The Hidden Money Behind Worship Tours ![rw-book-cover](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Wd3XNd9FGs0/maxresdefault.jpg) 🔗 **Source:** [The Hidden Money Behind Worship Tours](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wd3XNd9FGs0) [00:00:00] Let me ask you this. How did worship become an experience? Not only that, but who pays for it? The lights, the fog, the 40ft screens, the worship night that [00:00:10] is also, if you look really close, a sophisticated piece of marketing. I'm about to show you three unique stories that all lead to this world that we are [00:00:22] still in. A band out of an English town, a church in Sydney, and a movement born in a college town in Texas. How do we take such a drastic shift towards what [00:00:32] we know as worship from CCM? And who's paying for those massive tours? Well, it's probably not who you think it is. >> I've spoken for several organizations in [00:00:42] the past. I was paid anywhere from $5 to $3,000. And here's the truth. >> So, I got another person that reached out to me, but they are like an [00:00:52] influencer. So, when you see an influencer promote helping kids in need, they aren't really doing that out of the kindness of their heart. >> Before I finish the edit, I had another [00:01:03] very prominent influencer reach out to me. >> Jonathan, I'll send you these screenshots, but we did a brand deal with Compassion. Okay, before we open door number one, [00:01:17] remember CCLI from episode 5, the business that's licensing out all of the worship songs? That giant national collection plate where every church in America throws its [music] annual fee. [00:01:28] It gets split basically by those who get sung in the most big rooms. So, a handful of mega hits vacuum up the whole plate [music] and then there are [00:01:38] thousands of smaller songs that get maybe nothing. And the songs on the top of the chart get copied to write the next round of them. And around and [00:01:46] around we go. But now we know from episode 6 that every major Christian label in America is now living inside [music] of Universal, Warner or Sony. Now put those things together. If you're [00:01:58] a label owned by a giant corporation and you own a catalog of worship songs, what is the single most valuable thing to you? A room of people singing along. a [00:02:09] room that's big enough and loyal enough. And it means that when that song gets played inside it, that song is basically guaranteed to [music] spread and get [00:02:19] sung in 10,000 other locations. It's going to be a success [music] due to basically just the numbers spreading like some sort of weird rash or something. I don't know why I said [00:02:31] that. Anyway, a regular label by itself can't manufacture that. But a church maybe can be that. A conference can be that. So, watch what happens over the [00:02:43] next 20 years as rooms and the labels slowly discover that they actually need each other in order to survive this weird shift that's happening. Let's time travel back. Little Hampton, [00:02:56] England, a little seaside town that most Americans have never heard of. It's the early 1990s. There's a small church called Aaron Community Church and it runs a monthly event for young people or [00:03:10] teenagers and they call it Cutting Edge. The house band for that event is a handful of guys led by a recording engineer named Martin. And their whole [00:03:20] job at the start at least is just to lead worship for teenagers once a month. But something takes hold. The music they're making doesn't really sound like [00:03:30] the worship of that era. [music] >> Sounds like a band that these kids would actually be listening to the rest of the week. Kind of like what we saw with the [00:03:41] Jesus people in the 60s. And cutting edge grows. 70 at the start becomes hundreds. Then in the mid 1990s, Martin Smith is in a serious car accident and [00:03:54] he's lying in a hospital bed and he decides the thing he's been doing on the side is the thing that he's supposed to do with his life. He's supposed to lead [00:04:03] worship. So, they take the band full-time and they name it Delirious with a question mark. They become pretty much a pioneer in being a worship band, but also a rock band, a touring band [00:04:17] whose songs happen to be aimed at God. They didn't sign to one of those big Christian labels we spent like the whole last episode on. They built their own in [00:04:26] the UK. You see, there was a different scene in the UK at this time. It was way more independent still. And so, they start a label and they call it Furious [00:04:36] with a question mark records. and they start moving records by the tens of thousands out of their own operation. They played the mainstream rooms. They