Fee’s second album shows that that have no fear of the dreaded “sophomore slump”.  Their years of leading worship for Northpoint Ministries and the Passion conferences comes through strongly.  With ‘Hope Rising’ Fee has put together album of highly energetic music that is also highly singable by most congregations.

One of the things that most impresses me about this album is the “vertical” focus of so many of the songs.  In a time when more and more of our worship songs are filled with “Me” and “I” a large number of these songs are focused on God and who he is.  When it does get personal there is more “Our” and “We” than many other offerings out there.  “Send Me Out” is probably the most individually focused song, but even that is on how I can do God’s work on Earth in His name.

As a worship leader one of the things that I appreciate the most is that musically these songs can be adapted to work with a full band or they can be just as effective with just a single acoustic guitar.  I’ve already added “Glory to God Forever” into our set in Rittman and can see adding in songs like “Greatly To Be Praised” and “Rise and Sing” in the near future.

Do yourself a favor and pick this one up.