Experience

Publications

• The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation

  Judson Press

  Each generation brings new challenges and opportunities to the church. One such challenge/ opportunity facing the black church today comes in the form of the hip hop generation. Hip hop is DJing and MCing, break dancing and rapping; street art, street talk, and street smarts. It has its own language, its own look, its own consciousness. Hip hop is a culture and an identity, and for many African American churches, hip hop and its generation are both disturbing and frightening.

• The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation

  Judson Press

  Each generation brings new challenges and opportunities to the church. One such challenge/ opportunity facing the black church today comes in the form of the hip hop generation. Hip hop is DJing and MCing, break dancing and rapping; street art, street talk, and street smarts. It has its own language, its own look, its own consciousness. Hip hop is a culture and an identity, and for many African American churches, hip hop and its generation are both disturbing and frightening.

• Leading Your African American Church Pastoral Transition

  Judson Press

  A practical resource for church leaders who have responsibility for ushering a congregation through a pastoral transition. Whether the outgoing pastor s departure is planned or unexpected, whether the new pastor is assigned or elected, author Ralph Watkins shares helpful insights, practical strategies, and biblical principles to help clergy, their family, and their congregation negotiate the change in leadership. Features a half-dozen ministry profiles based on interviews with pastors and churches that have navigated a significant pastoral change of their own.

• The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation

  Judson Press

  Each generation brings new challenges and opportunities to the church. One such challenge/ opportunity facing the black church today comes in the form of the hip hop generation. Hip hop is DJing and MCing, break dancing and rapping; street art, street talk, and street smarts. It has its own language, its own look, its own consciousness. Hip hop is a culture and an identity, and for many African American churches, hip hop and its generation are both disturbing and frightening.

• Leading Your African American Church Pastoral Transition

  Judson Press

  A practical resource for church leaders who have responsibility for ushering a congregation through a pastoral transition. Whether the outgoing pastor s departure is planned or unexpected, whether the new pastor is assigned or elected, author Ralph Watkins shares helpful insights, practical strategies, and biblical principles to help clergy, their family, and their congregation negotiate the change in leadership. Features a half-dozen ministry profiles based on interviews with pastors and churches that have navigated a significant pastoral change of their own.

• Hip-Hop Redemption: Finding God in the Rhythm and the Rhyme

  Baker Academic

  Hip hop culture is experiencing a sea change today that has implications for evangelism, worship, and spiritual practices. Yet Christians have often failed to interpret this culture with sensitivity. Sociologist, preacher, pop culture expert, and D.J. Ralph Watkins understands that while there is room for a critique of mainstream hip hop and culture, by listening more intently to the music's story listeners can hear a prophet crying out, sharing the pain of a generation that feels as though it hasn't been heard. His accessible, balanced engagement reveals what is inherently good and redeeming in hiphop and rap music and uses that culture as a lens to open up the power of the Bible for ministry to a generation.

• The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation

  Judson Press

  Each generation brings new challenges and opportunities to the church. One such challenge/ opportunity facing the black church today comes in the form of the hip hop generation. Hip hop is DJing and MCing, break dancing and rapping; street art, street talk, and street smarts. It has its own language, its own look, its own consciousness. Hip hop is a culture and an identity, and for many African American churches, hip hop and its generation are both disturbing and frightening.

• Leading Your African American Church Pastoral Transition

  Judson Press

  A practical resource for church leaders who have responsibility for ushering a congregation through a pastoral transition. Whether the outgoing pastor s departure is planned or unexpected, whether the new pastor is assigned or elected, author Ralph Watkins shares helpful insights, practical strategies, and biblical principles to help clergy, their family, and their congregation negotiate the change in leadership. Features a half-dozen ministry profiles based on interviews with pastors and churches that have navigated a significant pastoral change of their own.

• Hip-Hop Redemption: Finding God in the Rhythm and the Rhyme

  Baker Academic

  Hip hop culture is experiencing a sea change today that has implications for evangelism, worship, and spiritual practices. Yet Christians have often failed to interpret this culture with sensitivity. Sociologist, preacher, pop culture expert, and D.J. Ralph Watkins understands that while there is room for a critique of mainstream hip hop and culture, by listening more intently to the music's story listeners can hear a prophet crying out, sharing the pain of a generation that feels as though it hasn't been heard. His accessible, balanced engagement reveals what is inherently good and redeeming in hiphop and rap music and uses that culture as a lens to open up the power of the Bible for ministry to a generation.

