Comments on: A Church that Embraces Hip Hop

By: Check These Out [5/27/09] - GBrenna dot com

Check These Out [5/27/09] - GBrenna dot com — Wed, 27 May 2009 12:21:27 +0000

[...] A Church that Embraces Hip Hop – This is a response to a previous post (linked to in the post)… I thought this discussion was interesting to follow. [...]

By: Hunter

Hunter — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:45:35 +0000

Reminder that the Rock Church is a reflection of their pastor’s personality. Hip Hop makes sense for them. It doesn’t make sense for everyone to do hip hop just cause its on the radio. There are plenty of other genre’s on the radio too. You have to be who God has called you to be. He has a specific group of people planned for you to reach and you can only reach them by being who he has created you to be. For many churches it would be extremely awkward and would flop for them to attempt to do hip hop.

By: Marc Millan

Marc Millan — Tue, 19 May 2009 20:18:36 +0000

This is a great topic to wrestle with and very healthy, we WANT great music in our churches, we WANT to reach people with relevant music for Christ. It’s also important to note, not all churches are the SAME, not all churches need to be the same way, Diversity is key, is good and needed.

By: Davis Staedtler

Davis Staedtler — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:44:37 +0000

Wow. DJ Beat Rabbi was trying this for a couple years with a church plant I was a part of, The Deep End. Didnt’ work out… maybe we were ahead of our time? =p

By: Graham Brenna

Graham Brenna — Mon, 18 May 2009 23:51:14 +0000

Thanks for this followup! Rock church looks Rockin’! :)

By: A New Way To GOD, The Church and Hip-Hop Music | Cyberistic Blog

A New Way To GOD, The Church and Hip-Hop Music | Cyberistic Blog — Mon, 18 May 2009 22:10:43 +0000

[...] Tony Morgan recently wrote a great series of posts on the new traditional church. One of his posts focused on music, and here’s an excerpt. “Most of the hip-hop and R&B music has been recorded by black artists. 14% of the U.S. population is black. But, remember, nearly one-third of the music purchased on iTunes is one of these two genres. You do the math. White people like hip-hop. [...]

By: Johnathan

Johnathan — Mon, 18 May 2009 20:05:24 +0000

It would be interesting to see a church like the Rock play Country music just as much as Hip Hop.

According to Recording Industry Association of America, there are just as many consumers of Country Music as Hip Hop.

http://76.74.24.142/44510E63-7B5E-5F42-DA74-349B51EDCE0F.pdf

According to Tony’s survey, only 3% of churches play Country music in church.

If we are going to be embrace culture, we should embrace all of it right?

By: Steve Patton

Steve Patton — Mon, 18 May 2009 17:25:34 +0000

Keith, I just realized I was reading two things at once and responded to that…my bad. Long weekend and short sleep I apologize.

By: Keith

Keith — Mon, 18 May 2009 16:01:32 +0000

Uh Steve? You just pretty much agreed with me man.

By: Steve Patton

Steve Patton — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:53:05 +0000

Keith, I couldn’t disagree with you more. The popular secular emcees are not any better than Christian emcees. Manchild, Raphi, Cash Hollistah, Fedel, The Czar, Lecrae, Dwayne Triumph, K-Drama and scores of others are much better than your Soulja Boy, Lil Wayne (yes I said it!), Rick Ross, Flo Rida, Jadakiss and other popular emcees.

Anyone who still complains about the quality of Christian hip-hop today either A) Spends too much time at your “midnight musicals or listening to the 11 year old at youth church trying to rap for the first time or B) Is just plain old not aware of what is availble today compared to what was available 10 years ago.

Here’s the problem I have when I see white churches trying to embrace hip-hop: With perfectly good intentions, it becomes parady. I’ve seen far too many attempts at being relevant come off as parady and that does more to offend those who they are trying to reach rather than reach them. I minister a culturally diverse church and we do open the door occaisionally to hip-hop. Being someone who has done it for a while, its definitely an area of sensitivity for me. Here’s a tip to ANYONE trying to infuse hip-hop music into your services: If it makes you laugh – don’t do it. Think like a missionary. You wouldn’t purposefully use bad spanish, leaders who are VERY limited in its knowledge of Mexico and talk about taco bell in attempts to reach spanish culture. Then why would you use bad rapping, people who only appreciate the culture from a distance and hip-hop cliches (ie “Yo, Yo, Y! I’m MC Shofar!) to try to reach those influenced by hip-hop culture?

/end rant