Hip Hop Church Starting in Bradford, Pennsylvania

Two Bradford Churches are working together to launch a new kind of church service in town. Grace Lutheran and Open Arms Community Churches are teaming up to start "The Remix" on Thursday nights at the Grace Lutheran Community Life Center.

"Hip Hop is at this point, a large part of our culture. There are a lot of people in our community who live the hip hop culture, and the church is not connecting with them," says Josh Hatcher, Outreach Coordinator at Open Arms.

"The Remix" service will be rap worship music with local Christian Hip Hop Group Panic Attack, which is made up of Justin Willoughby, and Larry Petry, and then a "remixed" video version of the weekly church service from Open Arms.

"Rap music often gets a bad reputation," says Hatcher, referring to the sex, violence, and drug use often portrayed in rap music, "but our goal here is not to revel in some of the things that the general hip hop market embraces, but rather to help people connect to God in their own language, from within their own culture."

The Remix is something of a missionary endeavor, according to Hatcher. "When Hudson Taylor went to China in the 19th century, he went in as an Englishman with his top hat and hymnal."

Hatcher says that Taylor found that the Chinese culture largely rejected him as an imperialist, which was not his goal at all. So he shaved his head, grew a traditional queue hairstyle, and changed the way he dressed, so that he could share the message of the gospel.

"The English mission boards were ready to stone him. They all pulled funding, because they thought what Taylor was doing was crazy and shameful. In reality, China Inland Missions helped to launch probably the largest and strongest group of believers in the world. It has survived communism, and there are currently millions of Chinese christians," says Hatcher, "I think that's what we need to do to reach people in America, too. We need to enter their world."

Grace Lutheran and Open Arms hope that "The Remix" can be an indigenous form of worship for a group of people that otherwise might never go to church.

"To be honest, a lot of these people wouldn't understand out churches, and I'm not sure that our churches would understand them. We live in a community where people are separated into tribes- some like country music and hunting and fishing, some are pierced and tattooed and wear black, and others speak the language of hip hop," says Hatcher. "I want to see all people be able to worship and experience God in their own language and style."

"The Remix: Hip Hop Worship" will start April 3rd at 8 PM at the Community Life Center.