Amanda Cook: The Bethel Worship Leader Behind “You Make Me Brave”

Amanda Cook (born May 8, 1984) is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and worship leader from Niverville, Manitoba.

Best known for writing Bethel Music’s “You Make Me Brave,” Cook spent nearly a decade as one of the defining voices of the Bethel Music collective before stepping into an independent, more experimental chapter of her career.

She’s a Juno Award winner, a two-time GMA Dove Award nominee turned winner, and one of the few worship artists who can hold a stadium quiet with just a piano and a candle of incense.

[IMAGE: Amanda Cook performing solo at a piano on a dimly lit stage]

At a Glance

Who Is Amanda Cook?

If you’ve sung “You Make Me Brave” in church, you already know Amanda Cook’s voice, even if you’ve never heard her name. She wrote it. Actually singing it live, hearing 4,000 people in a room finish the last line before she does, is a strange kind of ordinary for her now.

Cook grew up nowhere close to a stage. She was raised on a wheat farm outside Niverville, Manitoba, homeschooled, and singing with her dad in church by age ten. That farm-kid steadiness is still there under everything she does. It’s why a woman who’s headlined Bethel Music’s biggest conferences still walks onstage with just a piano, no band, sometimes a coil of incense smoke curling up beside her.

Early Life and Background

Amanda Lindsey Falk was born on May 8, 1984, and grew up on a working wheat farm just outside Winnipeg. Her parents were musical. Her father played guitar and sang, and Cook has said she used to fall asleep listening to him practice.

Their church actively wove music into worship, and by age six, Cook was already competing in local music festivals. By ten, she was singing beside her father at church events and around town, soaking up whatever was on his record shelf.

She never went to a conservatory. No formal vocal coach, no music degree. Everything she knows on piano and everything she does with her voice, she built herself, starting on that farm.

Musical Beginnings and Calling

By her late teens, Cook was writing her own songs. In 2004, she released her self-titled debut album, Amanda Falk, on the Winnipeg label Avante Records. It wasn’t a small splash. The record won the 2006 Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year, Canada’s biggest music honor.

She followed it with Beautiful in 2007, another Avante Records release that produced two Cross Rhythms chart hits, “Beautiful” and “This Is Love.” Between 2005 and 2008, Cook won the GMA Canada Covenant Award for Female Vocalist of the Year four years running. She wasn’t a newcomer by the time most people met her. She’d already spent nearly a decade in Canadian Christian music.

[IMAGE: Amanda Falk-era album cover art from the early 2000s]

Career Journey

In 2010, Cook released In Between the Now & Then on Signpost Music, the label formed by fellow Canadian songwriter Steve Bell. That same year, she and her then-husband moved to Medicine Hat, Alberta, where they served as leaders with Global House of Prayer.

It was through the Bethel School of Worship that Cook’s path crossed with Brian Johnson and Jenn Johnson, the couple behind Bethel Music. She’s said she was handed one of their records at 21 and it changed how she understood the presence of God. That connection deepened until, in 2010, she formally joined the Bethel Music collective as a worship leader at Bethel Church in Redding, California.

Her early contributions landed on Bethel Music group albums like Be Lifted High and For the Sake of the World. Then in 2014, everything changed with a single song.

Rise to Prominence

“You Make Me Brave” is Amanda Cook’s most popular song, and it’s the reason most people know her name at all. It was recorded live at Bethel’s women’s conference and released on the 2014 album You Make Me Brave: Live at the Civic, alongside worship leaders Kristene DiMarco and Jenn Johnson. Cook’s contribution, a raw, urgent call to overcome fear, catapulted the record onto the charts. It stayed there for 75 weeks and eventually won a Juno Award for Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year.

The following year, Cook released her first full solo project under Bethel Music, Brave New World (2015), this time recording under her married name, Amanda Cook. It debuted at number one on both the UK and US Christian music charts, hit number 20 on the Billboard 200, and won Inspirational Album of the Year at the 2016 GMA Dove Awards.

Discography

Her second Bethel Music solo record, House on a Hill (2019), came out of a very different season. Cook spent two months alone in an unfurnished house in the Tennessee hills, working through a stretch of heartbreak and disappointment, before writing the record with Grammy-winning producers Jason Ingram and Paul Mabury and longtime collaborator Steffany Gretzinger. It landed in the Top Ten of the US and UK Christian charts.

She’s also lent her voice to other artists’ records over the years, including Pat Barrett’s “Sails” alongside Gretzinger, and multiple Maverick City Music tracks such as “Closer” and “Lean Back.”

Personal Life

In 2015, Cook married Jacob Cook, and she began recording under her married name shortly after. The marriage later ended; Jacob publicly acknowledged “emotional infidelity” in 2019. Cook has said very little about the details since, and honestly, that’s her right. Not every part of a story is owed to an audience.

She’s been more open about something else: her ADHD diagnosis, which she’s described as genuinely helpful once she finally understood it. It gave her language for the restlessness she’d felt her whole life, the same restlessness that shows up in song titles like “Restless Soul” and in her preference for stillness over spectacle when she performs.

