1. What is Streetlights?
Streetlights is the world’s first urban audio Bible, combining the authentic Word of God in the New Living Translation with a dynamic musical score influenced by the cultures of the inner city. Top recording artists, accomplished music producers, and professional videographers unite to bring you word-for-word Scripture recited to industry standard, street-credible hip-hop beats. Through this relevant and engaging format, people of all literacy levels will be able to hear, understand, and internalize the Word of God.
2. Is Streetlights a physical Bible?
No. Streetlights is not a physical bible. As of right now it is simply an audio Bible of specific and whole portions of scripture with multi media tools supporting it.
3. When will it be done? When is it coming out?
In order for ministries to utilize Streetlights most effectively—and due to the large quantity of content and production necessary to create an audio Bible—Streetlights will be released in project phases combining thematic packages and whole books of the Bible.
For example, the first thematic project phase will be titled ―Divine DNA and will consist of Genesis chapters 1—6 combined with the entire Gospel of John. Producing these 27 chapters will require the collaboration of more than 20 vocal artists and 40 unique musical compositions.
Each project phase will have its own release date, and Streetlightsbible.com will update you when those release dates are coming.
4. Are you doing the whole Bible? Even Old Testament?
In our “Roll Out Plan” we are aiming to unpack the Bible according to systematic themes in several projects. these projects will always entail one Old Testament portion of text (which could be an entire book, or specific chapters of a book) paired with an entire book of the New Testament.
So are we doing the whole Bible? Yes and No.
5. What is the New Living Translation? Why use this translation?
The New Living Translation set out to render the message of the original texts of Scripture into clear, contemporary English. As they did so, they kept the concerns of both formal-equivalence and dynamic-equivalence in mind. On the one hand, they translated as simply and literally as possible when that approach yielded an accurate, clear, and natural English text. Many words and phrases were rendered literally and consistently into English, preserving essential literary and rhetorical devices, ancient metaphors, and word choices that give structure to the text and provide echoes of meaning from one passage to the next.
On the other hand, the translators rendered the message more dynamically when the literal rendering was hard to understand, was misleading, or yielded archaic or foreign wording. They clarified difficult metaphors and terms to aid in the reader’s understanding. The translators first struggled with the meaning of the words and phrases in the ancient context; then they rendered the message into clear, natural English. Their goal was to be both faithful to the ancient texts and eminently readable. The result is a translation that is both exegetically accurate and idiomatically powerful.
It is evident in Scripture that the biblical documents were written to be read aloud, often in public worship (see Nehemiah 8; Luke 4:16-20; 1 Timothy 4:13; Revelation 1:3). It is still the case today that more people will hear the Bible read aloud in church than are likely to read it for themselves. Therefore, a new translation must communicate with clarity and power when it is read publicly. Clarity was a primary goal for the NLT translators, not only to facilitate private reading and understanding, but also to ensure that it would be excellent for public reading and make an immediate and powerful impact on any listener.
6. Is Streetlights a reliable source to read and study the Bible?
Yes. Streetlights is a word for word dynamic reading of the New Living Translation, which is a respectable translation of the Bible. in time Streetlights has plans of offering curriculum to coincide and support the audio reading of the Bible.
7. Is this only an audio Bible?
Audio is at the core of Streetlights, so that people of all Literacy levels can interact with the Word of God. But Streetlights is also passionate about using all media platforms to communicate God’s Word. That is why you can expect to see plenty of videos coming from Streetlights; Streetlights iPhone App’s, a robust website, and much more.
8. Who is Grip? Who is Tyndale? Who is Humble Beast?
- GRIP Outreach For Youth (GRIP) [http://www.gripyouth.com/]: A frontline, inner-city ministry that provides a solid organizational foundation, and a real understanding of our primary target audience—at-risk youth.
- Humble Beast Records (Humble Beast) [http://humblebeast.com/] : A major record label that provides a national network of hundreds of professional-grade music producers, vocal artists, and videographers, as well as established distribution channels to reach our target audience.
- Tyndale House Publishers (Tyndale) [http://tyndale.com] : A world-class Christian publisher that has granted us the license to use the New Living Translation royalty-free.
9. Why Hip Hop? Are you trying to make the Bible cool?
Hip Hop is simply a relevant voice of popular culture worldwide and a great way to soundtrack the emotion of the text. Also, Hip Hop music is what we as musicians at Humble Beast and within Humble Beast’s networks do naturally. We were raised with it and we are creators of it. Therefore, it comes genuinely out of us. We see it as our natural soundtrack and want to use it to connect to demographics who gravitate to Hip Hop as well.
The reading of the text is the main objective, while the music supports it. At the end of the day, Streetlights’ main purpose is to communicate God’s Word to people of all literacy levels and the music supports that.
10. How can I use Streetlights?
There are plenty of ways Streetlights can be used practically.
1. Personally it can used for daily bible study and quiet time, a tool for scripture memorization and honest God honoring entertainment.
2. It can also be used in a small group and church setting; it could be an audio reading assistant and a tool for praise and worship.
3. And as we have seen already on social networking and mass media sites it can be a tool for evangelism using the video and audio we have made available.
4. We have also seen Streetlights used as a tool for ESL Programs and as media content for Conferences such as Reload.