By Tommy Kyllonen (a.k.a. Urban D.)
Zondervan, 2007, 190 pp., $16.99, www.zondervan.com
For those who think that Stephen Curtis Chapman is cutting-edge, Tommy Kyllonen has a rude surprise. Kyllonen is a musician and pastor of Crossover Community Church in Tampa, Florida. He says his is the first church to target the hip-hop crowd, but now he wants others to follow suit.
The hip-hop culture, Kyllonen writes, is mainstream these days, with 45 million “consumers” between the ages of 13 and 34. Eighty percent of those consumers are Caucasian. Translation: That suburban teen wearing penny loafers and his collar turned up might well have Snoop Dogg in his iPod.
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“Unfortunately, the church, by and large, hasn’t acknowledged this shift,” he writes. “The church, for the most part, still believes that anything urban-oriented is only for the inner-city or ethnic crowd. This couldn’t be further from the truth.”
“Unorthodox” combines dull-as-toast autobiography with a semi-convincing case for churches to hop on the hip-hop bandwagon now.
- Jammy Walker