The Conducive Nature Of Hip Hop Culture For Missional Praxis
A single of the most special, creative, and influential cultures in not only North America but throughout the world is hip hop culture. Hip hop's appeal can be noticed locally and globally as its style, music, and attitude continue to spread quick by means of many different mediums. In the midst of this culturally explosive motion, we also note that the North American Church is struggling, as its recognition and draw fades with every passing year. On the other hand, rebirth is located as thousands of Christians are taping into the fountains of biblical wisdom that are redirecting them back to God's Mission. A motion known as the missional church, is pleading with the body of Christ to be the Church, and to bring the gospel of Christ in a relevant and contextualized fashion to all peoples. One particular would be wise to advise the missional church to take extremely significant the possibilities that hip hop culture brings to the table. For it is this papers intent to show that the extremely nature of hip hop and its cultural norms are quite conducive for missional praxis locally and typically instances even globally.
Ahead of exploring why hip hop and missional theology would go together well hand in hand, 1 have to initially grasp what hip hop culture and missional ecclesiology are initial. To the misunderstandings of numerous, hip hop is one other word for rap music. This confusion draws from a lack of engagement from those outside the hip hop community with those inside. In reality rap is just 1 aspect or cultural artifact that has come out of the hip hop community. "The hip-hop subculture manifests itself in people, and as folks determine the requires in their life that hip-hop meets, the culture is sustained. To reduce hip-hop by saying it is just rap is to disrespect it, because hip-hop is life" (The Hip Hop Church, 66). Hip hop is a culture, it is a world view, it is a way of life. "Hip-hop is about dance, art, expression, discomfort, adore, racism, sexism, broken households, tough times, the search for God and overcoming" (The Hip Hop Church, 61).
For this perform, we also make the point that hip hop at its core is urban youth culture, specifically culture representing African Americans and Latinos. In the book, The Hip Hop Church the author agrees that "it encompasses the culture of African Americans, Latinos and urban America even more usually" (63). Now as we will point out later, the influences of hip hop have crossed these racial and geographic boundaries nonetheless, we attest to its cultural roots and authenticity identified in largely black and brown urban settings. From the beginning, hip hop has found its birth from the African diaspora. And then grounded itself in the urban experience largely of the northeast and west coast. "True Hip-hop is a term that describes the independent collective consciousness of a certain group of inner-city consumers" (The Hip Hop Church, 63). And so it is the people's mundane life activities that make and generate hip hop culture.
The missional community, on the other hand, represents a theologically diverse community who are committed to pursuing God's Mission. It seems at this point, that the missional motion (or at least under the title missional) is a largely white upper and middle class theology. Then again, a homogeneous group is not the goal, nor desire of those inside that theological framework. In fact they represent the opposite, a community that wants to cross all boundaries as God does. They claim that God has and continues to interact in human history, and chooses to use people, particularly the church, to be his hands and feet in this planet. And so according to John 20:21, just as Jesus has been sent into this world, followers of Jesus likewise are sent into this world. They are referred to as to share the gospel of Jesus Christ, and to represent the reign of God right here on earth. Practically speaking, they think that to do this we are known as to cross racial, ethnic, demographic, and cultural boundaries. At the very same time we are not to force any certain culture or practice for each and every context. In Missional Church it is explained this way, "to be faithful to its calling, the church have to be contextual, that is, it have to be culturally related within a certain setting. The church relates regularly and dynamically each to the gospel and to its contextual reality" (18). And so the charge is to bring the great news of Jesus and his coming Kingdom to a planet that is broken, sinful, and in bondage. Relevance is a crucial word for this community as they are sent out into the planet. Engaging cultures and recognizing that just about every culture can have the gospel applied to it is core teaching inside the missional community. "The gospel is generally conveyed by way of the medium of culture. It becomes good news to lost and broken humanity as it is incarnated in the globe via God's sent individuals, the church" (Missional Church, 18). As a result no culture is beneath redemption, no culture is so lost that it can't be saved.
It is with this background of missional theology and hip hop culture that we begin to lay foundation to who these communities, cultures, and movements are, as nicely as why they could possibly go nicely together for each are fascinating movements that have deep impact for the world in which we reside. We need to begin to acknowledge that whilst they do not necessarily overlap in terms of human population and demographics, ideologically the two would go hand in hand extremely well. We will begin to unpack this additional.
Within the hip hop community, there is a debate going on as to what is authentically hip hop, and what is a bi-product of the commercialization of rap music. Inside the confines of rap as a genre you come across underground and socially conscious emcees as well as rich and famous rap pop stars. The Hip Hop Church breaks it down like this, "a rapper is for the business or created by the market they rap about whatever is widely used, and they give the culture of hip-hop a reputation of only being about materialism and sex" (83). But there is one other definition for the conscious rapper, or as they call him the emcee. Right here they say that "an emcee, on the other hand, seeks to maintain the purity in hip-hop and stays away from the entertainment, efficiency-only view that rappers consistently have. The emcee is regarded as to be a lyricist with a thing to say that is for your heart, your soul or your intellect. They don't rhyme about what is famous or essential to the materialistic hip-hop head considering that they are stewards of the culture and hip-hop's message. Emcees are in search of to drop some knowledge about life and how perfect to live in this globe" (84). It is this stewardship and consciousness of hip hop that I would like to discover some even more as it relates to missional praxis.
