Come Jesus Come (CeCe Winans feat. Shirley Caesar)

“Come Jesus Come” was written in early 2020, during the first weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic, by Stephen and Tara McWhirter with Hank Bentley and Bryan Fowler. Stephen McWhirter had been reading Revelation, and the image that caught him was Revelation 22:17-20, where the Spirit and the Bride call for Jesus to come. The songwriters also drew on Revelation 19. It first came out as a Stephen McWhirter EP on July 17, 2020, and has since become one of the more widely covered new worship songs, with its own recording by The Brooklyn Tabernacle Choir featuring McWhirter on the album that won the 2026 Grammy for Best Roots Gospel Album.

CeCe Winans’ recording is the one that won the song its own Grammy at that ceremony. It first appeared on her 2024 album More Than This, and a version featuring Shirley Caesar arrived as a single in March 2025 and won Best Gospel Performance/Song at the 68th Grammy Awards on February 1, 2026 – Winans’ 18th Grammy, which puts her level with Aretha Franklin. One writeup of the win describes “a simple, prayerful cry rather than a complex arrangement,” with Caesar bringing “a generational weight to the record.” The songwriters’ nomination for Dove Song of the Year, in a field that includes several songs reviewed here in recent weeks, is a separate honor from the Grammy and will be decided at the October 6 ceremony.

What makes it work is that a plain refrain is exactly the right size for a song of this kind. “Come Jesus Come” is a prayer for a return, not a sermon about one, and it is also the same request that closes Robinson’s “Come, Thou Fount”: “Come, my Lord, no longer tarry.” A repeated, direct plea is the one form of worship music that gets stronger when it isn’t decorated, and two voices from different generations sharing it, which is what the Winans-Caesar pairing gives, is the natural way to sing a request that a whole church has been making for two thousand years.

8.6/10 – a small, prayerful song with a large pedigree, and a Grammy winner that stays in proportion to what it is asking.

Hero image: “Come Jesus Come” single artwork, CeCe Winans and Shirley Caesar. Used under fair use for editorial commentary.