Ministry with a New Rhythm

It was a busy day. Amena Brown was on the road again, noting that she had only seen home twice during the entire month.  She had also been all over the country in December, touring with Ellie Holcomb and Ann Voskamp for the Gift of Christmas Tour.  Given the circumstances, most people would be complaining about all the hustle and bustle with little time to relax.  Yet, Amena just laughed as she explained the travel itinerary for the coming week.  She takes it all in stride.

Yes, perseverance is something Amena knows well.  It is also a theme in many of her poems, ones she performs all over the country for women—and men—of all walks of life.  As I talked with Amena, I realized that while her bubbly personality is notable in an instant, she also possesses a deeper joy; one she carries with her wherever she is touring that week.

Amena grew up in San Antonio, Texas. Her parents separated when she was six and after a while, her mother decided to reinlist as a military nurse, which meant a move to San Antonio, Texas. That’s where Amena really found a relationship with God. Both her pastor and his wife were preachers and the wife, in particular, impacted Amena greatly. There was something about seeing her speak so powerfully about God that made Amena’s heart beat fast. At twelve or thirteen years old, she said she already knew it was something she was supposed to be doing. 

Fast forward to an auditorium full of people. They all are waiting so see and hear words of hope, and the come to see Amena. Far from the timid girl who accepted Jesus in the secrecy of her closet, this Amena speaks with intensity and passion. She speaks about things people can relate to, things they know.  

She is a spoken word poet, something Amena describes as the result of hip-hop and jazz having a poetry baby.  She has recorded two poems on the Gungor album “A Creation Liturgy” as well as published her own spoken word CD, titled: “Live at Java Monkey.”  With her husband, Matt (also known as DJ Opdiggy), Amena is opening new doors when it comes to ministry and spreading hope while she’s at it.

Amena said the experience of being among such godly women at a young age taught her that God truly does speak to women in a unique way.  As she continues to develop a platform and expand her ministry, Amena is delivering more than just poetry.  Amidst the struggle and pain of life, she is impacting lives of people across the nation, inspiring them just like the women who inspired all those years ago.

Just Between U shad the opportunity to catch up with Amena in-between performances to get a taste of what life is like for the speaker, author, poet and performer.  We wanted to know how she stays focused on God through all the busyness and what is next on the horizon.  

JBU:

How did you get into writing poetry and performing spoken word? What is it exactly?

Amena: I am a spoken word by vocation.  It’ll be five years in January.  What I do is a mix of writing, plus performing, plus some workshops and things at colleges and conferences. I always thought of doing something with writing, but never really that I could make a living as a poet.  I enjoy communicating and performance and as I pursued that, I realized it was something I could do.  The style of spoken word I’m doing is like if hip-hop and jazz had a poetry baby, with a bit of monologue mixed it.  It is poetry and it’s rhyme and rhythm, but not traditional poetry as we’ve come to know it. 

JBU:

How can we better tune our ears and lives to the rhythm of God? Describe what rhythms are in our lives?

Amena: The best way we can tune our ears and lives to the rhythm of God is to be still and be quiet.  That can be hard in our world because it’s a constant flow of information, downloading and uploading all this stuff.  I find the best way I can really keep my ears tuned to God is listen the best I can and just be still.  Take that time to be quiet, be silent, read scripture, pray and open our hearts to God.

JBU:

How did you become a believer?

Amena: I grew up in a church going family so I grew up around the narrative of God.  As a kid, I was familiar with it but my parents divorced when I was 6.  My mom went through a period in my childhood when she didn’t go to church so the only time I went was with my grandmother.  My mom was in a bad relationship.  She was raising two girls by herself and she was just starting to deal with her life.  She soon realized she needed to make a change for herself and she needed to make a change for us. So she reenlisted as a nurse in the military.  That meant we had to move to San Antonio, TX, which I thought was a horrible idea.  Once she got us set up in school she also started going back to church, which I also thought was a horrible idea.  But now that I look back on that as an adult, our move to San Antonio was the saving grace of our family.  I watched my mom’s life completely change. 

