Album Reviewed: "Arriving"

(if you think I'm plagarizing again...I am, but only from myself)

For a long time now, I've thought that Matt Redman was the foremost worship writer/musician around today. Not only the quality, but the quantity of Matt's music is astounding. Looking back over the past decade, an unbelievable number of great worship songs come from Mr. Redman.

Chris Tomlin , amazingly enough, is getting near Matt in both quantity and quality. His latest (about a year or so old) album, "Arriving", is the first congregational music I've heard to match Mr. Redman in quite some time (although Tomlin is not exactly a new face in the worshipful crowd). A quick scan of his guitar tabs yields these major Christian worship songs from the past 5-7 years (not counting those from "Arriving"):

• Be Glorified
• All Bow Down
• Enough
• Famous One
• Forever
• Give Us Clean Hands
• Kindness
• The Noise We Make
• We Fall Down
• The Wonderful Cross

Clearly, the man has some seriously blessed song-writing skills. IMO, there are two types of "worshipful" music. The first is an intensely personal, person-to-God style (think of Crowder's "A Collision") that can be very powerful in a time of intimate worship, whether it's between the song writer and God or an individual worshipper and their creator. The second style is meant to be sung corporately; whether through lyrics or musical style, the song simply feels right when worshipping with a group of believers. Arriving clearly aims for the latter style, and rarely has an album hit the bullseye so well.

The best worship songs are great because of their lyrical quality. It is fairly easy to stir emotions through crashing drums and a crescendo of instruments. It is more difficult, but much more impactful(?), to write lyrics that hit your heart. Some songs on this CD that do so:

• 1 - "Indescribable". This song "describes" how everything on heaven and earth glorifies God, ending with a statement of mercy: "You see the depths of my heart and you love me the same". For any Christian struggling with sin, guilt, and acceptance, those words can never be repeated enough.
• 2 - "Holy Is the Lord". The catchiest song, musically, on the album, it reinforces a simple statement of praise to God for his holiness. This is really the point of the whole album; not so much a digging into the depths of man, but focused on the attributes of God. We could use a lot more songs like this in our modern worship sets.
• 3 - "How Great Is Our God". The anthemic chorus will stir you--a great combination of powerful music with sublimely true and simple truths about Gods greatness. In my experience, this chorus ends up being repeated over and over and over as an awesome declarative statement. In my recent worship band experience, this song consistently got the single-best worshipful response by the congregation of any we played.
• Your Grace Is Enough, Unfailing Love, King of Glory, and You Do All Things Well are other standouts.

This is an absolute essential for your modern worship collection. Just about any church that plays contemporary worship will have taken several songs from this CD. And why? Because you won't find another album as focused on the glory of God. And that is a good place to be.