put on a show in Wembley Arena and they [00:04:48] did something a worship band was not really supposed to be able to do. They cracked the actual UK pop singles charts. We had seen this with, you know, [00:04:58] Amy Grant with a pop song, but a worship band hitting 20. Think about how wacky this was. a band from a church youth night competing suddenly on the same [00:05:09] chart as the pop acts that we talked about. And out of all of this came one song in particular. Martin Smith says that he wrote it in about 5 minutes. The [00:05:19] same chords all the way through in four words that you already know. I could sing of your [singing] love forever. >> That song started as a little chorus in [00:05:32] a room full of English teenagers around 1994. But it did not stay in that room. It traveled. It crossed over the ocean. It started getting sung in American [00:05:42] megaurches by people who had no idea really where it came from. It became one of the most sung worship [music] songs on the entire planet. Now, here's what [00:05:52] Delirious proved for us. Worship could be an event of sorts, a ticket sale, possibly a room full of people who came not just to sing, but to experience [00:06:03] something new and emotional. But that discovery came with a bill, obviously, [music] because the second worship becomes a tour or a rock show, it costs like a tour or a rock show. A rock band [00:06:17] has a crew. It has trucks, lights, a sound rig. They have to get hotels for the crew and hotels for the band. And [music] a tour has to sell enough [00:06:26] tickets and enough merch to feed itself week after week. A touring band is almost nothing but overhead costs when it comes to money. [music] Delirious carried that with them to all [00:06:39] of these shows. But the door they opened never really closed [music] because while they were proving that worship could fill an arena in England, a church on the other side of [music] the world [00:06:50] was about to prove something a little more intense, you could kind of own the arena [music] itself and call it church. So, Balkam Hills, I think I'm saying [00:07:03] that right, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, in 1983. There's this couple named Brian and Bobby Houston, and they start a church. They call it Hills Christian Life [00:07:15] Center, and it's part of the Assemblies of God movement in Australia at the time. And like a lot of churches in that era, it grows on the backs of young [00:07:22] people who were showing up for the music. Kind of like again what we saw with Calvary Chapel back in the 60s. By 1993, the church has a worship leader [00:07:33] named Darling Sheek, and she writes a song during a really hard financial season of her own life. A big soaring anthem of a song that you know, don't [00:07:44] don't you act like you don't know this song. You were probably expecting shout to the Lord, but I cannot sing that or show it because I [music] had that clip [00:07:55] originally in here and I uploaded the video to YouTube and I always upload it about a week ahead of time to see what I'm dealing [music] with. And I usually [00:08:03] get videos claimed by companies, right? Like they'll [music] try to claim the video for using like 3 seconds of a song. It's the auto claiming system [00:08:13] [music] we talked about. I always put in a dispute. I have never lost a dispute due to fair use. Fair use law means that [music] you can use something for [00:08:24] commentary or education or criticism or news reporting [music] purposes. My channel falls under that and I've never lost a dispute. But last night when I saw the claims, one of [00:08:36] them was shout to the Lord by Hillsong, owned [music] by Hillsong, and I put in a dispute citing US copyright section 107 and uh they denied it within a few [00:08:48] hours. It's the fastest I've ever seen. I mean, [music] so fast. It actually blew my mind. Not only did they deny it, but they escalated it to where I would [00:09:01] need to do an appeal. And if [music] I lose an appeal, it's a possibility that I get a copyright strike, which would uh I only get three of them until my [00:09:10] channel gets taken down. So, I thought, well, I'm feeling petty, so how about I delete the song instead of fighting this further, and we just talk about it in [00:09:19] the video. [music] Because to me, this lines up with what I say later on about how Hillong seems to really care about how they make [music] money. And I, [00:09:30] knowing this now, wish I had gone a little harder into that on uh what we're going to see later on. So, just know that things are never as they seem. And [00:09:42] uh Hillsong put up the quickest fight to take songs and make money that I've seen on this channel. It comes out on a