By Gavin Boyle
Founded in 2012, Circuit Riders Music is a worship collective that has become popular with the younger generations over the past decade as it delivers songs that speak to the heart of Jesus, something Gen Z longs for.
“There’s this drive in Gen Z,” Circuit Riders Music leader Lindy Cofer told Relevant. “They’re not half-in. They’re not here for performance. They’re hungry for the truth of who Jesus really is, and they want it straight.”
Circuit Riders Music worked to deliver music that meets this hunger through their album I’ve Been Meaning to Say This, the collective’s first full-length album to feature the group’s entire community.
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“We’ve all walked through the fire,” Cofer said, explaining the heart behind the album. “These songs were written on the other side of grief, loss, deep surrender. They’re not cute. They’re real.”
Many of these songs rip verses straight from the Bible, providing Gen Z with the words they need to cry out to God — as Christians have been doing for generations.
Music proves to be a major way for Gen Z to connect with their faith, as multiple artists have found success in recent years through social media. Musicians like Forrest Frank and Josiah Queen deliver their audiences a brand that focuses on authenticity over everything else.
“I never want my relationship to Jesus to be transactional. Like, hey, let me call God. I’m going to come to you and read this so that I can write a song about this so that people will click on it on social media. Because, that’s not how relationships work…” Queen previously told Pastor Jonathan Pokluda. “And so, you know, it’s like realizing that that’s honestly the hardest thing for me because it’s like, I write songs about the Bible. So, it’s like reading my Bible and going to the Lord, that being my relationship and then everything else coming second.”
In fact, Queen only found success when he shifted his focus from chasing success to creating worship experiences that simply come from his heart and speak to the Lord directly.
“I was writing songs that I thought would work for the radio — what I thought labels wanted,” Queen told Relevant last June. “And they weren’t really clicking. So finally I said, ‘Forget it. I’m just gonna make something I like.’ That’s where it started. This was always the dream. I used to pray that I’d just write worship music for a living. That’s all I ever wanted.”
It has been amazing to see how Gen Z has turned to the Lord in recent years and searched for His heart, rather than chasing Him for their own gain. Artists that follow this same path are finding success with the generation as they deliver songs that cry out to the Lord.
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