40 Days with God:
A Devotional Journey

Rebecca St. James

Standard Publishing, $15.99

ISBN 0784705690

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Rebecca St. James:
A Missionary for Teen Devotion

Review by Bill Hobbs

Christian musical artists who describe their work as a mission would do well to examine 40 Days with God: A Devotional Journey, the new multimedia project from fast-rising Rebecca St. James.

With just two albums and a few hits to her credit, St. James has evolved her musical career into a missions outreach perfectly designed to reach a youthful audience that's not much younger than she. It's not hard to imagine those same fans playing her music on their Walkmans, zipping her Audiovision CD into their Macs and PCs -- or flipping open the innovative 40 Days with God devotional journal when technology isn't available. The journal is surprisingly well-written, full of thought-provoking questions designed to get users thinking about whether their life is as God-centered as they might have thought. And it has eight pages of color photos of Rebecca's life.

The multimedia CD is a little less impressive -- more because of brevity than content. Still, with a variety of interview segments, portions of her 40 Days with God journal, and full lyrics to five songs including her hit "God," the CD-ROM has lots to offer and can take an hour to fully explore -- more if you spend time looking up each of the many scripture references in your own Bible.

Beware that the disc, which plays in either Macintosh or PC machines, needs a lot of RAM to run smoothly. The more memory, the less frustrating. Also, the videos play in small windows on the screen -- making them difficult to see. Adding to the frustration: the designer layered the video windows overlapping the printed lyrics. When the video runs visuals for "God," "Side by Side," or "He Is Exalted," it blocks out portions of the lyrics.

Now the praise: The visual presentation on the computer screen is clever and attractive, with background screens that are more than appropriate to the message of each song or video. And the video clips of interviews with St. James are well-chosen, presenting both a serious, message-centered St. James and a fun, open personality this disc's target youth audience will find easy to relate to, Australian accent and all.

Combined with the 40 Days with God journal, this disc sets a new mark for those artists who would describe their career as a mission.

Bill Hobbs is a freelance reviewer of Christian music in Nashville, TN.