While there, I started feeling led to go forward when they did the alter call at the end of the service.  I wanted to be a part of that because I’d seen it do so much for my mom since she had started taking us to church.  Then, a woman who’d been leading said that you didn’t have to go up front to accept Jesus into your heart, which I was afraid of because I was so shy.  So, I went home and closed my bedroom door.  I sat in my closet with my sneakers pressed up again the wall and I asked Jesus to come into my heart.  And that was the best decision I’ve made in my entire life.  

JBU:

When did you start doing poetry? What was it about the poetic reading of words that resonated in your soul to become your creative outlet?

Amena: I started writing poetry on my own when I was 12.  I just really loved writing and I wanted to keep doing that outside of school.  I didn’t show a lot of people I was very shy about it.  There was a movie that came out in the nineties called “LoveJoy”- and the central character did spoken word. I saw the movie when I was 16 or 17 and thought: “I’m like this guy!” 

After seeing it, I sat down to write my first spoken word poem which was about a boy— of course it was about a boy— I don’t even know if it was about a real boy though. From there, I just kept on writing.  I never thought there’d be any sort of career from it.  I was very intrigued by the poetry community but was not hearing a lot of Christian poets.  I really wanted to write well and perform well but I also wanted to speak about the hope I found in Jesus.  I think that’s really what triggered me 

JBU:

How does the impact of spoken versus written word differ?

Amena: I think the difference is that spoken word poetry is written to be performed.  It is a great resurgence to poetry in general.  A lot of time when people hear “spoken word poetry,” they immediately think: “This’ll be super boring.”  When they see it performed, they think: “That’s not at all what I was expecting.”  Some of what we think of as poetry is staged poetry, those more-formal forms of poetry.  The style of spoken word I do is a mix of poetry and hip-hop word-play and monologue, all mashed into one.

JBU:

Why do you think people relate to you and your poems on the level they do and what do you hope they get out of hearing you speak?

Amena: Some of it, I honestly don’t know why.  I have never been able to fully explain what makes people engage in int.  It’s the work of the spirit what God is speaking to us through.  I think when I’m working on trying to be as beautiful concrete as I can be, that has helped.  I first started writing, I wrote a lot of abstract things.  Over time, I’ve become a lot less interested in being abstract and more interested in what imagery I can use.  I write about what they identify with, take what’s human about me and put that into my writing.  And I think when we write about human experiences, it crosses cultures.

When people hear my spoken word, I hope they see there is always hope.  Some of the poems I write are about God, prayers to God.  Some are about being a girl and about growing up.  Yet, all of them point the fact that because we have God, we have hope.

JBU:

How has writing poetry and spoken word grown and expanded your own faith? 

Amena: When you’re doing stage work, there are various opinions.  We don’t like to talk about performance but I don’t mind that as a word.  It’s the craft of how you connect and engage people.  Yet, when you’re doing stage work, there’s a potential pitfall.  It’s tempting to live another life outside of that.  It’s not just one thing I do on a date and then here’s this other person I am when I’m not performing.  

I also think performing and writing has made my faith wide; I’m a lot less compartmentalized about my faith.  I can see that there are a lot of different ways God speaks to us.  It has also broadened my view of what’s sacred and what’s not.  God speaks in places I might not think is a holy place, and he speaks wherever He chooses to—it broadens my perspective.

JBU:

How did you feel like you had to break your own rhythm in order to tell others how to break theirs?

Amena: I feel like I’m not a risk taker by nature.  I don’t thrive on that.  I’m kind of a huge planner. I like to know what all of the steps are; I feel great following a formula and if I could make my life like that, that’d be the ideal.  I think for me ,because God knows I’m like that, He allows certain things to happen in my life that break the rhythm and that has helped me learn.  

There have also been times when I’ve made choices to break that rhythm, like getting my job.  I definitely went through a period where I was struck  in my church bubble.  I was leading at church.  The things I was doing at my church were good things but in a way I was burying my life in that and getting very comfortable being around people who believed like me.  One of the ways I had to break my rhythm was to get out of my church bubble. Not leave my church but to meet other people and let the light shine.

