A couple of days ago, I received a call from my friend Greg Stier, who oversees the Dare 2 Share ministry, one of the leading evangelistic outreaches to teenagers today. One of the ministry’s most eye-catching initiatives is, without question, the video “Life in 6 Words: The GOSPEL.” You can watch it right here.
[View:http://youtu.be/Ymfh6RJezQ4:550:0]
When I talked with Greg, I learned that something pretty special was happening with that video and a popular rapper—so special, in fact, that I asked Greg to jot it down so I could share it with you. Here’s what he wrote:
“Life in 6 Words” has gone viral. It’s now been seen by over 2 million viewers on a multitude of YouTube channels and has been shown in countless churches across the world. God used it to advance the gospel in ways we never imagined. I’ll admit, when Dare 2 Share produced it as a way to explain the gospel message in a theologically robust way, we weren’t thinking YouTube.
But because of YouTube, something really crazy happened just a few days ago. The rap artist T-Pain tweeted these words out to his almost one million Twitter followers: “This is one of the most amazing pieces I’ve ever heard. Pls enjoy and RT this. The gospel in 4 minutes…”
He then linked his tweet to one of the many YouTube sites that shows the “Life in 6 Words” video.
Wow.
T-Pain has earned two Grammy Awards and been featured on more than 50 chart-topping singles. He’s known for songs like “Let Me Buy U a Drank,” “I’m ‘n Luv (Wit a Stripper)” and “Take Your Shirt Off.” [Read Plugged In’s review of T-Pain’s Epiphany album here.]
In short, T-Pain with his mainstream success spewing gangsta themes, doesn’t appear to be the kind of guy who would ask folks to retweet a video about Jesus. But let’s not sell the Holy Spirit short. Our God can work in anyone’s heart.
T-Pain’s real name is Faheem Rasheed Najm. Although he was raised in a Muslim family, he married a Christian. To be honest, I have no idea where T-Pain is at spiritually. I watched a short video interview filmed last year where he expressed his belief that it didn’t matter what you believed, but that you had faith. Still, it’s obvious that Propaganda’s spoken-word piece moved him, at the minimum on an artistic level, at the maximum on a spiritual level. My prayer is that it nudged him closer to Jesus.
Pray for T-Pain to wrestle through the message of Jesus so clearly articulated in this short but powerful video. Also pray for his million or so Twitter followers to watch it and embrace the message of Jesus as the way of salvation. (At the time of this writing his tweet has been re-tweeted 1,200 times!) Pray for God to open the door for Propaganda to engage the conversation on a deeper level, not only with T-Pain, but others in the secular rap industry.
And one more thing: Whether you’re a teen or adult, feel free to send the www.lifein6words.com link to your friends or post it to your Twitter feed to get the conversation going.
I told you it was pretty cool, right? Don’t forget the “let’s pray for T-Pain” part of Greg’s words above. And I sent the “Life in 6 Words” link to a few people myself. One more thing: If you’re a youth pastor (or have the ear of your church’s youth pastor) Greg’s ministry is giving away 100 free “6 Words” books if you’ll commit to a prayer/evangelism strategy with your teens (at www.share6campaign.com). More than 100,000 of these little books have been used to trigger gospel conversations in the last seven months!
Extra cool, huh?
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