Art Life Faith Podcast

Next week, May 22-27, 2026, is our worship and arts conference “The Beauty of Japan・The Beauty of Heaven”. This five-day event is the biggest we have ever put on. Hundreds will join us here in downtown Tokyo with easy access to all the beautiful art and culture of our city. We will have over 30 presenters with short talks, testimonies, music, films, discussions, networking, prayer walks and activities around the city, an art gallery, and so much more. In this event, we celebrate all the nations being united across different languages and cultures to worship God together, and the taste of that we are receiving even now here in Japan. Even if you can’t be here, please pray for us, that God would do a mighty work here, leading people in worship, growing his kingdom, and building deeper connections between churches and ministries. Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. This episode, I had the honor of sitting down with Haijin and Makoto Fujimura to celebrate the launch of their new book, “Beauty and Justice: Creating A Life of Abundance and Courage”. Haijin is the founder and managing partner of Shim & Associates Law Firm. She is also the founder of Embers International, developing the programs and partnerships to protect, restore, and empower the victims of injustice. Mako is well-known as an artist, writer, and speaker, who has also had a big influence on my life and on the ministries of Community Arts Tokyo. Mako was kind enough to sit down with me after the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster here in Japan, and listen to my heart, and suggest that I start this arts organization. So he is not only a long-time friend of this ministry, but one of the people who help it to get started in the first place. In this conversation, Haijin and Mako urge us to not lose sight of the new creation, where the pursuit of beauty is an important part of true restoration, that working for justice is a working toward that perfect shalom that God has promised to bring into the world. After our conversation, they led one of our Art, Life, Faith events. So many people came from outside our usual networks, and all of us there received renewed inspiration to go out into the city and make a difference, to make the vision presented in the talk a reality in our communities. This combination of justice and beauty is so important, and if you want to know more about it you can read their book and watch the event we recorded, which is now on YouTube. Now, here’s our conversation. Roger I’m sitting here with Haejin and Mako Fujimura for an event we’re doing tonight celebrating the release of their new book, Beauty x Justice. Thank you both for being here and being willing to talk with me. Mako Absolutely, excited to be here. Haejin Thank you for having us. Roger So, this topic is really interesting to me. This is the Art, Life, Faith Podcast. We believe that art isn’t just something that’s meant to be decorative or something if you have time to do, but it really affects every part of our lives and can change societies and people. And so to be able to talk about justice and what that looks like, I think is really fascinating. Can you tell us a little bit about this book? Haejin This book is a result of Mako bugging me for months to do something that I wanted to do but was kind of putting aside. So I’m really glad that he encouraged me to write this book together. This book shares with the world what it means to understand beauty in the context of justice and vice versa, because we believe that beauty and justice are essentially two sides of the same coin. Of the Gospel. We need both beauty and justice, not as parallels but as an integrated whole, to have the kind of shalom that God intended us to have from the very beginning that we have lost. Thankfully, God not only gave us beauty, but God is beauty. God not only commanded every single one of us to seek justice, not just to lawyers or advocates, but he himself is also justice, right? So when we think about beauty and justice coming together, we kind of wanted to share a little bit about our life as a married couple, because essentially all my life, even way before I met Mako, or before we wrote this book together. I have been working through justice to pursue beauty, and Mako has all his life, as just an incredibly anointed artist, been pursuing justice. And when we got together, we were able to really name it, and we started to share that message with other people in the context of exhibitions, speaking engagements, team-building occasions. And then we really felt like we needed to share this with a wider public. So that’s when we decided to write this book. Roger Yeah, it’s great. I feel like in some ways justice doesn’t have a very good image right now, just for various reasons. I guess I had forgotten how many times justice comes up in the Old Testament, and it’s always with this good image. God isn’t just just, but through it he gives a picture of shalom and what we are all really yearning for, right? Haejin Yeah, absolutely. Mako Yeah, justice is beautiful when it is fully manifested, and that’s always been God’s vision for the world. And yet we have created this tainted version of, or at least a version that we do not know the definition of what justice is. We talk about it all the time, but if you pursue asking the deeper question of what do you think justice is, not many people can answer it. We all know when something is lacking, you know, when we know justice is needed. But one of the things that I discovered in our journey together is that I have been speaking about beauty for all my life, it seems. I’ve written several books on it and have tried to help people understand why beauty is needed and essential for our lives. As an artist, as you noted, Roger, that many times the reaction that I get, well, that’s a nice thing to do, you know, when you have extra money or space and time. But especially for the church, it’s very hard to have a conversation where it is assumed that beauty is fundamentally not only necessary, but it is the most important characteristic of God’s presence in our lives. So it’s just a constant battle to help people understand that what I call utilitarian pragmatism has taken over all of our lives, not just the church, but our cultures. We tend to reduce the complexity of reality into simple false binaries so we can have a so-called understanding of it and have to take a position on it and create culture war-like rhetoric. And all of that comes out of this very simple premise that if God is beauty, and if God is love, then all things should flow out of that reality, including the church, including what we call the gospel, the good news, has to be filled with the abundance and extravagance of God’s love, has to feel like this is too good to be true. We will experience something that is so out of box, and extraordinary that we don’t have words to explain what that is. It just happens that when you experience true justice, not just restoration, you know, not just somebody who has been jailed wrongly is able to be released — that’s the first step in seeking justice — but when that person who has been trapped in whatever the circumstances because of injustice is able to see themselves as beautiful, that’s when the restoration of the whole person becomes real, not just that person but the whole community. And when you see that at work through Haejin’s work with Embers International, which she co-founded many years ago, we get to see actual examples of somebody who has gone through this very difficult process of restoration, and in their being, they hold this godly presence of beauty and justice together. And that’s when I, as an artist, I point to that reality and say, there is beauty here that I have been longing for as an artist to create, manifest into my work. And I continue to do that, but it really is that radical and that simple. Roger I was thinking about how you’re saying that people realizing what is justice for them, to realize their own beauty and to be able to see it. Mako, I think I’ve heard you say before how beauty can help us, artwork can help us kind of see, not just see, but experience the world in new ways. Like, I was thinking of To Kill a Mockingbird, to be able to go in someone else’s skin and walk around it for a little while. For example, in December I was giving a bunch of organ concerts around Japan. That usually happens at Christmas time, right? One of the pieces I was playing is one of my favorites by Maurice Durufle, a late French Romantic composer, called “Come, Creator Spirit.” And in it, in the middle of the work, there is this incredible dissonance and brokenness that just — it breaks your heart. And yet that isn’t the end. It starts with creation and gets to this breaking, and then he brings us beyond it to a hope, to a life where things can be glorious and rejoicing. And every time I play it — it’s a 20-minute piece, it’s a pretty long piece— to be able to celebrate what God is doing, it’s like I’m experiencing again and again through the artwork this truth. And so in a way, I think that’s like what you’re talking about. Haejin I think we forget to ask the question, what is the essence of all things, right? So what’s the essence of creating arts? What is the essence of justice? What is the essence of humanity? I don’t know about you guys, but I don’t think I was ever asked to think about the essence of things. It’s more of what is the quote-unquote the definition of it, what is going on, what is it, rather than what is the essence behind what we can just comprehend and observe on the surface. Because it’s a really hard question. You have to be willing to slow down to answer this question, right? You have to be willing to admit that we come with a lot of assumptions and biases. Otherwise, we cannot really get to the essence of things. So I think that, of course the industrialization, the pragmatism and individualism and all of those kind of things that in and of itself are not bad, but has kind of trained humanity to seek what is easy. Because we also have deep down in our hearts the lust for certainty, because uncertainty is so uncomfortable and it feels so risky and dangerous. But to think about the essence of beauty, arts, and justice and humanity, you have to be willing to be on the edge of the uncertainty and face the reality that there are things that we can’t quite comprehend. So, for example, we cannot comprehend God, right? If somebody says, I understand God, probably very little, if at all. Roger Exactly. Haejin But then we also know that God exists and God is love. We understand to a certain extent, and we get to experience the glimpses of his essence through beauty, especially through beautiful relationships when justice is in play. But I think we have to be willing, and especially the body of Christ, to be willing to really long for that essence of things. Roger Yeah, I think it helps too, that vision that you’re giving, that we can’t give up talking about it because we forget exactly what we’re searching for, what we’re yearning for. The image of what justice is can be so shaped by the news and the comfort of our situation in our part of the world, whatever it is. But to be able to keep giving people a vision for, like you do in the book, for the new creation. This is what we’re working toward and how to help people see it just coming out from a lot of different angles. It was really helpful. Mako Art and music has a capacity to do exactly that, to invoke this vista that most people have forgotten to look up to. And because we are so stressed and traumatized sometimes by realities of brokenness around us and within us, that we no longer actually lose the capacity to use our senses to listen well or to see something that is so beautiful that it’s mind-boggling and complex. And yet it is utterly needed for not just to seek the beauty, but to understand that as a standard of who we are as human beings is not built for this world in the sense that we get locked into our presuppositions and we get locked into what the media tells us. So we get locked into what the digital framework defines as reality. Our senses are such amazing instruments. When we behold something or when we truly do the hard work of deep listening, something happens where our brain rewires itself to regain that understanding of love at the heart of all complexities and chaos. And just like you mentioned in this music that you played, there’s this great tension in all beauty, and you can really try to find an answer that clarifies, or very much be certain that, you know, this is it, this is the good news of the Gospel, I want to give it to you, which is a fine notion, except that the mystery of the gospel, what Paul talks about, the mysterion, you know, the mystery of the gospel is far bigger than we think it is. And the more you understand it, the less you understand, but the more you understand it, the more that you are in awe of God’s presence. And art can give us that experience. So it doesn’t necessarily have to be Christian art because all human beings are created in the image of God, and however fallen we are, we have evidences throughout history of people who are horrible human beings, but they created amazing art that we can see, and as a viewer, we can glorify God with. So that kind of reality has always been part of human experience. And by the way, the church was the greatest patron to create this. And yet we have in recent times, because of pragmatic, utility and efficiency and industrial way that we began to measure what is good and successful, we lost sight of the transcendence and mystery of what human beings are capable of. Roger Thank you for reminding us of it in this book. We so need to keep hearing that message. I think we better stop there to get ready for the event tonight. But I am really looking forward to tonight. I’ve been getting a lot of emails. There’s going to be a lot of people here really looking forward to hearing what you have to say. So thank you so much for sharing this time with us. Haejin Thank you, Roger. Mako Thank you. Roger You’ve been listening to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast. You can continue the conversation by picking up your own copy of Beauty x Justice, available wherever you buy your books. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne!” We’ll see you next time.

Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. This week on March 11, 2026, we remember the 15th anniversary of that terrible earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster that struck the northeast coast of Japan. In memory of that event, last month, we had a big gathering within JEMA, which is the Japan Evangelical Missionary Alliance, the organization that represents every missionary and every mission organization in Japan. We all met in our new church space, Grace City Church Tokyo’s space and spent three days looking at the earthquakes and floods since 2011 and trying to see what we could learn from them and prepare for the next one. Some of the stories that they told were actually quite funny. There was a group that came to mud-out a house. The seawater had gone clear up to the ceiling, and so the walls and the insulation were all soaked and full of mildew. But this group, instead of starting with the ceiling and then the walls, and then the floor, started with the floor. They not only removed the floors but cut through the beams and very foundations of the house. Well, that next team that came in to take out the walls, first had to fix the foundations and then put the floors back before they could work on the rest of the house. And so, at the gathering, they were talking about the need for someone who can lead groups who actually knows what they’re doing. And hopefully, knows a little something about how a house is built. Basically, the problem that kept coming up over and over again during the course of the gathering was that the Church of Japan felt like they had to start from scratch every single time a disaster happened. They needed to try to find new resources: new people, new networks, new money. And so to that end, recently, a new network was formed called Zenkisai, which is the Christian National Disaster Network. And little by little, it’s growing. And also, after this past earthquake, the Noto Earthquake, within Mission to the World, I led a committee to form a disaster relief project account that is for every disaster in Japan, not just for one. When that next disaster comes, we will be ready to receive your help. I’ve put the details for that in the show notes for this episode. So now, through this project account, we can receive funds that will be used to buy food, water, supplies, and also cover costs of sending groups of Japanese people to the disaster area from our churches in Japan. And also very important, we will be able to pay Japanese workers to aid in the relief effort. That next disaster is coming. We know it is, but we’re doing what we can to plan for it. Anyway, before we move on to two conversations I had with people at the gathering, I want to let you all know about a sale coming up. On March 11, on the 15th anniversary of the earthquake, for one day only, all of the ebooks I’ve written about the earthquake will be available for $0.99 on Amazon in the US, and just 100 yen on Amazon in Japan. This includes both children’s books, “The Tsunami Violin” and “Pippy the Piano and the Very Big Wave”, in English and in Japanese. The sale also includes another book I wrote called “Aroma of Beauty”, with a beautiful foreword by Makoto Fujimura. Personally, I think you should get the book just to read what he wrote, his experiences after 9/11. And by the way, we also have an exhibit going on in our church space with “The Tsunami Violin”, showcasing the beautiful artwork by the very talented Holly Rose Wallace, as another way that our church community is remembering the people and towns affected by the disaster. A big thank you to all of you who’ve already bought all three of these books and left reviews. Thank you so much. Okay, now let’s turn to my conversation with Dean Bengston. Roger We are here at the JEMA Gathering (Japan Evangelical Missionary Alliance), spending three days talking about disaster relief and trying to prepare for the next disaster. There’s been quite a few ways that many of us here in this room have been involved over the past. But, Dean, I really wanted to talk with you. You moved into a disaster area soon after the 2011 earthquake. Can you tell us a little bit about who you are? Dean I am with the Lutheran Brotherhood Mission in Japan. We were living in Sendai at the time, and through a number of circumstances, we ended up connecting with Abe-san in Ishinomaki and delivering necessary goods. We soon realized there were a lot more needs and started mudding-out houses. I commuted from Sendai for a year and 10 months before we moved. Roger I have very fond memories of a concert that we gave in that home you started up there. Can you tell us a little bit about how arts played a role in your ministry there? Dean I think early on, we realized that people needed healing in many ways. And we had a friend, Shizu-san, who’s a singer-songwriter, and we invited her to come. She wanted to come to mud-out houses, but we said, Shizu-san, you have to come and sing and minister to people through song, that people need healing, and music brings healing. And so she reluctantly agreed to do a concert in an open space, a lot that we were using for gatherings for takedashi cookouts. Shizu had lived in Ishinomaki in her junior high years, but she explained to people, I don’t know how to really sympathize with you. So she started by singing songs that everybody knew, old Japanese songs. And after several songs and people singing along, she said, Well, I just like to sing a song that I wrote. Singing old Japanese songs or popular songs that people knew drew people in. And then they opened the door for her to sing songs that she’s written and to share a part of her life and her faith in a very natural way. Roger Do you feel like that was surprising to her or to the people in the room that it had the impact that it did? Dean I don’t really know, but all I know is I think for several musicians, it changed their ministry so that even when they were doing concerts in churches, they moved from doing all “Christian” music to actually starting out their concerts with songs that people maybe knew. And Kosaka Chu is really good at this. He could share a testimony and weave it in with that there’s somebody loves you, and he would just sing a song about love, and then he’d share about God and how he loves you. I don’t know, I think it changed people’s lives. An awful lot of musicians volunteered, and they were well received. So we really appreciated it. We’ve had a lot of concerts. Roger Yes, you sure have. What was the name of the house that you were… Dean House of Hope or Kibou no Ie. Roger And how often were you having concerts there? Dean At least once a month. But before House of Hope, we were having them outside in empty lots, empty parking lots that we were using or empty house lots that we were using. Then we moved into the community center and had several concerts in the community center and very varying concerts. Everything from a Hawaiian Luau to gospel choirs to vcontemporary singers, and Roger, you on organ, and also the koto. Roger Right, the koto player, Chieko. Dean Yeah, that was beautiful. And we have a small place, so people were just enamored with being able to be so close to the koto and watch the keys on the organ. And also, wasn’t there a flute? Roger I was trying to remember if it was flute or violin or something. Dean Flute, I think. Roger It was so moving for me to be there and see the people… I mean, it wasn’t like background music. Everybody was so focused on what we were doing and interacting with us. It really was a moving time. Dean I think music has played a big part in bringing healing to people. Roger Tell us a little bit about your son. He’s a visual artist. Dean Yeah, he was actually starting art school, but it got delayed because of the earthquake. And so he volunteered with us at the beginning. And then he was able to, because he speaks English fluently, he was able to not take English and got Fridays off. So he volunteered for the first semester every day, every week on Fridays with us. And through that, he did one project, a byobu folding screen made out of cell phone parts. Roger Cell phone parts? Dean Yeah, the old flip phones. And there was a farmer who’s a small farmer in our neighborhood with a cell phone factory next to it. Now, as the waters came in, it drove all the parts of the cell phones into his ground, and we cleaned out his field. Joshua also did a number of things. He made paint from the muck and did some paintings with that. Roger Wait, I don’t understand. It was out of mud? Dean Yeah, out of the muck, he created paint. Roger No, I didn’t see that work. Dean Yeah. Actually, most of his art shows are interactive. He’s an interesting character because he always wished that he could touch paintings when he was a kid. So he did one show where he had all the paintings hanging at different levels, and you could walk around and touch them because they were all at touching level. So usually, his art shows are interactive. Roger Well, the cell phone project, that wasn’t just him looking for pieces. Wasn’t it collaborative in some way? Asking for people to bring in things? Dean Oh, that was a different project. He’s had a lot of different shows. Roger But just that way, too, of inviting people in, whether it’s volunteers who are there or people in neighborhood, too, is another connection point through the arts. I thought that was such an important message. Thank you so much for sharing. So Dean and his family were one of the many who moved into the disaster area after the earthquake. And every time I visited up there, I loved seeing the trust built with the community and the ways they were accepted. They were not seen as outsiders. And they’re still there now, 15 years later. Okay, so I also want to introduce you to Stephen Nakahashi. He was one of the young men who answered the call to help in the disaster area shortly after the earthquake. So this big organization, Samaritan’s Purse, came in not only with a lot of supplies, but with money to hire workers. And a call went out across the nation of Japan to send them people who could work full-time. Steven was one who answered that call, along with a lot of other young people. My wife’s sister, Virginia, also moved up there as a missionary through Mission to the World as she had just graduated from college. And there was Ryo and Mami Amano, Jordan Foxwell, and so many others that went up there as well. And eventually, through their work, Ishinomaki Christian Center was started. Also, in a past episode, Episode #43, we talked with Rachel Reese Kollmeyer who also came as a missionary through Mission to the World. She is a very gifted violinist and worked with the others to teach and perform and help with the children’s music clubs and a gospel choir for kids and the annual arts festival and so much else. They also had craft-making with the kids. I was particularly moved by a musical that one of the students wrote inspired by all this, and then worked with us for the production of their musical. After the earthquake, it was especially hard for the children. The men, whose livelihood had been the coast, now had long commutes to work in other places, and the women had to go to work as well. Not only did the kids not have their parents around as much, but they also didn’t have as many resources available to them as before. The parks were gone. Many school programs had shut down. And so they did what they could to help the children dream again. And so many relationships came out of that time. Now let’s hear from Stephen. Roger So, Stephen, thank you so much for taking this time to talk with me. This is the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and with the 15th anniversary of the 2011 earthquake, I wanted to talk a little bit about the role that the arts played in the relief effort. But before we do that, please introduce yourself. Stephen Thank you for having me. My name is Stephen Nakahashi, a pastor’s kid. I grew up in Japan from the age of 11. Prior to that, I lived in Scotland with my family. So I’ve been in Japan for 33 years and counting. I became involved in disaster relief from 2011 with Samaritan’s Purse and then I subsequently started working with Ishinomaki Christian Center and lived in Tohoku for 14 years. And currently, I am serving with Noto Help in the Hokuriku region since 2024. Roger So, you were just in a panel discussion here. You’ve had quite a few experiences with disasters. Can you list them in order with earthquake and floods by year? Stephen Okay, 2011 was the earthquake and tsunami in Tohoku. Then the 2016 earthquake in Kumamoto. Then heavy rain and flooding in Kumamoto in 2020, just south in Hitoyoshi. And then in 2021, there was again heavy rain and flooding in Saga Prefecture, north of Nagasaki. And then in 2022, there was flooding again in Aomori, in the northern part of Japan, which was a bit of a surprise as that has not happened before. And then in 2023, there was again heavy rain and flooding in Akita, again in the north. All of those happened in the summer of those years. And then in 2024, on the first of January, was the earthquake on the Noto Peninsula. Roger And then after you were brought in, I know you went in giving advice, helping in any way you could, but then you moved there. Stephen I did, yeah. Roger And you’ve been there for a year and three months. Stephen Yeah, that was a big decision for us. It was mainly driven by the importance of my family to be together. For 10 months, I had commuted from Miyagi to Noto. I would be down there for two or three weeks before going back home for a week or so and then repeat. So that became quite difficult, and we thought it’d be important for our family to be together. Roger Yeah, I was able to go twice to Noto Help while you were working there. We were in this big room with, I don’t know, maybe there were 60 volunteers or so broken up into four or five groups. You’re introducing, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do today. This group is going to do that. This group is going to do that.” You were the man in charge, telling everyone what was going to happen. For some, maybe it was their first disaster, and they don’t know what’s going on, but you gave them this assurance, “It’s going to be okay. Your driver is going to get you there safely. They’re going to bring you back. We’re going to serve the Lord in this way.” Really was a powerful experience. Stephen Really? I’m glad you thought so. Roger I think one of the interesting things about the Noto Help situation was how, those who are listening probably don’t even know this, the roads were really hurt by the earthquake. Basically, transportation was almost shut down. Finally, when they were able to open up the roads, they made one road to go up north, one road to come back. It used to be a two-way road, and they made it a one-way road. A police blockade stopped anyone from going because it was bottlenecking the whole peninsula, so y’all became the entrance point for working throughout the whole region. Was that a big responsibility? People contacting from all over the country and all over the world to wanting to help? Stephen Yeah, I think it was really a tricky balance to maintain. We really understood how much people wanted to help, and we knew how important that was for the recovery as well. So we wanted to make sure that we were not getting in the way of first responders, like ambulances or any vehicles like that. It did seem like it would be wise to try to, as a Christian community, to be responsible for that. So we were glad we could help in that way. Roger Let’s back up to 2011. The 15th anniversary is coming up, and so many memories. I mean, Community Arts Tokyo, this organization, was started through the experiences of that. When I was in the shelters in that disaster, in the chaos, and in the anguish, the anxiety people are feeling, and saw how the arts brought healing, to see how they brought comfort, how they helped us build relationships. During a time when people are saying, “We don’t need goods. We don’t need the food and water. We’re good.” And yet there was still an entry point, a way to connect through the arts. And I, experiencing the power of that, I wanted to bring that back to Tokyo. So we started Community Arts Tokyo, building community through the arts in Tokyo. But it was experiencing that with you up in Ishinomaki, in the Tohoku area, that was my first connection to it. I was just wondering, I’d love to hear your memories of that. As you look back and think about those times, what could you do to help me process that and those who are listening to try to understand, especially as artists, what role they can play in a disaster relief situation? Stephen I remember fondly the time that we ran the Junior High School Kids program in Ishinomaki, and I really could connect with those kids over a longer period of time. Where we taught the kids at the local junior high schools for three months from April through July. And then we had the Ishinomaki Gospel Festival. So there was a goal of something beyond just practicing, but to actually have a stage at the end of it for the kids to perform and experience something different. And the catch copy, so to speak, was for the kids to be able “to dream again.” And yeah, in the midst of the devastation at the time, there were lots of kids whose parents were really struggling with the aftermath of the earthquake. In Ishinomaki, especially, there was a lot of parents, the dads of the family who are fishermen, often were gone for a long time. But then post-disaster, the mothers also started working, and the kids didn’t really have anywhere to be or to go. And they didn’t really have that sense of looking forward to something. I think that played a really important role in helping some of those kids at the time to experience something new. Roger I loved those gospel festivals because it was like the whole town was coming together for all the businesses. There were stalls so they could offer food or whatever they made. On a personal note, I also loved giving organ concerts outside. I brought my portable organ up there and I’m playing, and I don’t get to play outside very much as an organist, so that was really fun. Stephen Yeah, that was really an amazing combination of the local people coming with their stalls and then so many different artists coming to serve and to play. We also had a play area for kids, because a lot of the parks had been damaged, there was really not many safe places for kids to play. So that was another aspect that we added to it. So the kids could enjoy something different. It was an amazing coming together of communities through music and through the arts. Roger It definitely was. Thank you so much for all the work you put into those. You were in Ishinomaki right after the disaster and for a long time afterward. And then Ishinomaki Christian Center started. And as I understand it, part of the vision for that was to be a meeting place for creating community. People had their own homes. They had their food and water. But still, that community building aspect was an important part of what was needed to help people recover. Now you had a spot to do it. You had the land. You had the building. I really enjoyed being able to come up, not as often as I wanted to, but when I did, to hear, what the situation was then and how people were doing. And to see you building that community, especially right where that building was. It almost felt like a wasteland from the first couple of years of my memory of that spot. Now it’s a thriving place. It was right next to the train station. When you look back, how would you put it in your own words? Stephen As we were just talking about today, if you approach the situation with the mentality of being the caregiver and then people receiving care, and especially in a physical way, once that need is no longer there, then the relationship also ends there. Music and the arts in many ways is something that we don’t always realize that we need. And it’s a really good way to bring the community together, even after the physical needs are met and people don’t really need those types of support. But whether it be a disaster or not, and all the more so after a disaster, the people in the community were going through a lot of uncertainty. Opportunities often provided by music and different means of the arts has provided the opportunity to continue to build relationships with people. That was really important to continue the relationships with the people that we had come to know. Roger Are you seeing that now in Ichikawa, on the Noto Peninsula, where you’re living now? Is that part of the vision? I know a lot of people ended up moving away. And you were sharing in the panel how a lot of the older people living there are being encouraged by their children to leave and move in with them. They’re answering, “No, this is our home.” But there’s a lot of resistance against rebuilding their homes, rebuilding their towns. What is your vision for that and how do you see the arts playing a role? Stephen I think so. I think as we move into the phase of that physical need not being so much of a need. And we are now reaching out into the temporary housing unit communities, and we are trying to build those relationships with the people. And so definitely, I think from this year onward, and even to this point, there’s a role for the arts to play in this phase. One of the challenges in Noto is that unlike maybe in Tohoku, a lot of the temporary housing unit communities are quite small, and sometimes they don’t really even have a gathering place. If they do, it can only house maybe 10 to 15 people. So it’s hard to reach people in that way. But yeah, I think now that we do have a center in Anamizu that hopefully we can start to connect to people more there. And we look forward to being able to coordinate people coming along. Roger Thank you. Well, I look forward to our next trip. Maybe we’ll bring some artists this summer. Stephen Yes, definitely. I look forward to it. Roger Thank you. Thank you so much. Stephen You’re welcome. Thank you. You’ve been listening to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast. And don’t forget to pick up your own copy of “The Tsunami Violin”, “Pippy the Piano”, and “Aroma of Beauty”. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne!” We’ll see you next time.

Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Today, I’m excited to share with you a project that our team has been working on for quite some time now. Our new children’s book, The Tsunami Violin, comes out on November 24, 2025. Back in 2020, I wrote my first children’s book called “Pippy the Piano and the Very Big Wave”. Based on a true story, it tells how a church finds their beloved piano upside down and covered in mud and debris. But rather than throw it out, they decide to spend the enormous amounts of time and money necessary to fix it, and they give the piano new life. And even today, the church continues to tell this story through the many concerts they host there. Now we are releasing our second children’s book, which this time tells the story about a violin. A young tree protects her town from the cold and harsh ocean winds. But when the tsunami comes, everything is washed away: family, friends, town. She’s lost everything, but then a master craftsman comes, a violin maker from Tokyo, and transforms her into something beautiful. Through her music and through her story, she brings encouragement and healing to all who hear it, a story of hope out of despair, life out of death, and new beginnings. Like Pippy the Piano, this book too is based on a true story. I’m fortunate to know Nakazawa-sensei, the violin maker, and also to have had the privilege of being involved in quite a few concerts with that violin. It’s such a powerful story of redemption that I had to get it out there. This is a story worth telling. In this episode, I have a conversation with some of the members of our team who made this book possible, the beginnings of the book and the process along the way, and especially with the very talented Holly Rose Wallace, whose images and illustrations so powerfully tell this story. So anyway, I know you’re going to love the book, and I hope this conversation into some of the background will help you enjoy it even more. Roger Well, today we are excited to share with all of you about this project we’ve been working on for quite some time now called The Tsunami Violin. And we have a number of us who are key players in getting this project together with us on the podcast. Can you all introduce yourselves one by one? Maybe Diane, you served as the project manager for this. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Diane Yes, I’m Diane Bakelaar, and I live in Nagoya, Japan. My husband and I run an arts ministry through an art gallery and meet people through the art gallery. I served as the project manager for this book. Roger Awesome. Now, most importantly, Holly Rose Wallace as the illustrator. Can you introduce yourself? Holly I don’t know about most important, but I’m Holly. I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. I did about a two-year internship in Nagoya, Japan, working with Diane and Peter Bakelaar, and then working on this project with Roger and others. This is my first illustration project, so it was really exciting to get to add this to my resume and work with the team on this project. But I’m a self-taught illustrator, and I’ve always loved the arts, so this is an exciting project for me. Roger Awesome. And, Verity, you’re on this call. Can you tell us your role in this project? Verity Hi, I’m Verity. I’m a London-based illustrator and designer specializing in book design. And I’m also preparing to move to Tokyo next year to work with Community Arts Tokyo as an arts missionary. Roger Very cool. Last but not least, we also have Tsumugu Misugi on the call. Can you introduce yourself? Tsumugu Yeah. Hello. My name is Tsumugu. I’m a violinist and a composer living in Japan. I write music and record for Japanese animation and Korean dramas and things like that. I was happy and so privileged to be able to play on the tsunami violin with Roger a couple of years ago. Roger Now, in the introduction to this episode, I’ve given a little summary of what this book is about. But really to capture the essence of it, I wanted all of us here together because I think there’s something really special about this project, in how it all came together. There were many pieces. It wasn’t like I wrote this story and then passed it on to Holly to illustrate and then published it, but there were so many moving parts. And as each part came in, it made the book all that much more special. So why don’t we just start right at the beginning? So, Tsumugu, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you were first introduced to the tsunami violin? Tsumugu I served as a volunteer in Ishinomaki from 2012 and went back every summer until 2016. And so I had first-hand experience helping with relief work. And then I went to the States for college, and then I decided to move to Japan after college to pursue my work. And that was when I reconnected with Roger. And within the first, I think, maybe three months of me moving back to Japan, Roger was like, “Hey, there’s this project where we want to give about 10 concerts in Japan, and it would be awesome if you could play on this tsunami violin.” And that was the first time I had heard of the violin, but it’s very famous here in Japan, and I was very honored to be asked to play on the violin. Roger Yeah, I had gotten to know it at previous concerts, and then there was this church, a group of churches actually, up in Iwaki, who asked us to come and give concerts on the violin. And it really wasn’t until that time that it came together. I was like, “this is an amazing story to be told.” I mean, everywhere the violin goes, it doesn’t just give a concert, but its story is an essential part of that concert. Just bringing that hope, bringing that idea that there’s life out of death, that all things can be redeemed, even when you’re in the pit of despair. And to continually bring that violin into any crowd of people, really, it spoke, it said something. And I was like, “How can we tell this to more people, not just those at the concerts. What would that look like?” And that was when the idea came forth about making a children’s book. Now, of course, I am not a visual artist. I don’t have the means to do that, but it just so happened that God provided Holly at just the right time to begin having this conversation. Holly, what do you remember about those early conversations about this book? Holly I remember the first time that I met you, I was showing you some of my work, and you looked really excited. You’re like, I have an idea for my next children’s book, and I’ve been looking for an illustrator. And you asked if I do that. I was like, “Well, I haven’t, but it’s always been a dream of mine.” And so it was this perfect partnership of you needed an illustrator, and I wanted to illustrate. It all came together from there. Roger It started first with the two of us working on this project, but then I think things really got special when we brought in Anna, who isn’t on this call, and Diane to be part of the process as well. Actually, Diane, just before we started recording, you said something about that, just the idea of having more people involved in the project somehow made it better. Diane Yes, I’ve always been fascinated with the idea, the wisdom of the group, and how it’s statistically shown that when people as a group, when they’re working together well, they can make better decisions than an individual, even if that individual is an expert in the area. I certainly saw that with this project. Everybody was bringing their strengths to the table, and everyone in the group was able to listen and not hold on to their parts so tightly that they weren’t able to hear suggestions and improvements. That was really impressive to me how everyone was very humble and very willing to work together, and it just made the project so much better. Roger Yeah, I really enjoyed our times together. Once every two weeks or so, we all had our roles. Mine was officially words. Holly was images. Verity was, I think, everything artistic. Verity Not at first… Roger At first, what was your role? Verity At first, I was thinking when I came in that I’d be taking on a design role of doing stuff with how the text looked and how the cover looked. Then my input grew from there, for sure. Roger Yeah, it sure did. It was fun to see this project be born out of our time together. The idea was, how do we tell this story in the best possible way? What words do we use? What images? Are there things we can do with the text? Maybe we should add a frame here or take one out here. To be talking about that creatively as a group was some of the magic of this project, I think. Verity Yeah, definitely. I think the first ever meeting we had about this project, Diane was there on Zoom, we were sitting on the floor in this apartment which had no furniture, which is why we were sitting on the floor. But we were going through some of the sketches that Holly had done and some of the writing and stuff. For a while, I’d been working in the creative industries. In the creative industries, I definitely feel like your role gets isolated from the rest of the creative process, particularly as a designer, where you do your thing that you’re told to do, but you don’t have any input in how the rest of a creative project, a book, for example, looks like. I was coming from that into this project where we were all like, you were asking my opinion on the text and stuff, and I was a little bit worried about stepping on your toes. That was a really special moment for me. It was, I think, maybe my first week or two in Japan. I was like, Oh, this is something different here. What the team is doing here is different. It was a good moment. Roger Yeah, it was. Anna said you can’t publish a book without a cat in it. And that was just so much better. So we had this cat, and there’s this yellow bird that flies through the scenes and came to represent the Holy Spirit flying through and having a presence all throughout the story. And I think we were just having fun with it. It wasn’t just about practical things, but about what we can creatively do that would be fun, not just for us, but for the reader as well. Verity For me, I feel like it is something that’s natural to the creative process, but I feel like it came together in quite a non-linear way. I remember we brought in the idea of the music as in the images of music in the text, not right at the beginning, one of the opening paragraphs of the book is about the music of nature that the tree hears, which obviously it’s a book called the Tsunami Violin, so it makes sense to have those musical images. But it wasn’t something that we came up with until we talked through the project a little bit, and then we started thinking about how we could bring in those images and make it flow more cohesively. Roger Yeah, it became a theme throughout the whole book. It was actually someone else who wasn’t on this call who came up with an idea. They said, “One of the special things about children’s books is when phrases are repeated over and over.” It has a special power when you’re reading a children’s illustrated book. And I was like, oh, that’s like choruses in songs, right? I mean, you sing the verse and then the chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, and the chorus keeps getting repeated. And I think that’s one of the beauties of this book now. It didn’t start that way at all, but to have this repeating course of the music of the town. In fact, we have it on the back cover here, “The rhythm of the waves, the song of the birds, the whistling of the wind, and the hum of the town,” She has it in the beginning, and then she loses it because of the tsunami. And then how does she get that back? And it’s through the work of this master craftsman, this violin maker who makes her into this beautiful thing that she didn’t know was possible. Through her music and through her story, the people are hearing the music of her town again. Verity I think that was another thing that I found quite exciting about working on The Tsunami Violin. I’ve never done a kid’s book before. Community Arts is not like a publishing house that specializes in children’s books. But it was quite exciting to just be like, “Well, let’s figure out how to do this,” exploring all of these ideas. I guess, I think for me, coming into that, I felt like I was breaking new ground creatively, having to think outside of the box that I find it easy to put myself in, having to think more broadly about what could I do and what can we do as a team. Diane Two creative challenges that I remember: the one in particular was when the violin maker looks into the box and visually how to do that and how poor Holly was trying so hard to do this. Verity Yeah, we really messed her up. Diane But anyway, and I think that is an example of where the group working together really helped. The page, I think, is very successful looking. But boy, that was a lot of hard work. Then the other aspect was because this is both in English and Japanese and how when it’s translated into Japanese, the words are longer, takes that much more space. Then again, having to adjust visually for creating more room. Anyway, there are just a lot of challenges along the way. Roger Holly, what do you think about all that as the illustrator of this book? Holly It’s all true! It was hard, but it’s all part of the creative process, is the back and forth and trying to work out how to make it look best. I think for me, it was a challenge because I wouldn’t really consider myself a digital artist, primarily. That’s not really my preferred medium. So this was a new experience for me in that sense. I had done digital work before, but I have very little experience and all self-taught. So that was one learning curve for me. And then the theme of the book being with a violin, but she starts out as a tree. For me, that was another challenge because I haven’t spent much time drawing trees. And so I’m like, Okay, I need to figure out the anatomy of a tree, and not just any tree, but specifically a Japanese pine. So there was a lot of back and forth trying to figure out what style to use and how to translate that into a children’s style. And then when she becomes the violin, coming up with that character design was a lot of fun for me. I had to watch a documentary on how violins are created because that was another thing. I don’t usually draw violins for fun. So that was another challenge to overcome, but it’s so much fun to do. And I think the cat, too, was a lot of fun to incorporate. And I went back and forth a lot with thoughts and ideas of how to design the cat and the bird. But I think what I finally came down to was just designing the cat to look like my cat, especially since I was living in Japan at the time, and my cat was back in America. So it was a fun way to feel connected to my cat. Verity My favorite is at the back when the cat is actually playing the violin. Roger It’s like one of my favorite scenes in the whole book. Holly That was one of my favorites to draw. Roger Actually, to the right of the cat is a young man that looks like Tsumugu to me. I don’t know, Holly, if you were actually looking at a picture of Tsumugu at the time, but it looks really like him. So that makes me happy. Verity Your moment of fame, Tsumugu. Tsumugu Yes, just happy to make a cameo in the book. Verity Yeah, you’re not getting any commission for this, by the way. We’re just using your image. Tsumugu That’s fine. I give full consent. Verity How generous. Actually, one of the things that I really like that you did, Holly, is the illustration of the tsunami. And that was something that we went back and forth on quite a lot. But there’s a scene in the book where the tsunami first appears, and it’s quite scary. I’m holding up a picture for these guys. It’s supposed to be quite a scary moment of this huge wave towering on the horizon. We went back and forth a lot on how to… First of all, how to make it look scary, but also should this tsunami be sentient? Should it be anthropomorphic the way that the tree and the violin are? We ended up settling on a design that references the Great Wave, the Hokusai famous woodprint. I think that it’s a really effective image as a result because it’s a very clear reference. The image in the Great Wave is also tsunami, I think. But then I think it’s interesting to how that connects people who aren’t as familiar with Japan and with Japanese culture because it’s such an internationally recognized image. I was speaking in front of a church on Sunday and I showed them the cover. People came up to me at the end and they were like, Oh, yeah, the wave. We reused the image in a composite with some other illustrations on the cover. And people were like, Oh, yeah, the wave is really cool. They remembered the connection with the great wave. And I feel like it’s just an interesting way of how you can connect with different audiences through those visual references. Holly Yeah, I agree. I’m so glad that people recognized it and saw that that was the inspiration. That panel was so challenging because I didn’t want to do a direct copy of the Hokusai wave, but I definitely wanted to draw inspiration from it. And it’s also the angle that it’s at, the wave is coming right at you. And I think that adds to make it scarier, make it more frightening for readers because it’s like, Oh, the wave is coming directly at me, off the page in a sense. But typically when you see illustrations of waves, like when I was looking for references, there are no pictures of waves coming directly at you. It’s always at some angle. And so that was something that took a lot of time to figure out, Okay, how do I interpret this into a visual representation of just this? But I’m really happy with how it turned out and happy for all of your guys’ input. Roger When I’ve shown that image to beta readers, they’re like, wow. I mean, wow. They were just speechless because it’s just so effective. But my favorite image is the one where you only did the two big eyes, where she’s at the low point of her life. She’s lost everything, and now she’s been cut up, and she’s thrown in this box, and doesn’t know where she’s going. The way you’re able to express all of that in just the two eyes, I think, is so effective. When I’ve been showing it to people, that’s always the page I show first. Like, look at these eyes. They’re like, oh, it’s just so cool. In this whole medium of children’s illustrated art, how you’re not trying to be literal. You can through the medium, through the language of children’s art, you can tell something in different ways. I think just looking at the eyes tells the whole story. Holly That’s so funny that’s your favorite page because that was the easiest one to do. That was one of the things in the character design for me that it’s so important, the eyes, because that’s what people are going to look at the most and what’s really going to bring the character to life. So I spent a lot of time trying to design those eyes and the eyelashes specifically, I was inspired by the F hole on the violin, so you could see that on the eyelashes of the character. But I thought that that was a fun little thing to add. Diane Holly, I was wondering about the colors that you chose. I love the colors in the book. Just what was your hope or thinking behind how you chose your colors? Holly I feel like it was really a team effort choosing the colors. But then, of course, some of the colors just come naturally. Because this is based on a true story, I was pulling colors a lot from just the reference images, but then trying to brighten them to make it more visually pleasing and more exciting for children. And all readers. But it was really interesting how naturally a palette came to be. It was a lot of browns and blues and greens, and just looking at them all side by side, it was like, yeah, there’s definitely a clear palette. But that came about really naturally, which was cool. Roger Yeah. Verity I have the actual physical book with me now, and the colors feel very alive. So it’s really nice to see it. Very vibrant. Tsumugu Nice. Can I talk a bit about the audience? I find it really interesting that you picked a children’s book as the medium to publish this because people who are older than teenagers would have experienced or would have seen the tsunami. But children, the target audience for this book, are people who’ve never experienced. They haven’t seen the tsunami. Roger They weren’t alive when it happened. Tsumugu Yeah, exactly. I think it’s so interesting that you picked children to spread this story and this message. I feel like it’s a good way for them to learn about the tsunami as well as the aftermath of what happened. Also, especially for international audiences, I feel like it might be something that is so far away and so detached from them, but there’s still such a powerful story in the aftermath of it. Roger Yeah, the violin maker, he met with the Emperor himself, and the Emperor said, “Oh, I’m so glad that you’re doing this because people are going to forget, and they need to remember what happened.” And that is essentially what his project, the violin, tsunami violin, continues to do, and that’s what we’re trying to do through this. Diane I was telling one of my Japanese friends that this was in the middle of the project, and I’m working on this project. She’s Japanese, and she had no idea about the tsunami violin. She didn’t know what it was. So I explained the story. She just looked at me and said, This is such an important story. This is part of our history. We’ve got to keep it alive. That was her reaction to the whole thing. Verity I think that it’s interesting. Perhaps we haven’t talked about this as a group, but it’s interesting to think about how this being a real event that really shapes people’s lives, all of the tragedy. And also, I feel like shapes the Japanese consciousness as well. I feel like it’s very much something in the minds and hearts of Japanese people. When we think about going through such a traumatic event, even as children, when children go through traumatic events, then there is this process of not being able to go back to what you were before. So experiencing something that is irreversible and coming out of that as a changed person. And that’s what happens to the tsunami violin is that the story is of her, not like she’s able to go back to the way she was when she was a happy and innocent child, but that she goes through something and she becomes something beautiful and something recognized by other people, but that she’s not able to go back to the way that she was. I feel like that’s actually a realistic view of trauma. I think that that’s quite a good thing to acknowledge, even for children, that just because you go through something doesn’t mean that you’re irreversibly broken, but that you can become something else. Roger Yeah, so good. I think we better end our time here. Thank you all so much for sharing with me and with our listeners. It’s just really a special project. We are excited to be able to launch it to all of you on November 24, and I hope that you’ll be able to pass it on to your friends as well. This story of redemption in a way that I think can reach audiences in any culture, any country, is just so important and we need to be repeating this story to others as well. You’ve been listening to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. The Tsunami Violin is available for sale on November 24 wherever you buy your books online. Please pick up a copy for yourselves and tell your family and friends about it as well. In fact, maybe it will also make a great Christmas present. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne!” We’ll see you next time. BUY “THE TSUNAMI VIOLIN”

Hello and welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast. I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Every year, we have interns come work alongside us in what God is doing here in Japan through the arts. This summer, one of our interns was a phenomenal dancer named Anna Gardner Herren, with a huge heart for missions around the world. This was her third summer with us here in Japan, and she also made trips to Taiwan and Korea. Last August, I interviewed her in this podcast—”#61 Summer Internships” if you’d like to have a listen—so I thought it would only be fair to give her a chance to interview me this year. She has her own wonderful podcast called The Purpose of Beauty, where she explores the role of beauty in our lives talking with various artists from around the world. In this episode that I’m about to share with you, we discuss some things that I’ve never talked about before on this podcast, especially about the music of Bach and its impact in Japan, so I think you’ll enjoy it. You can find other episodes of her podcast by searching for The Purpose of Beauty or by going to our show notes. Here is our conversation: Anna Gardner Hello and welcome to the “Purpose of Beauty” podcast. I’m here with Roger W. Lowther, founder and director of Community Arts Tokyo and worship director at Grace City Church Tokyo. He also just happens to be my boss as the Mission to the World team leader in Japan. So let’s welcome Roger. Roger Thank you. Great to be here. Looking forward to talking with you about this. Anna Gardner I’m so excited to talk to you because you have so many books written about beauty, so I really wanted to hear some things that you had to say. Roger Sure. Well, where do we start? Anna Gardner Where do we start? Well, one of the things that I really enjoyed hearing you talk about is Bach, and especially Bach in Japan. So for those of you just tuning in, he is a really amazing organ player, has played all over Japan and America and probably other places as well. And he was telling me more about how Bach is so influential and important in Japan, possibly more so than America. Roger Yeah, I would say so. Anna Gardner But how did you first encounter Bach? Roger Oh, interesting question. I’ve actually never been asked that before. Anna Gardner Really? Well, I would love to know. Roger I was about to switch teachers between elementary school and junior high, and the teacher wanted to test me, audition me to see if he would take me on as a student. And so he gave me a lesson and said, “I want you to learn this piece.” It was from the Liturgical Year, the little pieces that Bach wrote, each one’s like a page long, so it’s not too hard. And I passed the audition. He said, “Wow, I’ve never had someone learn this so quickly.” I had nothing to compare it to so I didn’t know. I practiced really hard. Anna Gardner So Bach is one of your origin stories of playing the organ? Roger Yeah, I mean, it was a very stressful situation, so I didn’t actually enjoy playing the piece very much. But that was my first interaction. Yeah, and then it’s grown from there. Anna Gardner Wow. Did you ever think you would be playing it here in Japan? Roger No, Japan was not on my radar at that point. But actually after that, my audition to Juilliard, to college, was through a piece. They make you memorize and play a prelude and fugue of Bach, which are much longer as organ works than piano. It’s about 15 minutes, something like that. And so that was my first piece on the audition, and I will never forget any of the notes in that piece ever, because I had four other auditions before that one, and I recorded it, and it is permanently etched into my head. So yeah, right now I’m actually going through a whole project to record all of Bach’s sacred organ works. Anna Gardner Why his sacred organ works? Roger Because people really haven’t focused on that. They’re not technically as showy and interesting for people in concert situations. They’re like, “That’s a little too slow” or “a little too long.” And yet in worship, it’s “a little bit too long.” They don’t really want them in worship either. So people don’t really play most of the pieces in that collection. I thought, “Okay, well, the only way it’s going to be heard, is if I record it, maybe do a whole set.” I’m thinking of doing a whole marathon of it. It’ll be many, many hours to play them all in a row. Anna Gardner You’re going to play them all in a row? Roger At some point. This is a long-term project. Either next year or the year after that I’m getting ready for it. Anna Gardner That’s crazy. Well, best wishes for that. I also am curious, since coming to Japan and playing Bach, do you have any stories about your interactions with Bach here in Japan? Roger Oh, yeah. It really shocked me. I’m used to playing Bach in America, and you’ll probably have smaller audiences if you do an all-Bach concert with the organ. I think in America, we like having lots of color and orchestration and loud/soft dynamic changes and things like that. The organ is so good at changing colors. But Bach tends to be a more similar sound for longer periods of time. And yet it’s been amazing the reactions I’ve gotten from Japanese people. So a story: Just my first year here, I was meeting with a language partner to help me learn how to speak Japanese. We’d meet once a week and have conversations together. And one of the things I wanted to do was just practice speaking about Christianity in Japanese. Anna Gardner Oh, that’s actually so scary. Roger I knew it was needed. I needed to learn how to do it, but she didn’t want to talk about religion at all. She’s like, “No, no, no, let’s stick to politics and art and culture.” Anna Gardner You mean politics was easier than religion? Oh, my goodness. Roger Yeah, so we had a great friendship, but that topic was off limits. We’re not talking about religion. And I’m like, okay, well, I guess I’ll have to learn it some other way. Then Easter, that first year, I gave a concert at a local church and invited her. She wanted to support her language student, so she came. And at the end of the concert, she was in tears. And I was thinking to myself, What’s wrong? Maybe she got bad news. A family member is sick or something like that. And she said, “I can’t talk right now. We’ll talk next week.” I’m like, Okay. I hope she’s okay. And so then the next week, we got together for our usual scheduled language conversation. And she said, “I’ve never thought about hope that way. And the way you talked about it through the music of Bach and from the Bible. I’ve never heard that message before.” And that was the beginning of something. We were able to talk about religion quite frequently after that. Anna Gardner Because of Bach? Roger Because of Bach. It opened this doorway in her heart to something that was off limits before and to a little bit of herself. I still talk to her now. This is, I don’t know, 20 years ago. I’ve been here 20 years. So it opened doors to deeper relationships. And I have so many stories like that. Anna Gardner Do you have maybe one more that you want to share with us? Because I love that story. Roger Well, we’re looking out the window of my living room here, and at that building way over there, I gave a concert in the lobby of that business building. It’s a huge space, and I brought my organ and a battery, and I was playing music by Bach, and this guy came by. He’s like, “Oh, Roger. It’s so good to see you again.” He was a conductor who had hired me a number of years before to play the St. Matthew Passion. Anna Gardner Oh, beautiful. Roger Playing the organ continuo part. So those of you know the St. Matthew Passion, it requires quite a few singers. There’re multiple choirs and two orchestras. There’s a lot of echoing going back and forth, calling to each other. There’s a lot of people. First of all, I was the only non-Japanese in the room, but also I was the only Christian in the room. Anna Gardner Wait, you’re playing St. Matthew Passion? And you’re the only Christian? Roger Yeah. Anna Gardner That’s crazy. Roger And there’s one point in the rehearsal, the director knew that I was a missionary, and he stops. He was trying to explain like, “well, this is the point where, let’s just let Roger explain it because he’s a missionary. Roger, would you stand up and explain to everyone?” And I’m like, okay, first of all, I knew everyone in that room spoke Japanese better than me, and I’m like, That’s quite a lot of pressure for not making mistakes. But anyway, I did my best. And it was just through these rehearsals, people would ask me questions after like, “What does this mean?” And I remember during the concert itself, the conductor broke down in tears, and the orchestra members were looking at each other like, “What’s wrong with him?” Anna Gardner Like, while you all are performing? Roger While we were performing. Anna Gardner Oh, my goodness. Roger The musicians were like, “Is he having a heart attack? Should we stop and help him?” Because he’s faltering. This isn’t a professional orchestra. It’s a volunteer orchestra. And afterwards, I talked with him. He said, “I want to be a Christian. Never before has the message hit me so deeply.” That was a fall concert, October, and he was baptized that following Christmas worship. Anna Gardner Okay, that’s crazy. Roger Yeah. There were others as well in the orchestra who were reading through the text and trying to figure out why this was so powerful and what was going on. Where else would Japanese people who have never seen a Bible before…here they were reading scripture in this context because of the music of Bach. It’s just amazing how God has provided this doorway. Anna Gardner It’s such a bridge to use the arts to share the gospel. And you would know that because you lead Community Arts Tokyo here. But that’s really special that Bach was such a gateway for you to be able to talk about God. So wow. Roger Yeah. Praise God. Anna Gardner I was reading one of your works. You’ve written so many books, and we need to talk about that soon, too. But I was reading one of your books about Bach in Japan and was wondering why it’s specifically impactful for Japanese people. Do you have any ideas? Roger That is a difficult question to answer. Anna Gardner Sorry. Roger I’ve been trying to figure it out for years. I think that in the arts, there’s this idea of trying to give an image to yourself in order to sell more works to be more successful like that. Bach was completely the opposite. He’s more like a craftsman. He just wanted to do the best he possibly could in his local context. Leipzig was not one of the biggest cities in Germany at the time. And so he’s just doing his thing, doing it to the best of his ability. And I feel like a lot of artists in Japan are like that, too. It’s more about the work they make rather than the name attached to it. Some of the greatest works of art here, it’s not about their name. It’s not written on there. You may not even know who wrote it. It could be anonymous…Oh, man, who made this?