JBU:

You are an African American woman in evangelical circles that are predominantly white and male. What hurdles do you see women and minorities facing to get their message out in the culture and what advice do you give them?

Amena: I feel like I’m seeing the Evangelical church take a turn that I think is going to be good.  I think we are now seeing how everyone’s voice and experience is important, that the Christian experience isn’t homogenous.  I think that’s a hurdle that women and people of color have had to face in the church for a long time.  When it comes to platforms and conferences and events, we need to think about how we are representing the body of Christ in who we have on stage.  Are we representing the diversity of the body of Christ, in gender and in culture and in generation?  Who should be on the stage?  Who should have the microphone?  We often choose people who look like us.  We are now seeing that as the body of Christ, we all need each other.  No part of the body is more important than the other.  There is no part of us that can say we are more important.  I think we’re now reaching the point, slowly but surely, that if I want my organization and my event to reflect what Jesus is about, I need to have people at the table who represent that diversity.  Anytime I can have a part of that, I am honored to do it, and I’m honored to follow people who do.

JBU:

How can the church help bring reconciliation with all the race issues going on right now in our country?  How can we bridge the racial divide?

Amena:  Especially in America, we’ve attempted to take some of our negative cultural path and we’ve brought that into the church.  We have a lot of things that in the past and currently that we’ve waved justice on what is righteous.  But we haven’t acknowledged things in the past that we have done in the name of Christ, that were wrong.  Slavery, for example.  Our Christian religion has done some terrible things and I think a part of how we can start that process, which we’ve seen a little of, is to own them and own our sorrow for them.  And that brings healing to the minority groups, to the culture here in America that has been wronged.  So I think one of our starting places right now as the Evangelical church is to be in a place to listen to the people who have been wounded here.  We’ve seen so many headlines in the last year and this is a great time to not only be praying for our country but to take action.  I think we could be humbled more and Jesus is our great example of that.

JBU:

What area of ministry is your passion?

Amena: Because I write about so many things, it depends on the moment.  Sometimes, if I’m doing a poem about God, I’d say I’m thinking about the people who are on the fringe of the group, who feel far from God—who are the people who may have walked into this room and are weighed down by what is difficult about life today. 

I am thinking about the people on the fringes because a lot of my life, I’ve been the person on the fringe—in faith, culturally, not being with super cool friends.  I ask, who are the people we might not think about?  Who do we not give enough of a voice?

JBU:

How can women answer the call of a creative God?

Amena: I honestly think women are answering the call of … everyday, even in many ways we don’t think about as women. I think creativity is not just artistic.  It’s the ability to problem solve, look at life form a different angle.  I like to say that to the women I’m in front of on stage: they are probably answering the call every day.  As women, the biggest way we can do so is to be ourselves and be exactly who it is God has called us to be.  We feel such pressure, whether a standard of beauty of the standard of womanhood that day.  But God made each of us different with different gifts and I think the best thing we can do to answer that call is to be the person God called us to be.  

JBU:

How do we discover what God created us to do?

Amena: The way I have always approached it, and it may not work this way for everyone, is to pay attention to what makes us come alive. I don’t believe that our calling has to be some ball and chain hat we have to drag around with us.  Our calling can be something that helps us discover who we are and what we were made to do here.  When I was a kid, I always wanted to write; I always loved talking.  A lot of those things I’m doing a combination of now.  I always tell people that if we can do back to those childhood things, we can get close to figuring out because I think God also puts inside of us a joy for the things He wants us to do.

JBU:

What are some of the biggest challenges you face as a woman in ministry?

Amena: I can’t think of one, and maybe that’s because it is more challenging that I know it is.  I grew up watching other women in ministry and watching them do ministry well.  When I’m in a position to speak, I stand there not as a woman or as me, but because God has called me to that.  If other people like that, than that’s awesome.  There are other people who don’t like that, but it’s not my job to be liked.  It’s my job to do what I can with the talent and gifts He has given me.  

