the vision

“Whoever has ears, let them hear.”Matthew 11:15

God gave us ears for listening, ears for hearing His good Word and ears for hearing His good music.

It’s because of this that we are dedicated to highlighting great Christian music of all genres. Hip-Hop, Rock, Indie, Pop, Electronica, Instrumental, R&B, Folk, Blues, Jazz, Bluegrass, Trap, and many more.

The vision for this channel is to create a space which encourages creativity, gives artists a platform to reach listeners and gives fans a place to find new music.

Since the start of this channel, it has always been about creating a fairer experience for artists - too often websites, radio stations and magazines will ‘sell’ reviews, plays and features to artists. For large, already established artists this isn’t a problem - they already have money from past albums, and from the label they’re signed to that have advertising budgets and the relational connections to get their songs seen and heard on big platforms. But what if an artist who has just recorded their first song in their bedroom has made a far more interesting piece of music? Why shouldn’t they be heard? After all Jesus said “the last will be first” and “whatever you did for the least of these you did for me”. Throughout the bible, and the whole redemptive narrative of salvation, Jesus brings a voice to the unheard and we believe that the music industry still has a way to go before it looks like His Kingdom.

This is why the first part of our ethos is that anyone who is making music worth sharing should be heard, and given the same chance as the people with money, support and connections. This is why we rarely use album artwork on our channel, because again artists may not have the budget to compete with the artwork of big artists and labels. We let the music speak. If you like the song, there’s links to all the artists’ social media, and places to download or buy their stuff. We do the hard work of finding music, deciding what will be received well on the channel and you as a listener can press play, and then seek after more of the artists that stand out to you.

As a music fan, finding music can be difficult and time consuming

That’s where we help. There’s no long review to read before reaching an actual link to the music (only to discover it’s not to your taste anyway). We don’t litter our website with news piece after news piece using clickbait techniques to bring in more traffic - website traffic doesn’t help us anyway as we don’t have adverts on here. We just feature good songs, plain and simply. Occasionally we do feature reviews, interviews but these are always intentional content that we believe our audience will enjoy and appreciate, and even then the content always runs alongside music featured on our channel. We also curate the music - there are loads of great websites out there for music but how often do you find yourself reading through 10 album reviews before you actually reach some music you enjoy? Hopefully with The Good Christian Music Blog, you’ve found an opinion and an ear for music that you can trust, and enjoy the music we share.

We are in this for the artists and the music fans.

This has never been about building our brand, our image our following or our business - all of those things are only good because they better help the artists do even better. We value the support of the artists we feature and care about the relationships we form with each artist - we never feature music without establishing that connection first.

Lastly, we thank you for your continued support as a follower of this platform, and look forward to bringing more and more musical goodness in the future.

Who runs the blog and how did it start?

Hi, I'm Stephen, I first created this website in 2012.

Originally, the blog was ran by myself in my spare time out of pure passion and this remained the case throughout my time at University and then full-time employment afterwards, but without the support and input of family, friends and followers none of this would be possible. The blog started simply to help people find music and never intended to be a business or a job - since the start the emphasis has always been about helping artists, not helping ourselves, gaining fame, or making money.

In 2017 our followers grew substantially on YouTube, and alongside the launch of our series Sinai Sessions and our Record Label, The Amen Collective, it naturally required more time to manage. Wanting to fully live out God's call and vision for this, and as music has always been my passion, I made the decision to leave employment to run all of this full time and give it the attention it needed. At the same time it became increasingly apparent that for us to have the best influence possible in the world of music that a company should be formed that both The Good Christian Music Blog and our label The Amen Collective would come under, which we named Amen Worldwide. This name is inspired by Isaiah 45 as quoted in Romans 14 "every knee will bow, every tongue will acknowledge God" - that one day all mankind (the world) will be in agreement (amen). 

Currently I am the sole employee of our company, though I rely on the help and work of a number of people for everything to work as it does - multiple people work on our Sinai Sessions, there's a brilliant company who help us release and pitch our music released through The Amen Collective, and every song that is featured on our YouTube channel is green-lighted by a couple people as well as myself.

Contrary to popular belief our YouTube channel doesn't earn lots of money - the majority of it goes directly to the artists featured (as it should!) - so to help make all this happen we still rely on the support of donations and monthly support through Patreon, both of which are linked to at the side of this page, and we are hugely thankful for every bit of support we get from our wonderful followers! Every day we commit to follow God in every decision we make and fully trust Him with our finances, our vision and all the work that we do, and we pray that this always remain true and so we love being supported through prayer. If you can support us in prayer, we simply ask that you would pray for God's will to be done in our lives and in our work :)

About Me

I’m now 27 years old and I live in Sheffield with my wife where we are part of a great church called The Well.  I work full time for Amen Worldwide; and my wife works full time at a local community charity as a Health Improvement Officer. We love our jobs, love our city and all that God is doing here and continue to follow Him in every aspect of our life.

My Background

I grew up attending church most Sundays but moved away from faith during my teenage years (though truthfully I never knew Jesus as a child or teenager), from then on it was a slow journey finding Jesus for myself. I didn't grow up listening to Christian music or know much about it besides popular contemporary worship played in church, but as Christ slowly called me back to Himself, He used the music of a few alternative worship and hiphop artists to help show me the gospel. Music has always been a big and important part of my life and it's a joy to share the stuff I find and love with so many people through this website and the YouTube channel.

Thanks,
Stephen Bradley