After seeing over 11,000 young people make professions of faith between 2004 – 2007 yet seeing no meaningful fruit when he returned to the same city the following year, Michigan emcee Jerome began seeking answers to a question burning DEEP within himself. During that same time, Lecrae took that same burning question and put it to a song when he began asking us all – “After the show, after the set, after the music stops, what’s next?” Well, over 5 years after the question was asked, we finally got an answer and its found in “Get Rooted.”
The goal of Get Rooted isn’t to get Jerome more CD sales. In fact, the CDs are actually available for free at the live events (over 10,000 CDs were given away last year alone). Instead the goal of Get Rooted is see people who attend the live events get connected to the local church after the music stops. As Jerome saw it “we were creating spiritual orphans.” People were being reborn but they weren’t connected a local family to learn with and to grow with. Of course it wasn’t his fault that people weren’t being connected after he left a city but, like a good missionary, he didn’t care who’s fault it was he just wanted see people connected. Maybe the local pastors didn’t know how, maybe the local pastors weren’t prepared to or maybe it just didn’t cross their minds. Either way, SOMETHING had to be done to see people move from the altar call at the outreach event to growing in community as a dedicated disciple of Christ. So Jerome hit his knees in prayer and fasting and after a wild series of events, God began to pour out a vision for Get Rooted.
Focusing on 7 “roots” – understanding salvation, growing deep roots in Jesus, the local church, serving sharing & giving, keeping your life on track, finding a “Paul” mentor and finding a “Timothy” to mentor – the materials are designed to create the type of deep roots that makes Colossians 2:6-8 a reality in the lives of young believers. And in a day when the Reformed/Arminian discussion seems to be at its highest point in over 100 years, Get Rooted is written in such a way that Calvinist AND Arminian pastors have equally considered it to be based on biblical doctrines. And after being copy edited by the same people who edited giga-church pastor and Purpose Driven Life author Rick Warren’s books, it has been written in a way that anyone can read it and grow.
Using a social media type platform similar to sites like Facebook, users creates a profile and connect to the hundreds of other people across the globe who are currently using the material as a means of growing deeper roots in Christ. They also happen to enjoy some good Christian hip-hop too as the users were connected to the site via one of Get Rooted’s outreach events in their city which is a hip-hop centric event. The site is a place to receive encouragement from others, getting into the material, seeing other videos that reinforce the “roots”, blogs and much more.
So head over to getrooted.org for info on how you grow through this tool or to find out how you can host a Get Rooted event and to find out how t launch this initiative as a Discipleship model for your youth ministry or your church. There is a church using it as a basis for growth for their entire church – children, youth and adult.
Now what do we do after the music stops? We get rooted.
