Rapping for Jesus : Gang Members Turn Choir Boys, Rock Burbank Church

On Sunday morning, 15-year-old Bob Hijar and nine other members of the North Hollywood Boyz gang slicked back their dark hair, donned baggy cotton pants and loose-fitting T-shirts----and headed for church.

Just a few months ago, the teen-agers would have headed for the streets or a local Burbank hangout, maybe stopping to scrawl some graffiti along the way. They might also have been stopped by a police officer somewhere in the process.

But these days, the teen-agers attend Pentecostal services at the New Life Church of God in Burbank. And at Sunday’s 10:30 a.m. service, about 60 mostly middle-aged and elderly parishioners were treated to the 10 teen-agers’ debut as Bob and the New Lifers. The youths performed Bob Hijar’s “gospel rap” composition in the style of popular rap groups like Run D.M.C.

“You want something that’ll get you real high/ Send you to the clouds, straight to heaven?/” sang lead rapper Hijar.

“Yeah, what’s that?,” asked the other youths in a background rapping chorus.

“It’s Jesus.”

When Hijar decided to compose the gospel rap song a few weeks ago, he said, the words just flowed.

“It just came out of the blue,” Hijar said. “It was like inspiration.”

Most rap music combines street and inner-city realities with a driving beat and, in some ways, Hijar’s composition was no different. He strutted and danced and spit words out with the intensity of a rap stylist. But his words had an added evangelical element. The song’s purpose was to encourage youths to turn from gang life and crime to religion.

“Before you get shot on the boulevard/ Before you end up killing the security guard/ Before you do time behind the bars/ Before your family visits you in the graveyard/ There’s a road in our way/ We got to choose/ The wrong, the right or to win or lose/ Because life’s a struggle/ Hard times with trouble/ But with Jesus, he’ll solve it up in a double.”

“I think they liked it, they clapped and everything,” Hijar said shyly at the service’s conclusion.

Martha Roberts, a long-time church member and self-proclaimed “gang mother,” said one person liked it enough to contribute $25 to the youths.

“I thought it was great,” said church member Vivian Nabors. “It was a first. I think most people enjoyed it and a lot of them were probably shocked.”

The church’s pastor said he was deeply moved when he heard the youths rehearse the song Saturday.

“I cannot tell you how I have been blessed by Bob’s composition, by his rap,” said the Rev. James Lewis. “When I first heard it, I cried for about an hour.”

Just a couple of months ago, the actions of the rapping teen-agers caused emotions of a different sort.

The youths were among a group of gang members who police accused of vandalism, street-fighting and graffiti-writing committed outside the Brighton Avenue home of Dale and Dorothy Davis. Residents of the quiet, middle-class neighborhood were angry and frightened by the presence of the youths.

The Davises, whose son Jeff was a member of the gang, said they had opened up their home to the youths in an effort to reform them, teach them about the Bible and convince them to attend services at the nearby New Life Church.

Responding to complaints from neighbors, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ordered the Davises to bar members of the North Hollywood Boyz from engaging in illegal activities such as drinking and fighting on their property.

But over the past few months the couple, along with Lewis, have managed to persuade the youths to come to Bible readings. Since then, about 30 of the gang members have regularly attended services.

Lewis said he hopes the gospel rap will draw more youths into the fold. “This is communicating the gospel in the language of the kids. To me that’s the task of the church.”

Lewis said a few members of his congregation, comprised of “white Anglo middle-class working people,” stopped coming after the youths began attending services.

“I try and merge the two,” he said. “But it’s like walking a tightrope sometimes.”

Still, Lewis is convinced that out of this group of youths will come “pastors and evangelists and businessmen that will make a difference in Burbank.”

Also at Sunday’s service was Burbank Police Chief Glen Bell, who was asked by Lewis to attend the parish’s “Police Appreciation Day.”

“I’m very glad this congregation is attempting to work with gang members,” Bell told worshipers. “The more you do, the less we’ll have to do.”

To the gang members, he said: “I hope you can stay in the direction that you’re going.

“It’s tough,” Bell warned. “But you’re on the right track.”

Hijar, a 10th-grader at Luther Burbank High School, said he was on the wrong track until recently. He regularly got in fights, spray-painted walls with graffiti and tangled with police, he said.

Along with 14-year-old Stan Nunez, Hijar began singing rap about six months ago. The pair, who called themselves the Noise Boyz first composed songs about cars and their experiences “getting stopped by cops just because we’re Latino,” Nunez said.

Hijar said he nearly got in deeper trouble contemplating revenge after he and his gang narrowly missed getting hit in a drive-by shooting.

But since he began going to church a couple months ago, things have changed for him, Hijar said.

“I’m more involved in Jesus now, I don’t cause the trouble that I used to cause. I kind of kick back now.”