Set In

A while back I was having a conversation with my wife on an afternoon drive about the issues and struggles that she deals with. She has a beautiful wonderful heart for ministering to all types of people, whether it be family, friends, strangers, members at our church, or evangelizing in the community. Where we met it was actually on a missions trip in Puerto Rico where she was working as the leader. Many women do noble things but my wife surpasses them all (😉 love you sweetie).

So what she was struggling with is people that she comes across that knows the bible and what it teaches but yet go against it. Not in a rebellious way, but a way that is of disregard.

A lot of what we want to do, myself included, is that we want to scream out “YOU ARE WRONG AND I AM RIGHT!” And that is what we do. That’s why you see the collective church broken up into so many denominations. I was talking about an issue and related it to faith and had this “you’re wrong I’m right” attitude and she responded jokingly “sometimes after talking to you I want to stop being a Christian.”

Ouch.

It was humbling. It made me open my eyes to how I evangelize to people. It helped me to learn from my mistakes.

So on that drive with my wife I told her that I don’t think it’s possible to minister to people set in their ways. I went on to explain that I believed it was much easier to minister to people that didn’t believe or had not heard of the gospel or were of another religion. That it was extremely difficult to minister to those within our faith.

It’s exactly what Jesus did throughout the gospels. He helped the sick, the needy, the poor, and the Pharisees (the religious folk) looked down at him in disgust. Hitting him with the proverbial religious filled work filled red tape of all the things he can’t do. They told him he was wrong and they were right.

But Jesus still served. And that’s what we need to do. We serve with a heart that is open.

Just like our demonstrator friends at the Lecrae concert. They’re so filled with “you can’t do this” and so worried about what is right and wrong and black and white. They miss the bigger picture. They miss, we miss, I miss, that it’s about serving and loving others.

They miss that it’s about love. I’ll leave you with a song.

Would Jesus Like Hip Hop?

Saturday night my wife and I were able to get a night out away from the kiddo and we attended the Anomaly Tour with Lecrae and Andy Mineo. I’ve been pumped for this since the day I bought the tickets.

As we’re walking into the Verizon Theater I noticed a bunch of people standing outside with bibles and at first thought I said “Oh how nice people from a local church are willing to minister to unbelievers.”

Then they opened their mouths.

Now I’m paraphrasing but basically they said “YOU’RE ALL GOING TO HELL BECAUSE YOU SUPPORT THESE PEOPLE!”

Yikes.

If you don’t know who Lecrae and Andy Mineo are, here are some songs by them.

Lecrae – Church Clothes

Andy Mineo – Freestyle

Hearing the protestors bring their theology, beliefs, rules, etc. lead me to 2 questions that I probably will never be able to answer:

1. Would Jesus Like Hip Hop?
2. How do you minister someone set in their ways?

I’ll answer number 1 here and number 2 in another post.

So…would Jesus like hip hop? Would Jesus have his modern day Palm Sunday donkey/old school drop top Buick ride blasting trap music?

Maybe. Let’s look at Psalms 81:1-2 and then John 12:13

Psalms 81:1-2
Sing for joy to God our strength; Shout joyfully to the God of Jacob. Raise a song, strike the timbrel, The sweet sounding lyre with the harp.

Christian rappers Rappers that are Christian, use their voices and beats to bring worship to God and Jesus Christ. They bring songs that aren’t going to be found in hymnals or coming out of pipe organs of 13th century cathedrals.

And it’s still worship to God.

I was raised Romanion Orthodox and in our church we sang the “hymns” and the religious chants of our denomination. When I left there for another “hipper” church and saw they played guitars and drums, it blew my mind. And…

It’s still worship to God.

John 12:13
They took palm branches and went out to meet him, shouting,“Hosanna!” “Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord!” “Blessed is the king of Israel!”

Christ was worshipped here in the book of John, where they may not have had music. They weren’t singing hymns. They didn’t have rock bands. But it didn’t matter.

Why? Because they worshipped Christ.

It’s not about songs, or instruments.

It’s about the focus.

And the focus is Jesus. So would Jesus like hip hop? I’ll leave you with this…

Most definitely