Everybody take a jump!

My body is still aching because yesterday I was in the road jammin’ and jumping up behind a band. If you know Caribbean culture, you know I’m referring to Carnival – and if you know me, you should be wondering what I was doing jammin’ and jumping up behind a band.
Carnival is one of the biggest expressions of Caribbean culture. It’s a celebration full of color, music, excitement…. and revelry and drinking and wining and grinding. A lot of “rudeness” as island people say.

If you’re not still wondering what I was doing there….

The celebration is such that most Christians want to stay away, and understandably so. It’s not really a place where Christ is welcome. Yet on Sunday, a group of people in Orlando sponsored a Christian “band” (group that takes part in the carnival parade). We had our own truck, a DJ playing gospel reggae and soca, and costumes that reflected our theme, “The Fight of Our Lives”. We tried to rep Christ to the fullest in amid darkness. As one pastor stated, we were the one drop of water in a bucket of dirt.

We did our best to mix things up and we were distinct. Like others we were singing, dancing, blowing whistles. But there was no wining, or skimpy costumes, or men from our group grinding on random women ….and we were giving out tracts. But it’s true. We were but a drop in the dirty bucket and you wonder if we really made a difference.

I ask myself, what’s our job, really? Maybe our part is to rep Christ in the culture, to be a display of “holy culture”, to shine a light in the midst of darkness and to reclaim our culture. There are many who equate the revelry, the wild behavior and lewd dancing to “Caribbean culture” and represent it proudly. And while the love for celebration and dancing is intrinsic to the culture, those other aspects are distortions of it, expressions of man’s sinful nature and the enemy’s cunning.

Is it possible to have a Caribbean celebration, full of the joyful expression, the loudness, the music, the color and the dancing… without the nastiness? I think so and that’s part of what we were there to display.

I left convinced that we must do this again. We need to rep Christ to our culture more often, rather than retreating from these events. How that looks in the future, I’m not sure. Should we be in the parade or hold our own outreach near the carnival grounds (like His Majesty Sound System in the U.K). Maybe we need to have Christian Caribbean festivals. Whatever. But sitting back and watching the enemy hijack my culture is not really an option for me. I don’t appreciate being forced to have my little soca dance parties… in my room. Jumping and waving alone is no fun. Besides, we actually have something to celebrate. We know Jesus. We know freedom. Why aren’t we the ones jumping and waving our rags in public?

All I know is I plan on jumping and waving for Jesus when I see Him, so I figure I can get some practice now. You can sit and watch if you want.