The Torchmen are probably Canada’s best-known Southern Gospel Quartet; in certain years, they have even been invited to a mainstage slot at the National Quartet Convention. Since their 2011 mainline release (Step Up, reviewed here), they have a new lead singer and bass singer. This album, A New Perspective, introduces the new lineup with a mixture of classics, covers of songs major groups introduced, and a few new songs.

The group did a good job of avoiding the obvious and over-done when selecting their song covers. They pull from major groups like the Cathedrals (“Over the Door”) and Larry Gatlin or the Blue Ridge Quartet (“Light at the End of the Darkness”), and they also revisit songs from lesser-known groups like the Cumberland Quartet (“I’ll Keep on Leaning”).

“I’d Rather Have Jesus,” “Wish You Were Here,” and “I Can Tell You the Time” are easily the three most recorded tracks, but only the first is one of Southern Gospel’s 200 most-recorded songs. 

The strongest new songs are “In the Cross,” written by Richard Ash, and “I Will Pray,” written by Rebecca Peck and Christina DeGazio. Interestingly, “I Will Pray” already had a Canadian connection: As we found out in this November post, DeGazio is Canadian. (DeGazio is perhaps best-known for co-writing Legacy Five’s first mega-hit, “I Stand Redeemed.”)

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This list aims to be inclusive of Daywind, Crossroads, Horizon, Sonlite, Vine, Gaither Music Group, Stow Town, New Haven, Song Garden, Mansion, and major independent group releases where known.

Is this list missing anything significant, especially among major independent releases? Let us know in the comments!

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God is always present when His people meet. As Jesus promised in Matthew 18:20, “Where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them” (KJV). But once in a while, He chooses to stir hearts with a particularly strong sense of blessing or conviction.

I occasionally notice promotional materials for Southern Gospel groups that promise to bring God’s presence, in this second sense, to services where they are invited to perform. (I can’t recall ever seeing a top-tier group do this; a claim to this effect is a pretty sure sign that I’m reading the promotional materials for a local or regional group.)

In that light, a recent series of columns from Bob Kauflin, a church musician and modern hymnwriter, is worth reading. In the first post, he states:

Good intentions notwithstanding, no one can consistently and meaningfully “bring God’s manifest presence” to a group of people. No musician, no pastor, no singer, no preacher, no leader – nobody. That’s the work of the Holy Spirit and he functions on his own terms, not ours (John 3:8; 1 Cor. 12:11).

He adds:

I’ve been invited to attend conferences, download songs, attend concerts, buy books, and listen to preachers who all claim they will bring me into God’s presence – for a price. But we can’t buy the presence of God. Simon the Magician realized that when he saw the disciples laying their hands on people with dramatic effect. He offered them cold cash, saying, “Give me this power.” Peter rebuked him.

God’s power, like God’s presence, can’t be bought or sold. God doesn’t call us so much to be facilitators of his glory as faithful to the gospel. Our job isn’t to create an “environment of excitement” but an environment of response to the true God through the gospel in the power of the Spirit.

Check out the three-part series here, here, and here. Don’t be dissuaded from completing the series by the corrective tone of the first post; the second post provides a necessary positive balance—we also aren’t to minimize the fact that sometimes God does choose to move in these powerful ways, and we need to be open and receptive when these times come.

In the concluding third post, he gets to the heart of the matter: “Don’t let the pursuit of experience replace a pursuit of faithfulness to Scripture and the gospel.”

It seems every generation is tempted to value and pursue experience over faithfulness. The perils are numerous. It can lead to equating elevated passions to encountering God, feeling disappointed if we’re not emotionally or physically affected, making secondary means (technical skill, lights, videos, arrangements) primary in engaging people’s minds and hearts, and being overimpressed with unusual manifestations. If the people I lead get more excited about the latest “move of God” than the fact that Jesus Christ came to die for our sins and rise from the dead to reconcile us to God (the gospel), then we’re responsible to lead them back to what is of first importance (1 Cor. 15:1-4). Likewise, if my congregation thinks “hearing from God” only means prophetic or spontaneous events, I need to help them treasure God’s sufficient and authoritative Word more than gold (Ps. 19:10-11).

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Song Snapshots is a column featuring the stories behind new and classic Southern Gospel songs.

When songwriter Belinda Smith was in college, she sang in a regional Southern Gospel group with her brother and her next-door neighbor.

One weekend, she auditioned to be the piano player for The Rowlands. At the time, Kyla Rowland and her brother, Ron Martin, were both part of the group. (Ron continues to run the group today.)

“I was so excited,” she recalls. “It was a really cool weekend to go out with them, because it was Kyla Rowland. I was devouring their cassettes, so I was so excited. It was just really cool to hang out for a weekend with someone like that!”

At one concert that weekend, she was playing piano as Kyla was testifying. “She was setting up something, and she said, ‘All I know is that God is in time, on time, every time.’

She thought, “Ooh, I should write that song! But it’s Kyla Rowland—maybe she’s written it! But she didn’t go into a song with that line, so so I really, deeply, truly thought she’d not written that song. And when Kyla Rowland speaks, you get your pencil!”

She went home and wrote the song in twenty minutes. After she recorded it with her group, she took it to John Darin Rowsey. (She knew John from her local Southern Gospel circuit.) John took the song to his publisher, Niles Borop of Centergy.

“A local artist recorded it—I never did find out who that was—and Jay Parrack was doing background vocals. He took it back to Gold City, and they recorded it.”

The song launched her career: “It was my first cut in Nashville, it was my first radio single, it was my first #1 song, and it was my first Dove Award nomination. And I’m like, ‘I should quit, and go home, and be done! I don’t know what else to do!’”

One year, Gold City performed the song at the National Quartet Convention. Gerald Wolfe, who had known Kyla Rowland since touring with her brother in his Dumplin Valley Boys days, came up to Belinda. He said, “Oh, Kyla Rowland has written a song something like ‘In Time, On Time, Every Time.’”

“Daniel, I could have cried!” Smith exclaimed. “I would never have written a song on top of hers, ever—I mean, ever!”

Interestingly, the Perrys recently cut and singled the Kyla Rowland song with the line—”Every Time I Need Him.” So both songs eventually saw the light of day, both hit the top five on the Singing News radio airplay chart. As it turns out, the concept was enough to sustain two top five hits!

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