live album in 1994 and [00:09:56] it doesn't just do well, it becomes one of the most defining worship songs on earth. And years later, it's so big that there's even versions performed on like [00:10:05] American Idol and it charted on the actual Billboard Hot 100 on just downloads. One song from one church sung in thousands upon thousands of other churches. Now, remember the CCLI [00:10:19] counting setup that we did like in episode 5 and how I told you that a song becomes an annuity for whoever owns it at this point. So, here's the question. [00:10:29] Who owns this song? That's right. Hillsong didn't just write the song. Hillsong didn't just publish the song. Hillsong recorded the song and Hillsong owned the song. And so Hillong [00:10:42] had somewhere to debut that song, its own building, its own conference, tens of thousands of its own [music] people, which means that the song already had backing and it already would count for [00:10:54] more in CCLI. More on that later. So this is obviously a very unique situation. And a normal label has a problem. It signs a songwriter and kind [00:11:04] of bets on a song, throws money and professionals at it, and hopes they pay enough and that they woo enough people in the industry that the song catches [00:11:13] on. And it has to convince worship pastors eventually to do them. Hillong [music] removed the gamble because Hillong is the church and the publisher and the record label and the stage. It can take [00:11:27] a brand new song, put it in front of 30,000 people at its own conference or gathering, record that moment, put it on an album, and ship it out to worship [00:11:37] leaders around the world with maybe a video of a stadium singing it. That song has already been reported in a bunch of big rooms that Hill Song has. And a [00:11:47] worship pastor, let's say in Ohio, watches that video and thinks, "Wow, look how much people love this song. They love it so much. My people will love this song too, I bet. So, he pulls [00:12:00] it up on CCLI and he puts the words on the screen and he reports it to the same counter. The song didn't have to earn its way up the charts. It was born at [00:12:11] the top before it ever got in front of thousands of people elsewhere. You can basically guarantee the win before the song is even released. You register the [00:12:20] song. You debut it in a stadium you control. And the same system that is supposed to measure what churches love instead measures what one enormous church with multiple locations decided [00:12:32] to hand them. Now, I want to make this clear. I don't want to go full tabloid right now, but I'd be lying to you [music] if I said [00:12:41] the growth of this thing known as Hillong was without its weirdness. And some of the questions around this started really early. As far back as 1999, Brian Houston published a book [00:12:52] with a title that raised a lot of eyebrows. You need more money. And a ton of critics in Australia started asking really hard questions about prosperity teaching, about whether the message [00:13:05] coming off that stage was God loves you or God wants you to be rich and God [music] wants to bless you. If you're close enough, he'll give you a bunch of [00:13:14] stuff. There were questions about money and accountability and those don't stop in this video. And in the mid 2000s, a Hillsong linked community arm called Hillsong Emerge got caught up in a [00:13:26] scandal over government grant money meant for indigenous Australians and the church was ultimately stripped of hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding. There were questions about a [00:13:37] residential program for young women called Mercy Ministries, which eventually shut down in Australia. I'm not trying to put those on the screen to just absolutely dunk on anybody. I'm [00:13:47] putting them there because they're early warning lights. This is sort of a pattern. So, if the same people who are overseeing some of these other things that go super weird are also overseeing [00:13:59] the music business side of it, we would be kind of dumb to think that they don't know what they're [music] doing. And this is again kind of a pattern that we [00:14:07] keep seeing in the series. It starts with good intentions [music] with real music and underneath it is an organization getting very good at scaling and money and branding because [00:14:18] Hillong proved the second big idea of this episode. Delirious proved that worship could be an event. Hillsong proved that the event could own itself. Church, label, stage and song all under [00:14:31] one roof. Which leaves one more door though. maybe the purest version of this whole idea. So, it's 1997 in Austin, Texas. There's a man named Louis Gigglio and his wife [00:14:45] Shelly, and they put on a conference for college students. They've been working with students for years already, and they build this new thing around a single verse. Isaiah 26:8, [00:14:58] your name and your renown are the desire of our hearts. They call this whole idea the 268 generation. And that first gathering draws around 2,000 students. So now we have from that passion, which [00:15:13] was a room built for a single thing to get a generation of college students into a single space and let them worship at full volume. And it worked. It worked [00:15:23] so well that it just kept growing. 