Hey Rose, here's something to go with your "hip-hop-tionary" vocab

The Lord is all that, I need for nothing. / He allows me to chill. / He keeps me from being heated / and allows me to breath easy. / He guides my life so that I can / represent and give shout outs in His name. / An even though I walk through the hood of death, / I don't back down, for you have my back. / The fact that He has me / covered allows me to chill. / He provides me with back-up / In front of player-haters, / and I know that I am a baller and life will be phat. / I fall back in the Lord's crib for the rest of my life.

This from the Pastor of Crossover Community Church in Tampa, FL, with the help of actual rappers.  I had heard of this before, but I was reminded of by Newsweek.

You might expect me to get all on this about how silly I think it is, and indeed it would be silly for me to try it for anything other than ironic effect, because it is quite evident that I ain't no thug from the streets.  And indeed, I think in the context of a Mass or other official liturgy of the Church, it would be out of place.  But as a devotional thing, I don't really see a problem with it; for me it falls into the category of any other other song or poem that is based on or a paraphrase of a Psalm (maybe I should explain in another post how I think about different categories of religious music).  (n.b. Nor does it really offend me to know that somewhere Protestants are having rap church services, since I think of Protestant church services as being more in the category of popular devotion than the equivalent of a Mass, anyway [if that doesn't make sense, ask me to explain in another post].)

Speaking of religious rap, I think Bishop Roche deserves a shout-out.  This is a story I heard some months ago in a Catholic newspaper, but writing on this subject reminded me of it.  The Bishop, trying to come up with ways to preach more effectively to young people, decided to try out some rap stylings.  Before actually using it in his ministry, though, he asked his nephews (or grand-nephews, I don't remember) to listen and tell him if they thought he could impress young people with his rap.  They told him no and advised him not to.  So he decided against it. 

I'm not making fun, I really admire that.  A less humble man might have assumed that he knew better and either not asked in the first place or ignored their criticism.  And then afterwards he wasn't too embarrassed about being shut down to tell the story, either.  So props to him.