Behind the social media highlight reel was a deeper story: a Christian worship leader walking into the center of country music not to conquer it, but to serve it. Brandon Lake didn’t gather Lainey Wilson, HARDY, Thomas Rhett, Dan + Shay, Bailey Zimmerman and others for a branding stunt. He invited them into something closer to church—where confession, creativity, and calling could breathe in the same room.

Writers circled pianos, traded verses, and prayed over melodies that might one day echo across arenas and radio stations. Some came as skeptics, others as quiet believers, all as storytellers. What they left with was more than demos; it was a sense that the line between “Christian” and “country” might not be a wall, but a doorway. Whatever songs emerge, the retreat already did its deepest work—reminding a genre of the God it never really left.