MARY ALESSI & Friends: When Women Worship
In a lost and fallen world, where fashion magazines are the designated determinants of favor and feminine beauty, it should come as no surprise that the ways in which God — throughout the ages — has defined beauty, and bestowed favor upon women, sometimes seem all but lost. On her stunning new release, When Women Worship, Mary Alessi—with the help of six of the most powerful female voices in praise and worship music today—does nothing less than restore those definitions to the realms of righteousness, and reclaim them for God.
By imparting words of deep, life-changing encouragement to women, to men—to all who’ve been alienated from God—Mary and her friends have created a work of compelling beauty that has the power to heal even the most confused and broken of hearts. Produced by hit-maker and GrammyTM Award winning songwriter/producer Aaron Lindsey (Israel and New Breed; Darwin Hobbs), with nine of fourteen songs written or co-written by Alessi, the album is rich with lavish, delicate-to-dramatic orchestrations, and singing that—at every turn—is dramatically passionate.
Alessi’s “friends” comprise a group of women as uniformly gifted, and complimentary of each other’s talents, as they are unique in their own vocal styles and signature sounds. Her twin sister, the 2005 Stellar Award-winning New Artist of the Year, Martha Munizzi, is one of the major artists in Gospel music today. Da’dra Crawford-Greathouse is one half of the hot, contemporary/urban Gospel act, Anointed; and Ingrid Rosario—who records for Integrity Music —is a leading lady of Spanish-language praise & worship. Not yet as well-known, but every bit as gifted, is Nicole Binion, who—with her singer/songwriter husband, David Binion—makes up a much sought-after duo in music ministry and evangelism, and Cindy Cruse-Ratcliff, the minister of music at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church, in Houston. Amie Dockery ministers at Dallas’s Covenant Church, and is the author who co-wrote with Mary the book, When Women Worship, which actually gave birth to the idea of the new album, and is being published in tandem with the CD’s March 13, 2007 release.
On an album filled with stand-out songs, several shine with particular brilliance. “Always Welcome” bears every marking of a true classic-in-the-making, as the women—in both English and Spanish—trade lead and ensemble vocals among them, rising passionately from a whisper to a roar, and back again. “I Surrender All,” from the pen of Alessi and Lindsey, is an absolute gem of modern praise & worship, that segues into a gorgeous Spanish translation of the classic hymn—written by and featuring Ingrid as lead vocalist—before soaring into an utterly transcendent English rendering of the original hymn featuring the entire group.
“Sometimes we can get into works and striving of our own creation, instead of waiting on the leading of the Holy Spirit,” says Mary, “and all we get is frustration. The only way that He can lead us is when we surrender to Him to lead us. I’ve always loved this hymn, and when we wrote the new song with that title, from the beginning I heard it moving into the hymn. I hope people will hear both as songs not only of salvation, but ‘daily walk’ songs, as well.”
“Great Grace,” another Lindsey/Alessi original, is as deeply moving as it is instantly memorable. Gospel great Kurt Carr’s “You Are God,” moves into the equally renowned Michael W. Smith’s contemporary anthem, “Agnus Dei,” evoking at the concert’s close what are perhaps the most memorable, moving, tour-de-force vocals from Mary and the group, on an evening and album filled with music and performances that are nothing less than majestic.
Alessi’s parents, John and Faith Stallings, were a husband-and-wife evangelism team, traveling the length of the United States back in the 1960s. Her mother was a pianist, her father preached and they both sang as a worship team for eight years before their first child was born.
Alessi and Martha were born in Lakeland, Florida, though only in passing—literally—as that’s where the family happened to be when their mother went into labor. Mary, Martha, and their older sister, Marveline, were all born with their parents’ musical gifts, and when they reached the age of eight each became part of the family group.
With love offerings being their sole source of income, the family traveled first in a car, before moving up to an RV as the family grew. The Stallings followed a very simple but effective plan in their ministry, simply “showing up” in towns where they had pastor friends—and sometimes did not—and holding revival meetings. Their stays were sometimes as brief as a couple of days and nights, or as long as six weeks or more, depending on the response they received. Faith always made sure her daughters sang and practiced music regularly, and she also home-schooled them until the family settled in Orlando, when Alessi was 12, so that the children could attend formal, public school. Alessi’s father founded and pastored a church, before the family moved to Miami upon the younger girls’ graduation from high school.
Then, Faith became the minister of music at Grace Church of Kendall, in suburban Miami, pastored by John and Ann Alessi, parents of Alessi’s future husband, Steve Alessi. Mary and Steve married a year later, and joined the elder Alessi’s in co-pastoring Grace Church. When Alessi’s family returned to Orlando not long after her marriage, she and Steve remained in Miami, active in leadership of the large, thriving Grace Church. As the church’s choir director, Alessi was laying the foundation for her current ministry. She and Steve left to form their own congregation, Metro Life Church, in 1997 with a handful of people. They now have over 1,000 members and will open their new facility by Easter 2007. “In that barren time when we were building our church, the people weren't coming right away, but the songs certainly were,” Alessi recalls about her early forays into songwriting. “We could tell that God was getting us ready for something. Sometime in 2002, I felt God telling me it was time to record a project.”
