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.
“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
