Minneapolis church connects hip-hop to ministry

MINNEAPOLIS ? Many urban churches are finding it increasingly difficult to get young adults through their doors.

But one Minneapolis minister is engaging religion-wary teens and twenty-somethings by mixing a little hip-hop in with the holiness.

On a recent Saturday night, disco lights blasted colored rays around the room at Urban Jerusalem, a Pentecostal church in north Minneapolis. The DJ settled in behind a stack of vinyl. Stacey Jones, the senior pastor at Urban Jerusalem, commanded the microphone.

"Every time the religious leaders came to Jesus to try to catch him," he told the congregation, "Jesus would just blow their mind. Jesus would just throw one or two lines and they were like, 'Oh, snap.' "

Here, turntables stand in place of a pulpit. Graffiti art, rather than stained glass, frames the sanctuary. And the hymns are the kind which can, and do, move congregants to breakdance.

Stacey and his wife, Tryenyse, launched this Twin Cities church five years ago, with the goal of connecting urban youth with Christ.

Source: http://postbulletin.com/news/stories/display.php?id=1480191

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