Inland Christian rappers keep hip-hop style, leave sin



Inland Christian rappers keep hip-hop style, leave sin

By Amanda Warner

Riverside’s The Press-Enterprise

July 25, 2011



Andrew Mackey, or Loyal Tee as his rapper name goes, says he has all the "swagger" of a professional hip-hop star. As the San Bernardino native bounces on stage with his studded earrings and large layered T-shirts the evening of July 3, he says he isn't seeking to make his name known.

Rather, he's hoping his audience here in The Way church in San Bernardino becomes more acquainted with God.

God is, after all, the inspiration for all of 25-year-old Mackey's rhymes.

Gospel rap, sometimes referred to as Christian rap, has formed somewhat of a culture in the Inland region.

Mackey, as well as local gospel rap artists 32-year old twins Jerome and Tyrone Saxton and 19-year-old Wesley Sims, have left behind gang life in the 'hoods and found grace and a new beginning in Jesus Christ.

But they can't leave behind everything.

Hip-hop has always been a part of their lives. Sims, who is currently a Moreno Valley resident, has been rapping since the fourth grade. The Saxtons, from San Bernardino, remember having rap battles with their friends in high school.

San Bernardino resident Sampson Baskerville, 23, better known as "Du2ce," started rapping in college.

The messages of those first songs, though, were not positive, Mackey said.

"The words that we are speaking, whether good or bad, they have power," Mackey said.

Hip-hop's banging beats are now a backdrop to an alternative to mainstream rap, featuring clean lyrics and encouraging messages.

These Inland gospel rappers perform a few times each month at local venues and say they give away more CDs than they sell.

Sims, who prays before writing any song, says music is just the tool he uses to share the gospel.

"People don't listen to a preacher," Sims said. "But they'll listen to music."

Off the stage, the rappers say they still serve God.

Baskerville, who carries his Bible everywhere, says music alone, even gospel rap, is not going to keep him or anyone else on the right track. He is ardent about reading the Bible and inciting others to read it more often, too.

"The way that we serve God is just by our lifestyle," Jerome Saxton said. "Not because we got a show this weekend."

When the Saxton twins, or 2Face, became Christians at age 24, they say God opened the door for them to use their gift of rapping as a ministry to reach other hip-hop lovers.

As Mackey, with his tattoos and trendy sneakers learned, he didn't have to give up the clothes that he liked or the genre of music that he listened to. He says he just had to give up his "sinful" lifestyle. Now the transformation of his music reflects the transformation Mackey says has occurred throughout his life.

"When you hear my lyrics, my lifestyle matches up with it," he said. "Real gospel rappers, we rep Jesus to the fullest."

Some Christians leave church to worship in homes

By Amanda Warner

Riverside’s The Press-Enterprise

July 31, 2011



When Bob Erickson invites a friend to church, many times the answer is a kind, but definite, no.

He thinks it's because his church may force members to be too vulnerable.

Erickson, 60, who was a leader at the 5,000-member Water of Life Community Church in Fontana, has been leading a 15-member house church for the past 10 years.

He was dissatisfied with the mega church concept and wanted to be involved with a church that had a more genuine community. His one-house church is now linked to five others in a network called Vine House Churches. There are groups in Perris, Fontana and Claremont.

In these groups everyone is involved as there is no formal pastor, only leaders who facilitate participation. For the two-hour meetings each week, there is dinner, prayer and discussion of Bible passages where doubts and questions are often brought up.

"People find it uncomfortable to be in a house church context because their life starts to be revealed," Erickson said. "It's like living with your family."

House churches are similar to the first Christian meetings as mentioned in the New Testament. It is a movement back to a simpler method of church, where the focus, Erickson said, is less on maintaining a building and more on deepening community and one's understanding of God.

About 9 percent of U.S. adults were involved in house churches when Barna Group conducted a study in 2006. They expect that percentage to double in the next two decades.

John Henry, 56, a former assistant pastor, started a house church 15 years ago. His network, called House to Home, has four house churches that have branched out from

Henry's original. They are in Riverside, Fontana and Alta Loma.

When visitors eventually started coming, Henry said, people were affected right away.

Riverside resident Teresa Ford, 49, is one of the leaders at a house church that branched off from Henry's original. Together her group picks apart the Bible, sings worship songs, eats dinner and prays for each other. For the most part they act as any church would -- with the exception of a formal offering and sermon.

Just like the vulnerability found in Erickson's house church, Ford says people in her group are open about their pasts. Ford and some of the other members are former drug abusers. Though, Ford says, they are all recovering from some struggle in their lives.

"It doesn't matter what you've done," Ford said. "You're welcome here."

This is a group that is committed to each other for the long haul, Ford said. Since the house church started in 2004, five of their members have died by returning to drug use. For those still attending, they recognize the power of family-like community and tough love.

"This group probably saved my life," Kim Meshkoff, 42, of Riverside, said.

The eight people who meet each Friday in Riverside joined because they were seeking genuine community and growth as a Christian that they weren't finding in traditional churches. Ford said she was lost in the crowd at the larger church she used to attend.

Still, Henry, Erickson and Ford all recognize how God can use both approaches to church.

"(Many) think church is the building, but it's not," Riverside resident Mike McCarthy, 53, said. "It's the people."

