Lecrae has a brand new album out today called Rebel. The title track is inspired by a sermon given at Mars Hill Church by Pastor Mark. You can download it for free here. The Reach records guys have been part of several Resurgence and Mars Hill events, they have a heart to live missional lives for Jesus, and are reaching the hip hop culture.

3 Questions with Lecrae

What was your inspiration for your new album—"Rebel"?

The inspiration for the album was largely realizing my own need for a biblical worldview. As I would navigate through arts, economics, politics, media, and culture as a whole I'd wrestle with a dichotomy between sacred and secular all the time. I'd either embrace aspects of secularism or the other extreme be very separatist in my views. I began read and listen to stuff by D.A. Carson, Mark Driscoll, Tim Keller, and Francis Schaeffer, and taking another look at Genesis, Daniel, and Romans and I found a better grid to see the world through.

Over time I've worked to see Urban culture through a biblical lens and it's really helped. So I wanted to share with the listener the need to take a stand for Christ in culture yet still be a blessing and cultivator for the culture.

What songs are you most excited about?

I'm really excited about "Change". The song deals with the endless search for "happiness" on earth. The futility of chasing power, pleasure, and possessions.

Also "Don't Waste Your Life". Very self explanatory. Dr. John Piper's ministry has greatly influenced myself and my crew so we crafted a hip hop song unpacking the life not used for God's glory.

Umm lastly I'd say "Got Paper". In urban culture especially hip hop culture, prosperity is constantly paraded as a badge of authentic masculinity, worth, and power. The prosperity gospel is also prevalent, so I wanted to address that in a song as well.

What ideas do you hope that people will come away with after listening to "Rebel"?

I really hope we can stir people toward going against the sinful stream of ideals, values, and lifestyles. I want the christian to be challenged in seeing that the fall of humanity has not thwarted God's intention for us. But since we are now corrupted by sin, we need to renew our mind. We still reflect God's image only now through a murkier lens, so it's important we learn to rebel by taking a stand for Jesus, and yet rebel by being a blessing to the unsaved and sinful culture. Non-believing listeners I pray will be attracted to the quality of the music and creativity, and prayerfully be challenged to look at God's holiness, repent, and turn to Jesus.

Get the Album on iTunes.

I'll be at the Desiring God Conference this Friday-Sunday, and will be live-blogging the whole thing. You can expect photos, video, updates, and my perspective on the event. You will be able to ask questions and I will be able to respond. This will all be on the front page of theResurgence.com. Keep coming back in the following days after the event—I'll be posting interviews with the speakers.

The more people that are part of this, the more fun it will be. So log on and participate. You can ask any questions that you have on the facebook discussion forum. Please let me know if you'll be checking it out below so that I have an idea of how many people will be involved.

Jesus is King and Lord over the whole world. One of the most powerful illustrations of this comes from the 19th chapter of Revelation. For our first Death by Love Contest we are inviting everyone to draw a picture of Jesus from the description in Revelation 19. You can watch this video clip for inspiration.

Instructions

1. "Draw an awesome picture of Jesus from Rev 19." From Andy Cimbala (State College, PA)
2. Post it to the Death by Love Facebook group picture section. (Below the video)
3. The top three will get a book, and then we'll randomly draw at least two submissions for free copies of Death by Love.

Revelation 19:11-16

"Then I saw heaven opened, and behold, a white horse! The one sitting on it is called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he judges and makes war. His eyes are like a flame of fire, and on his head are many diadems, and he has a name written that no one knows but himself. He is clothed in a robe dipped in blood, and the name by which he is called is The Word of God. And the armies of heaven, arrayed in fine linen, white and pure, were following him on white horses. From his mouth comes a sharp sword with which to strike down the nations, and he will rule them with a rod of iron. He will tread the winepress of the fury of the wrath of God the Almighty. On his robe and on his thigh he has a name written, King of kings and Lord of lords." Revelation 19:11-16

It's very sad that the term "preaching to the choir" is a text book cliche, yet many churches and Christians are still only preaching to the converted. Too many Christians are the cliche, they are only preaching to the choir. These people only talk about Jesus with Jesus people, they only pray when they're at the dinner table, they are only friends with people from church, they never take part in secular events, and always say they'll pray for some one—but almost never do.

Do you only 'preach to the choir'?

Saul Williams is an activist, poet, and musician. He's known for being anti-authoritarian and against "the man" (I don't know if he's a Christian, so don't sign up for his theology class). But his music was recently featured in a Nike commercial—his fans were flabbergasted that he could possibly do work for a corporation.

