In A City Called Heaven, Robert M. Marovich follows gospel music from early hymns and camp meetings through its growth into the sanctified soundtrack of the city's mainline black Protestant churches. Marovich mines print media, ephemera, and hours of interviews with artists, ministers, and historians--as well as relatives and friends of gospel pioneers--to recover forgotten singers, musicians, songwriters, and industry leaders. He also examines the entrepreneurial spirit that fueled gospel music's rise to popularity and granted social mobility to a number of its practitioners. As Marovich shows, the music expressed a yearning for freedom from earthly pains, racial prejudice, and life's hardships. Yet it also helped give voice to a people--and lift a nation. A City Called Heaven celebrates a sound too mighty and too joyous for even church walls to hold.

(Piano/Vocal/Guitar Artist Songbook). All 11 songs off the '06 release from this contemporary gospel star: Blessing in the Storm * Conquerors * He Will Take the Pain Away * Let Me Touch You * Melodies from Heaven * When You Fall * You Are * more.

Everyone worships. But Jesus tells us that God is seeking a particular kind of worshiper. In True Worshipers, a seasoned pastor and musician guides readers toward a more engaging, transformative, and biblically faithful understanding of the worship God is seeking. True worship is an activity rooted in the grace of the gospel that affects every area of our lives. And while worship is more than just singing, God’s people gathering in his presence to lift their voices in song is an activity that is biblically based, historically rooted, and potentially life-changing. Thoroughly based in Scripture and filled with practical guidance, this book connects Sunday worship to the rest of our lives—helping us live as true worshipers each and every day.

Heaven: it's everything we're made for, the answer to our inmost longings, our true Home whose depths of joy we can only imagine. And who can tell us more about this blessed realm than the saints — the souls closest to God while here on earth who now dwell beside His royal throne? What they say about Heaven has the fragrant anointing of the Holy Spirit who authored the Scriptures and from whom they draw their wisdom. Open these pages, then, and enter the Celestial Kingdom. Ponder all the rapturous beauty that the saints describe. Bask in the consoling warmth of their tender love for us and grow ever stronger in the desire to share in their heavenly delight. Here you'll come to know the very heart of Heaven: our sharing in the ecstatic love and life of the Trinity. You'll taste the joy of the saints triumphant, ponder the mysteries of our glorious resurrection, and come to understand death as the beautiful gateway to Heaven that it is. Best of all, you'll learn how to begin to live in Heaven even now — by adoring the Blessed Trinity dwelling in your soul, by receiving the precious Body and Blood of the Lord in the Eucharist, and by growing in the heavenly virtue of charity. The wisdom of the saints in these sublimely beautiful pages will quench your fear of death and awaken in you a blessed hunger to join your departed loved ones and to delight with them in the Three Divine Persons who are the very heart of Heaven's splendor.