Third Day - Time (1999)
Time came out during a rough spiritual patch of my college years, and had a message I needed to hear. As I picked up the album at the store and drove home, I popped it in my CD player and heard the words of "I've Always Loved You" coming at me in the exact moment I desperately needed to hear that the Lord still had a place for me after all my wandering and questioning. I pulled my car over and cried, one of the few times in my life that's happened. God's love is big, bigger than any of our failures or questions or insecurities.
Best Song: "I've Always Loved You"

Waterdeep - Everyone's Beautiful (1999)
Steve Taylor's Squint record label didn't release many records, but they batted 1.000. Waterdeep was already a successful indie band, but with Squint's help, they released a masterful folk-rock/psychedelic/worshipful/singer-songwriter album that contains multitudes. As clever lyrically as Bob Dylan in his prime and musically as interesting as any Phish album, Everyone's Beautiful is a masterful album that tells stories and parables of God's love.
Best Song: "Sweet River Roll" - "Soaking wet Juliet / she lives in a well full of tears / Her husband left her for some bimbo after twenty-two years / Now she's got to start all over, but she's just so terrified / She thinks it woulda been so much easier if he woulda just died…"

Various Artists - City On A Hill (2000)
City On A Hill was a true "community" worship album, with artists collaborating in a way that's unfortunately all too rare in music. With many of the artists here at the peak of their creative powers (Sixpence None The Richer, Third Day, Caedmon's Call, Jars Of Clay, The Choir) this album is a standout worship album, full of great songs that lift up the Maker in an honest and artful way.
Best Song: "God Of Wonders" - Still one of my favorite song to sing on a Sunday morning.

Michael W. Smith - Worship (2001)
Worship, despite its unimaginative title, is another great collaborative worship album that's significant to me because I bought it on the morning of Sept. 11th, 2001. Throughout that day (I was on active duty in the Air Force at the time) and the ones that followed, this album was a continual soundtrack of hope for me. With excellent song choices and great choral arrangements, MWS's Worship was a lifeline for me.
Best Song: "Open The Eyes Of My Heart" - My other favorite Sunday morning song.

P.O.D. - Satellite (2001)
The other purchase on that Sept. 11th morning. I'd never heard something so hard and so comforting at the same time. This is still P.O.D.'s finest moment.
Best Song: "Alive" - This was a needed song for me on that fateful September day.

Sixpence None The Richer - Divine Discontent (2002)
A few years after "Kiss Me" (a song so light and frilly I can barely listen to it) put them on the world-wide map, Sixpence returned with a great balanced album, taking the hard-rockin' side of This Beautiful Mess with the lush, ethereal production of their self-titled platinum album. That haunting opening guitar figure on "I've Been Waiting" and the fantastic cover of "Don't Dream It's Over" still get me every time.
Best Song: "Paralyzed" - The one, out and out rocker here, tells the tale of a real interview with a journalist who had just come back from a war zone in the Balkans, having lost his best friend. The frenzied song captures the story perfectly.

Over The Rhine - Ohio (2003)
Over The Rhine, a band that floats in and out of the CCM scene (they have played shows everywhere and have been featured in every kind of music magazine and website out there) released this double album in the summer of 2003, just in time for a road trip across country for me. I haven't stopped listening since. The complex, dreamy-yet-compelling folk-rock of this opus (dedicated to their home state) deserves a quiet spot and undivided attention to listen to it.
Best Song: "Jesus In New Orleans" - "Jesus is still my favorite loser / falling for the entire human race"

Caedemon's Call - Share The Well (2004)
A World Music treatise in the vein of Paul Simon's Graceland, Caedmon's Call took the concept of a "mission trip" and took the music of the regions they went to (India, South America) and wrote songs and performed them with local musicians. The results were spectacular, with the band producing its finest album. The wall of African percussion on the worshipful "There's Only One" and the political "Dalit Hymn" (a call for universal human rights) are worth ten listens each. The rollicking "Rains in Bombay" is worth your time too.
Best Song: "Mother India" - This is the song that we named my oldest daughter India after.

Skillet - Comatose (2006)
This album was the one I put on my head phones as I walked about my wonderful little town with my new-born daughter on my back. The lush orchestral backdrop to the opening song, "Rebirthing" was a great juxtaposition of hard rock and symphonic tones. Skillet is a band that divides music critics and fans alike, but this album will always have a place in my heart for being the soundtrack to a great year.
Best Song: "Rebirthing"

Jars of Clay - Good Monsters (2006)
This is, song for song, Jars Of Clay's finest, most mature outing. Their self-titled debut will always be their most well-known moment, but Good Monsters is their best album, pound for pound. The haunting cover of Julie Miller's "All My Tears", with those spine-tingling harmonies and the epic "Oh My God" and "Light Gives Heat" (with a fantastic African Children's choir in tow) show a band at the height of their creative powers. Bonus points are awarded for the satirical slap at Colonialism with the lyrics "hero's from the West / we don't know you / but we know best."
Best Song: "There Is A River" - This is a simple song of testimony, but the refrain and the melody are just about perfect.

