The modern worship landscape looks nothing like it did a decade ago. A new report from Worship Leader Research shows the biggest players in the industry have shifted, songwriting has consolidated, and the system determining what your church sings each Sunday has become both more collaborative and more concentrated.
Here’s what the data reveals:
1. The “Big 4” era is gone—replaced by an even tighter network
In the 2010s, Hillsong, Bethel, Elevation and Passion operated as four distinct powerhouses. Each had its own songwriting engine, and the biggest hits almost always came from inside those silos. That era is over.
Now, those boundaries barely exist. The study found that from 2020 to 2025, 51 new songs broke into the CCLI Top 100 chart—and 47 of them were written by a small, overlapping group of songwriters tied to just a few megachurches and collectives. The walls between movements have come down, but the circle of influence hasn’t expanded. If anything, it’s narrowed.
The same names—Chris Brown and Steven Furtick (Elevation), Pat Barrett, Phil Wickham, Chandler Moore—are writing together across brands and platforms. Only four songs in the past five years cracked the Top 100 without ties to what the report calls the “songwriting family.”
This isn’t just a branding shift. It means worship music is increasingly shaped by a handful of creative relationships rather than the theological or stylistic priorities of a single church.
2. Brandon Lake has become the connective thread
One name dominates this new ecosystem more than any other: Brandon Lake.
Lake is credited as a writer on 13 of the 51 new songs to hit the Top 100 since 2020—an astonishing 25 percent. He’s co-writing with Elevation, Bethel, Maverick City Music and others, providing a throughline that connects nearly every major worship movement.
This represents a fundamental change from past decades. Churches used to anchor the worship charts; now, individual songwriters hold that influence. When someone like Lake moves between movements, they’re effectively shaping the canon of songs sung in churches worldwide.
3. Women are in more rooms—but still missing from the charts
Women are participating in more writing sessions than they did a decade ago, but the Top 100 charts don’t reflect that progress.
Fewer than 25 credited writers on the current CCLI Top 100 are women—just 19 percent of all songwriters represented. That means over 80 percent of the most widely sung worship songs are written primarily by men.
There are bright spots: Jenn Johnson, Amanda Cook, Mia Fieldes, Naomi Raine, Charity Gayle and Christy Nockels all have Top 100 credits. But only Brooke Ligertwood has three or more songs on the chart, making her the lone female writer with a recurring presence at this level.
This is a telling shift: inclusion in the room is not the same as influence on the songs churches actually sing.
The data paints a clear picture. Worship music in 2025 isn’t dominated by a few brands the way it was in the 2010s—but it’s still being shaped by a surprisingly small group of interconnected writers. The future of modern worship may depend less on which church or collective is releasing the music and more on the decisions of a handful of individuals quietly defining the Church’s soundtrack.
