Hip-hop churches bring redemptive message to urban youth_41805

Posted: 4/15/05

Hip-hop churches bring
redemptive message to urban youth

By Ken Camp

Managing Editor

HOUSTON–Street Life leaders express their movement's in-your-face attitude on black T-shirts that carry a straightforward message: “Jesus is Lord. Satan is a punk. Pick a side.”

The Christian outreach to young people in the urban hip-hop culture offers a distinctive blend of student ministry, evangelism, church planting and discipleship.

The hip-hop approach operates on two fronts. Hard-edged, streetwise en-tertainment with a distinctively redemptive message draws non-Christian you-ng people. Then small groups offer them a place to experience community, encounter the gospel message and develop into disciples.

Since January, Union Baptist Association has helped start eight Street Life “squads” or cell group churches in Houston–four in homes and others on the Texas Southern University campus, on a high school campus, at a day care center and within a church's youth ministry.

Several established congregations, including First Metropo-litan Baptist, Rose of Sharon Missionary Baptist, First South-west Baptist and Bethany Baptist churches, have worked with the local African-American pastors' fellowship and the Baptist General Convention of Texas to help launch the ministry.

Bertha Vaughns, Baptist Student Ministry director at Texas Southern University, sees the students with whom she works as “an oppressed generation,” shaped by “broken homes, broken relationships (and) broken promises.”

She believes the hip-hop approach to sharing the gospel can be “the deliverer” this generation needs.

Street Life churches use rap music, soulful rhythm and blues, stand-up comedy and dramatic films to package the gospel in a way an urban generation raised on the streets will receive, said Shawn Scoggins, a hip-hop church planter.

“We want to give it to them in a way they've never seen it,” he said.

In part, that is accomplished through relationships built in small groups where non-Christians can talk frankly to mature Christians about issues that matter to them.

“They need to see Jesus walking among them,” Scoggins said.

But first, Christians have to establish a rapport with them by ap-proaching them on common ground, he stressed. Just as Jesus ministered among prostitutes, tax-gatherers, lepers and other outcasts, urban missionaries must meet people where they are, in the hip-hop culture.

“We have to be where the sinner is–in music, movies and media,” he said.

Pointing out that some urban children start picking up “gangsta” slang and attitudes as early as kindergarten, Scoggins envisions high school youth in hip-hop churches mentoring middle school students, who in turn influence younger children.

“God wants this to be reproducible,” Scoggins said. “It can start in a dorm room. It can start with a prayer group. It doesn't have to have a building or require a lot of money.”

While Scoggins provides leadership for the discipleship side of the ministry, Terrance Levi provides the entertainment tools for outreach.

“The Lord gave me the vision to do redemptive entertainment,” Levi said. “I have a passion to help sinners come to know the Lord and to understand the Bible is a manual for players. It's not just a book for grandmas.”

Levi speaks the hip-hop language and understands urban culture intimately.

“The Lord delivered me out of a life of organized crime nine and a half years ago,” he testified. “And I used to own a record company that made cuss-you-out rap records.”

After his conversion, he turned his attention to Christian entertainment but concluded: “A lot of it didn't relate to the unchurched. People want to be entertained, and if it's not entertaining, they won't pay any attention to it.”

Now Levi uses his professional expertise as a record producer and media entrepreneur to create Christian entertainment he believes will appeal to young people on the streets. Through his company, Street Life World-wide Entertainment Group, he and collaborator Rob Phat wrote and produced a motion picture, Pain.

With financial assistance from the BGCT, he also is producing short morality plays on DVD. The “mini-movies” are designed for Christians to give to their unchurched friends to view.

A recent “gathering of the players” at Texas Southern University brought together leaders from hip-hop churches around Houston for a celebration worship service, and it offered an outreach opportunity to students.

As minister to students on campus, Vaughns sees tremendous potential for the hip-hop church, which she views as a revolutionary movement of the Holy Spirit.

“I feel like God pole-vaulted me into this situation, and I've plummeted into something a lot bigger than me,” she said. “The Lord can use this hip-hop approach to redeem a generation. … I don't believe this is going to fizzle out–not be just a fad. I think it will bring about social change.”