Declaration

Speechless If he wasn't on your list before, you better add Steven Curtis Chapman to your contemporary Christian music (CCM) superstar group. Speechless, Chapman's 11th album in his 12-year career, reaches new heights and testifies to a songwriting brilliance that is almost unmatched. This ...	All Things New Steven Curtis Chapman has done it once again. Raising the bar to stratospheric heights and surpassing even his own lofty perch (see 1999's brilliant Speechless), Chapman has recorded and released a rich pop masterpiece full of insightful and relevant material in the form of All T...	Signs of Life Like his peer Michael W. Smith, the exuberant Steven Curtis Chapman only gets better with each album. The 1996 release Signs of Life shows Chapman at his best. With thoughtful, introspective lyrics and crisp production, Signs of Life bursts with many high moments, including the i...	All About Love Even Barry Bonds misses a pitch now and then, so let's cut Steven Curtis Chapman a little slack with the less-than-spectacular All About Love. After all, Chapman is riding an incredible wave of success on the heels of back-to-back brilliant releases, Speechless and Declaration. B...	This Moment
Steven Curtis Chapman: Greatest Hits In 10 years, Steven Curtis Chapman has charted 26 No. 1 hits, three Grammy Awards, and 32 Dove Awards (Christian music's equivalent of the Grammys). This release offers some of Chapman's best work in addition to two newer singles, "Not Home Yet" and "I Am Found in You," and rerec...	Heaven in the Real World Throughout his career, Steven Curtis Chapman has tastefully combined his appreciation for down-home country with forward-sounding pop sensibilities. Add to the country and pop a bundle of opportunities for Chapman to flash his guitar wizardry, and you have his 1994 release Heaven...	The Great Adventure	All I Really Want for Christmas You don't expect a Christmas record to become a campaign for adoption but in Steven Curtis Chapman's able hands, he manages to weave the joy of answered prayers for family and kids with songs from the season of the child born in a Bethlehem stable two centuries ago. With three a...	This Moment (Cinderella Edition) Special Edition includes 4 exclusive acoustic versions of "Miracle In the Moment", "Cinderella", "Children of God" and "With One Voice".

