SET APART
Set Apart is the third album from Worship Central. Featuring the team behind previous albums Spirit break out and Let it be known, including Tim Hughes, Ben Cantelon and Luke Hellenbronth, the album features 14 new tracks recorded live at Hillsong’s warehouse project.
There are a few standout tracks for me. Track number one, ‘The way’, is a really catchy and brilliant dance track featuring Tim Hughes, and I have listened to it again and again, enjoying it each time. It’s superb when Christian artists manage to make worship tracks which sound like things our young people are listening to normally, and they’ve absolutely nailed it here, for which I applaud them. However, there is absolutely no way my church worship group (consisting of a few voices and at best a guitar) could replicate this song, but it’s brilliant to listen to, and would be great to play at youth group. Equally, track ten ‘Let go’ has a great up-tempo-dance feel, although I’m not convinced we need another song for young people about letting it go. ‘Awesome is he’, taken from Luke Hellenbronth’s EP and sung by wife Anna, is extremely powerful; the lyrics and unusual timing make it feel new and different, while still extremely sing-able in a church setting. We have sung it already in my church, and no doubt will do on many more occasions. It’s simple, but contains powerful proclamations about who God is.
‘Singing over us’ has a very cool 70s-synth vibe, not dissimilar to something from Ellie Goulding or Lorde, but I can’t imagine singing it in a congregational setting. The final song of note for me is the spontaneous song ‘All that I am’. Maybe it strikes me because it was product of a worshipful setting, according to the Holy Spirit’s leading, or maybe simply because it is an easy but beautiful refrain repeated again and again – but either way I like it a lot.
Aside from the above, the album is vaguely disappointing. Just as with Spirit break out and Let it be known, there are a few really excellent and popular tracks that will stick around in the Church repertoire and general consciousness for a while (the title tracks on the previous albums), but the rest rather fade to the background. The theological ideas in the songs don’t feel particularly fresh, and the melodies are very much ‘album track worthy’, or in other words, not particularly catchy or memorable. They are nice enough to listen to, and I’m sure will add light and shade to a worship set, but they don’t have longevity. Given the wealth of people and resources behind the Worship Central movement, I would hope for more from an album of this calibre. I hope that as the Worship Central courses and movement continues to grow, increase and globalise, new and different writers will come through the pipeline and have the opportunity to contribute to these albums in future.
Phoebe Thompson IS EDITOR OF PREMIER YOUTHWORK.
EAGER TO LOVE
Eager to Love is a winsome attempt to piggyback on the renewed interest in Franciscan spirituality in the wake of Pope Francis’ name and actions. It takes the lives of St Francis and ‘poor’ Clare and examines why they had such a revolutionary influence on the Church.
One of the key themes is the importance of ‘lived experience’ of God, rather than mere doctrinal knowledge. Another is the need for presence in the margins of society to fully know the God who suffered.
It is no accident that Rohr’s writing has become anthemic for those believers who are involved in ‘incarnational’ ministry in slums or housing estates. Downward mobility, avoiding co-option by economic systems, and simple presence to oneself, God and neighbours are accented over and over again.
As ever with Rohr, there are scores of quotable one-liners about contemplative spirituality that many will (ironically) post on Facebook or Twitter. Some of these highlights are: ‘Matter is, and has always been, the hiding place for Spirit’; ‘He was totally at home in two worlds at the same time, and thus he made them into one world’; ‘You tend to think like those with whom you party,’ and ‘Humans tend to live themselves into new ways of thinking more than think themselves into new ways of living.’
As with many American writers, the reactive nature of some of his writing (to the religious right) is unsatisfying. Hitting that particular straw man again and again doesn’t do anyone any favours in our increasingly tribalised world.
Despite this, as you read you are wooed towards Rohr’s and St Francis’ obvious depth of intimacy and connectedness with their creator. I love books that make you want to put them down and practise what they are preaching. There are times when you may not go along with all of Rohr’s theology, but that’s OK, as there is so much to glean that is wonderful.
Andy Flannagan is a London-based singer-songwriter.
