Review

A couple weeks ago, I was rummaging through my music collection trying to find a chord chart for the song God of Wonders, the recently popular worship song that also enjoyed extensive radio play. The problem was, I didn't have a CD and songbook combination that was done in a congregational format that I could duplicate with my local church praise and worship team. I quickly remembered that the recently released Integrity Hosanna project with Paul Baloche had covered the song God of Wonders. I listened to the CD, but didn't have time to check out the music immediately. Then, about a week later I received a new product from Integrity called "God of Wonders Video Songbook". I read the cover and quickly discovered it was a CD-ROM, which I immediately threw in my computer's CD-ROM drive.

What I saw very encouraging! In about 5 minutes I had become hooked on this new tool. A day later, I brought the CD-ROM to my home and put it in my home PC. In 10 minutes I had learned the song I wanted to learn, using the age-old method of all successful students- watching and copying someone who could do it well. The genius of this resource isn't that it does something new, but that it does something old- play by example! You might be tempted to think this would be either too easy or too amateur-ish to be useful and effective. You would be wrong. First, let me describe how this resource works.

When you place the CD-ROM in your drive a window appears on your screen with a menu of songs selections. Clicking the first selection, Paul welcomes you to the video songbook and lets you know what to expect. For each song from the "God Of Wonders" album, two selections exist- a chord chart and an instructional guitar video. When you select the music note icon next to the song, the appropriate chord chart appears via the Adobe Acrobat program. Incidentally, all the software programs that are used to run the media on the video songbook are actually included on the CD-ROM for installation on to your computer (although that will likely not be necessary, since most computer will already have all these common print and video viewers installed).

In my case, I clicked on the chord chart for "God of Wonders". I printed the chart out and set it down next to me. Then I selected the video icon and immediately I had Paul Baloche in my home teaching me how to play a very cool (but accessible) version of God of Wonders on my guitar. In about 10 minutes I had listened and played along with Paul on three repetitions of the song. I learned the strumming pattern, chords, special finger placements, right & left hand accents and all that was necessary for playing this song in either my small group or for leading it from the acoustic on Sunday morning. As it happened for me, Sunday morning was the next morning. During the pre-service practice I taught the song to the band using what I had learned on the video songbook. Our first song in congregational worship that morning was God of Wonders. As we got to the end of the musical portion of our service, I went back and repeated the song as our last song that morning! It was very encouraging- people were engaging in praise to the Lord and the music of the song was played well and really supported the saints as they worshiped!

Over the days that followed, I went back and walked through each of the songs on the video songbook and found the same helpful instruction and ease to use arrangements on most songs. One of the songs (Jesus You Are), is even presented in two keys to allow you to follow and learn in keys best suited for your group. I was stoked!

The bottom line for me is this- using a musical/worship resource is only as good as its application in the local church life. If I can't actually use it in some form with my local congregation, I have a hard time seeing its value. This video songbook resource answers those concerns and blesses the Body of Christ by giving us all a great tool for learning some wonderful songs. I would not hesitate to recommend this resource to any guitar player or worship/praise leader that uses guitar.

My hope is that this new format of resourcing becomes a standard for all projects that present songs intended for use in the local church. If you are a worship leader, get a hold of this new resource- you'll be glad you did! To the worship publishing companies out there-- more, more, more! Instead of doing another rehash collection of souped up old favorite worship songs, we need this type of innovative and resourceful tool from you! To Paul Baloche and all the folks who are working to towards getting actually useable resources out to the local church and their worship ministry staffs- thank you and keep going! To all the high (and low) profile worship leaders out there- please consider what Paul has done here and how it offers such value to the Body of Christ and be spurred on to see what God could uniquely have you do to give to His body through such resourcing.

This resource is simply a great tool for the church; there really isn't any other way to say it. It is for this reason that the God of Wonders Video Songbook is receiving our "Editor's Choice Award". I think it will be a touchtone product that will hopefully lead to a new frontier of resourcing the local church in worship.

Blessings in the Lamb!

Kim Gentes