Reviewed by Matthew Cordle

This live concert recording, Israel And New Breed's first in five years, was recorded in February 2012 at Lakewood Church, Houston, their home church. Doug Holland has already reviewed the CD release of this concert so I'll concentrate mostly on the DVD itself. Immediately noticeable is the sheer number of singers and musicians involved in this concert - a large band, brass section, the singers of New Breed on the stage with Israel, several guest vocalists and the church choir in the stands. It's a testament to the production crew and all the musicians that there is not a single stray note or straggly moment, although I suspect there was rather more rehearsing than for a typical Sunday morning service! There are plenty of cameras around to capture every angle of what's going on both at the front and in the audience; static as well as jibs and Steadicams to provide more interesting motion shots, and these have been edited well. Matching the colour of the music there is plenty of visual colour, not to mention the silvery, sparkly guitar! This, combined with the darkness of the auditorium, does present encoding challenges for MPEG-2 with the bit rate limitation of the DVD spec and on some shots there is a measure of pixel mushiness - it's not enough to spoil enjoyment of the disc but it would have been great to see this concert on Blu-Ray. Everyone on stage looks as if they're seriously enjoying themselves and the audience packing the church building looks well engaged with the songs as they sing and worship through them, and it's quite clear there are some moments of profound worship going on. The highlights for me are the title track, a beautiful declaration of Jesus' centrality and eternality and a commitment to put him at the centre of our lives, and the duet with Michael Gungor, "You Have Me". Despite many questions about Lakeland's prosperity teaching, there's no doubt that Israel Houghton is a brilliant musician who can produce excellent music. However it did strike me that, with a couple of exceptions, this collection of songs seems a little one-dimensional in lyrical content; obviously it is important to sing in our worship that Jesus is faithful, powerful and unchanging and that we want him at the centre of all of our lives, but worship songs can also dive so much deeper into detailed truth. Extras on the disc are "The Iz And Linz Conversation", Israel and Aaron Lindsey chatting about the story of the album, and Israel giving the stories behind the songs along with some of his co-writers. If you enjoyed the concert on CD, it's definitely worth seeing this well produced DVD to gain an additional dimension.

The opinions expressed in this article are not necessarily those held by Cross Rhythms. Any expressed views were accurate at the time of publishing but may or may not reflect the views of the individuals concerned at a later date.

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