Review

Back in the 1970s, one of the schools of thought on church music was that the songs used in a worship service should be primarily scripture songs. That is to say that the lyrical content of the song should be taken directly from scripture. This philosophy resulted in congregations singing songs with lyrics that were taken almost verbatim from the Bible and these songs were arguably some of the best worship choruses from that era. From time to time a music label will issue a series of albums that will reintroduce a new generation to scripture songs. This time it's Integrity Music that has stepped up to bring us a whole gaggle of brand new scripture songs with the "Word Of God Speak" series.

This series consist of three separate CDs, "Hope", "Shelter", and "Illuminate". Each CD features songs based on scriptures having to do with the theme expressed by the CD title. Since the lyrics of every song is verbatim scripture and therefore God-breathed, any lyrical analysis in this review would be nothing more than my personal doctrinal commentary. (For a list of scripture references for these songs, please see the CD song lists).

Musically the songs are standard worship pop/rock fare which means that they can be comfortably worked into a church's repertoire that plays this style. And each CD is produced by Nathan Nockles (Passion, Rita Springer, Philips Craig & Dean) so you can probably guess that the production quality is really high.

As I listened to these CDs, I began to realize the many ways that they would come in handy. I will briefly share a few of these ideas with you now:

1. Any of these songs are perfect for learning scripture or just getting scripture into your heart. These CDs have aided me in starting my day off on the right foot, or depressurizing on the way home after a long day at work.

2. These songs are great for emphasizing a theme in your worship set. While other songs allude to scriptural concepts and themes, one of these songs may actually contain the verse that the Pastor is basing his sermon on. These songs can be integrated into a worship set (or tucked into another song) to really establish and pull the themes out of a set.

3. For media people, this series is a great resource for pre-service, background, and video soundtrack music (after obtaining the proper permissions, of course). When you need a song based on, say Psalm 61, why not actually use a song that IS Psalm 61!

Integrity has done a fantastic job with the "Word Of God Speak" series. There are so many good things to say about each CD. Let's hope that that Integrity will continue to release "Word Of God Speak" CDs in the future.

Review by Jeremy Dunn