Biola student leaves everything to serve in Mexico’s red light district

By Amanda Warner

Biola University’s The Chimes

Sept. 6, 2011



On a Saturday night in August, prostitutes line La Coahuila Street. The shabby Tijuana neighborhood is infected with pimps watching the onlookers closely. Biola freshman Shealynna Ringor, riding in a taxi with three of her family members, says her eyes were locked on the girls, the “meaning behind desperate.”

Later, Shealynna and her parents returned to her 21-year-old brother Sheadon Ringor’s apartment in Tecate.

The very next morning the Ringor family was told by Mexican residents that there were men watching the apartment the night they spent in Tijuana. They needed to leave. Immediately.

Sheadon and his family packed up all they could and safely made it across the border to the U.S.

Sheadon was told he could never go back to Tecate. Not even to retrieve the belongings he had to leave behind. His family, whom were seeing the work he does for the first time, escaped kidnapping by who knows how many minutes.

Yet, when the Ringor family, whom are from Kauai, Hawaii, had discussed this experience afterward, Shealynna said they all talked about their lack of fear. Seeing the ways God had protected and provided for Sheadon since he moved to Mexico with only $200, they knew God was working this time, too.

Their journey to trust God was a bumpy one.

Before 2009, Sheadon knew, without a doubt, that moving to Mexico was not his calling.

He believed God wanted him to be at Biola.

Sheadon was fine with his arrangement — serving in Mexico on weekends and studying to learn more about God in school. For him, it was a valid justification that continued into his sophomore year.

One night, Sheadon dreamt of darkness. He dreamt of a stadium filled with people who did not know God. But as he walked into the stadium, wanting to tell the unbelievers about Jesus, he couldn’t. He was blocked by the bulky item in his hands: a one-seat school desk.

“Oh, crap,” Sheadon said when he woke up.

Soon after, in October 2009, he prayed for clarity. He prayed for God to destroy everything in his life if he was truly meant to be in Mexico.

He does not recommend this prayer to be taken lightly.

The next day, he found himself throwing up and crying on the bathroom floor. He left Spanish class, blew off work at America Reads and went to his room in Horton. He packed up some clothes, got in his car and drove to Tijuana.

He had finally realized: God was calling him to Mexico.

Driving south to the border, Sheadon was on the freeway when he was overwhelmingly flooded with God’s joy. He had to pull over. God was blessing Sheadon’s decision to leave everything he loved to follow him. Never before had he felt such joy, and he says he’s never felt it that intensely again.

He stayed in Mexico three days before he came back to Biola to officially sign out. Friends did not believe he was really going through with it.

“You’re just excited. It’s emotions. Give it a few days,” were some of the responses.

Sheadon was afraid he would leave Biola on a bad note. Most people, including professors, were not supportive.

“God wants you here at Biola,” they would say.

After fighting it for over a year, Sheadon now knew otherwise.

When his sister Shealynna, 18, heard the news, she reacted as their parents did.

“What the heck? We just spent all of this money for Biola and God’s calling you out? Is he serious?” Shealynna remembered thinking.

“[Our parents] always wanted him to have a degree, go to college, finish school. It was really stressful for my mom,” Shealynna said. “I was kind of overwhelmed because I could never ditch everything I had at home and do this. So I was like, this is definitely a calling for my brother.”

Living in a dark, “ghetto” neighborhood in Tecate, Sheadon has been ministering in Tijuana’s red light district on La Coahuila Street since he left Biola. He and two other ministry workers go out twice a week and talk to prostitutes, street kids and others wandering the street in the middle of the night.

It’s hard.

“It’s not ‘Oh yay, I’m a missionary’ and everything’s good, happy, happy, happy. When you are working with street kids, when you are working with the red light district, it’s tough because … the real situations that you hear in the news or in books, it hits you in the face,” Sheadon said.

When Sheadon’s parents and sister visited him in Tecate a week before they helped Shealynna move into Hope Hall, reality set in for Shealynna after seeing the neighborhood where her brother ministers.

“All my mom kept saying was Sheadon needs a lot of prayer, Sheadon needs a lot of prayer. And I was like, that’s true, my brother needs so much prayer,” she said.

Shealynna says she never really prayed for her brother much, but that’s changed since she last visited him in Mexico.

The dangerous surroundings and the increased crime caused by the war on drugs are some of the issues Sheadon faces.

“It’s hard sometimes but we got to believe in God,” Sheadon said. “This is not our field, this is God’s field.”

Sheadon says it is worth it.

“Before I left, it was almost as if God was saying, ‘Are you willing to sacrifice all of this for me?’ And I’m like, O.K. ... But when I became a missionary, when I didn’t have anything and I was just receiving straight joy from the source, it was almost as if God was saying to me, ‘You didn’t sacrifice anything.’”

The time Sheadon spent at Biola was not a waste, he says. In addition to the strong friendships he made, he learned where he was supposed to be.

Shealynna, on the other hand, plans on staying at Biola all four years. She has seen God’s provision for her with money she did not expect flowing into her Biola account. This is a confirmation. She knows God has plans for her here.

When people have asked Sheadon if he still believes God is calling him to Mexico even after he was run out of his apartment, he remarks confidently that Mexico is where he belongs.

He’ll be moving to Tijuana full time, a move he feels God has been whispering to him for awhile.

This time, it didn’t take a year to get him there.

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