1. Godfrey Birtill - God Help Us

Godfrey is a worship leader from the UK that has really affected my family and our band. There's a raw reality to his worship, and the power of God truly rests upon this man. The songs are direct and crying out for God to change our broken world. It's a live record with moments of lament and grief to times of joy and celebration.

Leeland Mooring, the baby-faced namesake and frontman of the emerging band Leeland, appears on the cover of the November issue of CCM magazine, according to the band's e-mail newsletter.

Mooring shares the cover with industry O.G. Michael W. Smith, who allowed the teenager to write a a number of the songs on Smith's upcoming album Stand. The newsletter includes an image of the magazine cover, which frames its profile of Mooring/Smith as insight into the divinely appointed, "providential friendship" that apparently exists between the two.

Being a Christian music journalist in this day and age is a pretty rough job. Everything looks, feels, and sounds the same, and writing about it is like trying to find a new way to say "snowmen are white." Eventually you find yourself typing out "men crafted of frozen precipitation are of a pale hue," and then there is nothing left to do but throw in the towel. So I did. But a recent trip to Nashville introduced me to a band called Leeland, and suddenly those snowmen were wearing panama hats and evening gowns. I just had to talk to these guys and see what is driving this awesome new band. Keyboardist Jake Mooring (brother of front man and band namesake Leeland Mooring) called me up and we started chatting whilst I got my recorder in order. We are both from the same spit of Texas between Houston and the Gulf of Mexico, so after we agreed that chemical plants can indeed be a welcoming site after a long road trip, we started talking about the band: