On a quiet Sunday night in South LA, the Messiah Lutheran Church at West Manchester and Budlong Avenue sits dimly lit on a corner. It's an inconspicuous structure between a row of parking lots and blank buildings.

Inside, a graffitied poster serves as the main backdrop to the stage where 57-year-old Sharon Collins-Heads prepares the room along with a DJ for Sunday night service. As co-founder of Hip Hop Church LA and professor at nearby Los Angeles Southwest College, Collins-Heads and her ministry team uses gospel rap to reach out to their audience on community issues such as violence and drug abuse.

Although Christian rap has been on the scene for at least three decades, the subculture is re-appearing around the Los Angeles area through popular artists such as Lecrae, who, as LA Weekly said, is "poise[d]…for a mainstream invasion."

Collins-Heads, who is affectionately called "Professor Sharon" by her congregants, has seen the growth of the scene first-hand. Founded eight years ago, Hip Hop Church LA was conceived after Collins-Heads' son met Minister Kurtis Blow Walker. Walker had started a hip hop church in New York and would later help bring the scene to Los Angeles by co-founding Hip Hop Church LA with Collins-Heads. "We thought, here's a chance to do something different," Collins-Heads said.

Hip Hop Church LA maintains this non-traditional approach to service. Moving into their new permanent home at the Messiah only one month ago, Collins-Heads likes to call themselves a "mobile ministry," because they also attend community events in places like Skid Row and serve a transient population in addition to core followers: "We don't know whose gonna show up -- I've known people who've been in prison for 10 to 15 years and now have changed their life. But it don't matter. We just know we gonna have a good time."

ALSO READ: Neon Tommy's Full Religion Coverage

Their most recent community event, the 3rd annual Hip Hop Church LA Outreach Ministry R.A.P. (Rap and Praise) Awards, which honors 12 community activists, performance artists, or ministers, reached almost 200 people and packed Messiah Lutheran to full capacity.

But at tonight’s service, an intimate group of some 15 attendees, ranging from young teenagers sporting neon-colored leggings to families, disperse in the pews. This wide demographic the church now targets is an aspect Collins-Heads is most proud of. "Originally we served the youth," she said. "But then 30- or 40-year-olds started to come out. I think people forget that rap has been around for a long time."

The service runs in a traditional way, beginning with prayers and speakers. But what sets Hip Hop Church LA apart is the fact that its organizers and members are passionate about two things: That music is the best platform to reach out to the troubled, and that the streets of South LA can spell trouble for many youth.

"People complain about never having anything to eat/ but they only ever had liquor and a stripper," 22-year-old guest performance artist Flight raps to the congregate, receiving applause.

With each rapper and accompanying auto-tune backdrop, the guest artists cover the same theme of hope and Christ. For organizers at Hip Hop Church LA, this is the core message and mission of Christian rap. “It's saying, 'I've been in the streets, now turn your life around and believe in Christ,’" Collins-Heads explained.

Members of the church are quick to paint the clear distinction between the current Christian rap scene and the 'gangsta rap' culture that dominated the 90's and still permeates mainstream music. "People forget rap started out positive. It was about young people voice out about their neighborhoods, a lot of it was socially conscious. It wasn't just about violence, gangs, degrading woman," she said.

Hip Hop Church LA member Leon Scott-Wells, who has been attending service for almost two years, couldn’t agree more. "I like hip hop. I don't like gangsta rap," he said. "I don't listen to Lil Wayne anymore. All he says is bitches that, bitches that. He makes hip-hop lose its value. It's sad that it's so degrading."

Instead, Scott-Wells, who is currently studying fine arts at Los Angeles Trade Tech College, promotes 'conscious rap.' "Rappers should try to give you something you can learn from. [Conscious rap] affects youth in a good way. It affects me in a good way," he explained.

Scott-Wells praises Hip Hop Church LA for its strong infrastructure and ability to excite followers about the message of Christ through use of gospel and music. His favorite activity at service, he reflects, is "Question Session." Question session is similar to trivia, where the ministry will ask one biblical question as well as one hip hop question, such as "Who founded rap?" Winners receive prizes for their efforts and is an activity that makes lessons taught at service engaging.

Like many of the church’s core members, Scott-Wells was first brought to church by Collins-Heads, who was his health teacher while he was attending LA Southwest College. "She brought me back to church," he said. "Hip Church opened a completely new perspective for me."

As Scott-Wells sits attentively with other members in the front rows while Collins-Heads MC’s the night, it is clear that her presence is the core of the service, and the Church itself. "I'm gonna do my professor thing and tell everyone to scoot forward," she says, drawing laughs from the crowd.

Though people come in and out of Hip Hop Church, it is this ability to immediately connect and mentor people of all ages that earns her the title "Professor Sharon." But her understanding that residents of South LA need an innovative platform for communication has made the church a success in the local community that it currently serves. Not only is music used to engage the public, but also social media. The ministry has over 1,000 likes on its Facebook page and uses social networking primarily to organize events. It is perhaps most fitting, then, that "Professor Sharon" ends a night filled with dance and music with the statement: "My passion is for the lost. I used to say it's for the youth, but we're all young at heart."

Reach staff reporter Daffany Chan here.