…that craftsman mentality. So I think that’s part of the answer. Anna Gardner That makes sense because even from something like rice balls, there’s this idea of making it right and making it well. And there’s people who are famous for making a rice ball well. But of course, they weren’t making it well to be famous. Why would you want to become famous for making rice balls? But at the same time, there’s something really Japanese to me about that, about investing your time to make something really well, not for other people to look at you and say you did it well, but just to do it well. Roger Yeah, definitely. Actually, the most famous artist in Japan for the music of a Bach, Masaaki Suzuki…he’s really famous, I mean, when you go to the Leipzig Museum, the foremost museum about the music of Bach, it seems like half the recordings there are by Suzuki. So a Japanese group, the Bach Collegium of Japan, is representing the music of Bach globally, but he’s a very humble man. He wasn’t doing it for his own glory or anything like that. “Let’s record all of the cantatas of Bach to the best of our ability and just see what happens.” And God has really blessed his efforts in that. Anna Gardner That’s so beautiful. I think it inspires me that people would care about doing something well, not to be seen. I feel like as a Christian artist, sometimes I’m saddened by seeing non-successful or Christian works that to me, aren’t that great. But then when I see people who are Christians or non-Christians just doing something really well. I feel like we, as Christians, should also work so hard to do things well for Christ. Roger I appreciate beauty and things done well for sure. Because it lowers walls and it allows for more people to interact with the artwork, to build community around that artwork. I feel like when things are not done as well, it feels like it’s…I don’t know, if you’re trying to put more meaning on the message…then it’s almost manipulative. “You should care about this because of the message.” Well, if it’s good, you can’t help but be drawn in. Anna Gardner I think that’s one thing that I’ve really been encouraged about with Community Arts Tokyo. For reference, this is my third summer interning with Community Arts Tokyo. Roger Thank you for coming back so many times! Anna Gardner I’m so happy to come back because not only do we get to interact with a bunch of really amazing artists, but Christian artists who are making works really well for God. You’ve probably experienced that way more than me here. Roger We feel really blessed that we’re surrounded by such an amazing community of people who do their art to the best of their ability. We really inspire each other and encourage one another. I love that community. Anna Gardner It’s really a community. I think that you and your family and these other artists from the church and Community Arts Tokyo have created a community where we are able to invite people in who are not Christians, even who are not artists. It’s something that’s been special to me and special to some of my friends. To me, it’s really beautiful. That brings me to the point of, what is the purpose of beauty in your life? Roger Oh, you need to read my books! Anna Gardner Oh, yes. Tell us about your books, please. Roger Aroma of Beauty is one. Hidden Beauty is another. Anna Gardner That one’s my favorite. Roger Yeah, I mean, I thought a lot about this… Let me tell you a story. It’ll be easier that way. I used to think that beauty was something decorative, that it was something unnecessary. It’s only something for when you have the time or money to do. And then in 2011, we had that large earthquake, and I ended up going up as a truck driver bringing food, water, supplies. Anna Gardner To the countryside of Japan, right? Roger Yeah, and I thought, that’s what people need in that situation. But we found out from day one, from my very first trip, that beauty was just as important as all those other things, that people actually could not live without it or it led to despair. It led to “Why go on living? We lost everything.” And yet, somehow, beauty would bring not just encouragement, but hope, which is really powerful in that situation. And so that’s why I called the book Aroma of Beauty. It’s a bunch of stories about how people are finding hope through beauty in that terrible situation. Anna Gardner Yeah. How can we find your books? Roger They’re all on Amazon or wherever you buy books online. Anna Gardner I’ll link it in the show notes. Okay, great. And tell us about your new book, too. Roger Yeah, my new book comes out August 1. Anna Gardner Yes. So the day this podcast airs, your book should be live. Roger Awesome. Go buy my book. Anna Gardner Yes. Go check out his book. Roger I really had fun writing this one. It’s called Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan. Anna Gardner Wait, is this the one that you wrote on the plane? Roger I don’t think so. Anna Gardner Okay, no. I just remember you writing one book, literally on your plane ride to or from Japan. Roger I’m always writing on my plane rides. Anna Gardner I love it. Okay, but the Hidden Beauty book. Roger Yes. Anna Gardner Which I’ve gotten to preview, and y’all haven’t. Roger We do a series every month called Art, Life, Faith. It’s a great opportunity for artists to try to connect and work out what it means to connect their art, their life, and their faith. We feature a different artist every month. Those are great, but I realized that I wanted to share those stories with more people. We had the gathering, the event, but what if we try to get this in print? Try to continue the process, continue the conversation. And so quite a few people in that book were part of those Art, Life, Faith discussions. I wanted to get their stories out there and work with them. And it was amazing to see the excitement on their faces. Like, “Oh, my story is coming out in print. Thank you, Roger.” So I’m working with them asking, “Is that accurate? Would you change the wording of that.” And they’d respond like, “Yeah, maybe I would change that, but that sounds good.” And so seeing God in Japan, it’s about Japanese people seeing God in their lives, but also through the art, culture, and history of Japan. I would say that even if the readers are not interested in Japanese culture at all that they would still be interested in the book. “How do we see God in our daily lives? How can we worship God through anything that we do every day?” That’s basically the message of the book. Anna Gardner Which is a lot about ethnodoxology, another thing I really wanted to ask you about. I don’t know if you remember this, but about a year ago, I went and met one of your friends in Korea who is an artist, and we talked about ethnodoxology in Korea. But I would also love to talk about ethnodoxology for our listeners in Japan. What does that look like? And first of all, what is ethnodoxology? Roger Okay, first, ethnos means the peoples, the nations, and doxology means praise, praise of the nations. People were thinking how do we get the Bible, how do we get scripture, how do we get the gospel into every language in the world, worshiping God through their heart languages rather than translating into English or something like that. But then about 25 years ago, there was this big movement to ask what does that look like through the art languages: the ethnic instruments, musical forms, ways like that… Because there’s still this image in Christianity of importing either contemporary worship songs or traditional hymns, and that those are the only things that are legit when it comes to worshiping God. So how do we encourage the nations by saying, “Your art forms are legitimate in worshiping God.” At the time, that was basically unheard of. It was very controversial, and people got angry, and they stood against it. Even here in Japan, we’ve seen that. Okay, can I share a story about this? Anna Gardner Please do. I would love to hear a story. Roger So we’re sitting here next to some kotos. [music] You just heard me pluck one of the strings. My son is learning the koto from Chieko. Anna Gardner I love Chieko-san. Roger Her story is great. She became a Christian, and she was a professional koto player, a traditional Japanese harp. And when she became a Christian, she’s like, “Oh, now I have to give up the koto and learn the piano.” Anna Gardner Wait, what? That doesn’t make sense. Roger Because she’s a Christian now, and that’s the only legitimate art formsfor Christianity. Anna Gardner The only instrument you can play as a Christian is the piano? Roger Or the guitar. Anna Gardner Yeah. No. Roger In Japan, there is that image, and the koto is associated with the temple or the shrine. She’s like, “Oh, no, that can’t worship God. That’s another religion.” And so she was bummed about that because she was a professional and that was what she had dedicated her life to. Anna Gardner Wait, first of all, that’s incredible that she would be willing to become a Christian knowing that. Roger I know. Anna Gardner Yeah. That’s actually really moving. Roger That’s part of the power of her testimony. But we invited her as a church staff at Grace City Church Tokyo. We prayed about it and approached her and said, “We would like you to play in worship on the koto.” And she’s like, “No, I can’t do that. It will not go well.” And we’re like, “No, no, no. We want to do this. We think it’ll be good.” And she’s like, “Okay.” So she did. And she was shocked as she was playing. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she felt like for the first time she was able to worship through her heart language of koto music. She had no idea that she could worship God through koto music. It just had never occurred to her before with the image she had of Christianity, that God would love her to the depths of her being, the very identity of who she was as a koto player. So it was really moving to have her play. Anna Gardner That’s really beautiful. Roger But… Anna Gardner But? Oh, no. Roger After worship, that’s when the trouble started. There were a lot of angry people. We had a lot of meetings, not the types of meetings that you really want to have. People were saying, “I could not worship because of that instrument. How dare you sneak in that instrument? It prevented me from worshiping. It was very distracting.” They were very upset. Anna Gardner That’s crazy because to me, I feel like it would be very moving and beautiful in worship. Roger Yeah, you would think so. I mean, it’s not a loud instrument. It’s pretty subtle. Anna Gardner It is so subtle. Roger But do you know what the key was? When we shared, “Did you see the tears coming down her cheeks as she was playing? It was so powerful. She was worshiping God through her instrument. And we want to first love her and embrace her. And personally, I too was drawn in praise alongside her. I was able to worship God more fully because of her playing. Can’t you see it in that way?” Then they were like, “Oh, well, I guess if you put it in that way.” They thought we were trying to be clever and tricky, sneaking in our agenda of bringing in traditional Japanese instruments just to be cool or something, like a gimmick. No, it’s not about being a gimmick. It’s about a relationship with Chieko and loving her, embracing her, allowing her to worship God and coming alongside. That was the key. So then next time she played in worship, they were able to worship as well because they felt, even though they didn’t know how to worship God through that, they could worship alongside Chieko in her relationship with God. It was so powerful and so good. Anna Gardner I love that story, and it makes me so happy to hear that she was able to use her art form for Christ, even though it’s not a traditional Christian instrument, if you will. It reminds me of another artist that I think might be in your book, Kei-san. We have this wonderful friend at our church. His name is Kei-san, and he makes fashion design beautiful clothing. He’s a Japanese fashion designer. I remember putting on one of his designs and thinking, I want to dance in this. He actually allowed me to borrow this design and take it to Nagoya and perform in it. I bring this up because maybe it’s not a traditional way to worship through dance or to worship through wearing a costume or a fashion design. But to me, this fashion design was part kimono and part Western wear. I wore this to portray the story of Ruth, who was a foreigner living in Israel. While I, as an outsider to the Japanese culture, I first see the kimono fabric. I see that it’s in the shape of a kimono, and to me, it seems so Japanese. But to all the Japanese, they only see how it’s different. They think, “Oh, that’s not a kimono. That’s so different.” It’s different. How they see me. They don’t see me as “she’s nice and respectful.” They see me as, “she’s an outsider.” And so it helped me to see the story of Ruth and to see how she might have experienced herself in Israel, being an outsider and people seeing her as an outsider. But yet she made this firm commitment to God, to our God, despite her being a Moabite. And so if she could worship the God of Israel, and I can also worship God with dance, and you can worship God with the organ, and Chieko-san can worship with the koto, then that is ethnodoxology in our daily lives. Roger Yeah, it’s something that only every individual person can answer because sometimes it surprises us what that looks like. For example, I was thinking recently about my recent podcast with a heavy metal musician. He has a very large following here in Japan. Anna Gardner Wait, is he Japanese? Roger He’s Japanese. Anna Gardner But he does heavy metal? Yes. And he’s a Christian. Roger Yes. And he’s a Christian. Anna Gardner And he’s a Christian? Tell me more. Roger Okay. I mean, it really fits the subject of ethnodoxology because you may think, “Okay, koto, that makes sense. A traditional Japanese instrument. Heavy metal? Not so much.” I mean, that’s a Western art form. The West is imposing their musical styles on the rest of the world. Isn’t it terrible? But this singer, we call him Tone… Anna Gardner Tone? Roger In our interview, he told me how he felt like he was born to this, that God called him into this. If you listen to his music, you notice, first of all, it’s heavy metal, but he’s singing in Japanese. So okay, it’s in Japanese language. And he’s using Japanese traditional scales. Anna Gardner Actually? Wait, are they different than the ones we use in America? Roger Yeah, they’re actually koto scales. It’s different. And so you can hear it very clearly on his guitar, he’s going through the Japanese scales. But he says the reason this is Japanese music isn’t for those reasons but because he’s a Japanese man worshiping God in his context. That makes it Japanese. That makes it the praise of the nations. When you think ethnodoxology, you wouldn’t think particularly of a Japanese person worshiping God through heavy metal music. Anna Gardner No, that’s not what I would think of, Roger. Roger That’s not the image that comes up. And yet that fits the category as well, right? I mean, he is very good at what he does. He’s very technically proficient, loves high quality. When you watch his music videos online, you’re like, “Wow, that’s really good.” And I think we are going to see Tone in heaven leading us all in worship of God through heavy metal music. Anna Gardner That’s crazy. Roger Yeah. And it’s going to be representing the country of Japan in a sense. It’s all about how we praise God in our context with who God called us to be. And it’s different. With heavy metal music, it’s an in-your-face-a-little-bit art form. It’s very loud. It’s very fast. And yet there’s this sense that through it, you are giving everything—all your mind, body, soul, all your technical proficiency, all your energy, all your passion, it’s all coming through. And heavy metal as a style can do that better than, well, koto music, as a contrast. Anna Gardner You know, koto is like the silent version, the inner version. Roger Yeah. So I think God gifts these art styles to us in order to praise him. That’s what ethnodoxology is. To be able to praise through this gifting that God gives us, whether it’s organ music or dance or whatever it might be in our context, in our communities, for his glory. Anna Gardner That’s beautiful. The praise of the nations. Well, thank you so much for telling us about ethnodoxology and about how God can be glorified not just in piano and guitar. I want to ask you just a couple more questions. The first one is, is there any way that we can be praying for you? Roger Yes. Anna Gardner How can we pray for you? Roger Well, as you know, as a church we’ve been on the move for 15 years with no permanent worship space. Anna Gardner What does that look like on a Sunday morning? Roger So that has been very busy. We had all of our church equipment stored in a van in a large building on a weird elevator mechanical robot system. Anna Gardner Like one of those rotating car things? Oh, my goodness. Roger We’d have to do that and drive it to the venue wherever it was. There were many different venues, and then unload and set up, and then do the whole process in reverse. Anna Gardner Which is just so exhausting on a Sunday morning. The sound people and the helpers set up the whole church, which is not a small church. Roger No. Anna Gardner And then take it down and then start over the next week and not have anywhere to come during the week. Roger So from June 1, for the first time, we have a semi-permanent space we can use throughout the week. We thought, great, we’re going to have more time. And we do but for different things. Now that we have a space throughout the week, we’ve been using it throughout the week for so many great things. And God has really been giving us many opportunities for meeting new people, for evangelism, for discipleship. And it’s so exciting. But it’s also very tiring. And the setup process from June first until now, we’re speaking mid-July. We’re a little bit tired. We’ve really been pushing. It’s been really good, but I’m looking forward to resting a little bit for the rest of this summer and recovering from that. Anna Gardner Yeah. I wonder if you could talk to any of our listeners who might be artists who just need some rest. How do you find rest in God or in art when you’re exhausted from working so hard? Roger Well, I’m probably not a good example of that. What I do personally is change the art that I’m focused on for a little bit. Anna Gardner Okay, well, that is true. You never stop. Roger So if I’m focused really hard on music and then I get really worn out from music, I can switch then to writing. And in different genres of writing, whether it be writing fiction or non-fiction. And personally, I find that really energizing to switch what I’m focused on in my creative projects. Anna Gardner I do understand that, though. It’s a different pathway of your brain. Well, I know we can be praying for you about getting some rest, whether that’s changing your art form for a little while or whatever. But is there anything else we can be praying for, for Community Arts Tokyo as an organization in the future? Roger Yeah, I’ve been actually a little bit disappointed about the way this movement hasn’t grown like I had hoped within the church in Japan, this idea that art plays an important role in worship, in evangelism, in discipleship. There’re so few Christians in Japan. Churches are small with mostly older people. We’re seeing great things happen in our church and churches in our immediate network, but I really need to see this movement spread further, wider. How can we help the nation hear these stories? That’s one reason I started writing. We really need more people to come alongside us so we can be in more cities, working with more churches. And I would love to see God grow the church here in Japan, to see his kingdom grow and for arts to be a part of that. Anna Gardner Well, we will definitely be praying for that. I think we can all agree that that is something we all also want. So thanks for sharing that. I have one final question for you, but I’m going to give you a second to think about it while I close out the podcast. Do you have any advice that you would give to our listeners? I don’t know if I have any listeners who are organ players currently, but we might start something. But just artists or people who use the arts in their daily lives or are no longer professional artists but are Christians. For that purpose, as they pursue beauty, whether that’s in just going to worship and getting ready for worship and putting on a Sunday dress, or whether that’s making beautiful things for Christ. Do you have any advice that you would personally give to our listeners who are artists and also not artists. Roger Yeah, sure. Anna Gardner While you think about that, I’m going to briefly close out the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. The goal of this podcast is not to get famous, but just to share some beautiful stories of people that I have met and to hopefully allow you to be encouraged by the way that they see Christ through their art. And I’m really excited to have Roger on here. He’s written some wonderful books. So if you’re more interested in learning about the purpose of beauty or the aroma of beauty or the hidden beauty of art in Japan, and Christianity in Japan, you should go check out his books. I’ll definitely link it in the show notes. They’ve been really helpful for me as an artist, so I hope you’ll go check them out. They’ve been so encouraging. Roger Thank you for that endorsement. Anna Gardner That is not a paid endorsement. I want y’all to enjoy this and be encouraged by something that is so encouraging to me. So with that, I’ll turn it over to you to close this out. Roger Well, the advice, I guess I would say to artists is to not be discouraged, that God has given us certain gifts and passions to do things. And if we rely on people for encouragement to do it, then a lot of pathways end up being closed. For example, when I first started writing, people were like, “You’re an organist. You’re not a writer. Why are you writing?” And I had people saying, “Missionaries, you’re supposed to be in meetings all the time.” Anna Gardner What? Aren’t you supposed to be serving? Roger If I had just listened to people’s voices when I started writing during COVID, I would have not been writing now. And I do feel like God has blessed that to get certain stories, certain messages out to wider groups of people. And so that’s the message I have for other artists, too. Be creative. Enjoy what you’re doing and see God enjoying what you’re doing and delighting in it. And if you are able to praise God through what you’re doing, others will come alongside and be able to praise him as well. Anna Gardner Amen to that. That’s so encouraging. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for joining our podcast. Roger Thank you for inviting me. Anna Gardner Hope to have you back on again sometime. Which means I have to come back to Japan, right? Roger Okay. Well, we’ll be here. Anna Gardner Thank you so much. I hope you’ll have a wonderful rest of your day. Roger Bye. Thank you for listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Well, a lot’s been happening since our last podcast, so let me catch you up a bit. First, our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, celebrated its 15th anniversary this past Sunday on Pentecost Sunday, June 8, 2025. We started weekly worship exactly 15 years ago, and it’s been quite a journey since, which became real to all of us watching the presentation we made of pictures over the years and seeing my own children as little kids. Two of them are now in college. A lot of time has passed since this church started. And to just think about all the things that we’ve gone through over the past years. There was a lot of pain, but a lot of joy as well. And it was so exciting to celebrate that together with this community. We’re so thankful for how God has blessed over these years. Now, the most exciting part of the worship service was the space that we moved into. We have been on the move for 15 years now. Renting halls in downtown Tokyo is very expensive, and we have been turned down by many people who would not let us use their spaces. Some of the halls we were able to find have a lot of restrictions like not allowing food so we couldn’t do communion, or not allowing children (why would a hall not allow children?), or not allowing the collecting of funds, which rules out collecting tithes and offerings. Sometimes we were not able to find a place at all and we had to meet in a park at the mercy of the weather. The few times we did that, thankfully, God protected. When rain fell, we thought we would have to cancel and then it stopped just long enough for us to gather 70 people in the park, but then it started raining again right afterward and we had to go home. There has been a lot of pain but a lot of joy as well, and it was so exciting to be able to celebrate that together with this community. We’re so thankful for how God has been blessing his church. But now things have changed. An opportunity became available for us to move into a place 24/7 that we can use throughout the week. So we started something called the Tokyo Tabernacle Project to raise funds for it and moved into the space on June 1. The room was not quite finished. All the past week, the construction crew was trying to finish that up, get the rest of the wallpaper up, get some monitors up, things like that, and then for the church’s 15th anniversary this past Sunday, we were able to celebrate together and invite a lot of guests in to celebrate with us. We had some pastors come in who used to be on staff but have since gone out, sent out to plant other churches in Tokyo. We had the building committee up front to thank them for all their hard work. We had a representative from the building itself come and speak to us about the whole process and thank him for everything he did to make possible. We also had a video greeting from our founding pastor, and we were even honored to have the missions pastor and head of the missions committee from a church in the States to help support this project. It all smoothly proceeded forward under the fearless leadership of our pastor, Daisuke Kimura. The building where we’re meeting, Ochanomizu Christian Center, has a number of churches that meet for worship on Sundays. We’ve been working very hard over the past few months to develop those relationships. We were honored to have pastors from the church that meets just above us to come and bless us and pray for us, to share a meal with us during the two-hour party after worship. And they also bought us a big bouquet of flowers, which we were able to put in the entryway. It’s been so cool to see how God has pulled all this together as we look expectantly to see what he’s going to do in the future. We have other cool things to share as well. On July 1, we are launching a new book called Third Culture Kids. It was written by a missionary kid, Ulrika Ernvik, who was raised overseas. She wrote this book to help people understand the various things they need to think about when raising their children overseas in a third culture setting. There was a Japanese missionary family who went to Papua New Guinea, Yu Fukunaga, and he was so moved by this book and how helpful it was for him that he decided to undertake the task to translate it and then look for a publisher. He found us, and we agreed to work with him. This project has really been going on for a year now, and we are so proud of the results. So, this is the Japanese edition of Third Culture Kids, written from a Christian perspective. There really was nothing like this in the Japanese language before. So we’re really excited about how this is going to help families in the future. If you’re interested in learning more about this book, please contact me and check out the show notes. We pray that this book will really be a blessing to many Japanese families living around the world, whether in missions or not, even if it’s a transfer for a company. We believe this book would be really helpful for them. I’m also happy to announce that my next book will be coming out this summer called Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan. It’s about the Japanese aesthetic of beauty in hiddenness, and it’s also about seeing the hidden beauty of God in Japanese art and culture. Now, this is a project that’s been on the back burner for a while. I’m so happy it’s finally coming to fruition. We plan to launch it on August 1. I submitted the audiobook version just last week, so we’re going through the process of having that approved, and I’m waiting for proofs to come from England right now so I can make sure the covers look okay. It’s been quite a process giving birth to this book, but I’m so excited to finally be able to release it to all of you. There are a lot of stories in there that have meant a lot to people in our congregation. I tell stories of five of them in there, along with a lot of other stories as well. And they were saying, Oh, you’re finally coming out with that book, so we’re celebrating together. Anyway, I can’t wait to share it all with all of you. This episode, I talk with Verity Hayhow, who has been interning with us for the past three months. She’s an illustrator and designer who worked with Harper Collins in London just after college and took a break from that to work alongside us for a little bit, and we are so grateful. She immediately dived into many of the book projects we had going on at the time, as well as writing and illustrating her own book called Moon Creature, which we’re going to talk a little bit about. I’m also happy to announce that since the recording of this podcast, Verity has asked to be part of our missionary team, and we accepted. Now she’s going through the process of being approved by a mission agency and raising support. So we can’t wait to see her again in Japan as soon as she can raise those needed funds. I’ll have more information about that at the end of the podcast if you’re interested in supporting her and helping her get here. So for now, let me invite Verity into the conversation. Verity Welcome to the Art Life Podcast, and I’m your host Verity Hayhow. Roger Nice. I love it. Thank you, Verity, for being on the program. Verity Thank you for having me. Roger So I am excited to sit down with you and share some of the stories of what God has been doing during your time here in Japan. I would love to start by interacting with you about the Art Life Faith event we had last week that you led. Thank you for doing that. It was really well-attended, and I thought the atmosphere was great. What are your feelings about it? Verity It was a good time. Yeah, I was pretty nervous running up to it, but I hope people had a good time, and I had a good time talking about my work. Roger Tell us a little bit and what you shared in that time together. Verity So the event was divided up into two parts. The first part, I just talked about myself, my favorite thing to do. And then the second part was my second favorite thing to do, which was to engage other people in something creative. I talked a bit about where I’m from, the work that I like to make, and this project that I’m working on at the moment, The Moon Creature. Roger Okay, we’ll be getting more into that in a little bit. Verity We will be. Yeah, I guess I started off by talking about why I make art and what I enjoy about it and my creative journey as well. Roger I know a big part of what we did that evening was a workshop of making bags. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why you decided on that project? Verity Everybody got a bag and everybody got to paint one and take one home with them. This was something I decided on doing that I think maybe you don’t usually do in Art Life Faith events. But I think part of my practice as an artist is getting people involved in creating art themselves rather than just creating art by myself. There’s something very spiritual about getting other people involved in making art for themselves. Because I think that when I’ve run events like this, people come along and they always start off by saying, “Well, I’m not creative” or on Friday, “Oh, I’m not a painter. I don’t make images. I’m a musician or I’m a director.” Roger It was a little scary for me, not a painter, as a musician to try to paint a bag and be like, “Oh, what if I make a mistake?” Verity Exactly. It’s this unfamiliar territory. What if I do something wrong? What if it ends up looking bad? And people always have these fears, and they always, in my experience, come away from the event feeling like they did something special, which I think then leads on to something that I believe about the process of creating art is that it responds to something deep within us. That is not necessarily about just creating something that looks nice, but also making things echoes who we are as human beings made in the image of God. And that’s why, to me, workshops are something that I enjoy running because I think they give people an opportunity to answer this call within them, whether they consider themselves a creative professional or a professional creative or not. Roger Yeah. Well, let me ask you. So I know one of the cool things about it were the conversations that we were having. I was on that side of the room, and you were at the table with the other side of the room. We had some really amazing conversations in our group together because we were painting side by side and just talking as we were painting. So is that part for the community building aspect? Verity For sure. I think that people start to open up when they’re making things together. They start having these conversations. Maybe it’s easier to open up when you’re making something with someone else because your attention is directed elsewhere. So, yeah, I find that you do end up having these interesting conversations with people. Roger It was Good Friday. It was Easter weekend. And so you were leading us on a resurrection theme. For me, the most moving story was of the actress who we talked about in the past podcast, who we’d worked with, made a film together, and what she had painted. Did she interact with you as she was doing it, or was it more at the end? Verity A little bit throughout, I didn’t fully understand what she was painting until she had finished and she explained it. Roger Yeah, and what was it? Verity So this actress, she doesn’t speak a whole lot of English, and I don’t speak a whole lot of Japanese. Roger Right. I guess that’s a problem. Verity Our communication is pretty bare bones. But in the beginning, she was like, “I’m going to paint a sake bowl.” And I was like, “Okay, cool.” Then at the end, she shows me this painting that she’s made. And she’s like, “This is resurrection sake.” It’s an image of the sake and the cup, and then there’s some pickled vegetables on the plate. Those were also resurrection imagery. Bearing in mind that this girl, I don’t think that she’s a Christian, but she was telling us about how this sake has this resurrection imagery built into the process of drinking it. And how these pickles are stored underground. So there’s also that resurrection imagery of them being brought up into the light in order to be consumed. And she was talking about this with me, and I thought that was such a thoughtful response to the prompts of resurrection. That’s such an interesting interpretation, right? Roger I explain this a little bit in the past episode, how she has not met with Christians much. With the idea of painting the resurrection theme, she’s like, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t know what that is.” The sake imagery you mentioned, she explained in Japanese how there’s this sake that you bury out of the light for a long time in order for its taste to grow. And then after five years or so, when you open it up, you want to warm it up. And as you warm it up, the flavor really comes out. So you have to have hidden it away in the dark, and then you bring it out and it has to be warmed up in order for the flavor to come out. It was buried in a sense, and then it’s being brought out. And so as she’s trying to interact with the theme of resurrection, that’s what she came up with. And then the other was the movie, the film that she was involved in with us making from my book, A Taste of Grace, pickles that you keep underneath the floorboards in the kitchen, and you have to go in and you have to stir every day. Otherwise, it gets moldy, and fermentation stops if you don’t keep stirring it. You bring it back out then and the flavor comes out and it’s healthy for you. And so it has this resurrection theme in the pickles itself. And it was just so cool for her to be thinking through traditional Japanese culture, and interacting with what the resurrection looks like. As she’s heard now about Jesus, really for the first time last month, she’s trying to contextualize it with what she knows and interacting with all these Christians around the table, painting her bag, talking with you about it. It was just really cool to hear her story and watch her work through that process. Verity Yeah, for sure. I think it’s also just so interesting it’s such an unexpected image, but I think it really shows how, again, she’s an actress. She’s not a painter, but she had this really, I don’t know, really creative interest. It made me start to think about this whole idea of resurrection. It was just so unexpected, and it was very special. Roger Yeah, I felt like that, too. I was getting a new insight into what the gospel looks like in Japan. It made me praise God more by hearing her story. To see this person who isn’t a Christian, who has interacted with Christians, to be trying to wrestle with what it is that Christians believe and what does that look like. It was only because of this event that she could do that, that she was put in that community. And afterwards, it was really the community aspect of it, just how she was so excited to be like, “Let me know when there’s another event. I want to come back.” And then we had a professional film director who was also here at the event, and the two of them got to meet and talk. They said, “We should do something together. We should make a film together.” And my heart was just leaping for joy to see that new friendship. I do hope they make a movie together. I’d love to see that. The film director is a Christian. And so, again, to meet more Christians, be around more community, and just to keep interacting with these themes. But It’s really all about that. These events building community, building friendships that go way past the event itself. Verity I think they also create a far more accessible environment for people to start thinking about their faith. As creative people, but also just as people. If you stood up in church and started telling a room full of people about the resurrection, some people would hear that. Some people would understand what you were saying, and they resonate with it. Some people would just be like, this is just some American guy proselytizing to me, and they would go away and they wouldn’t think twice about it. But I think that when you create these environments for people, then I think it opens them up to this idea of resurrection through the art, because the art is this third space. It’s like a neutral space to talk and to think about these ideas. Roger Definitely. I was just embarrassed when comparing her bag with what I made. I was like, I don’t know how to paint a resurrection theme, so I’m just going to make a musical theme. And I made this rainbow city with a black note on top of it. Well, it’s very practical anyway. I used it for carrying my music to worship on Easter Sunday, so that was appropriate. Verity There you go. I made mine themed to the book that I’m writing so that when people comment on it, then I can tell them about the book. Roger Okay, so I want to get to talking about the book. Before I do, what have… Well, first, let’s go back even further. Who are you? What are you doing here in Japan? Verity What am I doing in your apartment? It’s scary. So I’m Verity. I’m an illustrator and designer from London, and I’m currently here in Japan. I’m interning with Community Arts for the past nearly three months, headed back to London soon. Roger We love having you here. Verity I’ve been having a great time, been learning about this whole intersection of faith and art and how they work together. Yeah, it’s been amazing. Roger I know you worked a little bit in the book publishing industry before you came here. We’ve had you in some book projects since you’ve been here. What are some of the projects you’ve been working on while you’re here? Verity Well, the first one is this one with you, Roger. Roger is an author, and one of the books that he’s got coming out in the next few months is this book called Hidden Beauty, which is about this whole idea of the idea that something is more beautiful if it’s more hidden in Japanese aesthetics and how God is hidden within Japanese culture as well, that we don’t explicitly see a Christian God in Japanese culture, but he’s still there because he’s everywhere. And so I’ve been working with Roger on a cover for that. Roger And that hasn’t been easy, has it? Verity No, it hasn’t been a straightforward road. Roger Because even when we both agree this is good, and then show it to some Japanese people, they’re like, No, you can’t do that. Verity I will say one thing that I’ve been learning in my time in Japan is Japanese aesthetics have so much more nuance than people think that they do. They’re very unexpected, and you can think that you understand them, and then you really don’t, which is what I’ve been finding. But yeah, this cover has … It’s been had a lot of U-turns and going back on itself, but I think we’re getting somewhere. Roger Thank you for your patience and endurance to keep going. What about the children’s book? Tell me about that. Verity Yes. I have been very willingly roped into advising on this kids’ book, also written by Roger and illustrated by our other lovely intern, Holly. Tsunami Violin is the title, and it tells the story of this tree by the coastline in Japan. Her home, her whole life is ripped apart by the 2011 tsunami. But she, through the course of the story, she finds a new purpose, very musical purpose, and it’s a real story. I have been advising on the illustrations as an illustrator myself, also on some of the text and then typesetting things as well. Roger Yeah, that has been a huge help because I know in our first book, Pippy the Piano, we weren’t thinking… I was putting the text in. You were doing an amazing job of thinking, “Why don’t we have the text fit the image and have it not just straight lines but wave around and do interesting creative things with the words.” So, I’ve really been appreciating that. Verity It’s been a learning process for me as well. Roger Yeah, so let’s talk about your book, The Moon Creature. Verity Right. The Moon Creature is this book that I’m writing and illustrating, and it tells the story of this little creepy cat, rabbit, animal. She lives on the moon. She’s best friends with the moon. When they have a big falling out, then she is left unmoored. She has to figure out her life. And the story just follows her as she makes a lot of mistakes as she figures out who she is and she figures out what it means to love another person and to be loved by another person and how she might have been getting it wrong all along. And It’s a book very close to my heart as a young person, because I think as a young person, that’s a journey that everybody has to go on. They have to figure out how to be a healthy adult with healthy adult relationships. And so, yeah, I hope that it resonates with other young people, too, when it comes out. Roger I know it will. And I can’t wait until it’s finished so more people can see it. But you’re doing the illustration as well, right? I think the story is powerful and the illustrations, too, are just amazing. So your goal is to finish part one, right? And get that done before you go back to the UK? It takes more time than we thought, doesn’t it? Verity It is. Actually, writing and illustrating a whole book by yourself is so much more work than I thought it would be. Yeah, so part one is hopefully coming out sometime in the near future, even if it happens while I’m in the UK. But yeah, it’s a story in four parts. I think it might take a while, but I’m hoping to be releasing a web version and then maybe some print versions as well to be able to share it with as many people as possible. Roger When this project is done, how can people find it? Verity Keep checking my website https://verityhayhow.com/. There will be more details on there shortly about how you can access the first chapter. Roger When it’s done, we’re definitely going to announce it on this podcast as well. So keep listening to future episodes and you’ll hear more about that. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we end our time together? While you’re thinking about that, I can say that one thing that I know that we’ve really enjoyed doing, especially with the children’s book, The Tsunami Violin, working together, there’s really been four of us sitting around the table meeting almost weekly to talk about the direction of the book and how much fun it’s been to not feel like you’re alone in a process, and interacting with you about The Moon Creature as well. It inspires you. I feel like each of these projects have gone infinitely better by working together, and it keeps you motivated to keep going on them and feel like you’re really, I don’t know, somehow providing a work that’s going to make a difference in people’s lives. Verity I agree. I think Moon Creature is so much better for the collaboration aspect. I think it also is what we do as Community Arts Tokyo, is that we’re producing work together. It’s not just for us, it’s for everybody. Roger Yeah, definitely. Well, that’s all the time we have today. Thank you so much for being here in Japan, for coming, sharing your life, your time with us here. We can’t wait to see the Moon Creature completed. Verity Thank you, Roger. And thank you for having me on the podcast, for having me in Japan. I hope to be back soon, and I hope to be sharing Moon Creature with everybody soon as well. Roger Awesome. Thank you. God bless. Thank you for listening to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. If you’d like to give to Verity so she can join us here in Japan, please click this link or message me personally. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time. Link to support Verity: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd5xLBC1jMCuBcFiQXsCul43RGAOmQ5CPrersuOcv7PrfsZcg/viewform?pli=1

Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. This is the third in a series of conversations I’ve shared with you from Lausanne Congress 4, which took place September 22–28, 2024 in Seoul, South Korea. Because it was the 50th anniversary of the Lausanne Movement, it was the largest gathering yet, with over 5,000 people in person and another 2,000 online, plus over 200 nations were represented. I had so many amazing conversations, and I’m so glad that through these three episodes, you can get just a little peek into what God is doing around the world. David My name is David. It’s nice to meet Roger, my friend again. Roger Where do you serve? David I serve in the Sahara, region of Africa that comprises 15 countries. We are targeting Unreached People groups in 15 countries from Gambia, Senegal, Niger Republic, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibuti, and Mali. Roger Are you a pastor? David I’m not the main pastor of the church, but I assist in pastoring, and I’m a missionary. Roger Great. Do you do something in the arts as well? David Yes, I’m a musician. I specialize in producing indigenous resources for Unreached People groups. I play the local instrument called the kora. I play the ngoni. I play the guitar. Roger I think I’ve heard you play one of those traditional instruments at a previous GCAMM conference. Is that right? David Yes, I brought my kora to GCAMM in Nairobi. I also played in GCAMM in the US. Roger I was at both of those events. It was beautiful. Thank you. And so what brought you to Korea? David I was invited to be part of the Congress. The work that I do needs more people. I need to be connected to people who are also doing the work that I’m doing. So I pray to God that I would be able to see people from Chad, people from Niger, people from Mali who are probably doing some of the things that I’m doing so I can collaborate and learn from them. Roger That’s one of the key themes of this whole congress, collaboration, isn’t it? David Yeah, collaboration is key. My ministry that I work with is Declare Global, and that’s one of the things we are doing. If you are going to really declare the gospel, it must be culturally relevant to the people you are reaching. And that’s one of the key things that I’m also learning from here. Roger Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. David Thank you for having me. Roger So I hear you have a story. Could you please share it with me? Attendee I grew up as a pastor’s kid using arts and ministry in different forms: singing and acting as a tool to reach out to people in evangelism. And then later on, I served in Cambodia in a cross-cultural setting. And I realized that using arts cross-culturally has to be different in our approach than when I was in the Philippines using arts and reaching out to people. And I learned that I should be more of a learner. I’m not going there to teach them arts but to learn their arts. So I learned to dance their dance, learn their music, and appreciate their arts. I realized that it connected us, and it was a pathway for me to build relationships with them and have meaningful conversation about life and other spiritual things that led us to talk about the master artist who is God. Some of them came to Christ, and it was a great way to reach out to people for the gospel. Arts is a pathway for the gospel to reach the unreached for Christ. Roger Definitely. You’re a missionary from the Philippines to Cambodia? Attendee But now I’m back home to mobilize Filipinos to go for missions, to be engaged in missions. Roger That’s so great. Please send some to Tokyo. Send them to my location. Attendee We have people in Japan. Roger Awesome. Attendee Actually, we don’t need to talk about Japan or mobilize for Japan. Even if we don’t talk about Japan, I think God is really doing something after praying for Japan. People will just come to us like, “I’m interested in Japan” even when we didn’t say anything about Japan. Roger Well, send them on! Attendee We have people. We actually have a long-term worker there, and there are people who are on the process of going to Japan. Roger Great. Well, thank you so much. Attendee Thank you. Matt I’m Matt Menger. I am the Global Ethnodoxology and Arts Coordinator for SIL. Roger What does that mean? Matt SIL is mostly a linguistics organization that does a lot of Bible translation and things like that. But we also have the Ethnomusicology and Arts Department. I wish we could just call ourselves the Ethnodoxology Department. But we work with all of the locally meaningful forms of artistic communication around the world, anywhere that there’s Bible translation going on, and coordinate with local musicians and artists and dancers and people telling stories and all that stuff to work with them to get scripture into more forms of communication. Roger Yeah, it’s very cool. Both of us were just in the seminar, talking about ethnodoxology and the things that are happening around the world. It’s really exciting. Is there anything you’d like to share about that? Matt Yeah, I’m just excited to see the amount of interest. I think in the session that you and I were both just in, we had over 50 people, and most of them I’d never seen before. That’s really exciting to me to see more people involved with churches and other things. It’s not just cross-cultural workers anymore. There’s more organizations that are aware of this. Several conversations I’ve had this week with music foundations and others in the Christian music world have never really thought about ethnodoxology before, and they’re starting to ask questions. That’s just really exciting to me to start to see that interest grow where it’s becoming a little more mainstream. Roger Yeah, I think so, too. Matt I feel like, and I may misquote him, but Jaewoon Kim has a term that he calls multicolor worship or things having the color of the multicultural, but they’re not truly multicultural. I feel like that’s a recurring theme here this week at Lausanne as we also try to worship together with people from over 5,000 people from over 200 countries and how many different worship traditions and different flavors of Christianity arehere. Jaewoo’s thought, I forget where I read that, and I hope I’m quoting him correctly, but the idea of so many people experiencing the color of the world. It’s a big question in the world today with urbanization and with cities. Roger The way I really see it in my context is it gives the artist permission to explore and be creative and think what is possible rather than thinking they have to adopt what they’ve been told or what traditionally has been done. Matt Yeah. Another thing I heard from artists this week that I met with was just the need for more acceptance from the church and the need to be better understood and supported by the church. Sometimes they need to do commercial things to make a living, and the church doesn’t understand why it’s not all free. But I think there’s a growing recognition. I don’t know if there’s a solution yet, but there’s more recognition that the church and artists need to have a better relationship. Roger I’m sitting here with Daniel Kim, who is a seminary professor and a pastor and an artistic director of theodrama. Thank you so for talking with us. I’m curious, since you live in Korea and Japan, and it’s only two hours away, there’s been a lot of talk at this conference, especially last night. We had a big presentation on the history of the church in Korea and the bad blood, literally, between Japan and Korea. What is your take on that? How can the Korean church reach Japan? Daniel Okay. I’m a Korean, so like any Korean, we have memories. Not that I was born in that era, but my parents have told us about this. We hear it everywhere in the churches and as a nation. It is not just Korea. Many nations have suffered under the colonialization of Japan and Japan’s imperial power and their military tyranny and so forth. Roger I’m so sorry, on behalf of Japan, my home. Daniel I don’t want to just go on and on, but I think it’s pretty much understood that we’ve been the victims of that. Roger It wasn’t that long ago. Daniel No, it wasn’t. There’re people alive now that remember it. We naturally have this trauma. Yet the Bible says that we must forgive our enemies. We must bless our enemies and pray for them. Japan is in dire need of the gospel. All the resources of the Korean churches have to be poured out into Japan. But why is that not happening? Certain churches, like Onnuri Church, on an annual basis have the Love Sonata, and they send armies of people. Roger Yeah, they’re the biggest church in Korea. Is that right? Daniel It’s one of the largest churches. It’s not the biggest. Roger 70,000 people or something? Daniel I’m not sure it’s that big, but we’re talking tens of thousands. But they have tremendous resources. They have a publishing house, and they have so many networks. It’s one of the really, I would say, good modern churches here in Korea. Yet, many Korean churches are still hesitant about Japan. Roger Why? Daniel Well, because of the history. Yet, the Lord’s word is very, very clear that we must, especially when we look over to Japan, we know that the Christian population is less than 1%. We’re sending thousands of missionaries out all over the world, and we have missionaries sent to Japan, too. Roger That’s what they said last night, that Korea is the second largest mission-sending country in the world. Daniel But we’re not that enthusiastic about Japanese evangelism yet. How can that happen? I’ve been thinking about this because it can’t just be verbally. It can’t just be because we have missionaries as agents of Christ, there’s got to be certain means that will be a connection that will touch the hearts of the people, really connect. Now, let’s say just for the sake of argument, if we were to take a bunch of artists from Korea and we meet a bunch of artists from Japan and they start dialoguing. Before long, when you start singing together and dancing together and articulating together and join the common projects, all this hostility, it fades into the background. And Christ’s love, I think that’s why they call it Love Sonata, it’s like a love song. They’re singing love songs to one another. Roger You think arts is that connection point? Daniel Yes, I believe that creative arts is the natural cultural bridge to mission. Roger Thank you so much. God bless your ministry. It’s so exciting what you guys are doing. Daniel Thank you so much. Roger I can’t wait until I get to see a performance. Daniel Thank you. Roger God bless. [Music of musicians walking down hallway] Roger That was rather spontaneous, wasn’t it? Andy That was a special moment right there. Roger You just never know what you’re going to run into when you’re here at Lausanne #4. Andy It’s great to be here. Roger Tell me, who are you and what are you doing? Where do you serve? Andy Hi, I’m Andy Game, and I’m serving in Japan and from Japan into Asia, really looking at new media that will be engaging for the young generation. Roger Now, we’ve known each other a long time, serving in Japan. We move in the same circles and want to see Japanese become Christians, specifically through the arts. Your realm is media. What have you been getting from this conference? You were telling me before that you’ve been able to be in some discussions, and maybe there’s some thinking that needed to be tweaked a little. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Andy Yeah, it’s just great to be here because we’ve got so many people who are working in media and tech, and also there’s a lot of conversation around AI, and what will that be for the future. We’ve had some great sessions in the afternoons where we’re really looking at collaboration. What does it look like to come together? It’s actually been a little bit low tech. We’ve had all these sheets of paper that we’ve been had lying on the table to help put all the ideas there. But it’s been really great to just meet people from different parts of the world. I’m excited to see how we could really grow together in the coming years. I think what we would really love to see from this is a fresh expression of the gospel that would really be done in an Asian voice that would really communicate the gospel in a way that would really connect with hearts and minds of younger generation. Roger So not just translation, but collaborating together? Coming up with new ideas and creating together? Andy We get so many people who come to me saying, “Can you just translate that?” If I go back to my team and ask them to do that, I think they might scream at me. The good conversations that are shaping up here are really the ones where we’re talking about how could we co-create together. How can we bring the best experience, the creative ideas, some of the initiatives and campaigns that have been seen in other countries. Take the very expressive and vibrant culture here. Everyone knows K-POP and BTS, right? But also coming from many Western nations. But we’d love to build out relationships into the coming years that we could really see co-creation that could really give a fresh expression to the gospel in a vibrant way and an exciting way. Roger Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you. It’s good to see you here. We’ll see you again in Japan. Andy We’ll see you again in Japan. Roger I’m sitting here with Mary Katherine, who I briefly met and got to hear from at the Ethnodoxology breakout session yesterday. Thank you for being willing to sit down for a longer conversation. Mary Katherine Absolutely, I’m happy to be here. Roger Tell me a little bit about what you do. Mary Katherine I’m a visual and performing artist. That’s my marketplace job. I spend a lot of time in the secular world with non-believers in the arts. But I also work as a global arts strategist with an organization called Global Strategy Forum. We’re a think tank and action tank working in 12 spheres of culture, of which arts and entertainment is one of those spheres. I’m one of their global arts strategists, looking at ways to incarnate God’s Kingdom in this sphere globally and to bring, hopefully, human flourishing and point people to Jesus. Roger Okay, that sounds really exciting. Can you help flesh it out for me? What does that look like? Mary Katherine Our members, we get together. Our think tank is our R&D. We’re doing research and development. We’re talking with Christian futurists. We’re speaking with people that have done research in these different spheres of culture, like arts and entertainment. We’re coming together and saying, “Okay, how can we give a Christian voice, given all this information that we have, how can we give a Christian voice into these different areas, these different issues or mega trends.” How do we give a Christian voice into that sphere? What are some strategies, some projects, some initiatives we could implement around the globe that could bring glory to God, ultimately. Once we’ve created strategies with our members, we also are looking at partnerships, who are the partners globally doing a good job? Who could we collaborate with or catalyze? Who could implement these different strategies globally? Roger That’s great. At the end of this session here, Lausanne was announcing about the collaborative action that we’re all going to be signing tomorrow and how important that is in filling the gaps that we’re seeing in the spread of God’s Kingdom around the globe. Are there parts of the world that you focus on, or is it just global at this point? Mary Katherine It really is global. Based on partners. Being at Lausanne, for me, has been creating partnerships, networks, getting introduced to people I didn’t even know existed in different parts of the world. I feel like for me, sometimes there’s gaps, there’s regions where there’s gaps, and I don’t know anyone. I feel like the more people that I know that are in the arts world or in the entertainment media sphere globally, then I have more of an opportunity to see, okay, where are the actual gaps? Who are the people who can fill those gaps? Roger Yeah, that’s so needed. Mary Katherine What I find everywhere I go, there’s people that don’t know about another organization. One organization of Christians doing in the arts don’t know who another organization is, or they don’t know who’s working in Asia if they’re in Africa. I feel like what God wants to do is bring us all together so that we can not only know what’s happening in other areas and be encouraged by it, but also look for opportunities to work with one another and partner. Roger I love it. I know your heart is to collaborate. How can people contact you? Mary Katherine You can contact me at admin because I’m also the administrator for Global Strategy Forum Admin, admin@globalstrategyforum.com. You can learn more about our work at globalstrategyforum.com. Roger So thank you so much. God bless. Mary Katherine Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Roger. Roger So I’m now sitting here with Dr. Nelson Jennings, who was a missionary back in the day in Japan. We’ve known each other for quite a while. I’m so glad that I got to connect with you here. What do you think of this conference so far? Nelson Well, it’s actually my first Lausanne Congress to attend. Because I teach missions, I include the Lausanne Movement. In understanding contemporary Christian missions and especially evangelical missions. It’s just interesting to be a part of this Congress for many reasons, because it’s the 50-year anniversary of Lausanne. It’s here in Korea, where I’ve had a lot of very close connections over the past several years, and how digital this Congress is. But just, of course, people from over 200 countries, 5,000 people assembled, 2,000 more taking part virtually. It’s just quite the event to be a part of and appreciate all the preparation, involved, which I know a lot of the Korean side of things for the preparation. It’s just interesting and heartwarming. Roger Yeah, there’s so many volunteers and staff here. I can’t imagine having to put all this together. But it’s interesting. You said you studied this a little bit. Why is Lausanne important? Nelson It’s a good question. I mean, Lausanne began in the early 1970s, largely as a reaction to trends that many people were alarmed about that were developing in the World Council of Churches. Billy Graham and John Stott and others wanted there to be more of an evangelistic church planting focus that was reclaimed, and thus Lausanne began. Lausanne has, over the past 50 years, incorporated increasing arenas of mission-related interest. There’s an ongoing, not controversy I don’t think, but discussions within those involved in the movement about keeping evangelism and church planting at the center while acknowledging that God’s mission is far-reaching. Thus, the different areas of concern about what mission means, how Christian churches and agencies are to be involved in Christian mission. There’s a wide scope of interest that has developed within the Lausanne Movement, definitely. That’s the one reason why it is important. Roger We’re sitting just under where the workplace ministry is happening, and that is a very large ballroom full of people. I do wonder if the past congresses have had so many people from the workplace. Nelson Well, I think that is a striking feature of this congress, to be sure. I think it’s relieved some people involved in Lausanne to hear that sending missionaries and having unreached people groups as a central focus is a part of Lausanne. Because some people, when they see the emphasis on workplace ministry and see the other emphases, whatever they might be in social justice or whatever, might sense that, Oh, the center of mission’s concern is dissipating a bit. I just think it’s incorporating more of what Christian mission involves while keeping a central focus on unreached peoples and the need for people, whoever we are, wherever we are, to hear and believe the good news of Jesus. Roger Yeah, that’s good. Nelson It’s more holistic, rather than techniques about how to evangelize by getting into certain ways. It’s more like, how does it affect all of life, including business? I think one feature I’ll mention, too. The Lausanne Movement can give the impression that the global church is here. There are representatives from many different churches and Christian organizations that are here. This does not represent the entire Church of Jesus Christ. I take a rather wide view of who we are as the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ and various traditions they’re in. I think perhaps a bit more modest self-understanding of who the Lausanne Movement involves, both in terms of evangelical, charismatic, Pentecostal groups, as well as there are many, many churches and agencies around the world who fit those categories but have no idea what Lausanne is about. Roger That’s interesting. Nelson This is a representative group of a sizable portion of the worldwide Christian movement. Roger That’s interesting because I have heard it described as the umbrella under which all other umbrellas exist. It’s the overarching, but you’re saying it doesn’t quite . . . Nelson Not quite. Let’s not downplay the importance and the wide scope of the Lausanne Movement, but let’s not over-extend, really, who it represents. Roger All right. Well, thank you so much for your time. Nelson My pleasure. Great to be here. [Music of people singing in a breakout session of artists] Roger You were just listening to a breakout session of artists at the Congress being led in worship in different languages. Next, I’d like to have a longer conversation with a friend of mine, Younhee Deborah Kim, who is a Korean missionary serving other parts of the world who I’ve become friends with over the years. She leads Arts in Mission Korea, and her specific vision is to train Korean missionaries how to incorporate the arts and missions to the rest of the world. Younhee has this wonderful example of how when she was serving in Africa and working with a group of women with fabric. They didn’t see their fabric as anything special. It’s just what they were used to. She said, oh, but it’s so beautiful. It’s so colorful. And through the workshop, convinced them to try making various things like jewelry, bags, hairbands, and souvenirs. And through it, they rediscovered beauty within their own culture. And also through it, found new ways to praise God. Without further introduction, here’s my conversation with Deborah. Now we’re sitting here outside the Songdo Convencia of the Lausanne Congress. I’m sitting here with Deborah Kim, and I wanted to have a longer conversation with you. So thank you for being willing to do this. Younhee Thank you for having me here. Roger I really want to thank you for the time that you spent with the interns. We had two of our summer interns, Garner and Rebecca, come join you for a week? Younhee I think they spent four or five days. Yeah. Roger And you took them to some tourist places, maybe? Younhee Yes. A little taste of Korea on the first day. You asked me to meet them, so of course, I can do that. And they were really sweet. They’re lovely girls. I greeted them and I showed some art exhibition, photography, because one of them is a photographer. So, I wanted to show them a photography exhibition. I invited them to nice café. And the café is a gallery café. Roger Rebecca took some beautiful photos while she was here. I don’t know if you got to see the results of that because then they took that back to Seto, near Nagoya, Japan, and had an art exhibit there. Younhee “Seasons of the Soul.” I know. That was just so impactful. People were very moved by that whole exhibit and relationships were built. I think this is a very good way to interact with different cultures because they didn’t spend that time as tourists. They are artists, and then they actively interact with the different cultures. Then they got the idea, and then they got inspired, and then they made something new. Roger Yeah, that’s such a good point because there’s this fear that if you’re going to send people over for mission trips or something like that, that they’re basically like Christian tourists. Are they really doing any good and all that. But I think just the beauty of how they were able to interact with you, see the beauty of Korean culture, but also use that for ministry in Japan. And relationships were built, and people were brought into the church in Japan through that. It was just… Yeah. Thank you so much for doing that, for sacrificing your time. Younhee No, it was really a pleasure. I liked their attitude. They wanted to learn. They wanted to be inspired by a new culture, and then they just didn’t want to waste it. They wanted to do something more than that. So I like that. I like that idea. We really enjoyed our time together, and then we became friends. Roger That’s so cool. So can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do? Younhee I’m Younghee Deborah Kim from South Korea. I’m working as a Director of Arts Mission Korea, which mobilizes and trains Korean Christian artists for God’s Kingdom and cross-cultural missions. Usually, I offer a seminar or trainings to encourage Korean Christians to use the artist’s talent and also learn why art is important and how to use art in a mission setting. On the other hand… Roger Yeah, you’ve done a lot of traveling, haven’t you? Younhee Yeah, because I’m also staff of Inspiro Arts Alliance, which is an art mission team in OM, Operation Mobilization. Roger They make a good magazine, too, don’t they? Younhee Yeah, it’s called Vivid. Very high quality. My role is Ethnodoxology Consultant and Trainer in Inspiro Arts Alliance. And we have a lot of short-term projects, and we offer different types of training for artists or non-artists. Now, I do cultural research and also work with local partners on how we can develop our workshops or training to be more culturally relevant. Basically, in the heart language of the people, how do you connect that more with what the Bible teaches, rather than importing it from somewhere else, especially Western culture? They have their own artistic expressions, their art forms. For me personally or as a team member, I equally encourage them to use their own artistic language or artistic expressions. Roger Yeah, that’s great. We just had dinner together, and you were sharing how you’ve been to Tanzania, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that? Younhee I worked with the local partners or local pastors, and I asked them, “Do you need any art project or art workshop?” And then, “Yeah, it would be great.” They invited me to come. I had several art workshops and seminars for women and for children. Roger What was the workshop you did with the women and the children? Younhee I helped them to see their cultural beauty. Also, mostly, I wanted to use local materials. I found out their African fabric has very vivid colors, and they’re so beautiful. I encouraged them to use that local fabric. I encourage them to try making something new rather than just making clothing. So they made some different sized bags and jewelry and some fashion items. Roger And how did they respond to that? Younhee Well, first they had no idea what they were doing. “I don’t know how to do it.” But you know what? The first 10 minutes, I just waited. And then they started making something new. And then they found that, “Oh, I can do this. I can be creative. I can make something new.” So that was a good experience. And also one lady said, “Well, first, I didn’t like your idea because it’s just plain clothes. It’s just plain fabric. There are lots of good things from outside the country. Roger “Outside is better.” Younhee Yeah, but then she realized, “Oh, our fabric is also beautiful. Now I can see it’s beautiful.” That was an eye-opening moment for her. Roger Yeah, it’s so interesting that it took someone from the outside. You had to come from Korea in order for her to be able to see the beauty of her own fabric that she’s been around her whole life. Younhee Yeah. I mean, that was also a learning moment for me as well because usually people think they know their culture. “Oh, I know my culture very well.” But when I ask a question in a specific way, and then they realize that, “I don’t know about my culture.” That always happens. Roger That’s beautiful. Just seeing the beauty of your own culture. It’s so important. I’d like to talk a little bit about the Congress. All these people are walking by us. You can hear everyone having conversations around us. So much great fellowship. So many great things going on. I want to specifically talk about the various art elements that we saw. A lot of people have been asking me what my opinion was of the virtual artist that was up there. Let’s see, I wrote his name down: Patrick Bezalel, the virtual reality artist. I’ve actually never seen anything like that. He was up there on stage with . . . what do you call those things? Younhee Those goggle-type things? Roger Yeah, that. Goggles, right? He’s moving his hands. I think he had special gloves on that could see where he was painting. It was up on the screen that was I don’t know, like 30 feet tall. It was a really huge screen. You see this guy dancing around on stage. It’s an amazing artwork, which ended up being Christ on this tree of the cross. There was light coming out from it. It was beautiful. It was on fire. It was like, vivid glowing fire. I’ve never seen anything like that. Younhee It was amazing, wasn’t it? Roger It was two songs, I think, that he did that. What else did you notice about this conference related to the arts? Younhee There’s also the drama team. They did a short drama and also spoken word. They mixed different types of art forms in drama. Roger It made the Bible readings just that much more interesting. What else has struck you about this conference? Has it been good for you? Are you glad you’re here? Younhee Okay, so for me personally, one of the struggles is that the praise time . . . all the songs are in English, right? Only in English. But this is an international conference. How many countries came here? Roger A lot. I don’t remember the number. Younhee More than 220 countries. Roger 220? Wow. Younhee That means there are more than 200 cultures here. So I hoped that . . . I mean, the music is excellent, the band is great, and all the techniques and musical experience is good. But what if all the songs and languages and expressions were diverse? Roger It is interesting to think what it would have been like if they had had various instruments from around the world and various musical styles from around the world. Younhee Yeah, I mean, it’s not easy to get 200 languages at the same time. I know that. But at least maybe we can try. Okay, let’s make four or five bands representing different continents. So we can have an African continent worship band and Asian and Latin American and North American and European and then Océanean. And then we can feel at least five different continents represented. And then it can be more diverse. Roger It’d be easier to feel the international presence here. Younhee Of course. For me, the life verse is Revelation 7:9–12. Every nation, every tribe, every people, and every language standing together in front of the throne. We will sing and dance together to worship God. I can’t wait. What will it look like? We cannot imagine, but we can imagine in part because of that cultural diversity. This is one of the complaints. It can be better. They can do better. Roger Yeah, I understand. Well, thank you so much for taking this time with me. Younhee Thank you for having me. And I really appreciate what you are doing in Japan because I know it’s not easy to do that work, but you’re an artist, a great artist, and also you are doing arts ministry there. So I do appreciate it. Roger Thank you so much. God bless. Thank you for listening to the Art Life Faith podcast. As we say in Japan “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. In September, I had the honor of attending the 4th Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Seoul or Incheon, South Korea. The Lausanne movement celebrated its 50th anniversary with 5,000 people from over 200 nations. There were so many people! The Lausanne Movement has significantly shaped Christianity since it was started by Billy Graham 50 years ago in 1974. And there are so many powerful moments that I want to share some of them with you in this and some upcoming episodes. One of those powerful moments for me was on the Thursday night of the conference when we had a kind of musical presentation of the history of Christianity in Korea. It was really well done, top notch in quality. It was almost like a Broadway show with professional singers and choruses. They symbolically led us through every stage of the growth of the church in Korea, from its founding by missionary Presbyterian missionaries, and then to this wildfire that spread across the nation into the power giant that it is today. But also some of the current challenges it has. In fact, one of the most moving parts of it was toward the end when they talked about how, yes, the church is big and strong now, but that’s also led to some of its problems, that some of the struggles for power and the pride have led many young people today to see the church as irrelevant. And they were actually seeing a decline of young people in the church. And so we need to pray for Korea. And then a Japanese woman came up and prayed for the country. Now, most of you probably know about the oppression the Japanese people had over the Korean people for a long time, and that was actually part of the reason for the growth of the church. And so, at the very end, to have a Japanese woman praying for the country, that God would continue to work mightily in Korea was just such a fitting end to that time. One of the biggest things I learned from that evening is how the spark of Christianity which spread across the nation started in Pyongyang, which is, you know, the capital of North Korea, where Christianity is now outlawed. So there we were not too far from North Korea where we were meeting for the conference. And we can’t go. No one can go to Pyongyang. And the center of where Christianity started on the Korean Peninsula is now outlawed for Christianity. And that pains us, right? So much has changed in the past 100 years. Some of the best times for me at the conference were to meet with other artists. We had two artist gatherings at the Congress one was an artist breakout time where we all gathered around tables in a room, I guess there were probably 60 of us there, and discussed challenges facing us in the arts and missions today. Around our tables, we would talk about that and then share from each table. And you could tell from the comments that there was a lot of emotion behind what people were saying. Unfortunately, the time was only 45 minutes and I really wanted it to be longer. And then we all had to rush off to something else. Two days later, we gathered again with a smaller group of artists and talked more about it. The arts were represented in the congress in a number of ways. First, the Broadway-like musical I told you about before with the presentation of Christianity in Korea. Also, there was an artist who was a virtual reality artist. I’ve actually never seen anything like it. He was standing up there with goggles on his eyes and painting in the air. And then we could see what he was painting on the digital screen behind him, which was a very tall screen. So it was pretty powerful in what he was doing. We also had a number of dramatic skits during the conference, and of course there was music. What was especially fascinating to me were two artists who were working up front doing live painting during the plenary sessions. They would take the theme for that day and represent it visually for all of us. And then after that, that painting was moved out into the lobby area where people could see it. They did this every single day. Well, after that very last plenary evening, I was able to talk with them a little bit for this podcast about their experience at the conference and to share a little bit of their story. Roger So I’m standing here with Bryn and Alexis, who’ve been painting these amazing paintings up here in the front of this hall. And so I want them to kind of share a little bit with all of you about what they’ve been doing up here. Bryn Gillette Take it away, sister. Alexis Newsom Hi, everyone. Yeah, so I’m Alexis, and Bryn and I have been here. We have been brought into the Lausanne family per se, through different channels. And Bryn has been the artist here for 10 years, and I was invited in earlier this year. So we have now known each other for just a few months. And this has been such an unbelievable week and such an unbelievable picture of collaboration. Yeah, so Bryn and I, we’re both artists, but we are artists of such differing styles. Bryn On the spectrum of styles, they don’t really get a whole lot wider. I’m not hyper-realistic and representational, but I definitely err on the side of the representational figurative work. Alexis Yes. And I… Bryn Fairly small… Alexis …typically paint very large, very contemporary artwork. Abstract artwork. Roger Totally. Bryn You’re doing what I want to do. Alexis Well, you’re kind of doing what I want to do. Bryn I need more of your work in my work. That’s why I think the Lord brought us together. Alexis Absolutely. I think that has a big part of it. Bryn Well, we’ve been joking all week as we have experienced working together in real time, side by side for the first time. We’ve been collaborating up until now on the 50th anniversary painting. But it was only with us handing the work off to each other and then, but not in the studio at the same time. So this was the first real time together. And our kingdom math, our kingdom collaborative math, became one plus one equals seven. But we kept turning around and being like, oh, my goodness, what you’re doing just so enhanced this and feeling like the Holy Spirit was the third undeniable partner with us. Alexis Yes. We’d be standing there. It’s such a crazy dynamic of standing there side by side with another artist and even passing off brushes and passing off colors and switching sides or being like, that’s amazing. Bryn I’ve never seen it. Like, can I try that? Alexis I’d paint something and come back to the same section and there’s a new, better addition. And it’s…it’s beautiful. Bryn Well, we talked about that. Like, when you do artwork on your own, you’re the master of your own little universe. Like everything answers to you. And so a couple of the things we’ve debriefed and just realized made the collaboration easy because we were like, why does this feel so easy? Alexis Yes. Bryn And I think a big part of that is that when you’re already used to collaborating with the Holy Spirit, you’ve already learned to surrender control. Like, it’s not your universe, it’s his. And you’re trying to serve the work. You’re trying to serve the Lord as he prompts. So there’s that already, that call and response. Like, it’s a give and take dance with the Holy Spirit and coming alongside another master and another deep disciple of Jesus Christ who knows how to dance with the Spirit. Lexi’s already doing that with the Lord. And it’s so natural. And I’m drinking from the same well, and I’m doing it. So we’re both collaborating and uniting that way. So it’s not hard to turn and then be humble before her and be attentive to her and surrender control to her because there’s…I just feel like that that’s what we’ve been learning about collaboration. And the honor is really important. The fact that I honor her capacity. Alexis Respecting and coming into this and coming into the…whatever it may be, the situation, the painting, and coming in with a spirit of humility and as was spoken about earlier in the week, just saying I need you and understanding that you do need others and other people need you. And it’s absolutely a partnership between each other and with the Lord. Bryn Yeah, like if we’re going to reach seven in the kingdom math, like I can bring one… Alexis …and I can bring one.. Bryn …but I need you if we’re going to reach seven because that’s the way the Lord designed it. Alexis Yep. Roger Thank you. That’s such a beautiful picture of what we all are hoping for in the movement here. So thank you so much. It’s been a blessing to us. Alexis Thank you so much, Roger. Roger On the next morning, the very last day of the conference, they did a beautiful display of what we’re all trying to accomplish through the Lausanne Movement. And that was they worked with this broken globe. We didn’t really know what it was till it was finished, but they ended up putting together this like 5-foot diameter globe of the earth together up on stage. It was broken in all these pieces. They put the pieces together, then they painted in the continents and the ocean, and then they painted over the cracks with gold. So that ancient Japanese art of kintsugi where you bring the broken together through gold to bring healing, to bring beauty into the brokenness. And to see that visual representation on stage in the last day was so powerful. I wish you all could have seen it. Well, I wanted to end our time together in this first episode about the Lausanne Congress with a conversation with Victor Nakah. He and I were at a missions conference together in Chattanooga, Tennessee, of all places, right after our trip to Korea. And we were waiting for an event to begin in a park. So we sat down on a park bench and just talked a little bit about it. Victor is the International Director for Mission to the World for Sub-Saharan Africa and has an important voice for what happens in Mission of the World around the globe. He is from Zimbabwe but currently lives in South Africa. During the missions conference in Tennessee on Sunday, he gave us an important reminder that all of us in the US and in Africa are among those foreign nations, those faraway gentile lands, that Israel constantly prayed for in the Old Testament. And his words really struck me because sometimes we in America think of the US as kind of a center for Christianity. But he powerfully reminded us of how we are brought into the family of God as outsiders, how we’ve been adopted as his children and invited into his family. In other words, we’ve already seen evidence of God’s desire to see the nations come to him. We’ve seen it in America. We’ve seen it in Africa. We see it across the globe. He will continue to make good on his promises. So Victor was on the theological committee for Lausanne, helping to form the Seoul Statement. The previous two congresses also had statements like the Manila Manifesto and the Cape Town Commitment. You gotta love the alliteration there. Victor was kind enough to sit down with me and interact a little bit about this statement and also his experience with Lausanne. Roger So I’m sitting here with Victor Naka in a park in Chattanooga. We are here for a missions conference at First Presbyterian Church, and I wanted to ask you some questions about the Lausanne Conference that we were both part of. Can you tell me just a little bit about your experience there? Yeah. Victor Thank you, Roger, for having me. I co-chair the Lausanne Theology Working group, and it’s a group of global theologians who were working on what then became the source statement over a period of four years. But I’ve been involved with the Lausanne movement for the last 20 years. Roger Wow. Victor And my first kind of active involvement was in 2010 when the Congress was held in Cape Town in South Africa. And I was in the theology working group with Chris Wright and others. Really, I was the youngest, so I was learning. I say to friends, I was carrying their bags when we went from one meeting to another. Roger So there have been various statements over the years: the Manila Manifesto and Cape Town Commitment, for this one, the Seoul Statement. What were you all trying to encompass? Was it building upon the past? Was it something new? Victor Well, obviously any document that Lausanne comes up with builds up on the previous documents so that there is consistency in terms of theology and the vision mission of the Lausanne movement. But the difference with the source statement is in the name. It’s not a commitment, it’s not a covenant, it’s a statement. And you can see how that is emphasized right throughout the statement itself, you know, beginning with the gospel. Roger Right. Victor So it’s a statement, a statement that tries to identify theological gaps that the global church needs to wrestle with as we work on the Great Commission. And these theological gaps were identified as part of the listening process in the Lausanne movement. You know, the same process that produced the state of the Great Commission is the same process that helped us identify these theological gaps, and then we started working on them. But it’s a statement. It’s not a covenant. It’s not a commitment. Roger Yeah. I was very impressed by how clearly the gospel was displayed in the opening pages of it. Can you summarize what the major gaps were that were identified? Victor Yeah, if I can remember all of them. So we obviously started with the Gospel because we realized that, you know, globally whether we’re talking about global north or global south, there are all these distortions of the gospel. There are many gospels. And that’s why we thought, if we are to talk about fidelity to the gospel, fidelity to the Scriptures, well, we must begin with answering the question, what is it? You know, what is the gospel? And so the gospel is the first one right at the top. Another issue that is in this statement is to do with how we read, study, and interpret Scripture. And we’re asking the question, is there an evangelical hermeneutic that unites evangelicals? Because we feel like, you know, all our different differences are really to do with how we read and study Scripture. So there is a section on evangelical hermeneutics. And then we have all these very hot issues around identity, sexuality, and technology. And the theology working group was very much aware of the fact that what we were going to end up with in this statement are conversation starters, as opposed to this is the final. Because how can you get the global evangelical body agreeing on anything, right? Especially on these issues, you know, that have divided churches, issues that have resulted in splits in denominations. So they’re conversation starters. And in one sense, as soon as people received this statement, that began to happen. Roger Yeah, I heard a lot of conversations happening about it. Victor Some distancing themselves from this statement. Others not happy with the way the sentences were constructed. And I think that was the objective behind this. Roger You know, one of my main impressions, just about the conference in general, was the way it felt like there were so many things happening around the world, so many movements, so many nations leading so many different ways. It didn’t feel like, in some ways it didn’t feel unified because there was so much…I don’t know if chaos is the right word…but definitely very diverse in what is happening. And I’m still trying to process it all. Can you help me process it? Victor Well, yeah, I don’t know if I can help, but I think the emphasis on polycentric mission helps speak to that. The fact that it’s no longer a mission or missions from one region of the world to another. We no longer have one who sends and the other who receives. It’s from everywhere to everywhere. Even when we talk about Africa, the African church is not waiting to send missionaries. We have already done that. Perhaps we need to organize better, train better. So it’s already happening from everywhere to everywhere. And even, you know, when we talk about unity in diversity, there’s a sense in which we’re quite happy to celebrate the diversity. But what’s more complicated is the unity. What is it that unifies us as evangelicals? I think there was a sense at the congress that perhaps this broad church has reached a point where there’s need to revisit the fundamentals, the essentials of the faith that unite us. Are we still united around those essentials or fundamentals and the non-essentials? To what extent have the non-essentials seeped into the essentials box and they need, you know, to refine that? But what I found interesting, I think, is the need for that is being manifested over things we’re fighting over issues of identity, issues of technology. I mean, we realize, for example, that the global church needs a theology of technology so that we’re not dealing with issues, but we are providing broadly what the Bible would help us think about as we think about technology. So a theology of technology that is all-encompassing. But we’re right at the beginning of doing that. I don’t think we’ve arrived yet. And when we’re talking about issues of identity and sexuality, we realize that perhaps the real need is to revisit our doctrine of humankind. We need a robust anthropology that speaks to and helps us engage with what society is grappling with. So we kept going back to the fundamentals. What are these fundamentals of the faith? What are these robust theologies that we need to revisit? Perhaps they need to repackage the same, but repackage in a way that millennials and Gen Zs can understand and process. Roger Yeah, it’s so good to be having these conversations because I know, like, for example, this past summer we had five summer interns come, undergrads from the States, and it was so different. I felt the difference between interns in previous years that this generation really understands social media and technology in ways that I’m always playing catch up. Victor Oh, yeah. Roger And so to have these conversations allows them to have a voice and say, well, here’s how I’ve been impacted in positive and negative ways. I really appreciate that. Victor Yeah. One of the things that I’ve appreciated is at times how the world, the secular world generally tends to be way ahead of us as believers. Because the secular world in business has talked about peer mentoring, I think, for the last 10 years, where you have a millennial, a young leader mentoring an older leader into the world of social media because they understand, understand social media better and they’re helping the CEO understand how do we use it and where should we be careful. I think it’s the same thing with us. We need to find ways to allow the younger generation to have a voice. I mean, one of the things the Lausanne movement talks about a lot is what will the church look like in 2050? Well, most of us are not going to be there in 2050, so why not allow the millennials and Gen Z’s, those who are going to be there, to have a voice and perhaps influence how we’re going to get to 2050? Roger That certainly was what I saw as the beauty of the Lausanne Congress. To be able to create unity, you need to have relationships. You need to be talking about these things together to be together and to be able to bring people from all over the world of all age categories. We had a Gen Z at our table. In fact, she was the table leader, the group discussion leader, and she was amazing. People keep asking, was it worth it? Going all the way there: was it worth the money? Was it worth the time? And I have to say yes. Victor Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, especially when you consider the fact that this doesn’t happen often. The Lausanne movement is not the only one that tries to bring together the global church. And so any opportunity to meet with more than 5,000 leaders from 200 countries at least. What an opportunity. I mean, when people talk about a taste of heaven, right? In terms of diversity and unity, the fact that we actually came together, just that by itself is good cause for celebration. Roger Certainly is. I can’t wait for the next one. Victor Oh, yeah. Roger Thank you for all your hard work preparing for this. Victor It was my pleasure. Roger Thank you. Victor Roger, good to talk to you. Thank you, brother. Roger So I think you can see from this short conversation that there’re so many things that were talked about at the conference and that we could talk about in this podcast, and I’ll be sharing some of those in the episodes ahead. Something that Lausanne did really well at the Congress was to represent the nations of the world at my discussion table at the plenaries. We had eight people from eight different countries, and in every mealtime and every seminar and everything that I went to, I was always talking with people from all over the world. So, what was clear coming away from the Lausanne Congress is that God is working around the globe and he will continue to do so. He is building his church, and he is spreading his kingdom across the face of this planet for the sake of his glory. Thank you so much for listening to the Art Life Faith podcast. As we say in Japan “Ja, matane. We’ll see you next time.”

My family and I live on an island that’s part of the reclaimed land of Tokyo Bay. It’s at the mouth of the Sumida River, which flows down from the heart of Tokyo. And this is a very interesting place, one reason why we chose to live here. This island is where the fishermen used to live that went out into the bay to catch the fish. And when they brought it back, they would give the best of it to the Imperial Palace. But then the rest they would take up the canal to Nihonbashi. Now, if you come into Haneda Airport in Tokyo, you know a little bit about this bridge because there’s a huge replica of it in the airport where all of the stores and restaurants are. And the reason is because that was the commerce center of Tokyo. Nihonbashi literally means the “bridge of Japan.” You know the phrase all roads lead to Rome? Well, all roads in Japan lead to Nihonbashi. It was the center of five ancient roads, highways that went out throughout the country. And even now, when you’re driving and you look at a sign and it says such and such kilometers to Tokyo, it’s telling you exactly how far it is to Nihonbashi. And further afield, if you go around the world, Paris or Sydney or somewhere like that, and it says Tokyo is 7,300 miles that way, it’s telling you how far it is to Nihonbashi. When Tokugawa united the nation of Japan, he made this place the main exchange ground for so many different things. Like one of them was the arts. As an artist, I really like that part. Ningyocho is right next to it. “Ningyo” means doll. So “doll town,” it’s the place where all of the kabuki theaters and puppet shows were. I know it pretty well because the pastor I used to work with, who planted the church where I work, used to live in Ningyocho. And so we had a lot of meetings there. Nihonbashi is also where the first department stores of Japan were invented. Mitsukoshimae is a subway stop that’s near there. Mitsukoshi is a very famous department store. It’s the first department store in Japan. And shortly after that, many other department stores were built. When I’m describing Nihonbashi, I’m telling you like, this is my front yard in a sense. I bike through there all the time. And you always have all these men in their white gloves, kind of ushering in the cars to get into the parking lots to go to the mall. It’s not really what you consider like an American mall. It’s a very high end Japanese mall. Another thing that Nihonbashi is known for is a financial district. It’s where the big banks were made. The Bank of Japan, the First National Bank, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange is in Nihonbashi. But what I want to talk to you about today is that it’s also the center of where sushi was invented, the kind of sushi that we know today. You have to understand that for a long time, and today too, Tokyo is the biggest city in the world. And that was the main cultural exchange place. So many different people, 1.2 million people in the 1700s. And with all these people wandering around, they needed to eat. They needed to eat quickly. And so, because it was a fish market of raw fish, it made sense that they’d want to make a fast food with the fish with mouth-sized bites to give to people in order to be able to have a quick lunch. So I think it’s funny, you know, when I travel in America, often I’ll see sushi in gas stations or airports. That sushi is not quite the same as the sushi that we have here, but it does serve the same purpose. It’s fast food. You’re going through somewhere, you get it, you eat it quickly, and you’re done. And even now, I’ll often eat sushi as fast food. If I’m rushing to something, I’ll grab it from a convenience store and eat it. It’s not too bad. However, the other day I had an important meeting, and we ate lunch at a sushi place in Nihonbashi. And it was amazing. Not like what you get in a convenience store or gas station or a supermarket. Very high end. And yet it wasn’t that expensive. So when y’all come visit us in Japan, I’ll have to take you there. It’s pretty good. And by the way, the other interesting thing to me about sushi is the wasabi, or horseradish, the green spicy part put between the fish and the rice. The center of the farming of wasabi comes from the Izu Peninsula, which is a mountainous region, the closest mountainous region to Tokyo. Our church has gone there for a retreat, and so I know the area pretty well, running through all the farmlands. Wasabi comes from big leafy plants that grow right in the middle of the cold, rushing mountain rivers. And so when I think wasabi, I’m thinking the sound of rushing rivers and cold mountain rivers. And so there’s always this fresh, clear crispness of mountain streams brought into my mind in the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s kind of a neat combination. So every Sunday, I bike from my home where the fishermen used to live through Nihonbashi, and I’m thinking about all these things to the place where we meet near Tokyo station for worship. It’s very close to where we live, and it’s very close to the culture of Japan and the culture of Tokyo. And so what I want to do is help people taste the answer to the question, “How does this help us see the grace of God?” About a month ago, my book, A Taste of Grace came out, and the purpose of that was to help people taste the message of the gospel, how God loves us and cares for us in a world which is really, really hard. There are so many expectations put on us, and I see people torn apart by that time and time again. Families fall apart. Communities fall apart. This world is hard. It’s really only the message of the gospel that gives us the freedom and hope that we need to live in abundance. That despite our brokenness and our failings and our mistakes, that God is working to redeem us, to sustain us. He has our best interests in mind, and he is building his perfect kingdom through us, through everything we do, everything we say, everything we make. Our pain, our suffering, is not without meaning. God’s message is not amorphous. It’s clear, it’s distinct, and it’s for us. And when I eat sushi in Japan, I sense this so deeply, and I want Japanese people to sense that as well. So in the book, I ask the question, “What is the gospel according to sushi?” And you know, when you ask that question, you get some really interesting answers. So for this episode, I’d like to share with you from the audiobook version of the book, A Taste of Grace. This is the chapter on sushi. Please have a listen. Every meal in Japan begins with one word. “Itadakimasu.” (“I humbly receive and eat.”) There is so much meaning in this one word! Literally, it expresses thankfulness both for the people who prepare the food and for the plants and animals which are the food. At each and every meal, we receive the life of another. For one to live, another must die. Sacrifice resides at the heart of every meal. Perhaps no food in Japan is more deserving of the sentiment of itadakimasu than sushi and sashimi. You watch as the chef cuts the fish right in front of you. Sometimes you even see it alive first, swimming in a small tank in the restaurant. Unlike beef, pork, or chicken, it is actually safe to eat as soon as the chef slices it, creating what I consider an intimate connection with the sacrifice of the fish. The kind of sushi most often enjoyed around the world today, also known as nigiri sushi or Edomae sushi, developed in the early 1800s within walking distance of my apartment in Tokyo. Roadside stands began placing bite-sized pieces of fish on top of hand-molded balls of rice mixed with vinegar. The pairing with wasabi, or Japanese horseradish, happened almost immediately. We find the birthplace and largest production of wasabi in the mountain river streams of Shizuoka Prefecture, just south of Tokyo. I can’t help feeling fascinated by the close attachment of sushi to the history, land, and sea of Japan. Sushi expresses in a microcosm the value of contrast in the culture, the strong tastes of vinegar and wasabi against the relatively mild fish and rice. And when I eat sushi, I think of Jesus on the cross. The clean flesh of the fish, his sinless sacrificial body. The vinegar, his bitter drink. The sharp taste of wasabi, his agony. The sushi chef bears witness to the beauty and bitterness of Christ’s sacrifice for the world through every serving. Sushi gives a delectable reminder of the gospel, humbling us in thankfulness for Jesus’s sacrifice while encouraging us to celebrate him with every meal. Itadakimasu. I humbly receive and eat. You’ve been listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. If you’d like to hear more examples of how we taste the grace of God through Japanese food, please check out my book, A Taste of Grace, just released. And after reading the book, would you consider leaving a review? It’s a huge blessing not only to me, but to those who are trying to figure out what this book is about. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne!” We’ll see you next time.

