Hip Hop Happens!

 October 13^th was our Fall Fest and we had a wonderful afternoon here at church enjoying the crisp fall weather, roasting hot dogs and s’mores, listening to gifted musicians and sharing food and conversations.  In short, it was a feast!  Folks from near and far joined together to share in fun and fellowship. 

For me, one of the highlights of the afternoon was watching our high school youth group in stylish, coordinated outfits display their energy, creativity and talent in exuberant hip-hop dance.  Kyla, Dana, Dede, Talaytha, Tanicia, Ieesha! These six youth have been bringing their energy and ideas to room 312 upstairs in the church since late summer.  They have been meeting faithfully three times a week and working with CTS youth intern Ayanna Garrett doing what brings them joy and excitement…Dancing.   

But how did this energetic group come to be a part of our life together here at Broadway?  This summer, Kyla Gray, a 10^th grader at Decatur High School, worked with JSP director Sholanda Lyons helping with the younger children in the program.  Near the end of the program, DeAmon Hargis invited Kyla to have a conversation with me about ways that we could support what she might be interested in doing.  Kyla brought two friends, Dana and Dede, and we talked about things that interested them…art, fashion, writing … but it turned out that what they really wanted was a place they could dance.  In the previous year, they had performed short dances during breaks in the sporting events at their high school and they wanted to continue to do this.  They needed a place to work toward building routines and a repertoire that they could showcase at different places like their school and in the community.

And so we began to meet here at the church.  Slowly we started to get to know each other a little.  We had relationships to build.  We had bridges to build over chasms of age and current culture.  And we soldiered on. Kyla and Dana and Dede brought more friends.  They began working hard at choreographing routines that were creative and exciting.  The routines began to take shape.  Ayanna Garrett began to meet with them to help and guide them.  And soon they were ready to take their efforts to their school to gain approval to do their routines and show the other students their talent and hard work.  They were excited about this prospect and talked about looking for ways to raise money for some costumes.  They were on a roll!

Now, no good story would be interesting without a little conflict.  Right?  Well, as sometimes happens, situations change, people in charge change, ideas change, you know the story.  The “powers that be” at the school did not seem as open to the hip-hop dancing idea as they had in the past.  The group met twice with school officials and … well, let’s just say it didn’t look promising.

And yet the Spirit of God continued to work.  At this very point in the story, a small card arrived at the church office.  In it was a monetary gift from “a child of this church,” Mrs. Hazel Jane Crosier.  In her card, Mrs. Crosier said the gift was “to be used for your active youth programs.”    Wow!  When I learned about this gift, I knew I had to share this information with the kids!  That evening when they came to practice dancing, Ayanna and I had them take a break to talk about the gift and how this was an example of how God can work.  We thought it would be a little bit of a balm to soothe their disappointment about the struggles with the school.  While we were talking about how God blesses us in unexpected ways, one of the youth blurted out “well, let’s pray that the school will let us dance!”  Not missing a beat, Ayanna said “OK!  Let do that!”  And right then and there we all joined hands and prayed together.  It was a moment of pure grace that I will never forget as I felt the bonds between us strengthen and grow.

I don’t know what the future holds for our dancers.  I don’t know what doors will open or what opportunities are in store.  But I do know that God is at work in all of our lives and if we trust Him, together we can see where we are being led and what great things we are called to do.