FLAME on Christian Rap being an oxymoron

Mike Leake 4 Comments

I thoroughly enjoyed this interview with Isaiah’s favorite rapper (Isaiah is my two year old), Marcus Gray (aka FLAME).  Particularly insightful was his response to this question: “One person had asked what you would say to someone who said that Christian hip-hop, or Christian rap, is an oxymoron.”

FLAME: First of all, I would understand that school of thought because if you look at secular hip-hop, it’s definitely, I believe, demonically influenced with an anti-Christ message. A lot of times people are anti-Christian even. They promote worldliness, debauchery, so I definitely understand that school of thought. But I would like for them to think through, number one, if Satan has the power to create? Number two, I would just hope that they would see that Satan doesn’t create anything—he’s a creature himself. Yes, he can influence people to start a movement, but I think hip-hop—rap—in and of itself can be redeemed just like anything else. God isn’t a wasteful God. He didn’t create us to say, “Oh, they’re sinners now because of Adam, I’m just going to cast them all to hell and start over.” He’s not a wasteful God; he chose to redeem people from sin.

And I think in that same light, the Lord is allowing people that came from the hip-hop culture, who have been redeemed and changed by Christ and now are seeking to go back into that culture, to minister the gospel to them. So it’s a mission field. It’s what any missionary would do—they would learn the language, they would learn the culture, what things are taboo to say, to do. I think it’s just a platform to do that, and I hope that people would see that and see hip-hop as a people group. It’s a people group that thinks a certain way, they act a certain way, they respond to the ills of society in one way. Every person is a responder and is responding in one way or the other. And there’s a culture of people called “hip-hop” that have responded one particular way, and that’s all I think it is.

I was also really happy to hear that FLAME will be putting out his fifth album around December 28th on his new record label Clear Sight Music.  I encourage you to read the entire interview.

When the Mission of God becomes our heartbeat

Mike Leake

In the epilogue to his lengthy but stellar book, The Mission of God, Christopher J.H. Wright posits what happens when we come to see “the mission of God as the very heartbeat of all reality, all creation, all history and all that yet lies ahead of us”:

  • We ask, “Where does God fit into the story of my life?” when the real question is where does my little life fit into this great story of God’s mission.
  • We want to be driven by a purpose that has been tailored just right for our own individual lives (which is of course infinitely preferable to living aimlessly), when we should be seeing the purpose of all life, including our own, wrapped up in the great mission of God for the whole of creation.
  • We talk about the problems of “applying the Bible to our lives,” which often means modifying the Bible somewhat adjectivally to fit into the assumed “reality” of the life we live “in the real world.”  What would it mean to apply our lives to the Bible instead, assuming the Bible to be the reality—the real story—to which we are called to conform ourselves.
  • We wrestle with the question of how we can “make the gospel relevant to the world” (again, at least that is clearly preferable to treating it as irrelevant).  But in this Story, God is about the business of transforming the world to fit the shape of the gospel.
  • We wonder whether and how the care of creation, for example, might fit into our concept and practice of mission, when this Story challenges us to ask whether our lives, lived on God’s earth and under God’s gaze, are aligned with, or horrendously misaligned with, God’s mission that stretches from creation to cosmic transformation and the arrival of a new heaven and new earth. 
  • We argue about what can legitimately be included in the mission God expects from the church, when we should ask what kind of church God expects for his mission in all its comprehensive fullness. 
  • I may wonder what kind of mission God has for me, when I should ask what kind of me God wants for his mission.

I hope you read through and thought about all of those.  If you just skimmed through make sure you at least read the last two. 

I also would hope that you would consider purchasing this book and plodding through it.  Of all that I have read within the past year this book may have shaped my worldview more than any other that I have read.  It is 28.00 and a little over 500 pages long but it is a very fun read even still.  There is a shorter book (that I have not read) that you can buy for 10.88.