Well, it’s here! The day has finally come. The launch of my next book “A Taste of Grace” is right around the corner, coming this Monday, May 27, on Memorial Day Weekend. I’m so excited to finally be able to share this book with all of you. Now, this book has really been a long time in coming. I began writing it in 2020 during the lockdown as part of a series of finding beauty in brokenness, along with my other books “The Broken Leaf” and “Aroma of Beauty.” During that year and the years since, we all desperately needed to hear the message of how we could find hope in our suffering. “A Taste of Grace” continues this series by looking specifically at the beauty and brokenness we find in Japanese food. Most of the stories come from our early years in Japan as missionaries, when we were encountering many Japanese foods for the first time. And some of these stories I hope you’re going to find pretty humorous. And others, I hope you’ll find thought-provoking, food for thought per se. Now, it’s taken me a couple of years to get this book out to you because it has gone through so many different versions during that time. But I’m pretty happy with the finished product, so I guess it was worth the wait. And I hope that many will find it as an encouragement for many years to come. There’s really two reasons that I wrote this book. One is so people could feel the presence of God, not just on Sundays, not just when they pray, but every day and every meal. Food gives us energy to keep us going, and it’s a wonderful way to connect with people around the table. Eating is certainly at the core of almost every single event that we do here in Tokyo. But food is so much more than that, so much more. It’s no coincidence that the Bible starts with food in the Garden of Eden and ends with food at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. Food is one of the primary ways that God continually shares his love and care for us. That’s one reason why the sin of taking the fruit from the forbidden tree was so destructive. And that’s also one reason why the imagery of heaven is so often described as gathering around a table, and especially as the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. You see, food is not just food. It’s not mere stuff. But through food, God is communicating his love to us. And this book explores how he does that and what that looks like. So, I want people to feel the love of God, to feel his care for us. But also, I wrote this book specifically for Japanese people. There’s an incredibly strong image here in Japan that Christianity is a Western religion. In fact, that image is so strong that for different Christian events and holidays, churches often feel like they need to celebrate with Western foods. In one of the conversations sparked by this book, I was talking with a Japanese woman, and she’s like, “After Christmas worship, we wanted to go out and eat as a group. One woman stopped and wanted to eat sushi. Another said, ‘No, you can’t eat sushi on Christmas. This is a Christian holiday. We need to eat Christian food.’ And so they went back and forth, ‘Wait, sushi isn’t Christian?’ and ‘Wait, what food is Christian?’ ‘Well, bread is. We have to go to a bakery.’ Just to emphasize this point, one of the biggest bread companies here in Japan is called Yamazaki Bread Company, started by Japanese Christians after World War II. They always have an ad on the back of our quarterly missionary magazine, a full-page ad that shows a picture of a Western-looking white girl eating their bread. So the image is very strong. Bread is Christian. Rice is not. But what I’m hoping that people will see is that it’s not only bread that’s from God, but rice is God as well. God is intimately sharing his love and care for people through the foods that we eat every day here in Japan. In fact, God is intimately working through all the cultures of the world, to share his love through all the foods of the world. And so I believe, too, that even if you as a reader are not interested in Japanese food or culture at all, that you’ll be able to taste the gospel in new ways through this book. And so, this book is launching this coming Monday, Memorial Day. And if you’re at all considering buying this book, can I ask a special favor? If we can get enough people to buy the book on the day of the launch, it’ll move into a bestseller status, especially on Amazon, not that I’m pushing Amazon. Wherever you buy your books is great. But if we can get the book into the bestseller status, then it becomes more visible to everyone. And once it’s more visible to everyone, then even people who aren’t searching for that particular book, people who’ve never heard of me, people who aren’t listening to this podcast. It allows that message to reach a much broader audience of people. And so I encourage you to at least consider buying the book on launch day, if you’re willing, and then after that, to leave a review, because that, too, is huge in helping people find the book and learn what it’s all about. And so that’s what it’s all about, to get the message far and wide to larger groups of people than I could possibly meet with in person. In the past, I’ve seen my book spark so many amazing conversations and build new relationships. And I’m hoping for that with this book as well. It’ll be out in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook. In this episode, I’d love to give you just a little taste from the audiobook edition. This is going to be about utage or the Japanese form of feasting. We just celebrated the cherry blossom viewing season here in Japan, and so I use this imagery to help us see the Wedding Supper of the Lamb in new ways, to help us see this amazing future that God has in store for us. Please have a listen. Outside my apartment building, we sit on mats by a river that flows through the center of Tokyo. A gentle wind rustles the pinkish white petals of the cherry trees, which float down around us like snow. Laughter fills the neighborhood with the joyful sounds of hanami cherry blossom viewing. A dizzying array of foods spreads out before me as each person arrives: karaage fried chicken, deep-fried potato korokke, sushi, onigiri, tsukemono pickled vegetables, fruit, various kinds of sake. One friend brings something a little more elaborate—a portable gas stove on top of a cart bearing a large pot of oden soup. My wife brings asparagus wrapped in bacon and homemade chocolate pudding. The Japanese word utage means “feast” or “banquet.” More than physical nourishment, the word conveys connection and community, happiness and blessing through celebration with food. The Japanese word for “taste” (“ajiwau”) includes broader and deeper connotations of experience than the English equivalent. Japanese expressions such as “taste the beautiful colors” or “taste the music” or, on the darker side, “taste suffering” sound strange in English. At heart, homo sapiens exist not just as “knowing people” but as “tasting people.” The Latin word sapiens for “knowing” can also mean “tasting.” By tasting, we learn not just about the world, but about each other as well. For example, those first moments after birth build a crucial bond between mother and child through breastfeeding, and we can not leave out the importance of a kiss. Mealtimes together as families, friends, or coworkers create essential opportunities for connecting and sharing stories. When we eat together and provide food for one another, we fill our table with compassion, kindness, connection, acceptance, and love. We build relationships with each other and with God, and we experience a foretaste of the abundant and eternal nourishment of God in heaven. “Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” (Revelation 19:9) All our best banquets give but a small taste of the wedding supper of the Lamb that awaits us. Will this glorious celebratory banquet occur in some large banquet hall made of stone? Or perhaps in the cozy setting of an upper room? Personally, I imagine it might take place outside, on mats laid out by the river that flows through the middle of the city as the wind of the Holy Spirit gently rustles the blossoms of the tree of life. Petals float down around us like snow. A dizzying array of the best foods, from every tribe and nation, spreads out before us as each person arrives. Laughter and joy overflow. The aromas of this incredible banquet already begin to waft through the air of our waiting world. Can you sense them? You can read the show notes for this episode at my website, www.rogerwlowther.com. Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, ”Ja, mata ne! See you next time.” BUY “A TASTE OF GRACE”

I want to give a brief report from our relief trip to Ishikawa Prefecture last weekend, responding to the needs from that enormous 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the region on January 1, 2024. I led a youth team of 3 adults and 7 junior high, high school, and college students from my church, Grace City Church in Tokyo. It was basically a mini-missions trip, which for many of them was their first experience to do anything like this in their entire lives. Man, it was a really long day. We left the cabin where we were staying in Nagano just after 4 AM and drove just over 3 hours through the sleet and slush, actually kind of dangerous conditions, to get to Uchinada Bible Church, the church in Kanazawa City that is serving as the largest base for Christian relief work in Ishikawa. This Christian effort is called NOTO HELP, which is a combined effort from Christians all over Japan. Noto is the name of the peninsula in Ishikawa where the earthquake damage is the worst. After receiving a short orientation, we received special shirts marked NOTO HELP, which proved essential for getting by the roadblocks into the peninsula where the damage was worst. I guess they don’t want people traveling up there just to see the destruction. From there, we drove to the city of Nanao, where NOTO HELP has their warehouse with all the supplies people are sending from all over Japan. From there, we split into three different teams. The job of Team 1 was to organize the warehouse. NOTO HELP’s warehouse in Nanao City has been receiving supplies from churches all over Japan. We created an inventory of the new donations and organized them: blankets, blue tarps, adult diapers, toilet paper, and so many other things. One youth commented, “I counted 5,418 masks! Just in the regular size! Not including small size, sort of small, or oversized…I’ve never seen so many masks in my life!” The youth also made 122 variety bags full of essential items like toothbrushes, toothpaste, wet towels, soap, little heating pads to warm your hands, and these bags will be handed out later at shelters. They also made small cards for each of the bags with the NOTO HELP logo and messages like “We’re praying for you!” Three of us headed to the largest shelter in the region, which housed over 750 people after the quake. Now almost two months later, 173 people still live there waiting for temporary housing or to find another living space. We received permission from the director of the shelter to give a concert and set up in the lobby just outside the doors to the main room where everyone could hear us. My 14-year-old son, Coen, played the koto, the traditional Japanese harp, and I played the grand piano. Many people stood in the hallway or sat on chairs to watch and listen. Those who walked by paused for a bit to listen or comment, “Beautiful!” or “I wish I could play like that” or to just wipe tears from their eyes. One woman told us the music was so deeply moving that it gave her peace. “Thank you for today,” she said. “Because of you, I’m going to sleep well tonight.” Outside the shelter, there were 20 temporary toilets lined up next to a big pool. You were supposed to fill a bucket with water to flush afterward. One of the youth was carrying a bucket up the stairs to the toilet when an older woman began to come down. Afterward, she remarked how she just couldn’t imagine living that way. She couldn’t imagine how they expected older people to carry a bucket of water upstairs, somehow hold it in one hand while opening the door, and then somehow get in without spilling any. Even the simplest things like using the toilet are challenging after an earthquake, she realized. We learned how many older people don’t drink water often enough to keep from having to use the bathrooms much, which leads to other kinds of health problems. Anyway, the plan is to shut down this shelter at the end of March and move everyone into temporary housing that is currently being built. The third team from our youth group went to Suzu City, another 2.5 hours north up the peninsula. Most of the buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged by the earthquake and the 6-foot tsunami that followed. We brought 60 cases of water to a medical clinic, a shelter in a school, and a private residence. Many sections of the road were impassable due to landslides, requiring the trucks to frequently use hastily made alternate routes. On the way back, my 18-year-old son Eastin found a clock in the destruction. It stopped at the exact time the tsunami had hit at 4:49 PM. He stood there and looked around, trying to imagine what it was like on that day. It was very moving. It’s much different seeing the destruction on TV and seeing it in person, you know? By the time we all got back to the cabin around midnight, we were so tired I can’t even tell you. But God really blessed that trip. During our worship time together the next morning, on a Sunday, it was great to hear the youth process their time. One youth commented on how everyone knew we were Christians by what was written on our shirts, and on the jacket of the guy from the Salvation Army as well. He wondered aloud what that would look like in Tokyo. How do we make our identity known as Christians in Tokyo? How do we show the presence of God in Tokyo? That led to a very interesting discussion as well. Quick story: In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake 13 years ago, we became good friends with a local family participating in our relief efforts. Their daughter, then in third grade, is now 21 years old and recently became a Christian through their ongoing relationship with our family and the church community. She joined us on this recent relief trip to Ishikawa, excited to help as her parents did 13 years ago but also to share her new faith in a God who is with us even in disasters. It was a really powerful trip, and there’s a lot more I could share about it. You know, March 11, the anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that struck the northern part of Japan is right around the corner. There are events planned up north to remember that day and the people lost, so I’m going to make the ebook versions of my books Aroma of Beauty and Pippy the Piano absolutely free through Amazon on that day, March 10-11. This goes for the Japanese version as well as the English version. These books tell the stories of how God worked after those terrible disasters. If you’ve already bought a copy of the paperback, hardcover, or audiobook, thank you! That means so much to me! Well, this is a great time to pick up the ebook as well, completely free. If you’re studying Japanese, it might be fun to pick up the Japanese version as well and try to read some of it. If you do get one, it would be a great help if you would rate it and leave a review on Amazon so more people can find the books. In our last episode, I told you a little bit about the trip Tsumugu and I took to Fukushima for Christmas concerts. Tsumugu played the “tsunami violin” made from debris from the tsunami. The sound post of that violin was made from one of the most famous trees in Japan, the Kisseki no Ippon Matsu, the “Miracle Pine Tree.” In one of the concerts, I played a piano famous in that area, the Kisseki no Piano, the “Miracle Piano.” And then, right next to the broken nuclear power plants, I played what is now known as the “Fallen Organ.” It was such a powerful trip in so many ways, and I think I will never forget the people or events from that trip. If you want to hear more about it, you can listen to the previous episode, Episode #55 of the Art, Life, Faith Podcast. This episode, I would like to share with you a conversation I had with Tsumugu just before our trip to Fukushima, which I already told you about in the last episode, so here you’ll hear us talk about our feelings going into it. It is also just before the Art Life Faith event in December. I first met Tsumugu when he was only 15 years old. He had just entered high school and was volunteering in Ishinomaki in the area where the earthquake and tsunami had hit. I heard him play, and was like, oh man, I need to bring him down to Tokyo to perform in our next conference. He did and did an amazing job. Well, he recently graduated from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, which many Japanese consider the best jazz school in the world because of some very famous Japanese jazz artists who graduated from there, and he moved to Tokyo where we reconnected just a few months ago. Here is our conversation. Roger So I’m sitting here with Tsumugu Misugi, who is going to be doing an Art Life Faith event for us tonight. Thank you so much for sitting down for this podcast. Tsumugu Thank you for having me here. I’m very excited to be here today. Roger Yeah, well, you’re not the only one. I mean, I’ve been getting emails from a lot of people from far-off places that are coming tonight to hear you and hear you’re going to have to share. Tsumugu Yeah, I heard that people coming from faraway places. And I’m very honored to be given this opportunity to share. And I hope that I make the trip worthwhile for them. Roger I’m sure. Well, I mean, you live this dream life, I would say, for so many. You’re, what, 26 years old, and you are accomplished in composition, writing scores for video games, Korean dramas and Japanese films, live performances with orchestras… I want to hear from your own words. It’s pretty cool. Tsumugu Yeah, I would say it’s not a normal life for sure. I’m very blessed to be able to live just writing, making music. I write music for video games. I write music for TV, drama, films, and mainly for orchestra context. But yeah… Roger I remember you showed me a picture of your home studio that you had to live a little bit outside the city in order to be able to get a place where you could record. It looks sci-fi with all these monitors and equipment. And there you are, recording yourself on the violin. It looks pretty cool. Tsumugu It’s a really cool space that I’m very proud of. I’m very blessed and honored that I have the opportunity to work in a space like that. It’s also a space that I’m in more than 10 hours a day. So I just wanted to make sure that I am the most inspired when I’m in that space. So I had to go a little outside of the city to find a place where I could make music 24/7. When a composer, you don’t have office hours. Roger It’s very project-based, right? Tsumugu Deadline-based. Yeah. When you’re working on a couple of projects at a time, that means you’re writing overnight and sleeping during the day. It depends on where the client is in the world because of time zones and everything. You have meetings at like 3:00 in the morning. So yeah, I’m very happy about my studio currently. Roger You said you didn’t always… We were talking before we started recording, that your very first recording space was an abandoned church. Tsumugu Yeah. I got into this line of work. I mean, I’ve been playing music my whole life, but I started writing music for film and video games during COVID. And at that time, I was looking for a space that I could make into a studio without getting disturbed by my dogs at home. Roger Oh, yeah. That would be a problem for recording. Tsumugu Yeah. I found a church that was abandoned because they had to stop service during COVID and couldn’t get enough money to last through COVID. It was an abandoned church, abandoned floor in a building with just a bunch of chairs for the congregation. I set them up. I stacked the chairs to make it look like an acoustic panel Looking back, it’s definitely not the best sound, but it worked. I’m still very fond of the music that I wrote in that space. It was a very strange working environment, but that’s where it started. Roger I imagine you having these bedsheets over it as well. Or some soundproofing blankets? Tsumugu Yeah, I would try to pull the curtains from the windows. Imade it work. But yeah, I recorded violin, I recorded cello in that space. I wrote probably my first few scores in that space. Roger That’s really cool. All right, so what projects are you working on now that you can tell us about, that you’re allowed to? Tsumugu Currently, I’m writing music for a video game that’s being produced in Singapore. We are targeting to release a beta version for Tokyo Game Show next year in September and a full release to the public at the end of the year. I’m not allowed to say the name of some of the projects that I’m working on, but I’m writing currently for a couple of Korean dramas. And I also did orchestration and violin recording on a movie called My (K)Night that came out in Japan two days ago. Roger Awesome. I can’t wait to see it. Tsumugu Yeah, it’s in theaters right now. So if you have time. Roger Very cool. All right. So a lot of people try to imagine what video game music is like with Mario Brothers. Is that what you’re talking about, or what music are you writing? Tsumugu Yeah, I think that’s what a lot of people grew up with. I think that’s… It’s really cool music. A lot of that came because of the limitations of the gaming consoles and devices that they had, the technology at that time. Roger It was analog, right? Tsumugu Yeah, but now we have the technology to basically put in audio files and program them into the game. A lot of the music that I write for video games is orchestral or hybrid orchestral, so a mix of electronics and orchestra. That’s where you get huge, epic, orchestral scores for music. That’s the, I guess, the genre of gaming music that I write. Roger That’s awesome. You said that there’s a little clip of something that we could play. Tsumugu Yeah, this piece of music, when you first start out, I think a lot of people have this question, “How do I become a film composer? How do I become a game composer when there’s no game or a film?” I went through the same questions and I realized that the first thing I had to do was to prove to people that I could write music. This piece of music was really what started everything for me. It’s called She Comes From the Stars. It was a random name that I came up with because I had no film, I had no game. But I just thought I just had this image after I wrote the piece. I didn’t have to title before, but just of this heroine just zooming through the cosmos. I think we can play a little bit of that. Roger Great. Let’s have it here. [PLAY: “She Comes from the Stars”] All right, so now might be a good time to jump back when we first met up in Ishinomaki in the disaster area soon after the tsunami had hit, and you were working up there. And then I invited you to come down and perform in one of our conferences. And what, you were 15 at that time? Is that right? Tsumugu I think so, yeah. Roger You played the guitar in a style that I have never really heard someone play, at least live before, in that way. It was pretty darn cool. So anyway, I just want to play a little clip here for our listeners. https://youtu.be/VVj9P68C-RI?si=oi84jwmlJ2wlWuwy Man, it’s so awesome. I love hearing it again. I think it was the highlight of the conference. To have this… Well, you appear to be this child prodigy, slapping away the guitar and just not playing the way normal people do. You were saying you were just having fun with it, right? Tsumugu Yeah. I mean, growing up playing classical violin and music was always an extremely serious business. Going to church as a kid, my friends would be like, “Hey, let’s go to dinner after service.” I would ask my mom, “Hey, can I go to dinner with this friend?” She would be like, “You can make a choice. You can play or you can go home and practice for your competition next week.” That was the childhood that I had. So guitar, I picked up way later than violin, but it was my escape. It was where I learned that, “Hey, music can be fun.” I think that’s why I gravitated towards that side of playing guitar, which was just slapping the strings and slapping the body and things like that. Roger Yeah, I’d love to hear you do it again sometime. Tsumugu For sure. I would have to practice. I’m a little rusty now. Roger So after that, you graduated. You went to Berkeley in Boston. Tsumugu Yeah, I went to Berkeley College of Music. Singapore is where I grew up, so there’s a two-year mandatory military service right out of high school. I did that. And then I went to Berkeley, and I actually just graduated this year. Roger Congratulations. Then, you moved to Tokyo to work here? Tsumugu I moved to Tokyo with no plan. But I’m very glad I came, and I’m gradually getting connected to the community here. Roger Yeah, we’re really glad you’re here. And I’m looking forward to… So listeners, Tsumugu and I are going to head up to the disaster area for Christmas this month and give a bunch of concerts, which I’m really looking forward to. Tsumugu Yeah, we’re going to be, or I’m going to be playing the tsunami violin. Do you want to talk a bit more about that? Roger Definitely. Yeah. So just before we started recording, the two of us went to go pick up this instrument, and it was made by a violin maker who wanted to do something to bring healing in the disaster area and help people remember and to bring hope to bring life. And so we went and talked to the company a little bit. There were two tsunami violins you got to try. Tell me what your impressions were of that. Tsumugu Yeah. Initially, when you proposed the idea that we do this concert on this violin, I was a little afraid. Violin is a very complicated instrument. It’s made out of wood with no nails, none at all. And so every single instrument is slightly different. And so your intonation, how you play, really changes according to the instrument. I have never performed on an instrument that isn’t mine. So this is the first time, and I was slightly like, “Am I going to be able to adjust to this instrument?” But once I played it, it’s like everything fell in place. I was telling you that the violin had tonal qualities that I look for in a violin. I think we’re going to be okay. I think I’ll be able to get used to it pretty soon. Roger Yeah, I heard you asking the staff, you’re like, “Is it okay if I record some things with this?” Tsumugu Yeah. I’ve not said this to you, but it’s just been in my brain that on top of being a violinist, I’m also a composer, and I don’t know if anything has been written for the instrument. Since I have three weeks with the instrument, I thought maybe it might be cool to write something and record it. If that leads to anyone getting hope from that instrument, even if they’re not able to make the concert, I think, yeah, But I’ll have to start working on that soon. Roger I’d love to see what you come up with. Tsumugu Yeah. She told us that there’s a quartet of a tsunami instruments, so it might be cool in the future if I could write something for the tsunami instruments as a quartet. Roger Yeah, definitely. So not with organ, hunh? Tsumugu Okay, the solo violin will be with organ. Roger I guess there is no tsunami organ. Tsumugu You could make one. Roger But yeah, I found it interesting. Their project was to have a thousand performers of this violin. And what number was it she said that you were going to be? Tsumugu I am the 833rd performer. Roger That’s so cool. Tsumugu That is really cool. Yeah. Roger And they were saying how there’s been thousands of concerts because each performer does quite a few concerts with it. Tsumugu I was telling you before that because so many people have played it before me, you can really sense the thoughts and the heart behind every single performer that has performed on the instrument. I could immediately tell the moment I picked up the instrument that I was playing something special. Roger It’s definitely special. And there’s quite a history, too. She was telling us how Yo-Yo Ma has played the cello, and the Emperor himself herself has played the viola. Tsumugu I think it’s pretty awesome that our current Japanese Emperor is a violist. Yeah. Roger Definitely gives a better image to the viola. All those viola jokes, you can’t tell them in Japan. That’s now a rule here. Tsumugu Or you’ll be offending the Emperor of Japan. That’s right. Roger Yeah. So we are going up. Actually, it’s going to be a special a couple of days in Iwaki because that Saturday is the very first church that we had connected to after the earthquake and tsunami in order to bring up supplies, and we still have that relationship today. Then the next day, we’re going to be giving concerts with First Baptist, which is a church that was right next to the nuclear power plants, and some of their church members worked at the nuclear power plants, and then they had to leave and were migrating all over, trying to find a new home and settled in Iwaki. So first we’re going to give a concert with them. But then we’re going up and giving a concert right next to the nuclear power plant. It’s just three miles away to the chapel that they had just built. They had just dedicated their organ. And now we’re going to be going back into that space, which at first I was a little bit fearful of whether this is a good idea or not. Tsumugu I remember you sending me the email like, “we’re going to be really close to the power plant. Do you still want to do this?” I called my mom. I was like, “hey, I just got this email from Roger. What do you think?” And she was like, “You know, if it’s meant to be, if this is God’s plan, he’ll protect you.” And I was like, “Okay.” Roger Yeah. I mean, because I remember back when the disaster happened, I thought they were saying, you have to wait 50 years before you can go back into the area. But now it’s only been 12, and they reopened that area this year. And so they wanted to have a rededication of the building and of the organ, and to be able to bring the tsunami violin into that space and give a concert, I think, it’s going to be really special. Tsumugu Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much for having me on this such a special event, not just for myself. I think it’s going to really make a mark on my journey as a musician, and hopefully, I can bring some hope to the people coming for the concert. Roger Yeah, it’s an amazing story, too, about this violin. I probably shouldn’t talk about this now, but I’m playing in my head with an idea for a children’s book. We’ve put out a children’s book about the tsunami piano before, Pippy the Piano. And now I’m having an idea for this Vivi the Violin, and just her seeing the story of living a happy life, and then this disaster comes, and her life is completely torn apart, and how she thinks it’s the end. She thinks she’s in despair, that there is no hope, and then this violin maker comes in and gives her new life and new hope. It’s just helping kids know how to respond to disaster and really dark times, and despair, and to see it through the eyes of this little girl who’s a violin, I think, would be a powerful story if we can bring it to completion at some point. Tsumugu Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I think it will be… It is a very difficult concept and feeling to explain in words, and especially to children. And I think art, like the drawings in the book and music, can help to… Even if children don’t fully understand, I think it is one way of connecting with them and helping them resolve some of these feelings. Roger Yeah, definitely. I guess that’s all the time we have. We really need to practice a little before this event tonight for all these concerts. So thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me on the podcast. Tsumugu Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I think maybe I can mention my SNS. Roger Sure. Okay. Tsumugu Because we’ll be traveling with the violin, and I’ll be updating my social media with all the information and what we’re doing with the tsunami violin and everything. The best place to find it would be on my Instagram, which is @hellotsu. For my other work, you can find it on my website, which is tsu-music.com. Roger Great. I’ll list those on the program notes, the show notes for this podcast, so people can find it on the website as well. Tsumugu Thank you. Roger Thank you so much. Tsumugu Thank you, Roger. Roger You can read the show notes for this episode at my website, www.rogerwlowther.com. Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, ”Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”

