A Couple of Conversations I had with Lecrae, Christian Rapper

A few months ago I saw a surprising comment on Facebook: “Did I just hear Lois Tverberg’s name on Lecrae’s newest album, Reconstruction?”

Being the out-of-touch nerd that I am, I didn’t realize that Lecrae is a famous Christian rap artist who has had several best-selling albums and won multiple Grammy awards, and he’s even had some hits in the secular Top 40!

On his new album he tells about how he went through a crisis of faith, but now he was going through a reconstruction of his Christian faith. He shares some of the details in a song called “My Story”:

Listen, look, this is the story of my reconstruction
I was broken and busted, I was dented and rusted
I hated Christians for a while, thought the church was disgusting…

Holy Spirit, patiently waiting, nothing forsaken
Started stirring my faith, it was gentle and never shaken
The Bema podcast and Marty Solomon’s words
I read a couple books by Lois Tverberg
Many sermons by Tony Evans and Charlie Dates
I felt the Lord showing His face, giving me grace
Corrected vision when my eyes got blurry
I give the Lord glory, He changed my whole story…

You can listen to the song here:

I shared this on Facebook and my family and friends rolled with laughter, partly at why a nerd like me would be mentioned by a famous rap artist, and also by how perfectly Lecrae said my hard-to-pronounce last name, better than I do myself. (Only Norwegians say it better!)

I Decided to Meet Lecrae

Shortly after hearing his song, I saw that Lecrae was going to be in concert in Grand Rapids, Michigan, near where I live. So I decided to buy two VIP tickets so that I could take a friend with me backstage and say hello to him! My friend Lynette was a huge fan of his, so I invited her to join me.

We had a delightful time visiting him in his motor-home parked outside the venue. When we walked on board he asked me my name, and I said, “I’m Lois Tverberg!” which took him by surprise. He said that usually fans are nervous to meet him, but now he was nervous to meet me! He was fun and very gracious.

Being a nerd, I brought a set of all of my books along with me and asked him which ones he didn’t have yet, which I shared with him. After a quick chat and some pictures, the concert took place, which was jet-engine loud but delightfully full of praise of God. I enjoyed it a lot (with earplugs in).

Of course I had to share a few pictures on social media, and soon a pastor-friend of mine, Danielle Parish, invited me to come out to Spark Church in Palo Alto, CA for a public conversation with Lecrae. She and I had been friends for years, and some of her staff knew some of Lecrae’s people, so they invited us to spend some time talking together.

Behind the Deconstruction and Reconstruction

Here’s little background to Lecrae’s Reconstruction album and the conversation we had. Right around 2020, Lecrae found all the headlines about innocent black men being shot by police deeply disturbing.

He had been learning a lot from white Christian pastors and had many fans in the church, but when he shared his feelings about this issue, their cumulative response was not horror at the loss of life or empathy for Lecrae. Rather, it was an accusation: “Lecrae has abandoned the Gospel for woke social justice issues and politics!”

Lecrae was stunned at the lack of Christian anger and grief over injustice, and the lack of trust of a fellow believer. People were saying the cruelest, ugliest things about him and it made him cynical about Christianity as a whole. For a while he walked away from faith altogether.

Some time later, his friend Adam Thomason (aka “A.T.”) found a way to re-light the fires of faith in Lecrae. He shared Ray Vander Laan’s videos, which he loved, and then my books (and other sources) with him. Lecrae found it very helpful to focus on learning from the first-century Jewish Jesus, rather than the “white American Jesus” that his fans seemed to believe in.

On November 9 we had a public conversation which also included A.T., who has been so much a part of Lecrae’s faith journey. We did it in two parts. First, Lecrae and A.T. talked about Lecrae’s story and struggles with faith, which you can watch here:

Then they invited me to join them and we talked about my writing and background, and especially my book, Walking in the Dust of Rabbi Jesus. We talked about how understanding the Bible in context can help provide perspective when faith has been wounded by Christian culture. And I shared about how my culture had given me issues that were also a problem for Bible reading, but that understanding the Bible in context gave me answers too.

You can here that conversation below:

It was a fascinating conversation and the audience laughed a lot. I think they found my white, nerdy Midwestern perspective quite funny.

I enjoyed our weekend together a lot!