Hallelujah! is your definitive guide to the top 100 worship songs

From ‘Jesus Stand Among Us’ to ‘History Maker’, Les Moir expertly explores the stories behind songs that transformed contemporary Christian worship, says our reviewer

Les Moir is definitely the man to write this book. A former music business executive, record producer (including some seminal Graham Kendrick albums), musician (he played bass on a number of important American Vineyard Music releases) and mentor to dozens of internationally known worship leaders and songwriters, Les brings a wealth of experience to this impressive work.

It is questionable whether a History of Contemporary Worship should begin with ‘How Great Thou Art’, which is a hymn rather than a song and certainly isn’t contemporary. Perhaps I should note here that Les’ painstakingly researched book also includes more modern hymns, such as Stuart Townend and Keith Getty’s ‘In Christ Alone’ and Jack Hayford’s ‘Majesty’. But perhaps my distinction between what constitutes a hymn and what is a song is simply technical nit-picking.

In any case, the book helped convince me that the first verse of Stuart Townend’s ‘How Deep the Father’s Love for Us’ is as good and poetically inspiring as anything written in a hymn in the last 500 years.

The structure of Moir’s finely researched book…