As a Christian hip-hop artist, I used to think I was special. I thought I had a God-given mission to save “woke” culture. I used to tell myself: “Those people are just so wrong. But if I could find a way to reach the ‘woke mob’, I could tell them about God, then I’d be able to make them see the Truth!” Though I would never say it out loud, what I was really doing was calling people sinners in hopes that they would be just ashamed enough to give their lives to Christ.
On a scale of 1-5, how ridiculous and self-righteous does that sound to you?
Even to me, it’s pretty ridiculous. But it’s the same motive that many Christian hip-hop artists have today. Those who haven’t yet put in the work to effectively communicate their message are saying:
“I want to go out into the world where the ‘bad’ people are, and make them ‘good,’ because the world needs more light and less darkness.”
That’s the distilled version of your traditional Christian evangelization model. You’ve likely seen some version of this on highway billboards or heard it from city corner street preachers.
So let me ask you: If you were a non-believer, would you feel compelled to give your life to Christ with this messaging? I’d guess that you probably wouldn’t.
So how do we make the ‘bad’ people in our world turn ‘good’? I can tell you what we don’t do.
- We don’t sell them on a lifestyle they don’t want.
- We don’t show them that as long as they do “Christian” things that are just “holier” versions of what “secular” people do, then they’ll be saved.
- We don’t show them they can have their cake and eat it too.
Here’s what we do:
- We meet them where they are, showing how their life story isn’t wrong, just incomplete.
- We form alliances with these people, rather than making them enemies.
- We offer an order and structure to their beliefs systems.
Why Christian Hip-Hop is Off Beat
I have to call out hip-hop music especially.
Today’s strategy for reaching the next generation looks something like this:
- Take a Christian hip-hop artist who used to be “bad” but is now “good”.
- Make music that sounds “secular”—by mixing in some bass drops, deep 808’s, autotune, and unintelligible lyrics—but is actually “holy”.
- Present that artist as a ‘family-friendly’ version of some other secular rapper.
- Mass-market and commodify them, in hopes that someone in the audience will be converted through divine intervention, not divine revelation.
- Wait for a testimony to come through on the wire.
The problem with this strategy is that it’s not intentional. It hinges on the belief that that “hopefully”, a ‘bad’ person will hear it, and then they’ll turn ‘good’. Or “maybe”, or “eventually”, they’ll just happen to stumble into it, and meet Jesus in disguise through rap music.
Really, this sounds like a bad sales pitch. It condescends on people, calling them out of darkness and into the light.
In order to turn ‘bad’ people into ‘good’ ones, people first have to have the self-awareness to admit that their life stories are “wrong” and need to be made “right.”
But in an age where people are as selfish and divisive as ever, how likely do you think that’s going to happen? As I’ve said before, there have been no scenarios that I’m aware of in which a philosophy that elicits emotions like shame, fear, and spite can lead to true, everlasting change—even on a personal level.
In fact, let me show you just how much it’s not working.
Christianity on the Decline
If this strategy were working so well, then why does the latest Pew research show that in the past decade, religious “nones” (i.e., people who don’t identify with any particular religion) increased from 16% to 29%?
And even for (former) Christian, that number is down from 78% to 63%. More and more, people “describe themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular” when asked about their religious identity.”
Despite that, Christian hip-hop continues to rise in popularity (thankfully) since the late 2000’s, and has seen some cross-collaborative mainstream success. Lecrae and Reach Records takes some of the worldly credit for this (and God takes all of it!).
Why More Freedom is Killing Our Community
An increasingly secularized, liberalist society has not made us more tolerant or unified; quite the opposite actually. Pop culture encourages beliefs and behaviours that encourage people to be atheists at worst, agnostic at best.
Over the past few years, I’ve seen a sharp increase in anti-Christian content. Specifically, ones that detail the rise and fall of megachurches, including programs like The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill and Hillsong: A Megachurch Exposed. Other documentaries like Marketing the Messiah and American Heretics start innocuously enough, but their M.O.’s are downright heretical.
For years, social scientists have observed people form social bonds not around their mutual goals or aspriations, but around their mutual hatred of things, ideas, or other groups. I mention that to say that people swarm around the mutual hate and distrust for Christians, churches, and pastors, and producing anti-Christian programs like the ones mentioned above either drives Christians away from church, and/or drives non-Christians deeper into distrust and hatred of Christians.
As Americans on the right and left untether themselves from the standards of organized religion, they often redraw their allegiances more broadly, rallying around identities of race or nationalism while setting aside tempering ideals such as charity and forgiveness. Think of the alt-right, the small, far-right movement that seeks a whites-only state, suspicious of Christianity because of its acceptance of many groups, or violent protesters on the left, more interested in tearing down their opponents than seeking opportunities for reconciliation. Such attitudes lead to a (sic) more partisan politics and more vicious public life. — Christine Emba
And that is why old evangelization models will not work. As ministers, pastors, and role models, Christian artists need to be more strategic about how they want to reach secular audiences. These audiences more likely to be agnostics, spiritual (but not religious), or possibly even universalist. Like any good brand, artists need to increase their understanding of their audiences’ beliefs and values, and tailor the message in their music accordingly.