• African Origins of Monotheism: Challenging the Eurocentric Interpretation of God Concepts on the Continent and in the Diaspora

  Pickwick Publishers

  Introduction / Review African Origins of Monotheism recasts an African knowledge of God in a new and original way. It aims to recapture concepts of God as originally reflected upon by pristine African religious thinkers. Muzorewa is seeking after the traditional African understandings of the Divine, which trace their origins back before the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Monotheism, he maintains, is the ancient view of God, ubiquitous across the continent of Africa; indeed, monotheism comes "out of Africa" The book challenges the way that the idea of God has been manipulated by Eurocentric agendas, by colonizers, enslavers, and empire builders, all of whom were using God-talk to achieve their own personal ends. In African thinking, the God concept is guided by a sense of the presence of the all-pervasive and omnipresent God, which has instilled in the people a sense of respect for life at all costs. Thus, respect is not based on a commandment or on fear but on a propensity for affinity.

• The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation

  Judson Press

  Each generation brings new challenges and opportunities to the church. One such challenge/ opportunity facing the black church today comes in the form of the hip hop generation. Hip hop is DJing and MCing, break dancing and rapping; street art, street talk, and street smarts. It has its own language, its own look, its own consciousness. Hip hop is a culture and an identity, and for many African American churches, hip hop and its generation are both disturbing and frightening.

• Leading Your African American Church Pastoral Transition

  Judson Press

  A practical resource for church leaders who have responsibility for ushering a congregation through a pastoral transition. Whether the outgoing pastor s departure is planned or unexpected, whether the new pastor is assigned or elected, author Ralph Watkins shares helpful insights, practical strategies, and biblical principles to help clergy, their family, and their congregation negotiate the change in leadership. Features a half-dozen ministry profiles based on interviews with pastors and churches that have navigated a significant pastoral change of their own.

• Hip-Hop Redemption: Finding God in the Rhythm and the Rhyme

  Baker Academic

  Hip hop culture is experiencing a sea change today that has implications for evangelism, worship, and spiritual practices. Yet Christians have often failed to interpret this culture with sensitivity. Sociologist, preacher, pop culture expert, and D.J. Ralph Watkins understands that while there is room for a critique of mainstream hip hop and culture, by listening more intently to the music's story listeners can hear a prophet crying out, sharing the pain of a generation that feels as though it hasn't been heard. His accessible, balanced engagement reveals what is inherently good and redeeming in hiphop and rap music and uses that culture as a lens to open up the power of the Bible for ministry to a generation.

• African Origins of Monotheism: Challenging the Eurocentric Interpretation of God Concepts on the Continent and in the Diaspora

  Pickwick Publishers

  Introduction / Review African Origins of Monotheism recasts an African knowledge of God in a new and original way. It aims to recapture concepts of God as originally reflected upon by pristine African religious thinkers. Muzorewa is seeking after the traditional African understandings of the Divine, which trace their origins back before the rise of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Monotheism, he maintains, is the ancient view of God, ubiquitous across the continent of Africa; indeed, monotheism comes "out of Africa" The book challenges the way that the idea of God has been manipulated by Eurocentric agendas, by colonizers, enslavers, and empire builders, all of whom were using God-talk to achieve their own personal ends. In African thinking, the God concept is guided by a sense of the presence of the all-pervasive and omnipresent God, which has instilled in the people a sense of respect for life at all costs. Thus, respect is not based on a commandment or on fear but on a propensity for affinity.

• Jay-Z to Jesus: Reaching and Teaching Young Adults in the Black Church

  Judson Press

  The church needs young adults and young adults need the church," the authors assert. This book is a call to respond to both of those needs--to challenge the African American church to reach out to the lost generation of young adults and to equip congregations with the insights and tools needed to teach the gospel to the postmodern, post-civil rights, post-soul generation. Acknowledging that young adulthood now encompasses ages 18-39, Ralph Watkins and Benjamin Stephens explore the issues and offer the words of young adults themselves as testimony to the spiritual longing and critique of the aging church's ministry