Many of you have been writing me about this earthquake that hit Japan just a couple of weeks ago on January 1st. Wow, what a way to begin the new year, right? As you know, it was a pretty big one. In Tokyo, it wasn’t that big, definitely felt, but mostly just a lot of big swaying. But actually, I wasn’t in Tokyo at the time when the earthquake hit. I was in Nagano, not far from the epicenter of the earthquake. We were up in the mountains of Japan on a ski vacation with the family. And let me tell you, where we were, it was big! It definitely brought back memories of 2011. The ground was jolting so hard that it was impossible to walk. We were staying in a cabin with foundations that were nothing more than a bunch of stones piled on top of each other, not a very solid foundation at all, so we were really worried the whole thing was going to topple over and collapse on to the ground. And it’s built on the side of a cliff, so there was this worry that it would slide down the mountain in a landslide like happened in so many places in Ishikawa. Fortunately, neither of those things happened. But the aftershocks, they just kept hitting, one after the other, and not little ones either, so we took shelter outside for a little while and built a snowman. The aftershocks were at first, like every 15 minutes or so, and then about every 30 minutes, then every 45 minutes, then every hour. And by the end of those first few days, we had, I don’t know, like 30 earthquakes, maybe more…a lot of earthquakes! I wasn’t keeping count. But they were definitely felt and memorable. Inside the cabin, we had this big kerosene heater to keep the cabin warm. But it also dries out the air, so on top of it we had this huge pot of water, and let me tell you that didn’t fair so well in the earthquake. All that water was just swishing around and went over the side and went down to the floor, and so we had a very wet floor for a couple of days there. And of course, everything else in the cabin fell down as well. There was a quite a mess that we had to clean up, but there really wasn’t any damage where I was. But, of course, as you know, it’s a much different story in Ishikawa. You’ve probably seen the news reports. A lot of homes fell down. A lot of roads are impassable. Through the church network, we heard about the needs in the area, and my friends in Nagoya, Japan, were able to take a number of large vans full of supplies right after the earthquake, and then my friends from Chiba did that as well. I haven’t been there yet, but we are in conversation with contacts about what the needs are and what we can do. They’re telling us not to come right now because there’s a bottleneck of supplies at the base of the peninsula, and they’re simply not able to get the supplies where they need to go because of damage to the roads and they’re so narrow going through the roads there. But the current plan is to take a team next month with artists to give concerts in shelters, so I’ll definitely keep you posted about that. Well, today I’m excited to introduce you to Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. She is a phenomenal person and a phenomenal writer here in Tokyo, and good friends of our family along with her husband and son, who is in the same class as my son. We recorded this podcast just before an Art, Life, Faith event that was being held that evening on writing in Japan along with another writer as well. Anyway, without further ado, here is Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. Hey, Sarah. I am so thankful to have you on the show today. Sarah I am delighted to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while. Roger Tonight, you’re going to be sharing with a group of people in our living room here about writing. Over the past, we’ve had musicians come, we’ve had painters, dancers, filmmakers. But it’s been a while since we’ve had a writer come, so I’m really looking forward to this. Sarah Cool. I’m excited to be a part of it. I’m just excited to talk about writing because that’s… I mean, wow, filmmakers and dancers, that blows my mind. I feel like writing is the easy thing because all you have to do is type. Roger I don’t know about that. It’s a tough process, that’s for sure, and it feels like it’s never done. Well, let me ask you. This morning, I finished your book of short stories called Pearly Gates, and I found it to be a really moving collection of stories. Can you tell us a little bit about this book? Sarah Sure. It’s a strange little collection, honestly, of 30 very short stories, and the premise—is that each one features a person, a human being, never named, man or woman, usually adults, sometimes children, sometimes more than one person or even a crowd—and they come to the Pearly Gates of Heaven. We most often hear about Pearly Gates in connection with either jokes or New Yorker cartoons featuring Saint Peter standing guard, but the imagery is drawn from the Book of Revelation so there’s a lot of Revelation imagery scattered throughout this book. And the idea is basically when you get to the Pearly Gates, you are at the final zone of no BS, no more lying or pretending. There is something about that place that repels anything but truthfulness. It’s a story of how a bunch of different people in a bunch of different ways and for their own different reasons, either pass through the gates, some happily, some pass through even unhappily, but they still pass through. There are others who do not like what they find there and turn and walk around the other way. Roger Yeah, I really appreciated the vivid imagery of these stories. I mean, I could easily imagine myself right there listening to the story, even animating it in my head visually. Just so many different things connected to life on earth here. Sarah The truth is, even though this is “afterlife fiction,” it really is about our life now. Like all spiritual speculation about the life to come, it’s reflecting back to us where we are now. But the nice thing about the Pearly Gates is you can’t lie anymore. You’re confronted with truth in a way that we can always dodge it in this life. Right. Roger Right. There’s a sense, I think a lot of people think of heaven in this abstract manner that it’s a place where God is, but it’s somewhere other. It’s not here at all, but there’s an earthiness to the way that you’ve written these stories. Sarah Yeah. Well, as I wrote more and more, I realized that to make them actually meaningful, something you can connect to, they had to be anchored in vivid reality. Because, I mean, they’re very short and there are no names. I’m not developing a plot, so it has to happen right then. What came to me is that we believe in the resurrection of the body. And so, a great deal of the emotional and spiritual drama is bodily enacted through the people’s own bodies. What happens to them. What they do with them. How they interact with objects that they might bring there with them. I’m glad that spoke to you that concreteness because it was really meant to be testimony to the resurrection of the body and the centrality to spirituality. Roger I could really feel that the heaviness or the lightness of the burdens. I remember, especially there was that one scene where the woman is scratching her skin, and then she’s like, “Oh, I’m so clean now.” You can feel that cleanness. You can feel the physicality of this encounter they’re having with heaven. Sarah Yeah. One of my favorites is when the man is furious at finding out that the Lord is the Lord. He had spent his whole life dedicated to denouncing the name of the Lord. Finally, in rage, he just attacks him and plunges through his heart and pops out on the other side covered in the blood of Jesus. But the blood is what brought him in. It brings everybody in. But the experience, even at that final moment of going through the blood of Jesus, is what changes him as well. They’re not all quite that gory. That’s an exceptionally… Roger No, it was… I could imagine there being an animated series of these stories because they were just so visual. For you listening, I can recommend these. They’re just perfect bedtime reading because it’s maybe two pages or six pages for a story, it’s easy to pick up and read one or a lot of them in one sitting. Sarah Yeah, great. Oh, I’m just thrilled to hear this. I’ve gotten probably more meaningful feedback from people for this book than anything else I’ve written. It seems to have…which is funny because it started out as a bizarre experiment. I would not have expected this to touch as many people as it has. Roger Yeah, I was inspired. Let me move on to another book that you’ve written. A Tumblin’ Down is one that I read six months ago, and I have trouble ever forgetting that book because it hit me so strongly because of the things that I was going through in my own life. How would you introduce this book to a listening audience? Sarah Right. Well, less inspirational than Pearly Gates. This one is much more anchored on earth. A Tumblin’ Down is a novel about a Lutheran pastor’s family in upstate New York in the late 1980s. I grew up in a Lutheran pastor’s family in upstate New York in the late 1980s, but other than that, it’s drawn from our experience and location, but it’s not our family story. It’s not autobiographical in that respect. But basically, parents in their late 30s trying to struggle on with career and vocation. They have an oldest daughter getting close to adolescence. Two little boys born within a year of each other who are very close. It has all the usual growing up, growing older challenges, a lot of time developing what the life of a congregation feels like. I have never read a book that really I felt satisfied me either on what it’s really like to be a pastor in a church with a family or what it’s like to be in a congregation. So that’s one thing I wanted to capture. But that by itself was a little bit too vaguely literary for me. I wanted some action. And so, about a quarter of the way into the book, a really horrific tragedy befalls the family. And so, the rest of the book is about the aftermath of the tragedy and then, unfortunately, how it leads to a faction in the congregation, turning on the pastor’s family, exploiting the tragedy, trying to drive him out, and then the aftermath of that. Roger Yeah. Again, it impacted me so deeply because it so reflected what we were going through in our own church with a family tragedy with the pastor, and then division in the church. And I was like, “Is this a true story?” I even asked you, “Is this a true story?” It’s the most true fiction story I have ever read, I swear. Sarah Yeah, I’m related to tons of pastors. I have tons of pastor friends. I am a pastor myself, fortunately in a very happy congregation now. Not like this at all. But I have just seen…Well, here this is another thing that may be a little slight polemical subtext here, but in popular American depictions of pastors and pastor’s families, you either have the totally sanitized, happy, unchallenged, the Lord is good and life is good and everything’s fine and isn’t it all sweet and all wrapped up. Or you have the pastor is a villain, and he’s having an affair, and he’s embezzling money, and he’s lost his faith, and it’s all dark and horrible. Just neither of those felt true to life to me. And those things…well, the second thing happens, I’m not sure about the first. But one thing I had never really seen depicted either, besides just really what it feels like to be in a congregation, is that a congregational faction turning on a pastor. In news reports, too, it’s always the pastor’s fault. I don’t doubt there are a lot of times it’s the pastor’s fault, but it’s not only the pastor’s fault. That story needed to be told about what it’s like for these… It can be a very small number of people who just decide to take down the pastor. Then how do you live with that? Roger A very vocal minority. Sarah Yeah, exactly. The way that well-meaning nice church folks are unequipped to deal with that, and they can get sucked into the system without even realizing it’s happening. Roger Yeah. Because it was such a painful book for me to read, I’m like, Should I recommend this book to others or not? Because it was so painful, but it was so true and so helpful. I do recommend it to as many people as I can because it was just… There was wisdom in there that I think we all need to hear through the pain how God is still… How God is working and how he can redeem such situations. That’s really something you can do in literature, in a novel, that’s harder to do in real life, right? Because you’re like, “Oh, I can’t mention that person…” You’ll get in trouble, right? Sarah I think actually it’s a hopeful book in the real sense of hope. It’s not naïve, and it’s not optimistic. But where the characters end at the end is a willingness to carry on based on reality. Having come through the pain, which was awful and they never would have chosen to go through it, but having gone through it, it gives them a fresh start in its own way. I also think there’s a lot of funny in it. I mean, it’s leavened with some comedy. I have had many pastors tell me that my scenes depicting the annual church conference is the most hilariously scathing satire they have ever come across of those church events. If you just need a takedown of a ridiculous, ineffective bishop, this book is for you. Roger It was coming to mind, too, about the organist in this story. Sarah As an organist, that probably was painful for you. Roger Yeah, because I’m an organist, I’m like, Oh, my goodness. I hope I haven’t been like that. Or the organist is like, “I’m going to save this church.” It’s like, that’s not really your job. But okay… Sarah Yeah, the church family that has deep historical roots, lots of money and never, ever attends, but still thinks they own the place. If you guys know that part of church life, you’ll find that here too. Roger Yeah. Gosh, there are so many characters that so stood out, likable or not likable, depending upon the person. Tell me, this idea, you’ve written many books, and this idea of writing books. There are issues you can bring up. By writing this novel, you were able to talk about things that you couldn’t really in any other way, not in this way for certain. Tell me a little bit about that. Why do you write? What is your… What do you want people to really get out of your books? Sarah Wow, deep questions. Well, the first answer is I write because I can’t not. I think a lot of writers are like that. But I got my… Well, I was always writing stories from the time I was small, but when I was old enough to actually try to do it in a more professional way, I actually got my start in non-fiction. It just was where the audience and the money was. Then I went on academically, so I’m a trained theologically. I’ve written lots of academic articles and books, as well as taking that and putting it in more popular form and zillions of sermons as well. But I think that as much as I really enjoy the discipline of theology, and I know theology gets a bad rap with lots of people, but it’s just loving God with your mind. It’s devoting the best of your intellectual capacities. It is not…I mean, theology, like everything else, has good and bad in it and better and worse. I don’t need to defend the bad stuff. But there are things it can’t do. One thing I realized at some point is that almost all theology is written in the key of Romans, which is fabulous of course. I’m a Lutheran. Of course, I love Romans, but it is a very particular form or genre of communication. And theologians never write in the key of the gospels, for example, or Esther, or Nehemiah, which is a memoir, and rarely in the form of poetry, which is a hugely important biblical genre. Which is not to say you can only write in biblical genres, but I think the fact that there are so many genres in Scripture as well as in subsequent church tradition shows that not all truth is accessed the same way or expressed the same way. Roger As an artist, I definitely agree with that. Sarah Of course, right. Music tells us things that the written word cannot, and visual arts tells us things that dance cannot. All these things. If you’re actually really passionately committed to truth, as I aspire to be, then you have to look at all the avenues towards truth and not artificially cut them off. So I think for me, something like this novel, A Tumblin’ Down, was a way to relate the experience of being a believer and a member, a part of a church community that I actually couldn’t write in a non-fiction format. It would always be abstracted, and it would always attempt at being universal. But in fact, one key thing you learn as a fiction writer is the more specific you are, the more universal the message becomes. Everybody writes out trying to write the story that is for everybody and about everybody, and no one is interested in that story. But people who have no connection to Lutheran pastors’ families can read this and feel intimately what it is like to be these people and draw something very human and personal out of it, even if they can’t draw the faith lesson out of it. But I wanted to give more the texture of what it’s like to believe and wrestle emotionally with all the things you wrestle with in life. Roger Yeah, Pearly Gates had that as well, right? The physicality, the humanity of heaven. Here you are doing it with A Tumblin’ Down and through this story. Sarah Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen schemas of the steps of salvation. Like first this, and then that, and then you have to go through this. It might be only two steps, or it might be, I’ve seen more like 18-20, and they have to unfold in the right order. I just think, if there are more fiction writers who were involved in theology, no one would come up with anything this stupid because every life is different, everyone’s experience is different. Of course, you find commonalities and similarities because we’re human, but we actually get the commonalities by looking at the specific cases and not the other way around. Roger Right. Yeah, definitely. Recently, I’ve been talking a lot about that. How when you go and visit different countries around the world, you enter different cultures. We are so much a product of our surroundings and environments and the stories that we are entrenched in. You can’t separate our humanity from that and certainly our theology as well. Sarah Yeah, right. You don’t go to a restaurant and say, I don’t need the menu, just bring me good food. Or you don’t say, play some good music. There’s lots of things that’s good music. That doesn’t specify it enough. Bach’s good music is not The Beatle’s good music. Roger Yeah. Before we started recording, you were telling me a little bit about your thoughts about wonder. Tell me a little more about that. Sarah Yeah, maybe this is where I am very much as a 21st century person and someone who’s done academic training in theology and just tried to live in our very weird hyper-modern, hyper-novel worlds. I guess there’s two things on either side I’m trying to navigate between. One is the response of people of faith who are really deeply frightened and alarmed by the world and by discoveries that might call the faith into question. Whether that’s like, challenges to the origins of the biblical documents with historic criticism or archeology or scientific findings. There’s a need to just bracket out all of that or maybe more perniciously pine for a different century. If only I’d lived then, if I wasn’t stuck. I was born in the 20th century. Now I live in the 21st. It’s so awful now. If this is God’s creation, then now and everything we have unleashed, looking out your windows at downtown Tokyo and the high rises, this is still part of God’s project. God doesn’t love absolutely everything we’ve done, of course, but this is ultimately all within the realm of what God made good. So either bracketing out stuff or just wishing not to be here seems deeply unfaithful to me. But on the other hand, there are, of course, tons of voices, we often call them secular or rationalistic or materialistic, that want everything or assume and infer everything is reductionistically explained, mechanistic, deterministic. Everything happens just as a matter of course, there is no freedom. There is no God, of course. I find that those people live in the same level of denial as the believers who are frightened by reality because they can’t allow the emotions they feel towards their beloved or their children or their parents to be real. They can’t allow their reactions to art or music to be real. They have to somehow tamp down any suspicion of wonder that cannot be analyzed and controlled by this engineering approach to reality. I think probably finding both of those wrong, and I’m stumbling because I’m trying to figure out how to articulate it. I think what I’m trying to do in all my writing is to figure out a way to talk about what it’s like to be really real, these bodies in this time, but that God is really real, but not in an easily accessible way, obviously, or there would be no question of doubt or pain. But at the same time, every time I try to run the thought experiments of this is all just religion as a projection of the brain that was evolutionarily helpful. I can talk myself into that. At the end of the day, it still doesn’t change my mind about thinking God is real. I think for me, this concept of wonder, which I’m sure was very much formed by writers like George McDonald and Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, all those greats, there’s something that’s really true about wonder, but doing it in a way that’s not fakely miraculous or just strip down the bad titling of Shusaku Endo’s book, Silence. He didn’t want it to be called Silence because Jesus does speak to him at the end, but only at the end. To me, that is closer, I think, in spirit to what I’m trying to get at. God is real, but he so often hides himself. Just trying to… Yeah, that’s what I think. If I try to analyze what I’m doing both theologically and artistically, it’s mapping out the real experience of wonder, not overblown, but not reduced to the atoms moving in my brain. Roger Yeah, I see that in your books as I think through them, this sense of… As we live through our lives, we end up having a narrow perspective of the situation that we’re in. But the idea of wonder, as you’re describing, it gives us a renewing sense of where we are rather than some other mystery thing. It’s like, no, actually just wonder in the situation that we’re in, being able to see it in a new way, a new perspective. It’s really exciting, actually, and necessary. Life can get… Well, life is hard. Life is hard, and we can get so caught up and busy. What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? It’s like we’re missing the journey. Your writing really helps us see the journey of where we are, not just where we’re going, but where we are right now. Sarah Thanks for that reflection. That’s great. I just want to point out, it’s so interesting, when I talk to other believers in the same space about this novel, they never bring up the non-realistic elements in it, I think, because it doesn’t seem unrealistic to them. In the book, the pastor, dad, Donald, he regularly has conversations with his dead grandfather. What that even means is never explained. I never try to give an account. I just knew Donald talks to his grandfather. His grandfather talks back. Carmichael, his wife, has alternate versions of herself, different lives she could have had come up and confront and annoy her. Kitty, the daughter, has her council, which she obviously got from her dad’s church council, but it’s all populated with characters from her beloved books. I’ll leave the ones for the little boys for the reader to discover. But this is just… It’s unfolded narratively as completely realistic, even though clearly it doesn’t… What? Clearly? I don’t know. It doesn’t not happen in that way? I’ve had a lot of people say, This seems actually what life is like to me. This is what it actually feels like. Roger Yeah. No, it’s very effective. We’re almost out of time. But before we end, is there any other… Would you like to talk, introduce any of your other books to our listeners? Sarah Can I tell about an upcoming one? Roger Sure. Sarah Okay, so right now I am writing a book about the transfiguration of Jesus because as a preacher, it comes up in my cycle of readings every year. After three or four years, I was like, I don’t have anything left to say about this, but surely there’s more to it than I’ve thought up. I started reading and became completely obsessed and fascinated with the transfiguration of Jesus, and probably because it is this wondrous moment in the life of Jesus. Obviously, Jesus does cool things like miracles. But other than the resurrection, this is the big one in the middle of Jesus, earthly life. I just started going into it and I was like, I bet there are more preachers who need help preaching on this every year. I found out Catholics and Anglicans have to preach on it twice a year. That’s a whole other story. But also for anyone, any believer who’s come across this and like, I have no idea what to do with this story. Anyway, so I’m working on it right now. I’m going to have a Kickstarter for it in January 2024, if anyone wants to be involved in this. It’s actually called Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration, because even for this very short story, there is so much happening, and it’s drawing in so many aspects of scripture and spiritual life and devotion. But to me, it’s given me a new way to look at and think about Christ and what he’s doing. I hope some of that excitement will be communicated. Roger Yeah, I can’t wait. I’ll definitely include a link in the show notes so people can get involved with the Kickstarter. How can people listen to you? I know you have a podcast. There are other things they can follow. Sarah Sure. Actually, I have two podcasts. If you want the more non-fiction traditional theology stream, it’s called Queen of the Sciences: Conversations Between a Theologian and Her Dad. And guess what? My co-host is my dad, Paul Hinlicky, a theologian as well. He probably has better claim to it than I do. We are just about to wrap up our fifth year together, and next year we’ll be starting our sixth. But also this year, I realized that I was ready to be more out there and official with my passion for combining good fiction and good theology at the same time. I’ve just started a second podcast with the very boring but accurate title, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories. In fact, the first season is all the 30 stories of Pearly Gates, each with a little introduction from me. You can find either of those on your podcast app or wherever you are listening to this one. Roger Awesome. Okay, I’ll include links for that as well. Anything else you want to share before we sign off? Sarah I think we’ve more than adequately supplied listeners with things to follow up on. But thank you, Roger, for this conversation. Roger Yeah, and we’re looking forward to tonight. We’re planning to have quite a few people come to dinner, and it’s going to be a really good night. Thank you so much for doing this. Sarah Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you for the invitation to be here. Roger That was perfect timing. So, that really was perfect timing, right? I had to leave that last part in because I thought it was just so funny. I was watching the clock as we were talking and thinking, “Oh, people are going to start ringing that doorbell.” And sure enough, that’s what happened. So, now you know what a Japanese doorbell sounds like! The event was so cool. A lot of people came, and we had another author speak as well, Ellen McGinty about her book, The Water Child, where she tells the story of a teenage girl who is trying to find healing in her family when the 2011 earthquake and tsunami strike. I read this book when it first came out in 2021 and was really struck not only by the power of the storytelling but the accuracy of the events, the way she is able to vividly describe the scene surrounding the disaster, because Ellen herself, the author, was involved in the relief movement after the earthquake and so was able to write from personal experience and the experiences of people she worked with. So, anyway, I highly recommend her book as well and will include a link in the show notes to this podcast. We also had two people share who attended a writer’s conference in Nagoya, Japan, a city about two hours south of us here in Tokyo. They shared some of the things they learned, especially interesting were some of the trends going on right now about what audiences are looking for, and especially what publishers are looking for. And there were a lot of writers in attendance, and so we had a really good discussion time together. We do Art Life Faith events like this once a month, and I started this podcast during COVID in order to be able to share some of this content with all of you, the conversations we’re having and the people we’re talking with. Most of those events are in Japanese, but it’s especially great when the speakers speak English so that you all can participate in them. So, as we sign off, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson has her Kickstarter campaign she mentioned happening right now through January 31, and I encourage y’all to check it out and back her project. And I’m going to include the links to that in the show notes for this podcast. Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne! See you next time.” Links: Queen of the Sciences PodcastSarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories Podcast“7 Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration” Kickstarter CampaignThornbush Press

Welcome back to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast. I’m your host Roger Lowther, and I’m excited to continue our discussion from the last episode, giving a little peek into some of the conversations and relationships that were happening at the GCAMM Conference this past September in Ft. Worth, Texas, the Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions. Let’s pick up where I left off last time and continue to mosey on through the cafeteria with mic in hand while everyone is eating their lunch and just see who else we can meet. Roger Well, we’re here in the lunchroom of the GCAMM Conference, and I am standing here with Robin Harris. Robin, please tell me, what you do. Attendee One of the roles I have is co-founder and president of the Global Ethnodoxology Network, or GEN, which is how people connect together between conferences like this to be encouraged, to find resources and training, and networking in between conferences for people who love arts and mission. That’s what the Global Ethnodoxology Network is. Roger Great. So let me emphasize that point. GCAMM is an event, but GEN is a network. It’s about relationships, right? Attendee Right. That’s right. Roger Okay. So what is GEN? Where is it going? What are you hoping for in the future? Attendee We’re celebrating our 20th anniversary this year. So we were founded at GCoMM in 2003. And so we’re celebrating 20 years, and we started as mostly, I would say North American missionaries who had a vision for doing arts and mission in a culturally appropriate, culturally sensitive way. Where we are going is now totally global. Many of our members, maybe even up to a third of them, are from the Global South. They’re members from all over the world doing arts and mission in their own contexts, and so we’re not where we started. It’s very exciting. We have a very globally diverse board right now, and in addition to that, we have a consortium of about 15 or 16 people that we call our Global Advisory Council. And many of them are here at GCAMM. They’re from a bunch of regions around the world. They’re actively doing ethnodoxology in their context, and they are leaders, and they own this movement. It is great to see what our global leaders are doing. Roger Okay, so this is awesome. Who would you recommend join GEN in the future if they don’t belong to it yet? Attendee People would enjoy GEN if they want to do arts in their context in culturally appropriate ways. So maybe you’re in a multicultural church and you’re having challenges actually including everybody. Maybe you love artists and you’re in a context where artists are marginalized, or you want to reach cross-culturally to other cultures in your context. GEN can help you do that in a really great way. We have trainings. We have networking. We have forums where people can ask questions. And so the best way to connect with us is through our free newsletter. You can go on to the site, worldofworship.org, or you can do worldofworship.org/newsletter, and that’ll take you right to the newsletter. It’s free. It comes out once a month or every six weeks. Roger This is great. What I’ve been hearing people saying in conversations around this conference is that it really is changing. I think before Global Ethnodoxology Network, that movement seemed a little narrow, like it was only for ethnomusicologists in very rural parts of this world. But now it’s much bigger than that, right? Attendee Exactly. That’s also reflected in our core values. We recently did a whole set of…wrote up the core values that have really emerged from the movement over the last 20 years. We realized as we were writing out those core values that it’s definitely not just music. Oh, my. No, it’s not just music. It’s all the arts. In fact, those are emphasized more in GEN than in a lot of places, to be very honest. It’s not just rural contexts. We deal a lot in training people how to do these kinds of things in urban contexts as well. Thank you for mentioning that because it really is more than just rural, cross-cultural missions. That’s a strength of ours. We’re really good at that, and we have a lot of specialists in that. But the world now is multicultural, and it’s urban, and we need to know how to address cultural issues in the arts for those contexts as well Roger Thank you, Robin. Thank you for starting this organization. I’m so excited to be part of it. It’s meant so much to me, but we really appreciate all the work you do. Attendee Thank you. Thank you very much. Roger Yeah, so tell me, who are you? Attendee I’m Debra Kim from South Korea, and I’m the director of Arts in Mission Korea, which is a mission organization that mobilizes and trains Korean Christian artists to encourage them to use their artistic talents for God’s kingdom in cross-cultural missions. Roger And how many people are in this network? Attendee You know what? So Arts in Mission Korea was started in 2013, which means it’s been 10 years, but it’s still very new to Korean people. You know, it’s not easy to spread the word, but now a few people notice that art is important and the arts can be used in the mission field. Because you know what? God is beautiful, and the gospel is beautiful. And so as Christians, we need to spread the word and we need to glorify God beautifully. And art is a language of worship. Art is a great instrument for worship and evangelism. Roger Thank you very much. Attendee Thank you. Roger