My husband is amazing.  He is my friend and encourages me, pushes me, and challenges me.  In my marriage, I have a good partner in life and we believe in each other.  This ministry is a journey and I’m happy to be walking on when I get to look at the women I am walking alongside.  When I married my husband, he was a youth pastor.  We were traveling together some and when we were at home, we were serving the students at our local church at home.  Now, he’s a full time artist like I am.  He produces all the music on my records too.  Our life is similar in the way that sometimes, he’s performing and sometimes I am.  We are always there together, as a team.

JBU:

Tell us about your husband and how God uses your creative gifts together.

Amena: We were collaborators. We were dating and we subsequently married.  Our initial connection was when we met and performed together.  It’s Interesting how God works because we were collaborating and working on ideas together and after a few years, we looked at each other and were like “Hey,” and started to really get to know each other.  

We just actually, launched our first project called Solgraffiti  (Sol is Spanish for sun). Initially, we started collaborating with all these poems I have, and I was going to have him help me.  We were basically coming together to see: If you bring together DJ-ing and music and beat and spoken word and songwriting, what kind of collaboration can you make? 

It’s been wild to figure out how to do it because he has a way he creates and I have a way I create.  We were trying to initially keep our ways but that didn’t work so we had to jump in to it together.  It was a frustrating process but through that frustration and working, we were able to come up with a map of what SolGrafit looked like.  We chose the name because we love hip-hop and because graffiti is one of the main tenets that reflects hip-hop culture. We even have rule that wherever we live, if we can’t see graffiti within five miles of our house, we can t live there because graffiti a sign of struggle happening, a sign that creativity is happening somewhere. We want to live in a neighborhood where we can be a part of that.  We want God to take our art and that it would not be left abandoned and rejected but that it would shine with the light of God. 

JBU:

How do you rest and refuel in the midst of such a busy ministry and personal life?

Amena: Netflix!  I give myself permission to catch up on shows or just do nothing sometimes.  It’s ok to have a day where you do nothing.  I take time to unplug from social media, and that’s refueling.  

Prayer is also a big part of that.  I take the things I worry about—my insecurities— to God.  When you do stage work, there are people watching what you do, applauding you.  It can be a breeding ground for ego and pride.  Being able to come back to God brings you back down to size.  I also do this by being around people who really know me. I need those people in my life.  They’re my accountability; they keep me real and honest; they help me to laugh and not take myself too seriously, and they point me to God.

JBU:

What is the most important thing you do each day? Why?

Amena: The most consistent thing I do every day is listen to music.  I can’t say it’s the most important thing, but it gets me going in the morning.  It reminds me of God and reminds me to be creative.  I don’t have a huge routine.  The most important thing I do probably changes day to day with what I do. I’m not a huge routine keeper.  I do have to write every day though.  That is very important to me.

JBU:

Tell me a little about your book, Breaking Old Rhythms.

Amena: It’s a book of me telling those stories of where I’ve God and where God has found me, and a lot of those are places I’d typically thought couldn’t be sacred.  It’s sort of me finding that theme in my life and what that theme means.  I start the book off by telling a story, which is true.  I was sitting at coffee with two friends and having an attempt at deep conversation.  We were talking about how Bruce Lee became obsessed with drumming and I began to think of the idea of switch rhythms of drumming, in my own life.  

At the time, I was working in corporate America and that conversation made me contemplate: What is the rhythm in my life, and am I just going along with that rhythm?  It made me think, what’s the rhythm in life and even bigger: What’s the rhythm of God? It’s not just what the world tells us.  I also have a couple of ideas for another book.  It will definitely involve storytelling because even when I’m not writing poems, that’s what I want to be doing.

JBU:

What are you looking forward to in your ministry?

Amena: My husband and I are launching ourselves as a duo.  Our duo name is SolGraffiti and we are currently working on new music for that.  It is basically like the albums we make and things we perform, but will be a mix of music, DJing and spoken word.  In the next year or two, I would like to have sort of like a one-woman show.  I think I’m getting close to it and I see myself building on that in the next few years.  My style is a combo of spoken word, comedy and some monologue.  I want to hone that craft in the next few years and see what it will look like on stage.  I’m excited to see what God’s going to do.

~ By Hannah Hartzell