BGospel Insight Focus Phil Wickham and What An Awesome God at #1

BGospel Insight Focus: Phil Wickham – #1 Top 50​

Phil Wickham is an American worship leader, singer and songwriter from San Diego who has been a key figure in modern worship since the mid‑2000s. He built his career on a series of albums whose songs are widely used in churches and Christian events worldwide.​

Positioned at the crossroads of CCM and pop‑worship, his catalog mixes congregational melodies and strong theological themes. Tracks such as This Is Amazing Grace, Living Hope and Battle Belongs have become staples in setlists and streaming playlists, establishing him as a long‑term reference artist in the worship space.

Phil Wickham is an American worship artist based in San Diego, active on the contemporary Christian music scene for more than fifteen years, with songs that travel easily between church services and mainstream Christian playlists. His work blends accessible melodies with a strong congregational focus, making his songs highly adaptable for live worship contexts.​

With landmark titles including This Is Amazing Grace, Living Hope, Battle Belongs and House Of The Lord, he combines pop‑driven production with biblically rooted lyrics. This balance has secured him sustained performance across radio, streaming platforms and live church adoption, underpinning his current momentum around What An Awesome God.

Artist & track snapshot

CONTEXT: INSIGHT FOCUS

Across weeks 2026‑W02 to W06, the BGospel YouTube Top 50 highlights a worship‑driven landscape where Phil Wickham coexists with other CCM leaders frequently featured in Christian playlists and curated mixes. Within this competitive environment, What An Awesome God (Sunset Walk) emerges as a central driver of gospel video consumption on YouTube.​

The track’s trajectory shows a clearly ascending pattern, with an initial weekly peak at 882,547 views followed by another at 845,436 views a few weeks later, pointing to sustained demand rather than a one‑off spike. Over the same span, cumulative YouTube views rise from about 25.996M to 28.550M, confirming an ongoing build‑up of audience around the video.​

During the observed period the track hits #1 twice but has not yet accumulated 10 weeks in the Top 3, which is the internal BGospel threshold before a song can be labeled a HIT. Still, its repeated #1s, combined with strong presence on TikTok, Spotify and major playlists, indicate the profile of a long‑tail worship asset with meaningful upside.​

Every six weeks, BGospel Magazine publishes an Insight Focus spotlighting artists who reached #1 on the BGospel YouTube Top 50, and this edition focuses on Phil Wickham to capture how his #1 performance translates into long‑term digital growth, stability of views and positioning in the worship market.

Weekly chart performance and status

BGospel internal chart analysis – weekly detail.​

INSIGHT – Weekly reading

Weekly data show consistent growth, with all weeks posting positive deltas between 0.9% and 3.5% and two very strong surges above 800k weekly views. This pattern aligns with simultaneous momentum on audio platforms and playlists, where What An Awesome God is pushed through top Christian and worship editorial placements.​

From a chart position standpoint, the track climbs from #78 to #1 within roughly one week and then stabilizes inside the Top 10, even when it temporarily slips to #13. This kind of behavior points to strong organic traction, consistent replay value and a resilient audience base in a Top 50 that generates between 11.8M and 13.2M weekly views in the weeks W02 and W06.​

Strategically, the song accounts for about 7.5% of total Top 50 views in W02 (882,547 / 11,846,229) and 6.4% in W06 (845,436 / 13,193,428), meaning it is a leading but not overwhelming contributor. That share, combined with its strong presence in radio and streaming playlists, positions the track as one of the core visibility engines in the global worship segment, while still not qualifying as a HIT under BGospel’s 10‑week Top‑3 rule.

Daily table – BGospel chart sample

BGospel internal daily compare‑period table.​

INSIGHT – Daily reading

This sample covers 24/01/2026 to 15/02/2026 and highlights very steady daily consumption, with most days between ~116k and 130k views and only small directional changes in trend flags. The dominance of “stable” signals, with only a few minor up or down moves, suggests an established audience rather than a short‑lived viral wave.​

Across the sample, positive or neutral days largely outnumber explicitly negative ones, indicating a healthy retention pattern over three weeks. When mapped against the approximate 1M daily views generated by the entire Top 50 on YouTube, Phil Wickham’s track accounts for a meaningful but not majority share, consistent with its 6–8% weekly contribution during #1 weeks.​​

In weeks where the video is #1 (W02 and W06), the title captures around 7.5% and 6.4% of overall weekly views respectively, making it one of the main traffic drivers without saturating the chart. This distribution reflects a diversified gospel/CCM video market where several high‑performing songs coexist, which is structurally positive for long‑term category stability and for Phil Wickham’s positioning within that ecosystem.​​

On social platforms, Phil Wickham shows strong traction with about 2.25M Instagram followers, 1M TikTok followers, 2.76M Facebook likes, 1.42M Spotify followers and 1.94M YouTube subscribers, confirming broad awareness. What An Awesome God itself is heavily leveraged on TikTok, with roughly 48–49k user videos in the last 90 days, signalling active song‑level recognition and sustained UGC creation.