2,000 students became 5,000. 5,000 became tens of thousands. And by 2013, Passion filled the Georgia Dome in Atlanta with 60,000 college students all worshiping, [00:15:40] an entire football stadium. So, Delirious filled an arena with a band. Hillsong filled its own stadium with a church. Passion filled a stadium with more of a movement. No single artist [00:15:52] required. The event itself was the star. So almost how Explo was in the 70s, Passion didn't just hold conferences. In the year 2000, they started a record [00:16:04] label and they called it Sixsteps Records. They partnered with a distribution with Sparrow, which remember is by then owned and living inside of EMI's corporate family. So [00:16:16] look at what the label suddenly had access to. tens of thousands of the exact right people, young, passionate, and about to go off to their college campuses all over the country and carry [00:16:28] whatever they sang back home with them. And the songwriters who came up through those rooms became the most sung songwriters in the world. Basically Matt Redmond worship [00:16:43] >> David Crowder [music] >> Chris Tomlin. [singing] [music] >> Let me sit on Chris Tomlin for one second because he's kind of the clearest proof of this. Time magazine once called [00:17:01] him possibly the most often sung artist on the planet. Not the bestselling, the most sung. And there is a difference. And by 2012, the licensing count estimated his songs were being performed [00:17:16] more than 3 million times a year in churches around the entire globe. The same number as the lawsuit that started CCLI. Anyway, every one of them was [00:17:26] counted and paid. How great is our God? Our God, Matt Redmond's here I am to worship and blessed be your name was written by Matt Redmond but sung by tree [00:17:37] 63 as we saw from the last [music] episode. So a similar mechanic to what we saw as Hill Song but a slightly different shape and [music] connection. [00:17:45] The room debutes the song. The room size validates the song. The song enters the count preloaded and ready to pay. Now I'm not trying to stand here and [music] [00:17:54] tell you that people are being like cynical or something on the stage. I don't believe that that's what they were doing. That's actually what makes this so important to understand. [music] [00:18:03] You don't really need a villain for the machine to run and do its thing. [music] It's just working. So now we've got our three roads. A band, a church, and a [00:18:14] movement. And all three of them prove the same thing [music] from three different directions. The room and the experience are the product. at least to the labels and those that are footing [00:18:24] the bills while needing to stay in business. So, that brings [music] us to kind of an uncomfortable question. Who's paying for the room? Let's talk about what it actually takes [00:18:36] to put on a 60,000 person stadium show and make them feel something. Obviously, it's not free. So, go back to Delirious for a second. I told you that they were [00:18:45] a worship band that becomes a rock band and it starts to cost like a rock band. Now multiply that by a stadium. The lights aren't church lights anymore. [00:18:54] They're a rig. You know, moving heads and lasers and a whole grid hung from a ceiling, probably by a union crew. And the screens aren't like a projector and [00:19:04] a bed sheet or transparency sheets. They're LED walls 40 feet across running live video. There's fog and there's haze and so the beams can come through something. And there's sound systems big [00:19:17] enough to fill a stadium without turning into sludge or something really gross and muddy. There are semitrs to haul all of this around from city to city. [00:19:27] There's a road crew that has to eat [music] and sleep in hotels every single night. It's hard to find like an honest public dollar figure for exactly what [00:19:37] one of these worship tours [music] costs. And and I'm not going to try to make up some number just to make you gasp or whatever, but this is arena [00:19:44] secular economics now. Same rig, same trucks, same overhead as a secular tour. The