something old or something new?

Friday's WSJ's story about the thread of the emergent church referred to as the hip hop church set me to wondering if this is something unique or just today's version of your parent's folk mass or your older sibling's praise service. Since 2 [apparantly middle-aged] pastors (who are probably conservative evangelicals if one can infer by their publishers -Moody Press and IVP) have written a book articulating this contemporary phenomenon (no, I haven't read it, and am therefore not critiquing its content in any way), I'm guessing the latter, since by the time the established church gets around to sanctioning a movement it is usually already moribund.

I've no problem with hip hoppers expressing and exploring their faith in what seems to be their vernacular; the church has been trying to share its words and traditions with the hoi polloi since Luther. I only giggle because each generation has their preferred forms of artistic conveyances, and each one thinks they've invented something truly new: a somewhat shocking, fresh, and devoid-of-meaningless-ritual style of worship. But all group activities, even orgies or meetings of the local anarchist society have ritual, even if those rituals are as simple as gathering and dispersing as a group--we can't function as a group without them. And hey, gathering and dispersing? Aren't those 2 of the essential elements of our age-old liturgical format? Though I won't be ascertaining this first hand, I'd bet that one can (as one can in a praise service) with barely scratching the surface, find the four essential elements of our age old liturgical outline (gathering, word, meal, sending), and that furthermore, there are hip hop stand- ins that function as traditional units of liturgy, e.g. a gathering hymn, a hymn of praise, a sending hymn, etc.

My point? The more things change....? There is nothing new under the sun? Everything old is new again? Yes but even more, since the Christian faith was able to survive and speak to new faces through the folk mass and the praise service, the spirit can surely speak through the incessantly annoying sounds and movements of hip hop, and that we cannot predict when God will do a new thing and speak a new word to us.