and deported back to Jamaica when I was
nine years old, so I really had to raise myself
coming up fatherless in an urban community.
The statistics of people within the urban setting
growing up without a father are just so crazy.
But yeah man, came up just a regular guy
pursuing a basketball career in high school, and
I never knew Hip-hop and Christianity could
co-exist. I looked at the genre of Hip-hop as
this thing that was glorifying of self, how much
let me check this place out.
God can take
a broken stick
and make a
straight line,
So I go, and I see young individuals. First off, it’s
a multi-cultural church, you see Black, White,
Latino, Asian, old people, young people, and
the majority of the people that are serving and
in leadership capacities at the church are youth.
Youth from ages eighteen to like twenty-three
leading in different parts of the church, leading
the youth ministry, leading the worship ministry,
even a kid leading the first impressions, leading the café
have, jewels, cars, this, this and that. seeing black and brown skinned people who
So I’m in Grand Rapids, I graduate high school from the hood
money do you have, how many women do you
and I’m going into college and I hear people
talking about this Hip-hop church. A friend of
mine who I played high school basketball with
gave his life to Jesus a year prior in 2009, so I
ran into him at the YMCA and he would be like,
“Yo, you should come check out the Hip-hop
church that I go to.” And I’m just thinking Hip-
area, so a very youth driven place. And I’m
love Hip-hop, and dance, and use spoken
word as worship, who love Jesus. And they
that grew
don’t see Jesus only as a savior, because that
up without a
father.
is what I saw Jesus as, as this person who you
must believe in if you don’t want to go to hell,
but these people believe in Jesus as the Lord
of their life.
hop Jesus, how does that even work? Are ya’ll
And that’s what this place really showed me.
talking about rapping worship, how does that church thing. So, you know, what really got me That God can take a broken stick and make a
even work? I was curious, but I also just let it fly there was a girl that I wanted to talk to, she straight line, even a kid from the hood that grew
by, and thought I just wanted to live my life as brought it up. She was like, “Hey I’m going to up without a father. Also, that young people
I’m young and then when I’m old do the whole this Hip-hop church tonight” so I was like, okay can be on fire for Jesus… using their gifts to
February 2019
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