only thing that's different is the words on the screen. We're talking thousands upon thousands, if not [00:19:56] millions upon millions of dollars. The show has to generate enough money to justify [music] the existence of it or it doesn't roll into the next city. It's [00:20:06] a good reminder of what John from 363 said in the previous [music] episode. >> 15-inute slot, play as the best you can, and as soon as you finish playing, run [00:20:16] off the stage around the back of the auditorium to the merch table and be ready to sell your product. >> So, here it is. You've got a product, [00:20:24] aka this room. Ticket money helps. Merch money helps. The record helps less and less every single year as you sell less [music] copies. You need another revenue [00:20:36] stream, something that turns those raised hands into money without ever feeling like a sale. And in the 2000s, this industry found it. It found a way to stand on stage in the middle of a [00:20:48] worship set and raise millions of dollars a night while everyone in the building believed that they were doing something purely beautifully good. And so to tell you about this, I actually [00:20:59] have to lean on some brand new reporting because this part isn't ancient history. It's still being uncovered right now. Let me introduce you to an organization that you most certainly know. Compassion [00:21:12] is a child sponsorship charity and it started back in 1952. A minister named Everett Swanson was trying to help orphans coming out of the Korean War. It's headquartered in Colorado Springs [00:21:24] and the model is very simple. For around $4ome dollars a month, you can sponsor a specific child. You get their photo, you get their letters, and you are in a real [00:21:35] personal way changing one kid's life for the better. And I want to be clear, I mean, the real children are getting real help through this. But I am going to [00:21:45] show you how it got wired into the machine [music] and kind of doesn't make sense mentally to me. Because decades ago, back in the late 1970s, Compassion [00:21:56] figured out something pretty clever. The best place on earth to find [music] people in exactly the right emotional state to sponsor a child is a Christian concert. So Compassion and its main [00:22:07] competitor, World Vision, and others built this partnership model with the artists. [music] And if you've ever been to a Christian concert in the last, you know, 30 years, [00:22:17] you've probably seen it run, even if you didn't know what you were watching. Here's kind of how it looks. Somewhere in the middle of the set, usually right [00:22:24] after some sort of emotional song or between the opener and the headliner, the room is the softest and the music goes quiet. Maybe a video plays. A child [00:22:34] is crying or they're showing impact of the ministry. And sometimes a spokesperson will appear and give a very brief overview and talk about all of their kind of experience with this [00:22:46] ministry. Maybe they said something like, "There's cards on your seat or there's people in the lobby. go sponsor a child tonight. And on the way out in [00:22:54] the lobby or a merch tent, there's a table and you sign and you commit to giving every month until the kid turns 18. Now, here's where I have to hand it [00:23:02] over to the reporters because this is very fresh. July of 2026, a journalist named Jessica Morris published an investigation titled The $50 million business of child sponsorships in [00:23:16] Christian music. And so a lot of this information is coming from that reporting. Just so that you know, they brought about $50 million a [music] year. That's the estimated size of the [00:23:26] child sponsorship inside of the Christian music world. That number comes out of a lawsuit. And the man who estimated it is someone you already met in the last episode. It's West Camp [00:23:39] Bell, the name attached to the impop world that we talked about in the last episode. He owns Newsboys Incorporated and he's built businesses in this exact space. According to this report, that [00:23:51] $50 million figure surfaced on April 2026 out of a lawsuit tied [music] to a $50 million sale to a foreign holding company. According to that same report, [00:24:02] [music] the artists get paid too. When someone in that emotional room signs a card and sponsors a [music] child, the musician on that stage can receive somewhere [00:24:12] between 200 and $500 for that single new sponsorship. I mean, the article laid out the math. A band playing 60 plus shows a year and signing up sponsors [00:24:22] every night could theoretically pull in millions of dollars a year just from getting children sponsored. Not only that, but what about the spokesperson who goes out