Kim Gentes

Glenn Packiam's new solo album "The Mystery of Faith" is the newest project from this songwriter/pastor from New Life Church in Colorado Springs. In a surprising and encouraging departure from past recordings, this album ventures at speaking the central truths of the Christian faith, usable by all Christian churches whether modern or liturgical. In fact, this album presents a modern worship liturgy that can be used as a guide for an entire service or applied in portions, using songs that fit for the kind of themes and services you may planning for.

This is a studio worship album featuring several new songs based, created and presented as a fresh expression of the historic liturgical service! In addition to 8 songs, there are two readings (the Nicene Creed and Prayer of Confession) with musical backdrops for easily adoption into your services. This concept project has value both as a collection of great songs and as a complete service that brings the message of our faith through the progression of these songs. Glenn co-writes with Ian Eskelin, Ian Morgan Cron, Jennie Lee Riddle, and others to craft these beautiful and usable songs.

Walking through each track song by song does not convey the mode of use of these songs. One must experience these songs as a collection and participate as a worshiper, being shaped by the songs as they provide the movement of the central components of worship that have been used in churches for hundreds of years. The proclamation of faith, the creed, the prayer of confession, the blessings to one another, declaration of the risen Christ, the Alleluia - each of these elements are poignant and engaging.

Something must be said about the significance of this project as a gift to the broader church. Many worship writers, leaders and artists claim that they are writing new songs for "the church", but few have gone to the trouble of writing songs for usable application in the framework used by over 50% of the global church- the liturgy. Glenn has sculpted these songs as useful tools to the whole body of Christ. This is a blessing and a joy. And even if your church does not use a liturgical format, there are some excellent songs here for use in modern worship sets.

Again, while this album is meant as a liturgically guided worship service, I found some single songs that I would like to highlight for any worshiping church. First is the song "Our Messiah Reigns". This is the last track on the album, but it is an excellent song for both weekly celebration of the Risen Christ and for the upcoming Easter season. Another strong song is "Grace Flows Freely Down", a joyous song about the power of God's grace. Finally, the song "The Lord Be With You" is an inviting song in which the Body can give thanks together while speaking God's blessing to one another.

For churches using WorshipTeam.com, all of the songs, chord charts, lyrics and audio from this album are already available and pre-loaded for you in the WorshipTeam.com system song database.

If you are not part of WorshipTeam.com and want to listen to audio samples or purchase the album directly yourself, see the Amazon link below.

Advent is not a word you hear outside of traditional and denominational Christian settings a lot.  But as the recent millenium has brought so many changes, we see much of the non-traditional and non-liturgical church groups reaching into the ancient traditions of the Christian church and mining the wisdom of our forebearers in the faith. Advent literally means "coming" and refers to the season of weeks that precede the celebrated birth of Christ and God's coming earth in the flesh as the Emmanuel (literally "God with us").  The Advent as a Christian season of reverence and anticipation was only exceeded in importance by the reflective season of Lent that leads up to the holy week of the death and resurrection of Christ.

Musical worship of advent often focuses on the anticipation of the coming savior, the light rising in the darkness of this world, and preparation of our hearts for His appearing.  It is in that spirit that the recent EP "Light Has Come" seems to present it’s finely crafted songs for the Advent season.

WorshipTogether releases the "Light Has Come" EP with six modern worship songs that focus on the light, hope, glory and joy of the advent season not by headlining it with artists. Instead it chose to release a compact collection of very focused songs from its songwriters, keeping the arrangements and presentation accessible and reproducible for churches.  Recorded crisply, but with the songs as the focus, one gets the idea this was meant more as a resource to churches coming to Advent than to consumers looking for radio hits.

In fact, even the keys and arrangements of the songs flow seamlessly from one song to another. I was able to sit down with my guitar and play along with each and every song the first time through. Five of the 6 songs were keyed either in F or C (very complimentary keys), making it great to use these songs together in a worship set.

Let’s dive into the songs.

The first song "Let The World Sing Gloria" is a modern song rendering language and context for the traditional phrase "Gloria in excelsis Deo" (which is Latin for "Glory to God in the highest"). Musically, it is an ebbing verse, vaulting chorus and rising bridge which brings the ancient phrase to life.  Melodic, well written lyrics and hook laden chorus, this is the best song on the EP. You really should consider this song for the upcoming season- it is excellent!

"Newborn King" is the second track and gives a medium tempo groove to celebrating the coming of the Christ child. Again the musical affinity is crisply acoustic/rock and easy to incorporate into a modern worship set. The lyrics continue to be the language of advent and anticipatory Christmas season. Another good candidate for your Sunday mornings.

The title track "Light Has Come" is a country-ish sounding ballad that reminds me of something from Vineyard Music's "roots worship" sound with Ryan Delmore- somewhere between acoustic/pop and Mumford & Sons. Lyrically, the song focuses a modern spin on the story of Jesus' light come to the broken and weak of our earthly society and bringing God's glory through such humility.

Track five is the pop-driven "End of Exile", the most progressive recording on this collection. Well done, this song soars on power-chords flooding the chorus. It is comprised of a terse lyrical style, leaving lithe phrases such as its compact chorus:

Glorious miracle here is the end of exile
God the invisible flooding the world with light

Definitely a song to look at for the Advent season.

I will leave tracks 4 and 6 to the reader to discover, as they are laid out simply and clearly in easily reproduced arrangements and keys.

Overall, I found the Advent EP "Light Has Come" to be delightful. I especially loved tracks 1, 2 and 5, as noted above and would recommend them to any church looking for new music for the season.  

"Light Has Come" find it at Amazon or iTunes

For those who use online planning, you can also find the songs from this album, the full audio, chord charts and lyrics online in WorshipTeam.com.

If you are wondering where you might find some great new songs for the Christmas/Advent season, and you are in contemporary worship context, you should definitely consider the songs on this new album from WorshipTogether, "Light Has Come".

worshiping Him!

Kim Gentes