The Power of One Worship Leader Edition [Review] #poowl

The Power of One Worship Leader Edition [Israel Houghton]: Integrity Music

I was pretty excited to be notified by a dm on twitter that I had been selected to review Iz’s latest offering. Probably more excited because I had already purchased The Power of One and was very familiar with the music. I knew there was going to be more behind the scenes, in-depth information geared towards worship leaders and worship teams (which is my heart) so I eagerly tore into the package the day it arrived.

From the get-go I was impressed by the packaging. I hadn’t quite known what to expect, but it made sense to me that Iz and the gang at Integrity would include a bunch of very useful goodies.

DVD

The DVD is very informative and is a GREAT resource for teams. One of my biggest desires is to see music for worship becoming more accessible to everyone, from megachurch bands to small church bands, and including stripped down, casual performances and tutorials of most of these songs is definitely an epic win.

You’ll also enjoy the stories behind the songs and some of the behinds the scenes stuff from the making of the album.

ENHANCED CD

What’s not to love about chord charts, lead sheets, and lyrics? You’ll hear some of the stripped down arrangements from the dvd recording, which are a lot less complex than the original album recording, which is handy if you’re looking for a place to start building arrangements. A lot of times it can be a pretty daunting task to pick up the latest Iz release which comes with a full choir, horn section, and amazing rhythm and lead sections, and arrange it for your piano and flute led worship band, but Integrity does an amazing job of packaging together a great set of tools to give worship leaders and teams a head start.

CD

This is the original recording, and although I had already purchased it for our church, I think it is a great move to package them all together. I would personally love to see Integrity (and others) actually pre-release worship leader editions BEFORE albums hit the streets, say by maybe 2 weeks or something.

MY THOUGHTS

Overall, I love this concept. I believe that any church that would possibly interested in using Israel’s music for worship times, but has been overwhelmed by the funky, soulful goodness of IZ and New Breed can approach the songs on this album armed with the knowledge that Iz will meet you half way and provide you with an amazing resource to get you started.

For people that already rock Iz, this is still a very useful tool. At our church we love to remix songs. Breathe new life into them. So, even though the stripped down sets are a little too casual for our Sunday morning sets, it’s nice to see the same songs in a different setting. It can be a tremendous teaching tool in helping our band members see that variety is a GOOD thing, and that we don’t have to do every song exactly the same way each time.

Like I said earlier, I hope Integrity carries on this offering, and sees the tremendous education, training, and equipping potential in this type of packaging. I’d love to see every major release get this sort of treatment.

If you’re a worship leader, worship band member, or even just a church goer and you love a little bit of funky, soul/gospel infused musical worship, Israel is one of the prime leaders in this genre. Buy this for your church you won’t regret it.

The Power of One Worship Leader Edition [Israel Houghton]: Integrity Music