The Gospel Music Association held their 39th Annual Dove Awards Wednesday night at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tenn.

Chris Tomlin won for "Male vocalist of the year"

Time was, it seemed almost a given that any act signed to a major Christian label would put out at least one praise and worship album at some point during their tenure. A close cousin, perhaps, to the aforementioned trend which carried the lion’s share of those in the CHR Top 40 along in its wake during the second half of the 1990s, Christian artists in the post-O Brother, Where Art Thou era are lining up to record the songs their parents and grandparents sang on Sunday mornings.

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.

Submitted by Robin Parrish (author and Editor-in-Chief of Infuzemag.com)

1. Bear McCreary - Battlestar Galactica - Season 2 Original Soundtrack

As a fiction writer, nothing helps me set the mood or helps me enter the right frame of mind like a good soundtrack (the no-words variety). The soundscapes that composer Bear McCreary creates for the new Battlestar Galactica range from hauntingly beautiful to wildly high energy, and he does it by using every tool in the box. His speciality is tribal/world/rhythmic sounds, but he blends it with middle eastern instruments and traditional orchestral sounds to create a truly singular effect. Incredibly original and compelling.

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.

If you’ve read any of my reviews for this band, you’ll know that I always seem to study their work, because I’m always yelling, “Ooh, ooh, I’ll take DCB! Let me at it!” I sported a similar attitude with this recording... that is until Mr. Dan Ficker let me know that this remix record was bluegrass in style.

But I took a stab at the CD nonetheless. I like a fair bit of country, and I’ll listen to bluegrass if it’s ever in close proximity; how bad could this album be?

If the David Crowder Band had never made a remix album, I might be more lenient with this most recent experimentation. However, this is not the first remix to cross our plates, and I can’t help but imagine that B Collision was probably recorded to make more money for Sparrow Records.

Integrity Music announced a major new initiative, GlobalWorshipNow.com TM, that will launch in July. The web site will be an innovative online community of churches, that share a common vision to equip the global church with songs and resources, offering new worship resources and content.

According to Integrity Vice President of Music Publishing and Strategic Marketing, Craig Dunnagan, "God is birthing a revolution in today's church. We're seeing churches of all sizes step forward as leaders in the creative arts to produce some of the freshest and most powerful songs we are hearing today. We hope to share these resources by networking churches around the world."

From Spinhouse Public Relations, Jason Morant, who released his sophomore record on Vertical Music this week, will lead worship for the Wild Week Camps all summer. These are weeklong camps presented by Mpact Events in conjunction with local ministries. "Camps are very different than normal concert dates in that we end up spending much more time with the kids and are able to invest more into their lives than just a single night will allow," said Morant.

Each camp week is Monday through Friday and will be held in Illinois, South Carolina, Alabama, and Texas in June.

Jason's new CD, "Open," was released May 30 and may define Morant as more than a modern worship artists. He has created music that includes rock, pop, and folk. His first single is called "Holy" and is currently impacting Chrisitan radio nationwide.

For more information on Jason Morant, visit www.jasonmorant.com.

Having grown up in the church, I’ve sung my fair share of songs written about “the sweet by and by.” I’ve listened to sermons about the streets of gold. I’ve read the Biblical accounts of the heavenly gates (not just pearly, but decked out with twelve kinds of semi-precious stones). But I’ve wondered how we can live in the “here and now” in an effective manner. I don’t want to see this life on earth simply as a time marker until we get to heaven.