John Van Deusen Making a 36-Song Worship Album Matters Because the Algorithm Is Training Artists to Think Smaller Than Art

Thirty-six songs.

In 2026.

That almost sounds rebellious.

John Van Deusen’s enormous two-part worship project, As Long As I Am In The Tent Of This Body I Will Make A Joyful Noise, deliberately ignores nearly every piece of modern streaming advice. CCM reported that Van Deusen wanted to make something closer in spirit to an ambitious double-album experience than a sequence of algorithm-friendly singles. Part two arrived Aug. 28. (CCM Magazine)

That matters because streaming platforms have quietly changed how artists imagine art.

Songs get shorter.

Albums become collections of singles.

Release schedules stretch into endless droplets designed to keep artists visible.

The question changes from:

“What work am I trying to make?”

to:

“What will the platform reward?”

That is not always the same question.

Van Deusen is essentially refusing the premise.

He wants the listener to spend time.

Maybe even get tired.

Maybe leave.

Maybe return months later.

That is nearly offensive to modern content strategy.

And that is why it is interesting.

Christian music should be particularly careful about algorithmic pressure.

Worship is supposed to resist hurry.

The spiritual practices Christianity inherited—prayer, contemplation, Scripture, Sabbath—are almost all hostile to the attention economy.

Yet Christian music increasingly lives inside platforms engineered to reward constant novelty.

That tension should bother us.

If worship artists begin composing primarily around retention metrics, skip rates and playlist compatibility, eventually the platform itself becomes a kind of invisible co-writer.

It does not tell you what to believe.

It tells you how long you are allowed to say it.

Van Deusen’s work offers another model.

Make the thing as large as the idea requires.

Trust the audience to meet it.

That may mean fewer casual listeners.

It may create deeper listeners.

And those are not equivalent outcomes.

CCM notes that his fans buy multi-vinyl editions and engage with albums front to back rather than simply encountering isolated tracks through recommendation engines. (CCM Magazine)

That sounds almost quaint.

It may also be the future of meaningful art.

As AI and algorithmic creation make disposable content nearly infinite, deliberate human work may become more valuable precisely because it asks something from the audience.

Attention.

Patience.

Return.