Timothy Brindle is breathing a refreshing breath of solid teaching into his hip hop tunes, drawing on a rich theological background. The artist started in the secular underground rap scene, but encountering Christ quickly turned his budding hip hop career in an entirely different direction.

Brindle grew under the discipleship of Christian hip hop artist Shai Linne and their Philadelphia church. After a few releases under the independent label Lamp Recordings, Timothy Brindle took a break to allow God to refocus and restore his heart and his ministry.

Despite being a seminary student and a full time husband and dad, Timothy Brindle still managed to return to hip hop in 2012 with his release The Restoration. Bill Lurwick of NewReleaseTuesday had a conversation with the artist about school, family, his hip hop history, and the all sufficient grace of Christ that has carried him through all of it.

You are a Christian hip hop minister who is going to seminary right now. How did this all come about?

Which part?

You’re working on your Master of Divinity right now, you’ve got four kids, you’re going to seminary, and you’re doing the Christian hip hop thing. If you do the math on that kind of thing, it’s usually the equation that people say, “What? It doesn’t really all add up.” How does it add up for Tim Brindle?

Good question. The Lord has been so gracious to me, to my wife. I was doing hip hop before I was in Christian. I was doing it for myself, for my own glory. God interrupted my early secular rap career and His mercy brought me to Himself. That was about a week before 9/11 and then about six weeks after that I met a guy named Shai Linne who also does Christian hip hop. He began discipling me, taking me through Romans. We both got connected to a church that I’m at now. This was about 10 years ago. My pastor, Lance Lewis, was already using the hip hop gift that he had in his music to glorify Jesus, and it became clear that hip hop is a good medium for proclaiming Christ. It’s very oratorical. You can pack three or four points in a four minute song, kind of summarize a sermon or make a worship song or evangelize or expound on a passage.

We began doing what we coined “lyrical theology,” and my first album came out in 2003. It was called The Great Awakening. Then in 2005, the next album came out called Chilling Sin. This time I was a school teacher in the city of Philadelphia. I’d gotten married to my wonderful wife, Floriana, and went from the teaching field into social work and just being in the midst of the brokenness of society here in Philadelphia and seeing how the secular mental health system doesn’t work.


It doesn’t focus on the heart. It doesn’t give people the gospel. It gave me a desire to want to get a counseling degree. I knew I couldn’t stomach a secular one, so that led me to Westminster. I was already in some other stuff that was coming out of Westminster, their high view of the gospel and scripture and the Christ-centered teaching.
 
So I landed there last year by the grace of God, and I switched from the Masters of Arts of Biblical counseling over into the MDIV Biblical counseling just as I got there. It’s been a feast for my soul, but I’ve got four little ones and a wife who helps keep me grounded when my head starts getting big from all that theology.

The Restoration is brand new, your first project in five years. You took a break from recording and stepped away and you’re back now. I know all of the fans are excited. We’ve got 19 cuts on The Restoration. Where’s that title come from? Is that the whole theme of the project, or is that a personal theme?

Good question. The answer is yes to both of those questions. Restoration comes from seeing it in the word, understanding that the gospel is God’s restoration of messed up people. Before I got married I thought I was a pretty Godly guy, as a lot of us single guys thought of ourselves. Coming into marriage has really showed me the real me, so to speak.
 
But God didn’t leave me there after showing me my deep need for Him. He showed me that what Christ has done at the cross in taking all our sin,  it’s Him earning the perfect right standing that only He could ever have earned on our behalf. His blood covering our sin and His resurrection, restoring us from the power of sin and death.
 
What Christ has done in the gospel is enough for the most messed up people, and that’s me. The Restoration CD is just to point believers and unbelievers to the gospel of Christ, to feed off of what Jesus has done, how it really frees us to begin to love Him and enjoy Him and love others and then go and spread His restoration grace, as Christ is in the process of restoring this broken world.

Talk about the songs on The Restoration. You did team up with Shai Linne for a couple of cuts on the project. We’ve got “I’m the Problem.” It’s pretty straightforward right there, isn’t it?

It is. That song is a challenge for us to stop blame shifting. It’s easy in marriage to see your spouse’s sins , especially when you have children. But really, even when other people around us have sinned, our sin is seen in how we respond to their sin.

The song “I’m the Problem” shows that although I did come out of a broken childhood, it's not an excuse. My parents divorced and I was diagnosed with mental health issues early on, and I’m not discounting any of that. This is a broken world. But at the end of the day, my biggest problem is my own sinful heart. Christ’s grace again, once we recognize that, is enough to restore us.

That’s the theme behind that song.

I love the title “The Pharisee and the Tax Collector.” It is Luke 18, a retelling of the parable in song. Tell us about that.

That’s exactly what the song does. I got a couple of my favorite fellow Christian hip hop ministers together. A guy named The Phanatic, who has been a legend. He basically pioneered Christian hip hop with his group The Cross Movement in the 90’s before I had even heard the gospel.

Him and another brother named Json, from St. Louis, who is also on the record label. The Phanatic plays the part of the Pharisee. He’s a 21^st century Pharisee, conceptualizing self righteousness, making it out that he’s coming to God based upon his performance, based upon how good he is. He’s really looking down on me. I’m the messy, jacked up tax collector.

Json plays the part of the narrator introducing each of us and the tax collector, which was kind of seen as the scum of society in Jesus’ day. As a tax collector, I come before God not making excuses for my sin, not saying, “But I tried,” just saying, “God, have mercy on me a sinner. Receive me because of your mercy, because of Christ.”

It’s just a song that prepares the listener for the next couple of songs after, which are really hitting home what Jesus has done for sinners in the gospel.

Tim, I’ve got to ask you. This is a great hip hop project. But there's not a whole lot of radio airplay for artists such as yourself. It can be tough. What do you hope to accomplish with The Restoration?

Good question. I just put it into the Lord’s hands. It’s my five pieces of bread, my two pieces of fish, and whatever the Lord wants to do with it. I don’t always expect it to succeed in the genre that we have musically. Our style is not really commercial. It’s not really mainstream. It’s a little more what people might call underground. So we don’t  expect it to blowup. 
 
If it can build up and encourage the saints, if it can exult his restoration, great.

We’re pretty excited about this. Glad that you’re partnering with us at New Release Tuesday. Thanks for spending time.

Thanks so much. You guys are a blessing.