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Hip-Hop Revival
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Youth of Maple Park United Methodist Church direct and produce the second Annual Hip-Hop Revival
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Youth are providing leadership for creative worship at Maple Park United Methodist Church. It started on the months where there is a fifth Sunday, which is Youth Sunday at the Maple Park church. Youth plan and lead prayer, praise and preaching on those days.
Rev. Felicia Howell-LaBoy said of her enthusiastic youth, “I told them that they could lead … and they took me seriously.” After one very successful fifth Sunday service, youth put forth an idea for a “hip-hop revival.”
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A second annual hip-hop revival took place in July with over 100 people in attendance. The youth transformed their sanctuary into a club with a DJ booth, streamers, a strobe light and a disco ball. The youth showed a movie they had made about a young man who wanted to attend a club, seeing all of his friends (and others who were not so cool) getting into this club. He could not figure out why he could not attend! After many attempts to get into the club, a guardian angel takes him through his life, showing him the mistakes he made. Finally, the young man changes his life and gives it over to Christ; finally, he gets into Club Heaven.
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What made this event so successful was that youth planned it and did all the work to make it happen. They created an opportunity in which they could speak about their love for God in their own style and language. The kids took various songs from popular rap and R & B music and changed the words, speaking about Jesus and the gospel. Examples include the music of T.I., including rap songs “Big Things Poppin and Little Things Stop It” and “What You know About That?” The youth who attended were amazed that they could listen to their music in church (with the words modified) and see adults enjoying their music along with them!
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One of the most memorable moments at this revival was the passing of the torch, when the youth who graduated from high school this year handed down a devotional Bible to the next generation of youth, providing a foundation basis to keep the youth ministry flowing.
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In another youth event the same weekend, Maple Park UMC teen Pagan McClure
choreographed, produced and directed the Maple Park liturgical dancers at a praise dance concert entitled "Look Where He Brought Us From." The audience was thoroughly awestruck when the dancers performed their rendition of "The Passion of Christ," as seen through a little girl's dream as she drifted off to sleep and became one with her dream in which she experienced Jesus praying in the garden, to the crucifixion on the cross and being raised with "all power" in his hands. One person who attended the concert said that this dance was so powerful that "I got goose bumps all over.”
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Susan Dal Porto, Dana McClure-Thomas, Youth Coordinator at Maple Park UMC and
Rev. Felicia Howell-LaBoy contributed to this story.
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