Living For You by Shout Praises! Kids

Reviewed by Ian Hayter

You're stuck with your kids' club and the musicians haven't turned up. There's no time to sort out any PowerPoint or SongPro presentations. The kids are restless and you need to get them singing and dancing. Here's the answer. Shout Praises Kids have produced a DVD not of music videos, but of 12 catchy contemporary worship songs with groovy graphics and lively lyrics. Pop it in the DVD player and off you go. I put this in the machine expecting the usual live worship video and was initially disappointed that it was just some computer generated graphics with a soundtrack. Then it dawned on me that this is actually a great resource for getting the kids to sing along, with all the lyrics on-screen and no images of the singers and musicians to distract from the worship. The 12 songs are all contemporary (including a new version of the classic "Take My Life" by Claire Cloninger and Steve Merkel, one of the people behind the project). There are offerings from the likes of Paul Baloche and Brenton Brown ("Our God Saves"), Kathryn Scott ("I Belong") and Jared Anderson ("Amazed", "Counting On God" and "Everything To God"). The arrangements are generally upbeat and use a great set of backing musicians, together with strong vocals (not all of which involve children). It's not necessarily the kind of thing you'll want to sit and listen to at one go (although it lasts only 35 minutes altogether), but it is very useful for taking a couple of songs to use in your worship time, without the need for musicians and a skilled techno-geek.