How a Song Written in Lagos Ended Up in Every Church on Earth

A deep dive into Sinach's Way Maker — the most covered worship song of the decade.

There's a moment most gospel music fans remember — the first time they truly heard Way Maker. Not just listened. Heard.

For some people it was in a church service somewhere in Lagos or Abuja, maybe 2016 or 2017, when the song was still mostly a Loveworld thing. For others it was during the lockdown, scrolling through a phone at 2am, when the world had gone genuinely quiet and terrifying, and somebody's livestream worship session had this song playing and it just... landed.

That's the thing about Way Maker. It didn't arrive the way most big worship songs arrive — with a label push, radio blitz, and conference rollout. Rather than rising to popularity through sponsored advertisements, Way Maker emerged in the most grassroots way a song can these days: a YouTube video. And from that one video, something unusual happened that the gospel music world is still trying to fully explain.

Who Is Sinach, Actually?

Before we talk about the song, we should talk about the woman — because her story is part of why the song resonates the way it does.

Sinach has written over 1,000 songs in her entire discography, with her first solo album 'Chapter One' released in 2008. She's a senior worship leader at Christ Embassy (Loveworld) in Lagos, and for years she was enormously well-known within African Pentecostal circles while remaining almost invisible to the Western Christian music industry. That invisibility wasn't for lack of talent. It was just how the industry worked — or didn't work — across borders.

What's interesting is that Sinach's ministry was meaningful long before the white North American church sang her songs. Her music is powerful with or without that affirmation. She wasn't waiting for American validation. She was just writing songs. And one of them happened to be Way Maker.

The Song Itself

Way Maker was released as a single on 30 December 2015. Sinach has shared in interviews that she wrote it during a personal season of faith — a moment where she had to choose to believe in God's promises before she could see any evidence of them moving. The song came out of that place. Not out of a studio formula. Out of actual wrestling with God.

That origin matters because you can feel it in the lyrics. There's nothing clever or polished about them. 'You are here, moving in our midst / I worship you, I worship you.' Simple, direct, almost childlike. But the kind of simple that takes honesty to write, not laziness.

The song started gaining traction in Nigerian churches first, then gradually across Africa. By 2018 it had started showing up in church worship sets internationally. And then 2019 happened.

Leeland Changed Everything

Way Maker grew more popular in 2019 when the band Leeland released a version, and that cover introduced the song to a much wider American evangelical audience. Leeland's version had a different texture — more polished production, the kind of sound that fits comfortably on Christian radio — and it worked. Leeland's version received more than 67 million streams, with the video getting over 27 million views.

But even that wasn't the real tipping point.

March 2020

When COVID-19 shut the world down in early 2020, something strange happened in churches. Pastors scrambled for songs that could hold a congregation together over a screen. Worship leaders needed something that felt true to the moment — not triumphalist, not shallow, but honest about uncertainty while still pointing to God.

Way Maker was the answer almost everywhere at once.

Way Maker's top Sunday was March 22, 2020, with nearly 7% of all worship presentations including the song — and it went on to become the top worship song of the entire year, based on Faithlife's report of more than 2.2 million uses of its Proclaim software.

Numerous hospitals played the song from their rooftops to their parking lots, taking a few moments to pray for those impacted by the virus and to honour healthcare workers on the front lines.

Think about that image for a second. A song written in Lagos, by a Nigerian woman in her quiet time with God, blasting from hospital rooftops in America during a pandemic. That's not a music industry story. That's something else entirely.

The song was also sung by demonstrators marching for racial justice in US cities, calling out to God as 'way maker, miracle worker, promise keeper, light in the darkness.' The same lyrics that started in a Lagos prayer session ended up on the streets of Minneapolis. That kind of reach doesn't happen by accident, and it doesn't happen by marketing.

The Cover Flood

Michael W. Smith released his version in February 2020, just as the pandemic was beginning, and it caught fire. His version held the number one spot on Billboard's Christian Airplay chart for 12 weeks in a row — and Sinach became the first female to hold that songwriter spot, ever.

After Smith's version, the covers kept coming. More than 60 recording artists covered the song, including Leeland, Michael W. Smith, Mandisa, Bethel, Passion featuring Kristian Stanfill, Kari Jobe and Cody Carnes, and eventually Revere featuring Darlene Zschech and William McDowell.

Churches translated it into over 60 languages. Sinach herself wrote that Way Maker had become 'a theme song sung in many languages to bring hope and faith to many in distress.'

And through all of it, Sinach's response was remarkably calm. When fans worried that Michael W. Smith would overshadow her authorship, she told CNN Africa that she was thrilled when artists could introduce her work to their audiences: 'The joy of a writer is that when you write a song, the whole world will sing it, because the song is really not about you.'

That's not something you say for PR. That's someone who actually means it.

The Credit Question

There is one uncomfortable corner of this story that deserves a mention.

While white evangelicals were just adopting the song in 2020, it had been loved by black churches for several years. By removing Sinach's name and story from the song, some congregations were claiming it as their own without crediting the vibrant context it came from.

This wasn't a new phenomenon — it's a pattern as old as popular music itself. But it stings a little differently when it happens in the church, a place that should know better. The good news is that enough voices pushed back loudly enough that many congregations became more deliberate about attribution. When you sing Way Maker now, most worship leaders know exactly who wrote it.

And they should. Because the story behind the song is part of the song.

What Made It Work

If you step back and ask the honest question — why this song, why not any of the hundreds of other worship songs released the same year — a few things stand out.

The lyrics don't promise that your situation will change. They declare that God is present whether things change or not. 'Even when I don't see it, You're working.' That line is doing heavy theological lifting in very plain language, and it lands because it's true to how faith actually works. Most people aren't living in miracles. They're living in the waiting. Way Maker speaks to the waiting.

The melody is also deceptively simple. Anyone can sing it. You don't need to be a trained vocalist, you don't need to know the bridge perfectly, you don't need a band. You can sing it alone in a car at night and it still works. That accessibility is not an accident — it's what makes a song travel.

And maybe most importantly: Sinach wasn't writing for a global market. She was writing for her congregation, from her own experience. And somehow, that specificity is exactly what made it universal.

Ten Years On

Way Maker's official music video has reached over 210 million views on YouTube. The song hit the top spot in the CCLI Top 100 in June 2020 and has been covered by more than 60 well-known Christian recording artists. It won Song of the Year at the 51st Annual GMA Dove Awards. Sinach became the first African artist to top the Billboard Christian Songwriters chart.

But the number that means the most isn't on any chart. It's the one you can't count — the number of people who heard that song at exactly the right moment. In a hospital room. On a lockdown afternoon. At a funeral. During a season that felt like it had no exit.

Way Maker found them.

That's what good gospel music does. It doesn't just entertain — it locates people in the dark and reminds them they're not alone. Sinach, in a Loveworld rehearsal room in Lagos sometime before 2015, wrote something that would do exactly that for millions of people she will never meet.

Not a bad legacy for a quiet moment with God.

What's your earliest memory of Way Maker? Drop it in the comments — I'd genuinely love to know.