there and promotes it? Good [00:24:34] thing I had a former spokesperson reach out to me anonymously so I could just straight up ask. [music] >> I've spoken for several organizations in the past. I was paid anywhere from $5 to [00:24:46] $3,000. And here's the truth is that nobody no artist or band [music] wants their concert to be interrupted with a 15-minute commercial about poor kids. It's like the whole [music] model [00:24:59] is Trojan horsing missions into a fun night, but it's an interruption that nobody really wants. And also, [music] the language that people used was things like, "Man, how many kids did you sell [00:25:11] tonight? I've heard somebody [clears throat] else go, "Yeah, I've sold some kids before." Or, "Who's selling the kids tonight?" or "How did we do on selling kids tonight?" Like, [00:25:22] that's [music] the kind of language that is used. But at the same time, my experience speaking [music] is that the artist or the band doesn't want it. And [00:25:31] also, the audience doesn't want it. Like the artist doesn't want you there. They just want the financial benefit. So, I'm [music] not really sure who it's for, [00:25:40] apart from getting paid, I guess. Like, the band or artist [music] wants to have a great tour. and they know that an organization will financially enable them to be able to afford a tour bus or [00:25:53] a semi-truck [music] or more gear or whatever. It's just crazy. Child sponsorships had their heyday in the 70s and 80s and we're on the downturn [music] now. That's that's what I've heard. [00:26:06] We're on the other side of that and I don't think anybody wants to mention that. Gen X boomers, they all did it. They sponsored kids. But then [music] [00:26:16] those kids aged out and people just don't trust the same way. So they pay thousands of dollars for me [music] to go out and ask for people to give $40 to [00:26:25] a kid and spend thousands on the tour gear. >> Slight derailing here. So the word has started to spread that I am doing a part about the sponsorship economy behind all [00:26:38] of this. So, I got another person that reached out to me, but they are like an influencer [music] and they wanted to talk about their experience with this sort of sponsorship [00:26:47] economy and I think it applies really well because musicians also kind of have to be influencers now and [music] so these deals also apply to them. >> Recently, Compassion discovered [music] [00:26:59] that they are losing the concert side so they switched their efforts to influencers. The deal structure is that if you get a kid sponsored, you [clears throat] get $100. So when you [00:27:10] see an influencer promote helping kids in need, they aren't really doing that out of the kindness of [music] their heart. And then when they post that they [00:27:17] got 210 kids sponsored, that means they made $21,000. Also, they have a thing called compassion causes where you can raise money for a building or digging wells or [00:27:30] projects. the money you raised from that for compassion, they give you 20% of it back as your bonus. I've heard of influencers who've done compassion causes but never even receive followup [00:27:42] on how the cause went. I think the bottom line of a lot of compassion things is that most people will say kids are being helped. And for some odd [00:27:51] reason, that statement gives anybody and everybody free reign doing what they want to help kids. Should the influencers not be paid? I don't know. >> Before I finished the edit, I had [00:28:04] another [music] very prominent influencer reach out to me with their experience. >> Jonathan, I'll send you these screenshots, [music] but we did a brand deal with compassion. [00:28:20] >> [music] >> And what was interesting, it was like cool [music] for us cuz we're used to doing brand deals with companies and like okay, we can support an [music] [00:28:32] organization that helps people in a different country. And so the goal of this trip was they do like these trips where they bring influencers [music] to like the HQ I guess of the area so we [00:28:42] can see the work they were doing. We each sponsor two kids. So, they showed us everything. So, it's not like anything was very sketchy. So, that was [00:28:50] [music] good. But what was interesting looking back on it was they put us up [music] in like a super nice hotel, which I'm not like hating on cuz we went [00:28:59] to and it's not like it's like a beautiful place. And it's not like I would want them to put us up in a place that was unsafe. But it was kind of like [00:29:08] the dichotomy of going to like a thirdw world place where these people have nothing and then we're going back to a hotel and we stay on the nicest hotel on [00:29:16] the rooftop [music] and