In her 25 years in the Christian music industry, Holly Zabka, president of Provident — a Sony subsidiary dedicated to Christian music — has never encountered a moment of such prominence for the genre. "This is the most exciting time to be in Christian music," she says. "I don't think we've ever been in this season of opportunity."
Once largely confined to insular networks like Christian radio, contemporary Christian music (CCM) is now breaking into mainstream popularity. Last year, CCM had its biggest streams on Spotify, where the genre experienced a 60% growth rate globally over a five-year period as artists reached beyond the confines of the Christian market to occupy sparsely-held mainstream space. And now, for the first time in 11 years, two CCM songs — Forrest Frank's "Your Way's Better" and Provident's own Brandon Lake's "Hard Fought Hallelujah" featuring Jelly Roll — have been charting simultaneously for weeks on the Billboard Hot 100. "This moment feels special because two Christian artists are each having a crossover mainstream moment at the same time," says Xander Zellner, a senior music data analyst at Billboard.
Aside from some rap-Christian crossover songs (like Kanye West's more religious discography, for example) and holiday tracks, fewer than a dozen CCM songs have crossed over from the Hot Christian Songs chart to the Billboard Hot 100 since 2013. That's when Billboard revised its methodology for the Christian Songs chart to incorporate multi-metric data, including streams and digital sales. This also marks only the second time since 2013 that two CCM songs have concurrently reached the Billboard Hot 100. The first instance was in 2014 with Carrie Underwood's "Something in the Water" and Craig Wayne Boyd's rendition of "The Old Rugged Cross." Unlike those tracks, which quickly fell off the charts, Lake's and Frank's hits have maintained their presence on the charts for months. While CCM artists have occasionally achieved mainstream crossover in recent years, such successes have been in isolation. Lauren Daigle, a prominent figure in CCM, made waves in 2018 with her ballad "You Say," which reached No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and topped both the Christian and Adult Contemporary charts. But her breakthrough, while significant, was a singular moment rather than part of a broader trend.
"Lake and Frank's recent successes are impressive and potentially signal a shift, especially considering how they've utilized social platforms and engaged younger audiences," says Zellner.
Jaime Marconette, VP of Music Insights at Luminate, an entertainment data and analytics company, first noted the rise of CCM around this time last year. His immediate observation was that "Christian music was following a similar storyline to country": the older audience with more traditional purchasing habits typically associated with the genre was giving way to a younger base who were driven by streaming platforms and social media engagement, and consequently propelling the genre to new levels of popularity. In its 2024 mid-year report, Luminate revealed that CCM had experienced the fourth largest amount of growth compared to all other genres, following country music.
This year, Marconette says CCM has overtaken world music, a genre that encompasses K-pop and Afrobeats. "We've never seen that before," he says. That growth was mostly accounted for by a new generation of younger listeners. According to Marconette, only 39% of CCM's listenership in 2021 was made up of millennials or younger. Today, that number has risen up to 45%, with signs of growth.
The dynamic shift of CCM's customer base has necessitated a change in marketing strategies, with less priority on radio and physical products and more emphasis on streaming and social media. "What's different is that we're no longer waiting for listeners to come to us, we're going to them," says Zabka.
Those in the CCM space are now taking a more streaming-friendly approach, releasing singles at a far greater speed than they would have in the past and allowing consumer data to dictate their release strategies at every turn, rather than relying on a traditional top-down approach. Now that they have to compete with every other genre on streaming platforms, CCM songs tend to be of ostensibly better quality, too.
"It used to be that Christian music felt like a lesser version of whatever was popular. Like, Harry Styles is popular, so let's do the Christian version of Harry Styles," says Zabka. Lake, whose songs aren't mere commercial imitations but include relatively experimental compositional choices, like abrupt key changes and whispered middle eights, "can now simply exist on the same level as all the other artists in the world," she says.
Zabka says she and her team talk daily about how they feel "a responsibility to grow the genre," that is both commercial and spiritually motivated. "A lot of times that means pushing the boundaries, being as innovative as we possibly can, while making sure that we're making music that still feels authentic to our genre, but not being scared to take our music into other spaces."
She notes that while Christian music was once confined to its own self-contained circles, it is now naturally integrating into mainstream channels. Explicitly liturgical songs can and do appear in the seemingly randomized mix of streams and scrolls, whether on Instagram Reels or Spotify's New Music Friday playlist. "Hopefully when people are going through their scroll, they'll find a song that connects to them. That's what our music does," says Zabka.
Christian music, often performed in congregational settings with lyrics projected onto screens to inspire singalongs, lends itself to the participatory nature of today's social media-led marketing. The musicians currently achieving the greatest success position themselves as co-creators with their audience, much like a pastor communing with their congregation. This is precisely how Lake and Frank operate.
Lake's "Hard Fought Hallelujah" naturally aligns with the segmented, bite-sized songs that apps like TikTok and Reels tend to prioritize. In the summer of 2024, when he began debuting the song during his arena tour, he performed only the first verse and chorus, encouraging fans to capture and upload the fragmented song. Lake is also highly conversant and engaged with his social platforms, posting to his 2.8 million followers on Instagram almost daily.
The success of Frank's music can also be attributed largely to user-generated content. His song "Your Way's Better" gained traction on the charts through a viral dance trend initiated by a couple, Bridgette Nicole and David Myers, two Christian TikTok influencers who frequently set CCM to their choreographed dances.
"The industry tends to adapt things that are working well in the mainstream for its own evangelical purposes," says Josh Langhoff, a writer and church musician. Emerging communication technologies like TikTok have opened new pathways for connection among Christians, offering new ways to evangelize en masse.
Alongside Nicole and Myers, Joe Navarro, who posts content as @JoeChristianGuy on TikTok, draws in millions of views. Navarro says labels and marketing directors frequently reach out to him as part of their campaign strategies.
He also posts regularly on Instagram Reels, where Zabka says Christian music is increasingly prevalent. Last year, one of Provident's artists, Seph Schlueter, went viral on Reels in Brazil, a heavily faith-based country and the second-largest area of growth for CCM globally. Provident enlisted Sony's resources to boost the American musician's success in the U.S. market. Within weeks, his song "Counting My Blessings" made Reels' Trending Charts and reached No. 1 on the Christian Airplay chart.
Other CCM artists are also focusing on their global audiences. According to Chartmetric, 16.3% of Frank's listenership is in Brazil, prompting him to occasionally translate and repost content in Portuguese to engage that market. Similarly, Lake frequently posts in Spanish.
CCM's overall growth globally among young people may be because of its unique messaging. Zabka says she believes this demographic is drawn to CCM because "so many of them struggle with depression, and what they are finding in Christian music is another way to deal with things that [give] them greater meaning in what they're walking through." Recently, with songs like Lake's "Daddy's DNA" and Daigle's 'Thank God I Do", CCM has been sharpening its focus on the kinds of depression anthems popularized by artists like Teddy Swims and Jelly Roll, pairing them with stories of salvation and redemption, and wrapping the songs with a call-to-action and solution.
"Most songs make you depressed and get you in your feels," Navarro says. "Christian music does the opposite."
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