“I was a worship leader,” Alessi says. “I never saw myself as an artist. We weren't sitting there saying, 'We'll do this, Lord, but we're really waiting for our big break.' Not at all. I was even hesitant and insecure about the idea of recording, because I was quite content and happy just ‘blooming where God had planted me. The church was doing very well. It was growing, and God was giving me songs. Martha had recorded The Best Is Yet To Come, and she kept encouraging me: ‘Mary, you need to do this. God will bring favor. You're no different than me, and you’ve got great songs.’”
Martha recommended Alessi to contact Aaron Lindsey with the idea of cutting an album, and though she finally did, it was still not initially with the idea of a large-scale production and release, but rather a custom CD intended largely for the Metro Life congregation. It wasn’t long after her first meeting with Lindsey, however, that her thinking began to change.
“When Aaron heard some of my songs, he told me I was crazy!” she recalls with a laugh. “He said, ‘You've got to have a bigger dream. I know you say you want to reach and touch the lives of your congregation, but this is bigger than that. This is for the nation.”
Alessi, still not entirely convinced, consulted with her husband, who immediately encouraged her to move forward with the idea, and assured her of his confidence that the money—and every resource required—would be supplied.
“I was so intimidated by the process,” says Mary. “I thought I was biting off far more than I could chew. But God always has a way of stepping in, if our plans our in His anointing. It was as if God had given me a whole new lease on who I could be—and what He had for me—in just a split second. Within six weeks, we went from a small-scale project for our own congregation to a five-figure production, recorded live in Dallas, in front of 3,000 people.”
The album, titled More, was recorded at Dallas’s Covenant Church, in 2004, at the invitation of Covenant’s pastors, Mike and Jackie Hayes, close friends and ministry partners with the Alessis. Taking six months to complete the entire production process, the project was released in January of 2005. A trip to Atlanta, to publicize More, happened to coincide with sister Martha’s appearance there as part of the highly successful, yearly “Sisters in the Spirit” tour, which annually features a number of Gospel’s most popular female vocalists. Backstage after the concert, Martha introduced Alessi to evangelist and recording artist, Juanita Bynum, who asked for a copy of Mary’s new CD.
No sooner had Alessi made it home the following morning than she received a phone message to: “Get the next plane back to Atlanta. Juanita wants you on TV, tonight.” Alessi did just that and made her national TV debut on Bynum’s TBN program.
“The CD had not even been officially released,” Mary explains. “We weren't even done with the pressing. But Juanita did so much for us in exposing it to a nationwide audience. The orders came in so fast we couldn't fill them right away! It was the proverbial ‘overnight sensation’ moment. I wanted to say, ‘But I’ve been leading worship for years and years. You just don't know me.”
The album was released on their own label, Miami Life Sounds (as is When Women Worship). As their church, ministry and music gained a considerable national—and even international—profile, Amie Dockery approached Alessi about co-writing a book on the worship experience. Alessi agreed and saw the natural intersection of such a book and a recording built on a similar theme. Once again, “Things just got bigger than I had ever imagined they would,” Mary says. “Cindy jumped on board; then my sister, then Ingrid. All these amazingly talented women wanted to be a part of this.”
The resulting book and CD speak eloquently to issues unique to women and the worship experience, as well as anyone feeling trapped, demeaned, or injured by the arrows that life and circumstance have aimed their way. “I think women, at least more often than men, are the more emotional gender, and desire and need a greater level of intimacy,” says Alessi. “In Song of Solomon,’ there’s the great description of “the bride,” and how beautiful she is; and that’s something that women don't always comprehend. I believe that the enemy has set out to attack and destroy women in their sexuality.
“We have a girls’ home as well, sponsored by our church,” Mary adds. “My heart is so much for young women, for them to understand that the presence of God is a place they can always go to. They may feel rejected by people, ..the system,’ the beauty standards of the world, and this culture, but in the presence of God they are perfect. In God’s eyes, they are the most beautiful, awesome person on the planet; and God loves them. We want to really help women understand that their worship creates a refuge they can run into and be safe.”
Pondering what she’d hope more than anything to convey, and even leave behind for her own children to live by, and share with others, Alessi alludes to the Psalms. “David was a man after the heart of God. That's not said about anyone else in the Bible,” she concludes. “My whole focus, my drive and passion, my calling, is to know God's heart. What does he want? What makes him happy? Even in a relationship as husband and wife, you can't have a more successful relationship than when two people are in it together, asking each other, ‘what makes you happy, what can I do to please your heart?’
“Those are the same things we’re told to ask, and seek to know, of God himself. And more than anything else, I'd just hope it could be said of me: "She was after the very heart of God".
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