Twenty-five years ago, Jesus Culture began as a youth conference tucked inside a California church. It wasn’t trying to become a global worship movement. There was no plan for world tours or viral worship albums. It was just a bunch of teenagers with guitars, chasing God in a room.
And yet here we are.
The name Jesus Culture now sits alongside Hillsong and Bethel in the modern worship canon, synonymous with anthemic choruses and Spirit-soaked stages. But if you ask worship leaders Derek Johnson and Marie Welch, who have spent years in the trenches of this ministry, the most radical thing Jesus Culture is doing right now isn’t dropping a new album — it’s going small.
“I think people assumed we’d just keep doing conferences and albums,” Johnson said. “But our founder, Banning Liebscher, felt like if we wanted longevity, we needed a local expression. We had to actually walk with people — raise families, disciple them, sit with them week after week. That’s how revival sticks.”
It’s an unexpected turn for a worship brand that helped define a generation of megachurch sound. But it’s also one that seems oddly subversive in 2025: a worship movement pivoting from stages to sanctuaries.
Johnson would know. He’s been with Jesus Culture for 15 of its 25 years — “kind of the old guy now,” he laughed — and said his journey started with a bootlegged CD.
“I was living outside Chicago when someone handed me a burnt Jesus Culture album,” he said. “It wasn’t just the music — it was the hunger. It stirred something in me. That CD was one of the reasons I moved to California.”
Today, he helps lead Jesus Culture’s church plants in Sacramento and San Diego. It’s less glamorous than sold-out arenas, but he swears it’s more transformative.
“There’s something different when you’re leading worship for people you know,” he said. “You’re there on Tuesdays, Sundays, in the prayer room, in people’s lives. The songs mean more because the people mean more.”
Welch agrees. She joined the team in 2019 after leading worship at a winter camp and connecting with Johnson and his wife. She and her husband uprooted their lives and moved to Sacramento, chasing the same stirring that CD ignited in Johnson a decade earlier.
“I remember listening to Jesus Culture at 16 and thinking, ‘I want to be part of that,’” Welch said. “But what I didn’t expect was how much it would shape me offstage. The community here — it’s not just talent. It’s people constantly asking, ‘How’s your heart?’”
That question isn’t just sentimental fluff. Welch said it’s part of a larger culture Jesus Culture is fiercely trying to protect: one where worship isn’t performance but overflow. In a time when burnout is the expected byproduct of ministry, both Welch and Johnson said longevity only comes when leaders learn to stop white-knuckling their spiritual lives.
“It’s not a calendar issue — it’s a devotion issue,” Johnson said. “We pour out in ministry, but if we’re not drawing from a deep well with Jesus, we burn out fast. I’ve led worship multiple times a week for 20 years. When my intimacy with Jesus is solid, I can do that and not feel drained. But if that connection’s thin, even one awkward worship set can wreck me.”
Welch nodded. “I was in youth ministry, young adults, Sundays, Tuesdays — I was everywhere. Eventually, my church pulled me aside and said, ‘We love you, but you’re doing too much.’ I had to ask God, ‘Where do you actually want me right now?’ I stepped back. It was hard, but I’m healthier now.”
It’s a refreshing honesty in an industry often allergic to limits. And it may be why their newest project, Sounds from the House, Vol. 1, feels less like an industry product and more like an open window into something real.
“These are songs pulled straight from our church,” Johnson said. “One was from a youth conference. One from our Sunday set. Another from our pastors’ gathering. We just hit record and shared what was happening.”
That may sound like a branding line, but Welch insists the unpolished nature of the EP is the point.
“It’s not a two-year-old studio album finally seeing the light of day. This is what God’s doing right now,” she said. “The song I led, ‘Blood,’ hit me in the car before we ever did it live. And then at our My City conference, it just wrecked people. I still cry listening back because you can hear the voices — everyone’s crying out. That’s what makes it powerful.”
This approach — capturing and releasing worship in real time — feels like a full-circle return to the early days of Jesus Culture, when the music felt more like a documentary than a show.
“We’re just part of the sound God is raising up in churches all over the world,” Johnson said. “We’re not the soundtrack of revival — we’re one voice in the choir.”
That posture has shaped how Jesus Culture is investing in its future. It’s not about platforming a few voices, Welch said — it’s about building a web of worshippers.
“We all carry different things,” she said. “I go to Derek for one kind of advice, someone else for another. It’s diverse, and it’s deep. That’s what keeps you grounded.”
That word — grounded — feels like the surprising theme of this new Jesus Culture era. It’s not about reinventing the sound. It’s about re-rooting the mission.
At 25 years old, Jesus Culture could have leaned on nostalgia. Instead, they’re choosing something riskier: relevance. Not the buzzword kind, but the kind rooted in actual people, real discipleship and a fierce commitment to authenticity.
“We’re not just trying to make something that sounds good,” Welch said. “We’re trying to be faithful to what God is doing right now.”
And what God is doing, apparently, isn’t a global worship tour. It’s a Tuesday night in a borrowed gym. A song that wasn’t written for the charts. A leader who’s more interested in asking how your heart is than handing you a setlist.
Maybe the future of worship isn’t louder. Maybe it’s just closer. Closer to the ground. Closer to people. Closer to Jesus.