Watch the Commercial

Williams wrote an open letter explaining his reasoning for selling the rights to the song (there are a couple cuss words—but if you're going to be a missionary to our culture you'll have to deal with a few of those). I found this quote from a 37signals blog post.

William's quote about preaching to the choir.

"I received a lot of questions from some about why I would allow my song ‘List of Demands’ to be used in a Nike campaign. Ironically, half of the people now reading this post never heard of me until that commercial aired. That, indeed, was one of my reasons for allowing it. A small circle of poets and conscious do-gooders are not enough to effect the change necessary to shift our planet in peril. We must enlist people from all walks of life, people not accustomed to questioning the norm, people who may simply want to dance uninterrupted without message or slogan. I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’."

The quote that stuck out to me was "I see no glory in ‘preaching to the converted’." and while I certainly see a big point in preaching to Christians still because we're all sinners who need to be convicted by the Word daily... He has a HUGE point. We need to preach the Gospel everywhere—at big corporations and beat poetry clubs, to sports teams and video game nerds, to rock stars and soccer moms, to condo dwelling city people and the homeless guy at the freeway off ramp. Everyone needs to know about Jesus, and that is what the Resurgence is about. It's a movement to equip people to love Jesus and tell the whole world about Him.

I have 40 copies of Death by Love to give away in the next couple weeks, and I need some ideas for contests. Join the Resurgence Facebook page, and leave a message in the correct discussion topic with your contest idea (it should be Christ-centered and somehow related to the themes from Death by Love). I'm going to give the people with the top five ideas a free copy of the book. If you haven't seen the Death by Love Site-check it out!

What to Do
1. Join the Resurgence Facebook page.
2. Go to the Death by Love discussion board on the Facebook page.
3. Submit your idea for the next contest.
3. We'll pick the top 5 entries.
4. We'll get your address and send you one copy of Death by Love—hot off the presses.

I got into the office today, and received a giant manilla envelope with two copies of the Total Church. This is a great book, I read it when it was only being published on the other side of the pond. It was helpful in reflection of how I am living in community and on mission—as well it helped me evaluate my goals as a leader in the Church. I think this book has the potential to radically refocus many churches on their mission, community, and the glory of God.

The Two Parts of Total Church

I've written down the chapter titles so that you can get an understanding of how broad this books is. I would recommend it to any pastor to go over with his leadership, for college and seminary students, and even for any Christian to have a better understanding of what a church body is and how to live as part of one.

Gospel and Community in Principle

Why Gospel?
Why Community?

Gospel and Community in Practice

Evangelism
Social Involvement
Church Planting
World Missions
Discipleship and Training
Pastoral Care
Spirituality
Theology
Apologetics
Children and Young People
Success

Total Church Conference

Steve Timmis and Tim Chester recently spoke at the Total Church North America Conference 2008 in San Diego.

Watch the Video Here

In this video Tim Keller is explaining the main ideas of his book, "The Reason for God" at the Google campus in Mountain View, California. Tim is someone who can calmly and knowledgeably share the Gospel with even the smartest most skeptical people.

I was inspired to share this with you because of a conversation I had with two very intelligent non-Christian men about God. They ask me about my Bible when I was sitting in a Starbucks, and it set off an hour long conversation about why Jesus is the world's only hope. Thankfully from listening and reading the teaching of wise Christian men, like Keller and Francis Schaeffer, I was able to answer most of their questions about God. Listen to this talk and read his book—it will be worth it.

Here's a clip that Dave Miers put up on his website from the 10,000 person large Australia event. The event was called Burn Your Plastic Jesus, which as far as I can tell means to get rid of the myths you have about Jesus, and embrace the Jesus of the Bible.

It's almost midnight and the site is live. For those of you on feed readers, you're going to want to click on the link and visit the site. I'm so thankful that we have such great web guys.

Emphasis on Media

We've put a large flash player on the front page that will contain audio and video. It's a one stop shop to see new media on the Resurgence.

Blog-Centric

The blog is a focus of our redesign. It's now on the front page and easy to get to. So now the 53% of Resurgence readers who don't use feed readers can find out what's new immediately.

Story of the resdesign

A few weeks ago I was talking to @sfaxon about redesigning the Resurgence. Here's that conversation:

Seth: What is the timeline you're thinking of?
Me: I'd like the site redesigned by the second week of September.
Seth: Yeah... and I'd like a pony and a unicorn—that's a bit ambitious.
Me: I can't wait to see my unicorn.

Today I got my unicorn!