showing “the realities of evil that we face.” According to a movie poster for the film, it will star Jones and other prominent Hollywood conservatives, including Scott Baio, Dean Cain, Stacey Dash, Robert Davi, Lorenzo Lamas, Kevin Sorbo, Kristy Swanson and Conflix Studios founder Antonio Sabato Jr.
Elaborating on the mission of Conflix Studios, Jones contended that many Christians “have done a disservice by sugarcoating that there is not a judgment day, that everybody’s welcome, that everyone you know will go, and that’s not true.” Jones predicted that Conflix Studios “is going to be reflective of what people want to see because there is a demand and there are a lot of people not meeting the supply.”
As part of her goal to “talk about God because of the changes He’s made in my life,” Jones is also working on writing a book, “which is all about His grace.” The book is in the early stages of development and its publication is not expected until next year.
Jones concluded the interview by praising the humanitarian work of City of Destiny Church and advising those who want to “up their game spiritually” to receive baptism as an adult. Noting that the church has distributed 17 million pounds of food, Jones emphasized that a church is meant to serve as a “spiritual hospital” where people are “looking for miracles.” She contrasted the baptism she went through as an adult with the baptisms that some believers only undergo shortly after birth.
“It is a great, wonderful thing to receive as an adult. It is a choice, your choice now, not given to you as a child.”
Ryan Foley is a reporter for The Christian Post. He can be reached at: [email protected]