Cook stands 5 feet 6 inches tall and, based on public reporting, currently lives and works out of Los Angeles, California, staying active on Instagram under her artist name, where fans get glimpses of tour life, new releases, and the quieter moments in between.

Faith, Theology, and Musical Philosophy

Cook doesn’t love the title “worship leader.” She’s said so directly. It’s not that she rejects the role; it’s that she thinks the label can flatten what she’s actually trying to do, which is create space for people to be honest with God rather than perform for him.

That philosophy shapes everything about how she writes. Her songs rarely open with certainty. They open with the ache first, the doubt, the exhaustion, and let the truth arrive later, once it’s been earned. “Intensity is not intimacy,” she’s said. “Intimacy comes in the quiet moments.” It’s why she’ll play a headline slot for thousands the exact same way she plays for a room of 300 volunteers: alone, at a piano, unhurried.

Influence and Legacy

“You Make Me Brave” didn’t just chart. It became a fixture of CCLI’s most-sung songs list for years, which means it’s been sung in more churches on more Sundays than Cook will ever personally know about. That’s the strange math of worship music: the songwriter rarely sees the full reach of what she’s made.

Cook’s fingerprints are also on the broader shift in worship music toward a more intimate, singer-songwriter sound, one that trades arena bombast for a single voice and a piano. Younger worship artists who favor stripped-back, confessional records owe something to the space she helped open.

Why Did Amanda Cook Leave Bethel? Is She Still With Bethel?

There was never a dramatic public exit. What happened is more of a gradual shift. Cook’s last full-length release under the Bethel Music banner was House on a Hill in 2019. In 2020, she signed with Essential Worship (Provident/Sony) and began releasing music independently, first under her Falcon pop identity, then back under her own name with 2022’s State of the Union and the SURVEY EPs that followed.

She still shows up on Bethel-connected collaborative tracks and has been featured with Maverick City Music, so the relationships clearly remain. But as a recording artist, she’s been building her own lane, under her own label, Wings, since the early 2020s. If you’re asking whether she “left” Bethel, the honest answer is that she outgrew the collective structure more than she rejected it.

What Church Does Amanda Cook Go To?

Cook was a worship leader at Bethel Church in Redding, California, for roughly a decade, but her more recent public ministry has looked less like a single home church and more like an itinerant one: festival main stages, conference intimacy rooms, and one-off live recordings like her 2025 EP filmed at St. John at Hackney in London. Her current church home hasn’t been publicly detailed in recent interviews.

Criticism and Controversies

Cook’s affiliation with Bethel Church has occasionally drawn criticism from corners of the broader Christian community skeptical of the church’s charismatic practices and “signs and wonders” theology. Cook herself has faced some pushback for comments describing God in more abstract, mystical terms in interviews, language some listeners felt strayed from traditional doctrinal phrasing. She hasn’t responded publicly to most of this criticism, and it hasn’t meaningfully slowed her output or her audience.

Net Worth and Financial Information

Public “net worth” figures for Amanda Cook vary enormously across celebrity finance sites, from the low six figures to wildly inflated multi-million-dollar claims. None of these numbers trace back to a verified, disclosed source. The honest answer is that her net worth isn’t publicly documented in any reliable way, and any specific figure you see online should be treated as a guess.

Awards and Recognition

• 2006 Juno Award — Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year (Amanda Falk)
• 2005–2008 GMA Canada Covenant Award — Female Vocalist of the Year (four consecutive years)
• 2014 Juno Award — Contemporary Christian/Gospel Album of the Year (You Make Me Brave: Live at the Civic, with Bethel Music)
• 2016 GMA Dove Award — Inspirational Album of the Year (Brave New World)

Interesting Facts

• She was competing in music festivals by age six and singing publicly with her father by age ten.
• She released music under three different artist identities: Amanda Falk, Amanda Cook, and the pop project Falcon.
• She recorded part of House on a Hill completely alone in an unfurnished rental house in the Tennessee woods.
• She’s spoken publicly about her ADHD diagnosis and how understanding it changed her sense of self.
• She often performs solo with just a piano, even at festival headline slots built for full bands.

Timeline

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Amanda Cook?

Amanda Cook is a Canadian singer, songwriter, and worship leader from Niverville, Manitoba, best known for writing Bethel Music’s “You Make Me Brave.” She built her career across three artist identities: Amanda Falk, Amanda Cook, and the pop project Falcon.

How old is Amanda Cook?

Amanda Cook was born May 8, 1984, which makes her 42 years old as of 2026.

Where is Amanda Cook from?

She’s from Niverville, Manitoba, Canada, where she grew up homeschooled on her family’s wheat farm outside Winnipeg.

Is Amanda Cook still married?

No. She married Jacob Cook in 2015, and the marriage later ended following a public admission of “emotional infidelity” from Jacob in 2019. Cook hasn’t spoken extensively about the details since.

What is Amanda Cook’s most popular song?

“You Make Me Brave,” released with Bethel Music in 2014, remains her most recognized and most-sung song in churches worldwide.

Is Amanda Cook still with Bethel?

Not as a signed recording artist. Her last full album under the Bethel Music label was 2019’s House on a Hill. Since 2020, she’s released music independently under Essential Worship and her own label, Wings, though she still appears on Bethel-connected collaborations.

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