emerging mosaic

Several years ago I sat in a worship gathering with Sally Morganthaler as someone from the Ionia Community lead the gathered body in some “worship songs of diversity” from Africa. At one point Morganthaler asked me where is the hip hop music? The Anglo church including some of my friends in the emerging church and emergent conversation have been slow to embrace hip hop’s place in the church.

Baker Bookhouse is sponsoring a Hip Hop Culture Forum on April 24th and bringing some important people to the table talk about this very issue.

The next night will feature a great line up of Christian hip hip artists including

Local George Moss ( who  will moderate the forum
T-Bone
Grits ( a favorite of my son and I)

and many more. This is something worth checking out

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The   Jazz Theologian has done it again . His post looking and the synergy between Christian community and jazz ensembles is profound and thought provoking. One person should not be that brilliant  He quotes Ann Pederson, Associate Professor of Religion on jazz community

"Jam sessions set the musicians free to take risks. Diverse cross sections of people come together to just play and learn from one another. The jam session remains an open system where diverse people with diverse talents can come together to learn." "Learning occurs individually through the support of the jazz community. ‘Overall, the jazz community’s educational system sets the students on paths of development directly related to their goal: the creation of a unique improvisational voice with the jazz tradition.’ The jazz community exemplifies the constant struggle between leadership and following, interdependence and individual freedom. The goal of a jazz community is to find the balance where the individual’s freedom to improvise is grounded in the support of the ensemble. The individual plays freely but within the group. Limits are set for the dynamic of freedom." "…the group lends its support as each member learns to discover her or his own musical voice."

Then he asks How’d you like to learn to follow Jesus in that kind of environment?

My response I would love to learn to follow Jesus in that kind of a setting. Wat he describes is the very essence of the covenant community that is at the center of the theological expression in which I was trained. each individual is valued and recognized as a child of God with unique gifts perspectives and expressions of God’s image but interdependent on each other to fully express and reach our potential as God created us.

Too bad most Christian community isn’t like that. I need to think about how my faith community can move more intentionally in that direction.

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Michale Stipe from R.E.M. and producer of the movie Saved! talks about faith in a great interview I came across after reading a blurb on it in Relevant magazine. Here is a snippet.

Faith in general–and I am speaking about Christian faith in particular because it’s what I’m most familiar with–is an individual thing. But I think it’s easy to get lost in it and to maybe allow other people to tell you what is and is not right. I think a true Christian, and I’ll use my parents as the shining example in my life, recognizes what the teachings of Jesus represent and what that means to them, and then, in the not-simple day-to-day living and breathing those teachings, what paths do you take, what choices do you make, what do you support, what do you not support?

If there’s a schism in this country, it might be not between the people who have faith and the people who don’t have faith, but people who have faith that is, in my opinion, pure to the teachings of Jesus and people who have taken that and turned it into something for other reasons, be that power, be that intolerance or ignorance. And that’s where a schism might have occurred in this country presently.

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A line from U2’s 1992 hit One has been voted the UK’s favourite song lyric. The line "One life, with each other, sisters, brothers" came top of a poll of 13,000 people by music channel VH1. The song reached number seven in the UK chart when it was originally released, but a new version featuring Mary J Blige recently went to number two. A call from Bob Marley to "free our minds" in his Redemption Song came fourth,.

read the full story  U2 line tops favourite lyric poll

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Ambra Nikola has once again caught my attention with her biting satirical wit in her commentary on Sean puff.. I mean Puff Da.. I mean P..  aah Diddy’s (why don’t you just make it a symbol) Combs most recent name change.

Oh Prince did that already 

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While browsing over at nykola.com I came across a reference to this song by Nick Cannon about what might have happened is he had not been a born. It is an interesting and straight forward exploration of  the abortion question in popular music

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Technorati Tags: christian_perspective, music

Luther Vandross is being buried today. His silky soulful voice which brought us everything from pepsi and mikey d comercials to jams like stop,a house is not a home and most recently dance with my father will be missed.

Andre

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About six years ago I started preaching every February about the spiritual and emotional issues raised in songs nominated for song of the year a the Grammy awards. this year is the first year to do it with mosaic life and there is just so much to explore. Jesus walks by kanye west if I ain’t got you Alcia keys, the reason hoobastank, and heaven Los lonely boys.

kanye west’s is up first. he straight up calls the church out for not speaking Jesus to the world and being the presence of god to the lest of these

I ain’t here to argue about his facial features
Or here to convert atheists into believers
I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers
The way Kathy Lee needed Regis that’s the way I need Jesus

and and hip-hop world for being hypocrites for rapping about any and everything but God.

So here go my single dawg radio needs this
They say you can rap-about-anything except for Jesus
That means guns, sex, lies, video tapes
But if I talk about God my record won’t get played, Huh?
Well let this take away from my spins
Which will probably take away from my ends
Then I hope it take away from my sins
And bring the day that I’m dreamin bout
Next time I’m in the club everybody screamin out
(Jesus Walks)
it begs the questions who did Jesus walk with? and who does he walk with today?

stay tuned

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if you haven’t seen them yet kanye west jesus walks videos have been playing on mtv for a while now. there are three very different videos

relevant magazine has a summary of all the videos with some spiritual/scriptural connections.

i blogged about this accidental hip-hop prophet previously. he is sharing his spiritual journey in the hip-hop media

i think west is a perfect example of how the postmodern/emergent culture is represented in the african - american community. check this

[Chorus]
Jesus Walk- God show me the way because the devil tryna break me down
Jesus Walk With Me- The only thing that I pray iz that my feet don’t fail me now
Jesus Walk-And I don’t think theres nothing I could do now to right my wrongs
Jesus Walk With Me-I wanna talk to God but im afraid cuz we aint spoke in so long..

I ain’t?t here to argue about his facial features
Or here to convert atheists into believers
I’m just tryna say the way school need teachers
The Way Kathy Lee needed Regis…thats the way i need Jesus.
So here go my single dawg, radio needs this
They said they could rap about anything except for jesus
That means guns, sex, lies, videotape
But if I talk about God my record wont get played, huh?
Well if this take away from my spinz…which will prolly take away my endz..
Then i hope it take away from my sinz and bring the day that im dreamin bout…
Next time im in the club, erybody screaming out…

no trippin about the stuff that church folks stress about "what did jesus look like?"just focus on what really matters we need jesus and he walks with us!

preach brotha

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