Leeland - Sound of Melodies (2006)
From the extended, epic opening of the title track to the majestic "Carried To The Table", Leeland's debut album was a refreshing take on worship music that hit me and the youth group I was working with at just the right time. I played these songs with the worship band, and the songs still bring back the faces of that great group of kids.
Best Song: "The Sound Of Melodies" - "The sound fills your daughters and your sons"

Switchfoot - Hello Hurricane (2009)
My favorite album by my favorite band. It might not be their "best", but it's the one that hits me the hardest. I wasn't sure what the band was doing after two underwhelming outings (Nothing Is Sound and Oh, Gravity), but this album won me over in the first 30 seconds. In fact, the first song inspired my first novel, and the last line of the book is from this song. That's inspiration! The worshipful "Your Love Is A Song" and the epic title track, with its message of hopeful resistance (a good message for any married person or parent) is one I still turn on after a hard day. This album is in my soul's DNA.
Best Song: "Needle In A Haystack Life" - "You are once in a lifetime alive"

The Choir - Burning Like The Midnight Sun (2010)
The definitive "alternative Christian band" has hit on a late career energy burst, putting out four fantastic albums in the last ten years (O How The Mighty Have Fallen, Burning…, The Loudest Sound Ever Heard, and Shadow Weaver) and this one is the best of the litter. With songs celebrating friendship (each band member has a song written about them) and a few more addressing the odd, polarizing nature of the Church in politics ("It Should Have Been Obvious", "The Word Inside The Word"), The Choir is not fading away, in fact, their burning like the midnight sun.
Best Song: "Burning Like The Midnight Sun"

The Afters - Light Up The Sky (2010)
This is a sentimental pick, because it's my oldest daughter's favorite album, and listening to it together is a memory I'll always cherish. The title track is still one of the best songs you'll here on Air1, and the video is worth a quiet few minutes of your time.
Best Song: "Light Up The Sky"

The Lost Dogs - Old Angel (2010)
The Lost Dogs, a group that contains members of seminal alternative artists like The Choir, The 77's and Daniel Amos, are a treasure. Believers that make some of the most honest and heartfelt music of faith, their "cowboy" songs found a great outlet in this concept album that found them traveling old Route 66 (at one time, the only east-west highway in the county) and writing songs all along the way. With an eye on the immigrants who still travel to America looking for a better life, the Lost Dogs wrote a whole album about "movement", both the literal and spiritual kind. Growing old, growing cynical, rarely have I heard such a raw-yet-human album that takes a geographical metaphor and mines spiritual gold out of it. Many traveled Route 66 searching for a better life (the Oakies of the Great Depression, immigrants from Mexico and South America today), and in reality, we're all on the road of life, searching for that elusive promised land.
Best Song: "Carry Me"

Propaganda - Execllent (2012)
Propaganda is a man, rapper, and apologist with a lot on his mind. Excellent ranges in subject matter from historical lessons on the blind spots of many "holy men" Evangelicals revere, ("Precious Puritans") to the modern day life of inner city America ("Raise The Banner"). Huge in scope and fantastic in production and execution (thanks to the marvelous Beautiful Eulogy guys), Excellent shows Propaganda to be one of the deepest "thinkers" the modern Church has to offer.
Best Song: "Raise The Banner"

Andrew Peterson - Light For The Lost Boy (2012)
Peterson had been a fine folk music artist with many great albums under his belt, but Lost Boy saw him break new ground sonically and thematically. Harder rocking and more expansive in theme than he'd ever managed before, this rock opera tells the story of the movement from childhood innocence to (potential) adulthood cynicism in sweeping, cinematic style.
Best Song: "Don't You Want To Thank Someone" - This is the best 10 minute "wrap up" epic rock song you'll hear in many years.

NEEDTOBREATHE - Rivers In The Wasteland (2014)
This is Needtobreathe's finest hour (so far), and with amazing variety and epic scope, Rivers shows the depth and breadth of what a band can do, given time to mature. The satirical-yet-hopeful "Difference Maker" (a beautiful, epic and misunderstood song), the worshipful "Multiplied", the raucous "The Heart" and the joyful "Brother" are four totally different songs in style, but masterfully feel unified in theme. The best way to hear these songs is in one sitting, then in their live versions on the fantastic Live From The Woods concert recording.
Best Song: "Brother" - This is a timeless song about brotherhood (in its many forms) and the bonds of friendship. As good as the classic "Lean On Me", "Brother" will be the soundtrack to senior slide shows and goodbye, final camp moments for years to come.