What Gospel and Community Centered Might Look Like…

Mike Leake

In their groundbreaking work Total Church authors Steve Timmis and Tim Chester outline what “being gospel-centered and community-centered might mean”:

  • seeing church as an identity instead of a responsibility to be juggled alongside other commitments
  • celebrating ordinary life as the context in which the word of God is proclaimed with “God-talk” as a normal feature of everyday conversation
  • running fewer evangelistic events, youth clubs, and social projects and spending more time sharing our lives with unbelievers
  • starting new congregations instead of growing existing ones
  • preparing Bible talks with other people instead of just studying alone at a desk
  • adopting a 24-7 approach to mission and pastoral care instead of starting ministry programs
  • switching the emphasis from Bible teaching to Bible learning and action
  • spending more time with people on the margins of society
  • learning to disciple one another—and to be discipled—day by day
  • having churches that are messy instead of churches that pretend

If these get your attention you may want to dig a little further by buying this excellent book for just a little over 10 bucks.

More Light, Less Warmth (May It Not Be So!)

Mike Leake 1 Comment

I read this a little over a week ago and it is still rocking me.  John Newton is writing about those things in life that are not necessarily clear in Scripture.  He is considering the idea that “first religious impressions are usually mingled with much of a legal spirit”.  I certainly can relate to this as I once for the sake of holiness burned all of my secular CD’s.  I now think that may have been going a bit too far and some of those burned are probably more true to the gospel than what is sometimes found on Christian radio.  But these words from Newton really shook me up:

And I believe the over-doings of a young convert, proceeding from an honest simplicity of heart, and a desire of pleasing the Lord, are more acceptable in his sight, than a certain coolness of conduct which frequently takes place afterward, when we are apt to look back with pity upon our former weakness, and secretly applaud ourselves for our present greater attainments in knowledge, though perhaps (alas that it should ever be so!) we may have lost as much in warmth, as we have gained in light. 

That last sentence is what really got to me.  I absolutely despise that there are areas in my life where I have increased in knowledge (light) but I have lost just as much in warmth.  I’m going to be vulnerable enough to display some of my early ridiculous beliefs—you can laugh if you desire.

I once had so much “faith” after watching a televangelist that I thought about driving 45 miles without my contacts so that God would heal me, thinking that perhaps God was calling me to exercise faith and then he would heal my deplorable eyesight.  Stupid.  I am much wiser now.  But I have lost a certain warmth and simplicity to my faith.  I sometimes catch myself thinking that quotes like this one are a tad silly, “expect great things from God, attempt great things for God”.  More light, less warmth.

I once was a passionate anxiously awaiting the rapture firm pretribulationalist.  In fact one of my first attempts at writing a book was about the end times mixed with various conspiracy theories.  We’re talking similar to the It’s Prophesied song.  Stupid.  I am much wiser now.  But I have lost a certain warmth and expectancy of Christ’s coming.  I do not believe I will be raptured (in the pre-tribulation since).  But I have also cultivated a lack of eager expectation as regards Christ’s second coming.  More light, less warmth.  (Although some would argue, less light led to less warmth).

I once prayed passionately during services that people would walk the aisle, get saved, and pray the prayer.  Of course I no longer subscribe to Decisional Regeneration, or even really am all that stoked about altar calls.  My theology of those things has changed—and I think rightly so.  But something wrongly changed in my heart as well.  I now find myself much less passionate about praying for lost people in our services.  I find less joy when somebody “makes a decision”.  I am more skeptical.  More light, less warmth. 

I could give many more stories, and that fact alone bothers me.  I am often convicted by the thought of being like the church at Ephesus—“forsaking their first love”.  Or perhaps the Corinthians that had “much knowledge” but not enough love.  Perhaps I’m only a clanging cymbal.

So, I want to pray that the Lord will continue to do a work of grace in my heart.  Rather than just light, I want light that leads to warmth.  I pray for a warm faith, a joyous expectancy of Christ’s return, and a vibrant passion for seeing the lost come to faith in Jesus.  I am reminded of something I once heard Keith Green pray—“I want my heart to have baby skin, Lord.  I want my heart to have skin like a baby”.  Then he sang this song:

<\/param><\/embed><\/object><\/div>“;” alt=””>

 

Only a vision of Jesus will cure my withering heart. 

© 2026 . All rights reserved.
Fashionista by aThemes
  • -
  • +