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A new Southern Baptist Convention survey finds nearly 1,900 churches without a primary music ministry leader and projects a 20,000-leader shortfall by 2040. Here's what the data shows about the shift from "music minister" to "worship leader," the thinning training pipeline, and what any church can do about it.

A worship leader sits alone in an empty sanctuary — a quiet picture of the isolation many describe. Worship Leader Research describes its 2025 Worship Leader Survey as the largest study of its kind ever conducted in North America: 3,384 eligible responses after quality filtering, gathered across denominations, traditions, and regions, with partial funding from the Louisville Institute and five named researchers (Shannan Baker, Elias Dummer, Marc Jolicoeur, Adam Perez, and Mik