Outreach, Not Evangelization: A New Model for Christian Hip-Hop Artists
For myself, I realized that as a producer and an artist, if I really wanted to make an impact, I needed to re-think the entire approach that CHH artists have been taking. After nearly a year of dedicated research, I came to a startling realization.
What if Christian rap artists stopped trying to call “bad” people out of the darkness, and instead met them there? What if we were the lamplight unto their feet (Psalm 119:105), and walked back with them into the light of Christ?
Whereas Christian rappers today tell their audiences, ‘follow me‘, we should really tell them is, ‘I’ll walk with you.’
What if, instead of reaching people who whose life stories were “wrong” to make them “right”, we reached people whose life stories were just incomplete?
Meeting Spiritual People Halfway
Christianity, done properly, is an inherently spiritual lifestyle. As Christians, we don’t simply do Christian things. The entire process of becoming sanctified is to become more like Christ. This metamorphosis requires an entirely different mindset transformation. That happens in a matter of years, not minutes.
As our culture grows more secularized, I find that people tend to “re-discover” God’s ancient wisdom, but package it in new ways. For example, people may say things like “everything happens for a reason”, but they’ll use words like “divine timing” to describe the synergy in meeting the right person at the right time.
Here’s another example: A recent Harvard study found that forgiveness is good for you. They also found that people who get together regularly with their community of faith found that people live longer and with a better quality of life. Those people found more meaning in life. Rates of suicide dropped.
Is it really any surprise that people who are plugged into a genuine community experience a better quality of life? These studies are lessons learned in religious communities. And they’re just as true of non-spiritual people as well. This is the basic tenet of a principle called “common grace.”
Reaching the People Whom Christians Won’t
If I had to boil it down to a single sentence, it would be this:
Moderate agnostics just might have a better grasp on what it means to be a Christian than most Christians do.
Why is that? I’ve found that they’re not tied down by the letter of the law, debating what is or is not a sin. Instead, they follow the spirit of the law. They know that the best way to live is to seek justice, love mercy, and walk humbly (Micah 6:8). And they devote their entire lifestyles to living that out every day, not just on Sundays. They might also talk about consciousness and love, but they’re really talking about sanctification—they just may not know it yet.
And you know what else? People in groups like these have better relationships with one another, are more tolerant, and more intentional than most Christians (that I’ve met).
Yes, there are some people that go a bit too far left-field with their spiritual beliefs with their belief in crystals, chakras, spirit guides, astrology, energy fields/auras, etc.
Yes, as Christians, we should rightly call that what it is: idol worship.
No, that isn’t exclusive to non-Christian groups (how many believers have you met that were a bit too…”zealous” in their beliefs?)
No, that doesn’t excuse us from trying to reach people like this and bring them a little bit closer back to center—back to Christ.
Whereas most Christians might call these ‘spiritual’ people heretics, non-believers, sinners, and God knows what else, I make it my focus to reach these people specifically. I find that while they may or may not be “Christian” per se, when I talk about biblical topics with them, more often than not, we agree on the same core beliefs. We both understand there’s a mystery in the ether that must be solved—not because we have to, but because we get to. And while we may never fully solve it in this lifetime, its the pursuit of an answer that keeps us going. That search, that mission, is what bands people together. To make it as cliche as possible, it’s the journey, not the destination, in which people find their life’s purpose.
Since I’ve made it my focus to reach these types of people, I have had so many fulfilling conversations, without compromising my faith, or invalidating that of another. In fact, I’ve started wonderful friendships that could, in time, result in the person coming to Christ as they continue to pursue universal, objective, moral Truth (capital ‘T’), as much as I do.
Conscious Christian Hip-Hop
Thankfully, I’m not alone in approaching ministry this way. As the Bible says, “seek and you shall find.” I’m now finding an entire community of artists and listeners who think like this. Some are Christian, some are agnostic, others are somewhere in between. In doing so, I’m finding an entire audience of people who have been overlooked by Christian hip-hop music. Unlike the mainstream approach, I’m not tricking them into liking something that they wouldn’t otherwise.
In fact, I’m bringing something to them I know they already like, and the positive, socially conscious messages are just a bonus.
I am meeting my audience where they are, and leading them back to what I know they’re already looking for:
A little more peace in our world.
A little more grace.
A little more tolerance.
A little more freedom to be who we are.
A little more transcendence to rise above.
A little more intuition in our decisions.
And a whole lot of love.
Peace, Love, Unity, Respect. What’s not to love?
And if we want to offer people these things, we have to make it easy and convenient for them to receive it.
One study found that one in two (50%) of non-believers said that they’d prefer to talk with a Christian who doesn’t force their conclusions on them. In reality, one in four (26%) said that actually happened. To reach non-believers, to have more fruitful conversations (and possibly conversions), we don’t need to compromise our faith. But we do need to compromise. We have to offer everything that they’re already looking for in one package. They believe in the Universe. We believe in the creator of the Universe.
We have to give them Jesus, not demand that they come and take Him.
