Hip Hop Worship Service Gives Teenagers a Home
www.hiphopoutreach.com

Imagine this….You feel bass thumping your chest loudly as hip hop music rattles in your ear. You walk closer to the church and say to yourself, “this can’t be”. As you approach the sanctuary, you see a few hundred teens, as diverse as they are engaged, all shouting out lyrics and getting “crunk for Christ”. Some nod their head while their pants sag lower than the church attendance at many of their home congregations.

Their do-rags are covering their crooked hats while they “C-Walk” (Christ Walk). A DJ spins records atop a pulpit where you would imagine a stiff old white pastor once stood. This is not your grandmother’s worship service; this is JUMP (Joint Urban Ministries in Praise)

JUMP was started three years ago by a group of local urban youth directors that was fed up with the lack of youth involvement at their churches. They saw that the worship services at their home parishes were not connecting with their youth, and they had to do something about it.

They commissioned local Hip Hop Artist David Scherer (a.k.a. Agape) to write a Hip Hop Worship service that would connect with their kids and expose them to a new paradigm of church. He hired some of the best musicians in town and created an interactive, dynamic “hip hop liturgy” that resonated with kids and helped transform some of the youth’s opinions about church who had never seen anything like it.

JUMP is just one of many examples of a growing marriage between hip hop and the church. Originally once said to be totally divorced of one another, the church’s rosary beads and rap’s bling bling are dangling closer and closer together. Recently the rap industry has seen a ubiquity in rappers exploring issues of faith and spirituality. Five years ago Mase, once the multiplatinum, shiny suit darling of P. Diddy’s Bad Boy Records, traded in his bling and fast lifestyle to become a minister. This summer he released a clean CD “Welcome Back” that has been received very warmly by radio airplay. Also released on the same day, was a CD by R. Kelly, one of urban music’s most popular artists.

The Second CD on the double disc is filled with nothing but Gospel songs. And arguably the hottest song of the summer “Jesus Walks” is a song by Kanye West with an overtly Christian message that poses the question, “If I rap about God my record won’t get played?” This “trend” toward spiritual questions in rap excites Reverend Kelly Chatman of Redeemer Lutheran Church in North Minneapolis. “Two thirds of the church’s young people leave after confirmation and only a third are likely to return.

Young people are thirsting for spiritual nurture and JUMP provides an expression of the church designed to meet their taste. I see this as a wonderful opportunity for the church to express commitment to spiritual formation for young people.”

Inadequacy of the church to meet young people’s needs is what compelled Rev. Chatman to invite JUMP to Redeemer Lutheran Church. Redeemer holds the service the second Sunday of every month and Chatman hopes the JUMP model will grow to influence the entire church body. “This is the hip hop generation. We have a choice as a church to embrace that notion and nurture those gifts or to live in denial and continue to die as an institution,” says Dave Scherer (A.k.a. Agape). He travels the country with his ministry Hip Hop Outreach, a program designed to “Spread God’s love through hip hop”. The two met in 1998 when Chatman was on the National Youth Ministry staff for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. He hired Scherer to come in and perform for a global mission’s event. Now, six years later, the two are teaming up again to finish the vision they started together. They will soon start a Hip Hop Institute designed to train young people in music and ministry. They also hope one day to start a hip hop record store that sells positive music. All of these efforts stem from a desire to see more young people involved in church. “It’s going to be a tough road ahead of us,” says Scherer “It’s like when you have a bad experience at a restaurant; it would take a lot for you to want to go back there. We have a lot of youth that have been told that their music is bad, or who they are is not welcome. At JUMP we want to show them that the menu has changed.”

JUMP starts October 10th at 7pm and continues on the second Sunday each month at Redeemer Lutheran Church (1800 Glenwood Ave. N.). For more info on JUMP, contact Redeemer at 612-374-4139 or David Scherer at: agape@hiphopoutreach.com

JUMP: The Hip Hop Worship Experience
October 10th 7pm
Redeemer Lutheran Church
1800 Glenwood Ave. N.
(On the corner of Glenwood and logan)
Open mic and fellowship at 5 pm; worship at 7:00 pm.
For more info contact Redeemer Lutheran Church at 612-374-4139

We do it on the second sunday of every month.