Every now and again a new idea begins to take shape that has the potential to change the landscape of Christian Music. Homegrown Worship is a platform dedicated to unearthing and sharing brand new worship songs each and every week.
Founded by the self-titled Chief Enthusiast Andy Baker, Homegrown Worship is evidence of the depth, width, and breadth to the expressions of worship we’ve been hearing over the past year. Andy is no stranger to the Christain music world having previously managed Philippa Hanna for over a decade and pioneered the fan-funding website Rocket Fuel. The vision for this fresh venture appears to be to raise up an army of songwriters and Christian artists to advance the Kingdom in their mission field rather than looking for the next Christian celebrity to sell concert tickets.
Homegrown Worship quite literally grew out of a morning devotional routine that Andy started in January 2018. Each morning, a routine of journaling, scribbling down a gratitude list and scripture reading led to a time of responding with a new song. After several months of doing this, he had dozens of finished new songs and began a song-sharing marathon that spanned an entire year of weekly releases from June 2018 until May 2019. Few artists will write 52 new songs in a year, let alone record this many and share them in rapid-fire succession. The pattern of studio recordings, lyric videos and the stories behind the songs in a blog format provided a framework for Homegrown Worship to test out before inviting other writers and artists to get involved.
Having recruited several songwriters, artists and worship leaders to join in with the song-sharing, the first homegrown releases started hitting our inboxes in January of this year. It’s encouraging to see a real mix of sounds, expressions, and ethnicities joining together in one community. In order for Christian music to reach far and wide, we need to encourage more people to develop, record and share songs. Leaving music ministry solely in the hands of the established professionals might be ok for today but won’t help the church of tomorrow. Homegrown Worship seems to be about utilizing the body rather than trying to push the most fashionable or sellable product. The quality of releases is consistently strong with many standout acts however they are committed to helping new artists reach their mission-field; a challenge that few other organisations have done effectively.
At last count, I’ve been advised there are forty-eight acts involved with Homegrown Worship with around half of them having shared songs already. With writers in England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, The Netherlands, South Africa, and the USA there is global infrastructure developing. Considering the creative-community has only been publicly sharing music from new artists for less than a year, this is a remarkable achievement. The team at Resound Media is going from strength to strength with music producers, videographers and administrators in Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa.
There have been many new initiatives aimed at helping new expressions of worship music flourish but this one seems to be one of substance and sustainability. Rather than signing artists on exclusive 360-degree contracts, Homegrown Worship splits the costs of develop, recording and sharing the songs with the act. The brochures published on their website gives any prospective artist a clear idea of what to expect and what not to expect in a bid to avoid putting stars in anyone’s eye. However, in a digital climate where it can be difficult to get any attention for new content, Homegrown Worship has helped many emerging acts to get their music on official Spotify playlists as well as traditional media such as BBC Radio, UCB, Premier as well as GOD TV and TBN. We have also had many of these releases featured in the UK Christian Chart here at StepFWD.
With recently live recording events having taken place in, Bristol, South Wales, and Gloucestershire, we can expect to see these new songs on YouTube, social media and Christian TV stations throughout 2020 and beyond. The first collection from Andy, Loulita Gill and Nick Law (the head of A&R at Homegrown) entitled “Waking Up The Parishioners” demonstrates a real and raw passion for Jesus. Filmed and recorded at Trinity Cheltenham (Andy’s home-church) it brings together ten of the strongest compositions from the 52-week song-sharing marathon.
This looks like the start of a global grassroots worship revolution and we pray that it would inspire new waves of worship.
To find out more about Homegrown Worship, visit homegrownworship.com or connect via @hgwsongs
