Firmly established in the scene, One Man In The Middle brings you regular, unbiased and honest reviews of music albums and EPs from Christian artists and musicians here in the UK and worldwide. This week we have The Things We Did At First by Sean Feucht with an overall review score of 9.3 out of 10.
Album Information:
Sean Feucht is a husband, father, missionary, musician, speaker, author and founder of a grassroots global worship, prayer and missions organisation; Burn 24/7. His lifelong quest and dream is to witness a generation of burning hearts arise across the nations of the world with renewed faith, vision and sacrificial pursuit after the Presence of God. He travels to 20-30 nations per year planting furnaces of worship and prayer, training, mobilizing, leading worship and speaking.
He has produced, recorded and released fifteen music albums, numerous books and teaching resources. He is married to his high school sweetheart, Kate, and is obsessed with their three children: Keturah (4), Malachi (2) and Ezra (1). He currently resides in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania – when he is not on planes, trains or automobiles.
Review:
I love the write-up above because I think it does a good job of capturing the heart of this musician, worshipper, teacher, husband and pastor. At the end of the day our job is to reach nations and make disciples and it seems this guy is trying to do his bit! For such a prolific person within the Christian community writing books and recording albums, this is my first experience of Sean Feucht.
I might not be aware of him but the collaborations on this album suggest that he is well known in the Bethel Music and Jesus Culture circles. This album features guest vocals from Kristene DiMarco, Jenn Johnson, Stefany Gretzinger as well as country music legend Ricky Skaggs and United Pursuit solo artist Andrea Marie. This album features six brand new recordings and 4 remixes of favourites from previous projects.
This album is basically written as a collection of love songs to God. Pretty much each track is fairly easy listening with a blend of some atmospheric keys, light percussion and guitars. It is the lyrics and the vocals that we are being asked to focus on here. From the very first track we are going into a place of worship, bringing our hearts back to the place where we first became aware of God in our lives. “When My Heart Became Aware” is really trying to help us find that first flame of love that flickered inside of us, at the beginning of this album reminding us of the fire that burned when we first realised the sacrifice made for us, the love that caused this to happen.
The depth of expression in the lyrics is brilliant for a personal worship time. “You Delight In Me” reminds us that God always delights in us, no matter how we feel. “Your pleasure shatters all my defences / Your kindness melts away my offences” this is stuff that we need to be reminding ourselves of in worship. God delights in us, He loves us, now and always with an absolutely burning passion for us. The backing singer on this (I can’t see anywhere who this is) is brilliant, bringing in some great harmonies to compliment Sean’s main vocal.
For me the absolute stand out track is “Lay My Head (John’s Song)” which is a brilliant song taking inspiration from the gospel indication that John (the disciple whom Jesus loved) laid with his head on Jesus chest during the last supper. This brilliantly captures some of the thoughts that surround how we might feel in the same position. “I lay my head down, down on your chest, I want to listen, I want to hear your heart beating for me.” Although there are some more complex lyrics this chorus captures the essence of the song brilliantly.
While the lyrics and obviously the vocals that carry them are the main emphasis of these recordings there is room around them for the song to breathe. Sean doesn’t seem rushed to move on to the next part of the song with the gentle backgrounds giving plenty of room to allow the song itself to breathe and for the listener to ruminate on the lyrics. It’s unhurried worship making us aware of the presence of God and ably directing us to consider our faith, to declare his Glory and consider the good that the Father has for us.
This is a powerful and personal collection. I believe that some people will draw different things out of this to me, because it is that kind of personal song that doesn’t work in collective worship, but this private meditation will speak in different ways with each listen. There is a rich seam of songwriting here which it will take repeated listens to mine completely.
For track listing, ranking breakdown and more check out onemaninthemiddle.com