there's a rooftop pool and then there's another one that was right by the beach. But yeah, they did and they would pay a [00:29:24] bonus for every kid we got sponsored. Again, I think that this all feels really strange because you're just wondering how this money is being used and it shows just almost a flippant [00:29:36] spending that there's not much accountability. So, let's get back to the music side of this and keep that all in mind. At least some of the time, the person [00:29:47] making that appeal has a financial stake in how many cards get signed. That doesn't mean the child isn't helped. It doesn't mean the artist doesn't care. It [00:29:57] doesn't mean that the spokesperson doesn't care. But it means that the thing you thought was pure ministry was also a new revenue stream. It was monetized a second way on top of the [00:30:08] ticket, on top of the merch, on top of the song sales, on top of the CCLI licensing. Not only that, but these bands agree to it so that they can get [00:30:18] things like tour bus sponsors. [music] So every month some of your gift for that child actually goes towards funding tours and buses and not everybody in the [00:30:29] industry was comfortable with playing along with that. I mean the article quotes real artists saying so like Mike Donahe from 10th Avenue North and he said that they always felt very [00:30:40] uncomfortable [music] taking money from a nonprofit. Another artist named David Zach of a band called Remedy Drive was way blunter. And he called the model morally ambiguous at [00:30:50] best and said that 99% of audiences would be shocked to hear how this works. But there's another layer to this. Compassion, like a lot of these other [00:31:00] ministries, has gotten harder to see [music] into over the years. The article and other watchd dogss have documented a broader move among large evangelical organizations [music] to reclassify [00:31:12] themselves for just tax purposes in a way that lets them stop from filing the public financial forms that used to show you know how much your executive pay was [00:31:23] and [music] what your travel was and what the overhead was. Compassion's name is in that reporting. the money got bigger and at the same time that little [00:31:32] window that you could look through to see what was supposed to be [music] transparent got smaller and foggier. Again, that's kind of the pattern we're seeing here with the labels, [music] [00:31:41] too. Ministry becomes an asset. I'm bringing it all together now. Delirious proved worship could be a show. His song proved the show could own itself. Church, label, stage, and song. [00:31:56] All of that in one thing, feeding a CCLI count. And Passion proved that you didn't need a consistent band or a venue. You could attract some people [00:32:06] with a movement and a time. The room had to be paid for. So, the industry found yet another stream of money running straight through the middle of the set. [00:32:16] Again, none of this is unique to Christian music. I keep saying that episode after episode. The concert business monetizes your emotion. It happens. The charity business finds warm [00:32:28] rooms that are promising to get donors. The publishing businesses chase down songs that get sung the most. The only difference in our world is that all of [00:32:38] that was happening while 40,000 people have their hands in the air, eyes closed, and are certain that they're doing nothing but loving God and worshiping him. And maybe they were in a [00:32:49] lot of those moments. The worship is real. The child does get help. The song does move people and make them think about Jesus. And it was all wired into a [00:33:00] weird system at the same time. A system that I'm not really sure we were supposed to be a part of with worship. [music] But here's the thing about a [00:33:08] room you can only fit so many people into it. And right about the same time the industry perfected the room, the ground shifted underneath all of it [00:33:18] again. A new generation was on the way. and they had the internet and they had cameras. The song didn't need the room anymore. It didn't need a label or even [00:33:27] the church. It just needed a good thumbnail, an algorithm. And that algorithm needed to decide what those 40 million people would fall asleep to or wake up to or drive to work to. There's [00:33:38] a church in Reading, California, and there's a pastor in North Carolina with a camera crew. And there's a machine you already met back in episode 5 sitting [00:33:48] behind all of it again. So, what happens when your audience isn't just the people in the church room or the stadium, but the entire world?, The Hidden Money Behind Worship Tours, Jonathan Allen Wright, 01m25z5q7wdn6jz8nrqt38bpqs.