what kind of flame?
An album of the caliber of Steven Curtis Chapman's DECLARATION worms its way deeper into an appreciative listener's soul with every new pass-through. Its appeal is multi-layered. Each new encounter with this kind of music reveals a new facet, a previously unheard sound, the pleasure of an allusive turn of phrase that had gone undetected. Chapman winks and nods a fair bit in this CD, a hobby that doesn't distract him from exploring life-and-death themes via some very fine music. The album's opening track--the jaunty, witty, `Live Out Loud' starts the winking in earnest, but you get the idea he's just getting down to business and having a bit of meaningful fun while he arranges his desk. If that's your first impression, events prove you correct with `This Day', a profoundly theological orientation to *this* day. Like the psalmists in some of their most perceptive moments, Chapman lays his emphasis on the given moment. Though he can sing that `you are the same yesterday, today, and forever', he knows you rarely get to eyeball all that. *Today*, by contrast, is right here, right now. Chapman, like the best practitioners of biblical faith, knows the transparent merger of bedrock confession, on the one hand, and the plea for the capacity to believe, on the other: `Father help me to believe ...', he cries out in imitation of a well-remembered gospel cameo, almost in the same breath as a stunning articulation of what he *does* believe. Such tranparency is in no small measure responsible for the affection Chapman's fans maintain for him. What in other mouths might come across as preaching is in Chapman's music the honest confession of something he is learning to get right without yet having mastered it. When the CD liner gives three or four biblical texts at the beginning of each song's credits and lyrics, it is not because Chapman went looking for a string of biblical catchwords to tack clumsily to what he had come to by a completely other route. Nor is it because he simply couldn't make up his mind which passage `fit best'. To the contrary, the odd habit of prefacing his artistic work with a constellation of texts represents the fingerprint of a genuine biblical theologian who sings out with exquisite mastery truth what he has considered unhurriedly, quietly, lovingly. Then follows `Jesus is Life', a winsome declaration of the benignly totalitarian claim of Jesus on one's life. In tracks like this, Chapman allows decency and charm to disarm the embarrassment that often surrounds speculation about `a certain Someone'. Then, just when you thought it was safe to go outside, Something Big happens. `No Greater Love' changes the tone as an astonishing ode to the stubborn mercy that took the iconic Jim Elliot and four other men to Ecuador to die on the shore of a river with spears stuck in their bodies. This tune, which begs repeated listening, tells the story of one of the Amerindian men who in their ignorance took these men's lives. Tertullian's dictum that `the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church' soars here on a new melody. Rhetorical questions are sometimes the best way to articulate what we know and what we do not know in the face of life's majestic enigmas. Chapman wraps his wonderings about them in such grammar, to magnificent effect. `God is God' arguably climbs the album's highest peak. It is perhaps the finest recent musical articulation of life's essential anti-idolatrous confession: `God is God and I am not'. Simply put, Chapman gets everything right on this track. From the ominous, strum-over-voice opening to the mid-sentence foundation statement (`... And the pain falls like a curtain // On the things I once called certain // And I have to say the words I fear the most // I just don't know') to the monastic-esque refrain and closing statement, every detail comes together, powered by the force that throbs at the center of Christian faith and the life-altering consciousness that by grace allows many to see things clearly and to realize that until now they had not. `See the Glory' continues with the same large-ness of soul and note. But even this accomplished track cedes pride of place to the Anthem of The Wise Wo/Man that follows, a song that's become a kind of musical creed in this reviewer's home, to be played on the mornings that more than anything else promise a hard day ahead. Bring it On is an immensely courageous song. Part battle cry, part sung recollection of God's reliability, part self-talk, Chapman has sounded more sober and determined than he does on this potent track. I didn't come lookin' for trouble And I don't want to fight needlessly But I'm not gonna hide in a bubble If trouble comes for me I can feel my heart beating faster I can tell something's coming down But if it's gonna make me grow stronger then... Bring it on Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll, let the storm winds blow Bring it on Let the trouble come, let the hard rain fall, let it make me strong Bring it on Now, maybe you're thinkin' I'm crazy And maybe I need to explain some things `Cause I know I've got an enemy waiting Who wants to bring me pain But what he never seems to remember What he means for evil God works for good So I will not retreat or surrender Now, I don't want to sound like some hero `Cause it's God alone that my hope is in But I'm not gonna run from the very things That would drive me closer to Him So bring it on Bring it on Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll, let the storm winds blow Bring it on Let the trouble come, let it make me fall on the One who's strong Bring it on Let the lightning flash, let the thunder roll, let the storm winds blow Bring it on Let me be made weak so I'll know the strength of the One who's strong Bring it on Bring it on If more of us were bent on being good instead of nice, there'd be a bit more of this track sung in living rooms, cars, offices, and church washrooms. That alone would improve the world. Steven Curtis Chapman has grown on this reviewer gradually and mostly through my sons' musical collections. Yet I find myself standing back in quiet awe before this offering in a way that is not so true of this musician's other superb collections collections. In DECLARATION, justice, mercy, worship, music kiss here. Well-balanced friends, each fires the passion and acuity of the other.

Good CD
Not as good as his Speechless CD, which is probably my favorite of all CD's, but still done well.

Very Good!
This the my second Steven Curtis Chapman album I got, the first being "Heaven In The Real World." I must say "Declaration" is a bit different from his earlier works, a little more rocky, but still good with great and well-written songs. Highly recommended! Also check out Steven's song "Dive" from his album "Speechless". My favorite song of all time.

Well Done
Steven Curtis Chapman's energy and soul make this a must have. What a way to honor the Lord!

Rescue and Freedom
This album is extremely difficult to review because of it's extreme complexity in string arrangements and the awesome vocal power given from SCC. Yet it's absolute power in focusing on God makes Grace revealed, which simplifies the nature of the Lamb and the explanation of this music. I suppose that I can explain it in this mannerism. I am part of Security Forces in the United States Air Force. I am currently deployed in Baghdad, Iraq. In the time that I have been deployed it has been difficult to remain close with God due to a many factors. The power of positive, uplifting, and reassuring music has been absent from my life, which also makes it difficult to stay mentally and spiritually in one Peace of God. Thankfully there are forms of Rescue and Freedom in these songs. From No Greater Love to God is God to Magnificent Obsession, this album truly makes this deployment spirtually and mentally bearable. Music does have power to revive even the most lost. I just hope that Love will continue to take me in. Recommended the most: No Greater Love God is God When Love Takes You In Magnificent Obsession This Day Savior