Trailblazin Ministries Blog

Ministry

A Teaching Ministry

Written by LaRosa Johnson
Sunday, 06 May 2007
Filed under: Faith, Holy Hip-Hop, Ministry

This entry is the continuation of my Sunday Afternoon Thoughts entry. Instead of putting it all in one long entry, I decided to break it up since these are two different topics entirely. This particular blog entry is about my recent thoughts concerning Trailblazin Ministries and the direction that I desire for it to go in.

Lately, I've been praying quite a bit for Trailblazin Ministries, more than I usually do. In the past few months, the ministry has really stabilized itself in many areas. First and foremost, we now have a design for our website that I feel fits the ministry's needs and what I want to get across, plus it is easy enough for me to update from either a computer or my mobile phone (T-Mobile Dash). For the first time (ever?), I can say that I have not had any desire to change or tweak the design in any way; the only changes that I've made recently were integrating my blog and photo gallery (not that hard, a couple hours of work) and adding/removing menu items; other than that, I have not made any significant changes to the site. Hosting the United Vision Mixtape and Young Joshua mixtape have brought quite a few visitors our way and that number is steadily growing with each month that passes. Even though I don't exactly like having the mixtapes page on the website, I see its usefulness and it has been a key tool in attracting people to the website in order to get fed the Word. Even donations have been a blessing as it has allowed the ministry to reach out to others in need and help spread the gospel even further. In all, you could say things are on the up and up, which is a very pleasant feeling, considering the years of work and retooling that I've put into the ministry in order for it to find its niche and become useful.

Even with all of the so-called success that the site has had over the past few months, by no means am I satisfied. Sure, I am content with the current state of things, but I am not satisfied with the direction that the site is leaning towards in some regards, and I know that I can expect greater things to come, so I keep working. The main thing that concerns me most is that people get to my site because they are either looking for information on a holy hip-hop artist or are trying to find a mixtape to download; sure, that is fine within itself (as a number may decide to browse through the rest of the site and start getting fed and become return visitors), but I refuse to have Trailblazin Ministries be known as just another holy hip-hop site that is known for its music reviews because that is not what this site or ministry is about. My utmost desire is for Trailblazin Ministries to be a teaching ministry that disciples and builds believers up in the Word through the medium of hip-hop.

With that in mind, I have tried to leverage the holy hip-hop music to my advantage in order to use it as a means of teaching. That started back in October 2006 when I started doing devotions that were based on a song from a holy hip-hop emcee's album and then attaching that song to the end of the devotion (B. Morr's song "Self Worship" is a good example). For the audience that I presented this to, it was almost an instant hit, and I received quite a bit of positive feedback; as a result, I've decided to do this twice a week in-between the regular devotions. For me, it's been both fun and a challenge on many levels. First, it's fun because it's a nice break from the normal devotions I do, but it becomes a challenge in finding the right song that is solid and has a firm scriptural backing and then finding said passage to support it. From there, I need to make sure that I keep the devotion in the context of both the Scripture and get across the point that the artist was trying to get through in their song, which presents an interesting challenge. Most times, I hit the nail on the head (as many artists have told me after seeing their song used), so that is a comfort in knowing that I'm "getting" the heart of the song.

The holy hip-hop devotions were a success, but there still seemed to be an over emphasis on the music reviews, instead of the Word of God. I knew the factors for this, and it started to get out of control a bit with numerous albums being sent in for review and requests for mixtapes to be added to the mixtapes page. With so many albums, I had to shift gears to focus on the reviews just to keep up as much as possible, which inevitably left me to neglect the teaching aspect of the ministry, which is the true focus of all of this. Not to mention that many of my writers haven't been able to do as many reviews as they used to, that kept putting things further behind. I kept praying on this, hoping that the Lord would give me a solution and many possibilities came my way. Some of the possibilities included: 1) semi-merging with another holy hip-hop site (with better servicing and more writers), 2) heading up the review team of another website (and cross posting reviews on TM), and 3) shut down the review section altogether.

None of those options really seemed conducive to the ministry for several reasons. First, I didn't want to be dependent upon another website for new music or spend more time helping their site grow than I would my own site & ministry. It didn't make much sense to me to take my time doing reviews at my own site and simply transfer it to another, so those options got ruled out rather quickly. Even shutting down that section didn't make sense as a lot of the ministry's readership comes from people looking for these music reviews. That's when I decided to take a different approach with the reviews, instead of critiquing the album from a musical standpoint, I would make an effort to point out the spiritual meat that could be gleaned from the project. So far only two reviews have been done in this format (Believin' Stephen & Everyday Process). That solved one of my problems, which was taking things away from a purely musical standpoint, and focusing on the spiritual aspects (which other sites don't do, so yet another thing to set us apart). I still had a problem as far as what to do about the number of albums that I was receiving for review (along with the quality of some of these projects). I still haven't figured out this one just yet, but I'm thinking that I may simply stop taking in albums for review, and pick and choose on my own what gets covered. This would keep me from covering music that is subpar and stuff that I wouldn't necessarily recommend a listener buy. On the other hand, I would still accept submissions for possible inclusion in hip-hop devotions and other website coverage (who knows, I may get an album that I want to review and tell people about, lots of slept on and up & coming emcees in holy hip-hop). I'm not sure how that will work, but it's definitely an option that I am strongly leaning towards, especially with the current state of my review team and the struggle to find good writers/reviewers.

Now, that solves the issues currently facing me, but, as I said earlier, I am not satisfied with just that; I want Trailblazin Ministries to be a teaching ministry where people can really grow, and not just find quality holy hip-hop. I do have one idea that will really help to push things in the right direction, but it's going to take a lot (and I do mean a lot) of time to get it together. I don't remember if I blogged on it before, I know I posted on the forum about it. Anyway, a brief overview is to put together a bible study booklet that basically takes an artist's album as a whole and each individual song and makes a book with several weeks of Bible study teaching material for use in personal study, small groups, one-on-one discipleship, or Sunday school classes. I would take an album like Timothy Brindle's Killing Sin that is chock full of the Word and put it into both an easy to understand and challenging Bible study series that will promote personal growth. The idea is to work with the artist in putting this together so that they can have input as to what is covered and said, as well as deliver any personal message or points that they may have. It will then be distributed on this site, as well as on their own. The eventual goal is to have it be an enhanced portion of the CD (by doing it in conjunction with the making of the project), which would immediately put the material in the listener's hand without having to visit anyone's website. This is something that is in the works, but I'm just trying to figure out how I want to format it and how in-depth the studies should be. Already, I have emcees such as Excelsius and Flame interested, so it's just a matter of doing my homework and then getting them involved.

That's all I have for right now, as far as pushing this towards becoming a teaching ministry more than it already is. More book reviews will definitely help, as well as bringing back the Bible studies (when I have time to do them). I also want to bring back the podcast so that there is more audio to download and listen to on the site, that both promotes quality music and teaches the Word. That is really my heart's desire and the gift that the Lord has given me; I want to see it come to pass and I know it's going to take a lot of work and prayer. As long as I can stay close to Him and let Him lead me, I know that things will continue to grow and prosper as they have thus far. I just have to make sure that everything I do lines up with the vision that the Lord has given for the ministry.

For anyone reading this, please keep us in prayer, and if you have any ideas or ways that you can help, then feel free to hit us up via our contact form and we'll be glad to take a look at what you have to say. In the meantime, we'll keep doing what we do the best we know how to do it. God bless!