Streaming & audio engagement

All figures based on recent windows (28–90 days) from pro analytics dashboards.​

INSIGHT – Platform footprint

Phil Wickham is active across at least ten major digital and social platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music via top playlists, Amazon, Deezer, YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Audiomack, QQ and Yandex. For an already mainstream worship artist, the strategic priority is less about opening new channels and more about deepening engagement in under‑penetrated regions (Africa via Boomplay, Asia via QQ/Yandex) to unlock incremental growth.​

The strongest hubs today are Facebook, Instagram, Spotify, YouTube and TikTok, each above the one‑million‑user mark and tightly interconnected via playlists, short‑video content and live promotion. In the gospel/CCM economy, this configuration amplifies organic reach, increases the credibility of view counts, and maximizes upside each time a focus track like What An Awesome God is pushed through campaigns or live tours.

AIRPLAY & playlists

Radio airplay data show around 2,341 spins over the last 28 days across 17 countries, with top activity in the United States (~1.1k plays), Canada (732) and New Zealand (132). Month‑over‑month trends are slightly positive, with +1.9% in the US, +13% in Canada and +23.4% in New Zealand, confirming solid integration into Christian radio rotations.​

On the playlist side, Phil Wickham and What An Awesome God appear in high‑impact Christian and worship lists: Top Christian & Gospel and WorshipNow on Spotify, Today’s Top Christian Hits and NRT staff picks on Apple Music, Gospel Hits and Christian Worship on Deezer, plus several large Christian music playlists on YouTube. Analytics point to roughly 169.8k playlists and ~30.3M playlist reach attached to his catalog on Spotify alone, which significantly boosts discovery and repeat listening.

INSIGHT – Airplay & playlist leverage

The artist and his songs are currently supported on more than twenty distinct exposure channels when combining radio, editorial streaming playlists and large user‑curated lists. From a marketing perspective, this diversified funnel reduces dependency on a single algorithm, ensuring more predictable visibility for What An Awesome God and the broader catalog.

In terms of development stage, Phil Wickham clearly sits in the advanced/mainstream bracket for the worship market: multi‑territory airplay, top‑tier playlists, powerful TikTok UGC and robust touring. Compared with a developing worship artist, this network dramatically increases campaign efficiency, as each new release can activate a pre‑existing, data‑proven infrastructure across video, audio and live, enhancing both stability and long‑term growth potential.

BGospel Index Phil Wickham – What An Awesome God (Sunset Walk): 87/100.

What An Awesome God reaches a very strong overall performance level, driven by YouTube views already above the BGospel ceiling (28.55 M) and a robust audio and playlist ecosystem, which pushes YouTube, Spotify and Radio components toward their maximum scores in the index. The consolidated fanbase of more than 10.6 M followers across platforms (Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Spotify, TikTok, etc.) also maxes out the fanbase score, confirming Phil Wickham’s status as a major worship act rather than a short‑lived phenomenon.

TikTok performance for this specific track remains below the threshold of massive viral hits in gospel/CCM, with around 49k videos created in 90 days, positioning it more as a worship long seller supported by churches, playlists and airplay than as an ultra‑viral UGC banger. The track has not yet reached 10 weeks in the BGospel Top 3, so it cannot be labelled as a HIT under the BGospel methodology, but the combination of an 87/100 index, very strong airplay (2,341 spins/28 days) and premium playlist exposure confirms durable potential and solid international traction.

Data sources

• BGospel internal dashboards (YouTube Top 50 – Growth, Artist Profile, Compare Period, Chart Analysis).​
• Professional analytics tools (Chartmetric‑type and Soundcharts‑type dashboards for cross‑platform fans, playlists, airplay, TikTok, Spotify, YouTube, Pandora, Shazam).
• Public platforms: YouTube and official music videos (What An Awesome God – Official, Sunset Walk, Live, Lyric), artist channels and social profiles.