With corporate consolidation in worship music, more entities are invested in the songs sung on Sunday mornings. How will their financial incentives shape the church?
When worship leader Jonathan Anderson selects the song “Lion and the Lamb” for a service, he thinks about what it means for his multigenerational Assemblies of God church to sing about the return of Christ and his final victory: Every knee will bow before the Lion and the Lamb.
“We have older people who love to imagine seeing God’s face, who look forward to that, to seeing pure beauty,” said Anderson, who serves at Bethel Church in Tallmadge, Ohio.
Songwriter and recording artist Leeland Mooring (who performs with the band “Leeland”) started composing the song at a worship event. He found himself and those with him profoundly moved by the words and music as they took shape.
Mooring told NewRelease Today, “We were just weeping, and there wasn’t a dry eye in the room …. God dropped the whole chorus of the song on me right there.”
Eight years after its release, “Lion and the Lamb” remains among the top 30 contemporary worship songs sung in churches on Sunday, with recordings by popular bands including Leeland, Shane & Shane, and Big Daddy Weave.
The song’s continued popularity means congregations lift those powerful words in praise each week, as Mooring and his cowriters (industry veterans Brenton Brown and Bethel Music’s Brian Johnson) hoped. And each time churches like Anderson’s sing “Lion and the Lamb,” it adds up—especially if the service is livestreamed—for Christian music licensing companies, corporate labels, and private investors who have come to see the Christian corner of the industry as a previously untapped income stream.
A portion of the rights and royalties for Mooring’s song, which would …
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