Hillsong Music and Integrity Music will release Hillsong Live! This is Our God, the unprecedented 17th annual live worship CD on July 29th, featuring Hillsong Church’s Reuben Morgan, Joel Houston, Darlene Zschech and Marty Sampson. A companion DVD, CD/DVD Special Edition and CD-ROM Songbook will also be released that day.

Every year since 1992, the Sydney, Australia mega-church has produced a live contemporary/modern worship CD during its annual Hillsong Conference, the dynamic worship event which draws up to 30,000 attendees each year. From the first release, The Power of Your Love, which was produced on cassette, up until this year’s This is Our God, the Hillsong worship team has created these albums based on its commitment to perpetually offering new songs for the church.

Hillsong’s high-energy worship is evident once again on two-disc This is Our God, which was recorded live in March at Acer Arena, the largest indoor stadium in Sydney. A number of new songwriters, worship leaders and musicians including Matthew Crocker, Joel Davies, Jonathon Douglass (JD), Brooke Fraser, Annie Garratt, Jad Gillies, Sam Knock, Mike Guglielmucci and Jill McCloghry joined Morgan, Houston, Zschech and Sampson on the platform, introducing new music and bringing new energy to all the music presented at the event.

Joel Houston, Hillsong’s Creative Director, views this live installment as a message to God. “It’s about a generation expressing their worship; expressing their heart for worship in the action of love toward God, toward the world we live in, and the people who inhabit it. It’s not about highlighting the darkness; it’s about becoming the light that diminishes the darkness. It’s the gospel and we’re all in this together,” he says.

One of the project’s highlights is bound to be “Healer”, which features a guest vocalist/appearance from Mike Guglielmucci of Planetshakers, who wrote or co-wrote several of the disc’s new songs. Guglielmucci wrote “Healer” after a terminal cancer diagnosis in 2006. Guglielmucci’s compelling testimony and his performance, aided by oxygen therapy, is one of the most powerful moments captured on the DVD of This is Our God.

Visit Hillsong YMZ page and find out more about This Is Our God, and the Shout To The Lord Gold Edition which contains Shout To The Lord and Shout To The Lord 2 in a special metallic O-sleeve package which is available at Canadian Christian retail this week.