Hip-hop services are popping up all over. Lawndale Community Church in Chicago packs the house with its rap-inspired version. The leaders of Minneapolis’s Sanctuary Covenant Church do hip-hop services six times a year to boost youth attendance. In Tampa, the Rev. Tommy Kyllonen’s Crossover Community Church gained 10 times as many congregants when it started using hip-hop in youth outreach programs. Holder has developed “The Hip Hop Prayer Book,” inspired by the Book of Common Prayer, which he wrote with help from dozens of rappers, musicians and poets. Here’s their version of the 23rd Psalm:
Not surprisingly, plenty of bloggers, columnists and fellow priests have criticized the approach. Eric Turner, the assistant pastor at Bible Baptist Church in Creedmoor, N.C., says that when you alter Biblical passages, “you take the author of those writings down. God is completely different from us, and trying to make him like us is incorrect … Jesus is the same yesterday, today, and forever.” But proponents argue that using vernacular language in services is a way to draw young people to church. Everyone’s down with that.
