There was no shortage of worship movements when Jeremiah Carlson received a vision to pioneer Cultivation Generation, seven years ago. Across the country, young adults were gathering for weekend conferences, featuring renowned speakers and floor-thumping worship sessions. Surely, many of these events sparked revival, but Carlson wondered how long after everyone went home before the effect wore off and life for these attendees returned to business as usual.
“We wanted to design a conference that would funnel back into the local church, for young people to get a vision of more than just hyping them up, but sustaining a revival by giving them the tools to lead and disciple others,” Carlson says. “Music is essential to capturing and influencing culture, so making worship a focus of the conference made a lot of sense.”
Partnering with Northwest Vineyard worship leaders Stephen Lampert, Anabeth Morgan, David Linhart and Jesse Meyer, Carlson – along with his band The Neverclaim – released a collection of songs captured from 2011’s Cultivation Generation conference at Boise Vineyard Church, titled My Foundation.
“If there’s any theme to this record, it’s a call to be rooted in God’s love as our foundation, and nothing else,” says Lampert, a long-time worship leader at Coast Vineyard Christian Fellowship in Lincoln City, Oregon. “People, trends, popularity will all eventually fade away. The focus throughout these songs is to remember that only one thing will always stand when our worlds fall.”
The live album follows up last year’s critically acclaimed, self-titled release, recorded at a CG conference in Vancouver. A somewhat-unexpectedly big response to the first project spawned enthusiasm to make not only a follow-up – but the aspiration to take a more musically diverse approach in the process.
“One of the great mistakes a church can make is losing its identity while trying to mimic what’s popular,” Carlson says. “There are lots of worship movements doing great things. We’ve taken some ambitious, creative paths that have certainly differentiated ourselves from others not so much on purpose, but because we’re simply being who we are. As a result, Cultivation Generation has become a fresh shot in the arm for youth-oriented worship.”
Stylistically, the songs featured on My Foundation deviate from the British pop-rock formula ubiquitous in most modern worship circles and instead drift into a mixture of other flavors. The lead track showcases the Southern folk-rock cry of The Neverclaim’s “My Soul Longs” meandering from there through an eclectic mix of spirit-filled tunes, including Linhart’s R&B/funk-inspired remake of the slave hymn “God Don’t Never Change”, and Lambert’s country-tinged “Let It Shine.”
The album’s title track “My Foundation” – and arguably one of the most highly responded to songs on the record – was written by Morgan, Linhart and James Moscardini somewhat on accident, during a CG songwriter retreat, prior to the 2011 conference.
“We’d just taken a break from a writing session, and James was picking his guitar. I sort-of absentmindedly began humming this melody along to it. David and James both stopped what they were doing and asked, ‘What’s that?’ I didn’t think it was anything. But a minute later, the three of us created this chorus to a song that would later be a highlight of the conference.”
Interestingly, the nature of how “My Foundation” came into existence in that impromptu writing session reflects a bigger story of CG’s growth as a world-impacting effort. Not to mention, a timely opportunity for the Vineyard music movement.
“Cultivation Generation started as a four-day conference to help kids radically encounter God; music was just an element of to help them get there,” says Carlson. “The amazing response to the live records have out of leftfield for CG and Vineyard. We were looking for a bigger platform, which Vineyard – in search of a younger expression of worship – was able to provide. It was a win-win situation for all of us.”
Which all leads back to the theme interweaving the 12 songs comprising My Foundation: the only thing that is truly important in the end is growing the Church and bringing people to accept Christ as the ultimate salvation. Considering the Vineyard and Cultivation Generation movement’s shared, rich value of church planting, this relationship is poised to accomplish work far greater than album sales.
