Shouting hip-hop's praises

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By Cathy Lynn Grossman, USA TODAY
TAMPA — The pastor bounds past the disc jockeys at the turntable bank under the nightclub lighting of Crossover Community Church's worship/concert space.

The Rev. Tommy Kyllonen is in his Sunday best — a sparkling white "Twice-born" T-shirt under his open sport shirt — as he strides onto a catwalk and launches into a sermon on "how Christ would roll," how he would act, facing anger, self-righteousness and deceit. (Related audio clip: Passport by Urban D)

Would the Son of God give offenders the "ice grill"? Kyllonen asks, freezing in a confrontational pose, eyes glowering.

Or would he be "pouring out love onto them"? Kyllonen asks, citing in Psalm 86:15 how God is "slow to anger, abounding in love."

Welcome to hip-hop church — a multiracial, multi-ethnic, mega-decibel, authentically biblical worship service where urban street sound and style take a holy spin.

Crossover does 21st-century church in first-century fashion, going into the world like the Apostle Paul in Athens, telling of salvation in the language of the streets. He meets people where they are and speaks them, sings them, dances them to God, even if it takes a break-dancer gyrating with the chorus.

If under-40 adults white, black and Latino are into hip-hop culture — the MC's rhythmic lyrics and DJ's driving beats. the free-wheeling break-dancers, the bold graffiti-design imagery, the big, flashy fashion — God goes there, too.

Crossover and a handful of other hip-hop churches are a growing niche in "emergent churches," young-adult Christian congregations that turn their backs on denominations and politics and set aside the staid hymnals and dense texts of their elders.

They want their worship, study and service to be of a piece with their daily lifestyle, not segregated into Sunday mornings, says Cameron Strang, head of Relevant, a media company marketing magazines, books, websites and music to post-collegiate Christians.
Worship with attitude

Unashamed by Crossover Church member Carlos "Los-1" Ramirez. Recorded by Anthony "20/20" Duran.

I ain't got nothing to boast about

My flesh is broken I got a thorn stickin' out

I'm not saved by the body I was born in

God's grace encases

So how am I ballin?

So my good actions are only an occurrence

Of me being obedient so be encouraged

Not responding to my own desires

Has kept me away from the edge like mountain climbers

So there is no fear of fallin' off

When my strength fades away He makes a way

So if I fall short

That's all it is

God dusts me off

And has no remembrance

I'm saved by a grace self-controlled servant

My works ain't worth His Majesty's earnings

Big props to the One who Rocks Ages

And stages I can't rock

God's Amazing.

Just as many baby boomers still flock to concerts by grizzled rockers and cling to the '60s' do-your-own-thing ethos, so teens who grew up with hip-hop are still tight with the beat as adults.

"Hip-hop has what all corporate America wants — 18- to 35-year-old employed adults with growing families. That's why you see Russell Simmons producing clothes, Snoop Dogg hawking Chrysler. Everyone wants us. Why not the church?" says Kyllonen, 32, father of a toddler.

As secular hip-hop became a worldwide force, a small but growing contingent, more interested in blessings than bling, nurtures a Christian thread instead of odes to pimping, prostitution, guns and drugs.

Traditional churches often are suspicious of hip-hop's sinful side, but "I'm not ready to give poetry, creativity and visual expression up to the forces of evil when they can be used for God," says the Rev. Efrem Smith, a senior pastor who holds hip-hop services six Sundays a year at Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis. Other Sundays, it's only for teen outreach.

But every Sunday is hip-hop at Crossover, where Kyllonen grew the congregation from 40 to 400 after stepping up from youth pastor to senior pastor in 2002.

Now people ages 16 to 69-plus cycle through three weekend services in a low-slung cinderblock building with backlit skyscraper photos instead of windows, as if it were a downtown storefront not set amid moss-dripping trees in a working-class corner of Tampa.

Another 100 teens come for Thursday night services led by a new youth minister who tracked down grants to build an elaborate skateboarding park and a new basketball court adjacent to the church.

Kyllonen estimates 90% of Crossover's members are originally from the urban Northeast, chiefly New York, where teasing out race and ethnicity is like deconstructing a stew. Kyllonen defies classification. He has Greek, Spanish and Finnish heritage. His wife, Lucy, the administrator at Crossover, is Puerto Rican.

He began as a rebellious pastor's kid, rapping at age 10, tagging Philadelphia walls with illegal graffiti at 15, back when hip-hop was "all about making your name and reputation with style."

Then, his father challenged him to "take it to God." Could he turn the performance of self into a performance of soul?

Absolutely. By the time he was rapping with his own group in a college street ministry, it all came together: "I could be all myself and all in service to God."

An evangelist recruited Kyllonen for a youth ministry at Crossover when he was 22, finishing a bachelor's in pastoral theology at Southeastern University seminary in Lakeland. He did his senior internship creating a successful youth basketball league for churches in nearby Clearwater.

When Pastor Tommy and Lucy came to Crossover, it was a lonely building in a weedy lot, home to a succession of failing congregations. There were four teens in the group, 40 people in worship on Sundays.

He quickly built the youth group to 400 by talking of eternal life in the vernacular of their every day. But the Sunday services still languished in the little sanctuary.

Now the room is transformed into a concert hall/club/sanctuary, packed with video screens and speakers, a tech booth in the back and a turntable bank where a traditional or suburban contemporary church might have an organ or a drum set.

Worship on a recent Sunday leads off with seven worship team singers in chocolate-brown T-shirts leading 20 minutes of praise and prayer. A dancer spins by as they sing, "When the spirit of the Lord moves in my heart, I will dance like David danced."

Associate Pastor Anthony "Tone" Bruno does a boxing skit and gives a Scripture-backed lesson on learning from "a cat in the Bible named Nehemiah" to avoid turning anger into sin. It leads into the first of Kyllonen's four-sermon "City of Pain" series on dealing with troubles in the world.

Tech-savvy music, video and design teams enhance the sermon theme presentations with videos, raps, posters and parodies of pop-culture phenoms like reality TV or plastic surgery makeovers. Christian hip-hop followers buy their CDs, DVD, and ministry materials from their website, crossoverchurch.org

"Everything leads to the same principles," Kyllonen says. "You can pimp your ride. You can nip and you can tuck. You can be all hooked up with your job — but you'll never find the answers you really need."

Denise and Ernie Hamilton of Riverview, a Tampa suburb, came with their teenagers and found that hip-hop church rocked their own souls, as well.

"I've seen a lot of messed-up messages in traditional churches," says Denise, 45. "People have to be able to come to church even when they are all messed up in life and find the unconditional love of God, not the judgment of man."

Says Kyllonen: "It's all about the word of God delivered in an honest, postmodern way. ... We're non-denominational, but we're not lone rangers doing some crazy theological thing."

After inquiries from around the country, Kyllonen six years ago created an annual conference at Crossover to spread techniques for running a multimedia church with biblical integrity and a hip-hop flavor. This year's event drew 250 performers, pastors, youth ministers and more from Japan to Barcelona to Omaha.

Hip-hop's outsize volume and in-your-face imagery are "unavoidable" today, Bruno told one of the workshops.

"We're not looking to rule all churches, but we will be a major part of the next generation. We want what the whole church wants — to be rescued and redeemed."