One man wandered in after seeing the awning and thinking it was a nightclub. Another couple had lived a life on the streets with drugs and gangs; the woman carried a shaving blade under her tongue, a prison trick for quick and covert attacks. A different woman was battling AIDS and addicted to marijuana.
Because of Elements Church in the Bronx, New York, all of them are leaving their old ways behind and slowly learning what it means to live their lives for Christ.
In a low-income neighborhood where crime, prostitution and homelessness are prevalent, Elements has its work cut out for it. But Pastor Efrain Alicea, who goes by Pastor E, has found a way to connect to his community in a language they understand: hip-hop.
“There are other churches in our neighborhood, and they’re doing great work, but they’re not like us,” Pastor E says. “We don’t have a church, for example, where the last Sunday of the month is hip-hop Sunday, and then the next Sunday everybody goes back to ‘normal.’ No, we are who we are all the time.”
Elements began with the hope of reaching the misfits and marginalized.
“So many in the hip-hop culture are marginalized from church,” Pastor E says. “And in some ways, still even from society at large. While the artistry of hip-hop is accepted, the person usually isn’t. So we decided to plant a church for those who felt they didn’t fit in anywhere else. We planted a church we would like to go to.”
Pastor E, a Christian hip-hop artist himself, has found ways to incorporate the music genre into everything they do.
“You’ll hear, say, a song by Hillsong United, and in the middle of it we’ll just kick a hot 16 bars. And that speaks to us as a people,” he says. “Hip-hop is part of our communication method. The culture sees a lot of popular hip-hop artists and rappers as prophets, and the word means so much, so we’re just using their language.”
That means a traditional worship band is out, and a disc jockey is in. Sometimes a musician will play the cajón, guitar or bongos. The walls are also covered in artistic graffiti. The children’s room, for example, shows children crowding around Jesus.
Outreaches include breakdancing, guitar and percussion classes for kids, as well as skating events and basketball tournaments when the weather is nice. Soon they’ll offer graffiti classes for adults.
And to reach some of the immediately felt needs in the church’s Wakefield neighborhood, where they’ve been since last September, they’re offering more practical outreaches for adults: commercial driver’s license and GED classes. They’ve also fed men at a nearby homeless shelter, held a monthly Caribbean breakfast called Wake Up Wakefield and given backpacks to kids in the fall.
As a small church, Elements relies on word-of-mouth, flyers and partnerships to bring their ideas to life. They model a lot of their work after the ministry at Crossover Church, a large church based out of Tampa, Florida, that’s also reaching in to the hip-hop culture but on a larger scale. And they’re talking about possibly partnering with another smaller church that’s been in Wakefield for decades and reaches the African-American and black Caribbean communities.
When it comes to applying evangelism to the context of your community, Elements is breaking it down to the basics. They’re a grassroots movement of Christ followers who understand that speaking the same language of the people they’re reaching is key.