Alan Lamar Patterson, aka AL P, got a law degree from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University and then became a minister. He is a staff member of Mount Corinth Church in Houston, where he directs the monthly Friday Night Live, the Happy Hour of Power.

Efrem Smith serves as the President and CEO of World Impact in Los Angeles, Calif., a urban missions organization committed to the empowerment of the urban poor through the facilitation of church planting movements and leadership development. He also served as founding pastor of The Sanctuary Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Minn. Smith co-authored The Hip-Hop Church: […]

W.P. Middlebrooks is a lay minister and rap evangelist at People’s Place Church in Pasadena, Calif., affiliated with the Church of God in Christ. He has developed Christian hiphop events and clubs through his Youth United for the World ministry.

Marianne Novy is a professor of English and women’s studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She wrote Reading Adoption: Family and Differences in Fiction and Drama, a book about adoption themes in literature.

Kimasi Browne is director of the ethnomusicology program at Azusa Pacific University near Los Angeles, where he is an assistant professor of music. Contemporary religious music trends and hiphop are among his areas of expertise.

Bobby Schuller, head of Hour for Power in Garden Grove, Calif., and grandson of founder Robert Schuller, holds regular hiphop church services at the Los Angeles FaithDome, attracting thousands. Contact through Melanie Vogel, Shepherd’s Grove Public Relations.

The Rev. Ralph C. Watkins is the Peachtree associate professor of evangelism and church growth for Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, Ga. Watkins co-authored The Gospel Remix: Reaching the Hip Hop Generation (Judson Press, 2007). Watkins, a pastor and musician, works to resolve gaps between the hiphop generation and its elders.

Ellen Herman is a professor of contemporary American history at the University of Oregon and the creator of the Adoption History Project. She is the author of Kinship by Design: A History of Adoption in the Modern United States, which examines the history of modern adoption.

David Brodzinsky is a research and project director at the Evan B. Donaldson Adoption Institute in Oakland, Calif. He is an expert on the psychology of adoption in children, adoption research, interracial adoption, adoption outcomes, foster care, stress and coping in children, developmental psychopathology and divorce and child custody issues. He co-edited The Psychology of […]