And what is your name? Attendee My name is Joy Kim. Roger And what are you doing here? Attendee I work with Proskuneo Ministries, and now I’m attending GCAMM. Roger What is Proskuneo Ministries? Attendee Proskuneo Ministries is based in Atlanta, Georgia. We’ve been developing resources and gathering people to worship together, gathering different peoples from different cultures and languages to worship together. And we have a multicultural worshiping community in our town. Roger I happen to know that you also do a lot of traveling with Proskuneo so that other churches can be exposed to multicultural worship. Attendee Yes. Roger Why is that important? Attendee In a nutshell, I think that the churches have been worshiping in their own ways, but in multicultural context, where we actually do life together and we worship together, but then we are struggling, especially the churches in the US, are struggling to find what is our own expression of worship made up of a lot of different cultures and languages, and what is an honoring way to bring all these different expressions into one space of worship for a community. We’ve been experimenting with different stuff, but we believe that not just the context of ourselves, like multicultural context, calls for new expressions, but also we want to honor different come-froms of our people in our worshiping community to be able to express themselves in worship. So we’ve experimented with different creative elements of arts, and we learned songs from one another and wrote songs together, and are still on a journey to find what would be the songs and arts that bring us together to worship together in unity and diversity. I see that a lot of neighborhoods are becoming multicultural, so we like to share what we are learning from our own journey of building worshiping community. Roger Well, that’s awesome. I have certainly benefited from seeing your worship in unity and diversity. So, thank you so much for what you do. Attendee Okay. Roger There were so many cool people there, and I hope that you the listener get to meet some of these people in person. Maybe you can come to the next GCAMM event whenever and wherever it is. I have many more conversations to share with you, but I want to stop there for a moment and sit down for a longer conversation with one person, Héber Negrão, who is an ethnodoxologist from Brazil. And he is a member of the board of GEN, the Global Ethnodoxology Network. And he really has some interesting insights into what it means to be a missionary and an artist in the world today. So, let’s have a listen. Okay, I’m sitting here with Héber Negrão, an ethnodoxologist in Brazil. And can you tell us more about who you are? Héber Yes. I’ve been working with ethnoarts ministries in Brazil since 2006, 17 years now. I am a member of EMLA (Evangelical Missionary Linguistic Association), which is the Wycliffe organization in Brazil. I am the arts coordinator of EMLA. Currently, I am taking my PhD studies at Dallas International University, a PhD candidate there in World Arts. I’m part of GEN. I’m a member of the board. Roger Okay. Now I have two questions. First, what is your art in particular? Héber I’m a musician. I studied violin since I was seven. I did the whole degree, but not the college one, just the mid-second level. Roger Do you sing as well? Héber I can sing. I’m not particularly great at it, but I don’t lose the pitch, at least. Roger Okay. All right. You are a board member of GEN. What’s GEN? Héber GEN is the Global Ethnodoxology Network. It’s a group of more than 300 members that use local arts in the context of worship. They use arts of people from different parts of the world to engage with God, to worship him, and engage with the world. Basically, that’s what GEN is about. It’s a group of people that like and encourage the use of local arts to engage with God. Roger Okay. What does that look like in your context in Brazil? Héber Yeah. In Brazil, we have a lot of indigenous people. We have around 344 different people groups in Brazil, and their culture is completely different than the Brazilian majority culture. The language is different, and the arts are also different. Roger Yeah, it’s a big country. Héber It’s huge, yes. In my ministry, I encourage local leaders, church leaders, from those indigenous people to use their arts to worship God. Roger I’ve met some of the leaders here, too, I guess, who are helping you in that or who are working in various parts of Brazil? Héber Yes, they work in Central Brazil, and I’m located in the northern part of Brazil. But I’ve been doing ministry in Brazil in very different places, so not only one. Roger I see. Héber Yeah. Roger All right. What trend do you see? A lot of people talk about the Global South, how Christianity is moving into the Global South. Can you talk about that? Héber Oh, yes, of course. The Global South is a phenomenon that is happening where the gravity center of Christianity is switching to the south. Today, there are more Christians in Latin America, Africa, and Asia than in North America and Europe. By that, because of this phase of Christianity is changing, it also affects how church is engaged in missions. So before, you had “From the West to the rest.” Now, with the center of Christianity being more the Global South, there is a tendency or trend to understand that mission is now from the south to the north. Many missiologists says that now the Christians in the south are re-evangelizing Europe, for instance. Roger And Japan as well, by the way. There are a lot of Brazilian missionaries in Japan. Héber Yeah, I know one of them. So that’s the major concept based on this change in the Christianity center. Roger What do you think about that? Is all the responsibility now put on the Global South? Héber There is an issue with the pendulum effect. The pendulum effect is when someone takes the pendulum to one part of the range, and you lose that pendulum, it doesn’t balance. It’s just goes all the way to the other side. In this case, the pendulum effect is people on the Global South saying things like, Okay, now the time of missions in North America and Europe is done. Now it’s our turn. That’s our responsibility to go and reach the world for God and stuff like that. But that’s not how it is. Roger It sounds exciting, though. Héber It is. It is for some people, but that’s not how God wants to do it because the mission is not for the church in the northern part of the planet or the southern part of the hemisphere. It’s for the global church. So ideally, because we have a huge representativity of Christianity in the South, it can be done “From everywhere to everywhere.” Not anymore “From the West to the rest,” but “From everywhere to everywhere.” Us from the Global South, the church from the Global South can collaborate, can be partners with the Global North—Americans or European missionaries and churches—to accomplish the task. Some people tend to give this huge emphasis on the church and the Global South saying, “Okay, don’t bother. We got it. We got this. Now it’s our turn.” There’s no such a thing in God’s mission. The mission is God’s, but he invites his church to be part of the mission, not his global church. His church, period. Roger Yeah, I agree. All right, so what trends do we see then in ethnodoxology? Would you say the Global South is taking on this…is it known what that word is, “ethnodoxology”? Is it a concept that is recognized? Héber It’s growing. It’s growing the awareness of using the local expressions of arts and different people groups in the South. It’s growing because it’s a new concept. You see, the Global Ethnodoxology Network was founded 20 years ago, and it’s still a new concept. So many people and mission agencies and churches may be practicing ethnodoxology without knowing, but because the discipline or the field was starting to be developed and structured just for a few years ago, we’ll still have a lot to accomplish in the Global South. But yes, I would say it’s a growing awareness in Brazil about using local arts and local expressions of arts to worship God. Roger In this network, GEN, do you see that as growing, as being a worldwide network. Héber Yeah. Today in GEN, we have representatives from 80 countries in the world. It’s a lot. We have a good representation of the Global South communities. But still, we have North Americans in the board, for instance, but we also have Africans, Latinos, Asians in the board. That means that this expression of the polycentric mission, the polycentric mission is that one that goes from everywhere to everywhere. There’s multiple centers of mission, not only North, not only South. This expression of polycentric mission, we can see in the GEN board because it’s not anymore a group of North Americans thinking of mission or mission and arts and mission for the other parts of the world. But we are thinking together and helping each other and strategizing together. With this ethnic variety and different nationalities, we were thinking GEN to reflect that polycentric mission. Roger Yeah, personally, I’ve really benefitted from the GEN network. But I want to ask you, why do you think people listening, should they join GEN? Why should they join GEN? Héber They should join GEN because with the globalization, we see a huge influence of the West in churches and missions and media and movies. The globalization came to make everything look like the same, like the West. God created the world in a slightly different way. Roger Yes, definitely. Héber With this huge cultural variety, here are lots of different cultural expressions. Ethnodoxology seeks to encourage these multiple expressions of faith in different parts of the world. Because the arts, our identity, are the most different things that we have that God gave us, and we can respond to him according to that gift of beauty, of cultural diversity he gave to us. So that’s why GEN matters. Roger Okay, so but is the Jenn network particularly for artists? Héber I would say GEN network, you don’t have to be an artist to be part of GEN. But it’s important that you have arts dear to your heart and your work, because when we talk about the outcomes of why GEN emphasizes and produces and encourages is an artistic expression. You don’t have to be an artist, but if you work in a multi-ethnic community or in a community different from your own, then GEN will help you to see artistic traditions of that community, and will help you to use it or identify what you can use and what you cannot use. But automatically, the decision comes from the people, of course. But being part of GEN, you receive the tools to engage with the arts of that community. You can do that not being an artist. You just need to be a curious person to go ahead and ask good questions to understand how the arts work and encourage them to use it. Roger Yeah. We were just both sitting in a seminar by a man named Juan from Spain, and he was talking about how the arts are God’s secret weapon for the world in missions. I think a lot of people think of the arts as something outside, like something periphery, not something core to our identity. But everything you’re talking about nations praising, tribes praising, whether they realize it or not, the arts are core to who they are. To be able to encourage that, support that. Héber Yeah. In GEN, we say and we understand that arts are a powerful means of communication. Because we are Christians, we always are looking to communicate something. We want to communicate a message that can transform anyone’s life. If we use the arts, local arts, the correct means of communication, that message will be not only understood, but will be received as for their own. It’s much better than if you try to bring the message of the gospel in a foreign vessel. You see? It will be something that not… It’s something new. It’s something from the outside, but maybe it’s not for the people. The people may not receive that as something for them. If you bring that powerful message in a way that people grasp that and accept as their own, Oh, this talks to me. I can hear. I hear this song since I was a child. Or this is the drama that my people used to practice to perform. I see the Bible stories in this drama. It make things personal, cultural, and appropriate for each people group. Roger Thank you. Well said. Thank you for sitting down and taking this time to talk with me. Héber Of course. My pleasure. Thank you very much. Roger As we close, I want to play a song for you performed by IziBongo, one of the featured worship teams at the conference. A lot of what I was taught as the foundation of Western Classical Music can be played on the piano. Yet, this piece cannot. In fact, those notions of major is happy and minor is sad is completely turned on its head by what sounds to most Western ears as pretty atonal. It’s very interesting to give you a translation of what’s being sung. The meaning is, “It’s God’s word that makes us so very happy.” [Music Plays – “Pahpam Jarkwa”] Thank you for listening. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”

Welcome to the Art Life Faith Podcast. I’m your host, Roger Lowther. This is our 50th podcast episode. Woo hoo! Happy birthday, Art Life Faith Podcast! I can’t believe we’ve done this 50 times now. I’m so grateful for all of you who’ve come along with us on this journey and who’ve supported this podcast in so many ways, by continuing to listen, by giving it five-star ratings, and leaving your reviews. We’ve had 5,000 downloads so far since we first started three years ago in the height of the pandemic, and we continue to grow each and every episode. Thank you for spreading the word. I’ve really been encouraged by some of the reviews that we’ve got, and I’d like to share some of them with you. “Beautiful! Unlike anything I’ve ever heard before.” Another said, “Perfect bite-sized treasures of the gospel for weary souls.” Another wrote, “Beautiful gems of inspiration. I love how Roger identifies beauty in the midst of brokenness.” The last one I’ll share is this, “Roger’s easy storytelling technique draws you in, tugs at your heartstrings, and refreshes your soul.” These reviews don’t just encourage me, but help other listeners as well. The more ratings and reviews we get, the easier it is for others to find it. If you’re willing, please, wherever you listen to podcasts, would you consider leaving your rating and review as well? And ff this podcast is an encouragement to you, please pass it on to others. Well, as I’ve shared this before, this podcast was something born out of COVID. I’d actually been wanting to do it for many years and … little-known fact, I briefly had a podcast just out of college back in the 90s before podcasts were really a thing. But it wasn’t until COVID stopped our ability to gather and hold events, and then later in the summer only with small groups, that this became not just a desire, but really a necessity to find ways to get these stories out there to show how God is working in our midst. For years now, we’ve had to hold online Zoom meetings, and it just made sense to start trying to report on those events in English as well so that more of you could participate in the conversations from a distance, and give you a chance to see and hear just a little of what God is doing here in Japan. Actually, we’re still pretty far from the numbers we had at events before COVID, so this is an ongoing necessity, to find ways to get that message and stories out there in as many different media as possible. Anyway, God is working. Many great things are happening. I hope you’ll continue to follow along with our stories in the months and years to come because there are many great things to follow. In fact, I’m excited about our next episode. I’m going to try to do something different, interviewing a lot of people at a conference I’m about to attend. This is the GCAMM conference from September 11-14 in Fort Worth, Texas. GCAMM is the largest gathering of missionary artists in the world. It’s an amazing group of people who I’ve learned so much from, and I’m blessed to be able to call many of them friends. Now, if you’re listening to this podcast, you really need to know a little bit about this conference and this group. It’s not too late to come. It’s going to be the 20th anniversary of GCAMM, the Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions. These conferences only happen every few years. The first one I attended was in Chiang Mai, Thailand. After that, I was able to go to one in Nairobi, Kenya. And then during COVID, the event had to be moved online, but it was still an amazing time. The people at these events gather from all over the planet. Many countries, many languages, many organizations, many churches. When I first came into missions as an artist, I really had a very narrow view of what missions through the arts looks like. The best example is probably in this area of contextualization. I saw my job as contextualizing the gospel in ways that Japanese people could hear and understand. The arts were a way to listen to and get insights into elements of Japanese culture and then learn how to talk about the gospel through them. I thought of myself as a translator of sorts, translating the gospel. But what I didn’t see was what the Japanese people would teach me. You see, missions in Japan will never be over. It isn’t over even when the Japanese can no longer be called an unreached people group. Missions is eternal. Our glimpses into heaven through Revelation and all other books of the Bible show us that we will always be worshiping God not just alongside the Japanese people, but through their art and culture. The best of every culture will be represented in heaven for the eternal glory of God. Every good and perfect gift is from God. Every work of art belongs to God. God is speaking through Japanese art and culture to share himself with the Japanese people, and also with you and with me. I’ve tried to capture some of these examples in my books, The Broken Leaf, Aroma of Beauty, Pippy the Piano, and I have even more stories to share in my next two books, A Taste of Grace and Hidden Beauty. The work of missionaries in the arts is to listen and point out how God is already working in that culture. To show that God is not far from any person or culture, for in him, all the nations live and move and have their being. In other words, missions is not temporary. It’s not a dead-end street. It’s not about me bringing the gospel to the Japanese people or the Japanese people bringing the gospel to me. It’s about God bringing the gospel to all people through Japanese culture and through every other culture on the planet. This is just a little of what the community at GCAMM has taught me, so I hope you can be part of it as well. I’ll include the website for this conference and a link to registration in the show notes for this episode. Today, I’ll be sharing a conversation with Dr. Ron Man, one of the organizers for this conference. He himself is a missionary artist, having served in Europe for many years, and now travels the globe teaching about the biblical foundations of worship. It’s an understatement to say that he’s been a huge influence on my life, including introducing me to this concept of ethnodoxology, worship through the cultures of the world, and the GCAMM community. He has a book coming out this fall called Let Us Draw Near, which many of us have been eagerly waiting for. It’s only because of COVID that he finally had a chance to take a break from his busy travel schedule and write down the things he’s been teaching all these years. Anyway, without further ado, here is our conversation. Roger Ron Man, we’re so happy to have you on this episode today. Ron Thanks for having me. Roger Yeah, this is awesome. I am really intrigued by your travel schedule. I mean, you travel all over the place. Where have you been recently? Ron Well, let’s see… Last November I was in Bangladesh, and then I go to Spain every February to a little Bible school, and then I was at a conference in Pakistan in the spring and then went on from there to Ethiopia to teach in a theological college. I’ve covered some ground. Roger Oh, my goodness. How much time do you have between all these trips? Ron Well, I usually would limit them to maybe four or five trips a year of two or maximum three weeks at a time. Roger Well, it doesn’t sound as bad when you put it that way, but when I get your newsletter, I think, I can’t believe he’s going on another trip. Sometimes it seems like you’re only home for a week or two before you’re off to some other place. Ron It’s not quite that bad, but I’ve had a lot of neat opportunities. I guess not that many people do what I do, teaching on worship, biblical worship in that way. Roger Yeah. Tell us more. What are you doing? What are you traveling to do? Ron Well, my disclaimer, when I go into these places to teach, usually in schools, Bible schools, seminaries, Bible colleges, and whatnot, for a week or two, I usually start out by saying, “I’ve not come to tell you how to do worship in your culture because I’m not from your culture. What I can share with you are biblical principles of worship, which, because they are biblical, by definition, they transcend culture.” That’s what I can share with them. I have colleagues in some of the organizations we’ll be talking about later, who have been on the mission field for years, decades maybe, in particular spots. After that, after being immersed in the culture for that long, they have a right to speak into some of the actual practices of worship in those cultures. I don’t have that right since I’m just in and out one or two weeks at a time. I don’t try to speak very much about practices. We’ll talk a little bit about practical aspects, but the main thing is just laying these biblical foundations. It’s really exciting how everywhere I’ve gone in the world, I’ve found real hearts for worship in these students that I teach. That’s something you can’t teach, a heart for worship. But what I’ve found in so many places that with this commitment, this heart for this love for worship already, that when you add some real solid biblical content to it, they just soak it up and come alive. It’d be a lot harder to teach them a heart for worship than to teach them biblical material to undergo this. Roger I’m trying to imagine what this looks like. You’re walking into places where everyone speaks a different language, wearing different clothes, perhaps eating different foods. I mean, completely different cultures. But there’s been times when I’ve been in places in the world… I’m thinking of a particular mini-seminar I attended in India where a pastor stood up and said, “We want to transcend culture. We want to think about the culture of heaven. That is the real culture that we’re trying to strive for.” And he went on to denounce Indian culture. How is what you’re talking about different than that? What does it mean to transcend culture? Ron Well, I use an illustration in my teaching of a bridge, which I can’t give you the graphic in this context, of course, but a suspension bridge where the two towers in the illustration represent a biblical framework, which needs to guide us and control us and give that content, that framework to our worship practices. But then in the illustration of a suspension bridge, I explain that a lot of the weight of the bridge is borne by this cable or suspension span between the two towers, which, unlike the sturdy firm towers sunk deeply into the ground, this cable has to have built into it a lot of flexibility because of changes of temperature and winds and so forth. And that serves in the illustration for the biblical framework being the towers and the span, the flexible span, representing the flexibility or latitude we have in worship practices, which the New Testament seems to allow because it frankly just does not give us a lot of detail about how our worship services should exactly look like. I think, as it’s been explained, that perhaps that’s God’s way of allowing the gospel as it goes into different cultures and as the church is planted among the nations, that there’s room to breathe the air of that culture and give expression using the music, the arts, the different cultural expressions that are already built into people’s hearts. I like to give the people that freedom to give expression to that in their own way, in their own context, of their own arts and their own expressions and whatnot. And yet there’s always this biblical framework. And that’s what I try to explain, what I try to teach. In some ways, my job is easy because I teach them for one or two weeks on the biblical foundations and framework, and then I leave. And then they have the hard job of actually putting that into practice in their own context and making it fit into their own expression. Roger That’s beautiful. So you’re giving us this picture of this suspension bridge, which can move and flex with the situation. You’re coming into a group of people who are very passionate about worship and giving a context for how to think creatively about what can that look like. How does that affect, I don’t know … obviously the worship songs will be in different languages, but more than that? What does that mean in terms of what instruments we use? What does that mean in terms of what themes we’re singing about? What does that mean in terms of how dance would be part of the liturgy? Or visual arts? Or other things as well? Ron I encourage them to think about things maybe they haven’t thought of, but pulling from their own culture, from their own context, what they could pull in and effectively use. Roger You know, it always bothers me when I travel around the world and attend various worship services, and I feel like I could be anywhere in the world at any time in history, because I feel like, wow, we’ve really lost the richness of what this could be. I feel like something’s wrong if I’m attending a worship service and it’s exactly the same, whether I’m in India or Malaysia or America or France. There should be differences besides the language that’s spoken, right? Is that what you’re saying? Ron Yeah, I really believe that. But there’s another complication in this world of ethnodoxology — we’ll throw that term out right now. You find ethnomusicology in secular universities, which is a study of the different musics of the people of the world. Ethnodoxology is a new field in the world of missions, a newly coined term that speaks to the worship, “ethno” meaning people, and “doxology” meaning praise or glory. It’s how the different peoples of the world praise our great God in their different cultural contexts and whatnot. This is a growing, burgeoning field in missions that’s grabbed a lot of people’s attention just in recent decades of really valuing and validating the local expressions. Missionaries not coming in as used to be done all too often bringing the gospel dressed in their own cultural clothing. They brought not only the gospel, but too often they brought English and they brought their own dress or their own instruments or own styles and music and whatnot. But there’s been a wonderful development of missionaries being trained and developed to go in and be listeners and learners and take the long route of really immersing themselves in the culture, and then and only then, perhaps, being able to be part of the discussion about what can effectively be used from the culture in the local expressions of worship as the gospel reaches them. So it’s a wonderful development in the field of missions and has been so effective. They get the Bible translated into their own language and say, “Well, God speaks my language, not just the white man’s language or something coming from the outside.” But the same thing happens with the arts when they say, “Well, God loves my music or my art or my whatnot, and not just what’s brought in from the outside.” That’s been a wonderful and freeing development and so effective in letting people be who they are, what they are, what’s already built into their DNA from childhood up, and that can be a way to give expression to their worship. In this conference we had that you were part of, Roger, in Africa, the Maasai people came from Tanzania. They’re very distinctive in their dress. They’re very tall and wear these red plaid costumes, and they have very distinctive forms of dance and dress and music and whatnot. It was explained to us at the conference that for a long time, the gospel was not making inroads into their culture until somebody, missionaries were able to make clear to them that they could become Christians and still be Maasai, that they could bring their own expressions to bear in expression of Christian faith. And then the gospel took hold, and many, many of them came to Christ. So just that valuing and validating of who people are and their culture and the air they breathe has been such a powerful force in missions in the last decade. Now, the complication I started to make reference to with this is that whether we like it or not, part of the reality is that young people all over the world, especially in urban areas, because of modern communication and the internet and globalization and whatnot, whether we like it or not, Western popular styles of music are part of what we call the heart music of young people all over the world. We want to value local expressions and local instruments, but it can’t be an either/or thing. We don’t want to stomp out the old traditional ways, but we don’t want to say, “Well, the new ways come from the West and they’re not allowed” when it’s what the young people want, what’s being built into them in their own cultural context. So there has to be a both/and, and that makes it complicated and tricky, but we need to give place to both. And we find that in my country, in the United States as well. You have issues like that between generations here. You have cultural differences, not just between countries or nations. You find cultural differences within individual churches, especially between the generations, young and old, who see things and like things and prefer things in much different ways from one another. And so, again, it needs to be both a teaching aspect and a discipling aspect for the young people to honor the old and the older people to honor the young, and that they both have valid expressions to bring. If I could tell a quick story that I heard once at a conference. Joe Stowe, who was president of Moody Bible Institute at the time, told this beautiful story. They have a radio station and decided to change their music format. For many, many years they had traditional old-fashioned church hymn, gospel hymn-type music, and they decided to change to a more contemporary music format. They received a letter from an elderly woman who wrote, “I’ve been listening to your station and supporting it financially for years. And I just love the old hymns and the things you broadcast. And now you’ve gone and decided to change the format to this more contemporary style. But,” she wrote, “if you think that’s what’s needed to reach the youth of today, I want you to know I’m 100 % behind it. Here’s my check.” And I thought, “What a beautiful, mature Christian who understands that it’s not just about her, or what I want or what I like.” I often tell that story because I think it’s such a tremendous expression of true Christian love and maturity that we need more of. Roger I think it’s interesting about that story of the dancers. I remember them coming in. The rings around their necks and legs and wrists would make this sound that was rhythmic. We were all just amazed at the dress that they had on. But then I remember a number of us Westerners afterwards saw that after the worship service, they changed and changed into Western clothing. Ron Oh, did they? I didn’t even notice that. Roger We’re like, “Oh!” I think that’s one aspect of what you’re talking about too. It’s not just either or. They are children of Western culture as well that’s prevalent worldwide, but they can also worship through their traditional art forms and feel like, “Yeah, this is special. This is part of our heritage, part of our ancestral family.” But at the same time, they can also join in worship services that have a Western style as well at other times and be able to engage in that. Ron I come home after church and change clothes too. Perhaps that’s a similar thing. Roger Yeah, a mutual friend of ours, Nancy Nethercott, just sent out her newsletter. I don’t think she’d mind me sharing the story of her at a singing, songwriting workshop somewhere in the world. It wasn’t just about writing new songs in their language, but they ended up adopting themes that are not often talked about in what we may find in Western hymnody or something. Because of where people are coming from in their cultural context, their history, different things they’ve had to go through, they end up wanting to sing about different themes, different perspectives of God’s traits and characteristics than what we may often see. Ron Very interesting, yeah. They’d be topics that wouldn’t be normally dealt with in their own culture. Roger Right. For example, let me give one that I have experience with. A topic we often see in American songs is rejoicing in God as the resurrected savior, the one who was crucified, but he has come again and he has victory over the grave. And that seems to be something that a lot of contemporary songs today embrace. Whereas in Japan, when we’re writing contemporary songs, it’s usually about the suffering of Christ on the cross. So American songs in general may tend to focus on Easter. Japanese contemporary songs may tend to focus on Good Friday. They’re both true, and you need elements of both, but it’s just because of…Japanese are especially… I don’t know, sensitive, I could say, to the beauty in suffering, the beauty that comes through brokenness. And seeing that in the gospel is something that’s so attractive to the Japanese. And they love singing about it. A lot of the songs I’m thinking about that we’ve written in our church, that Japanese people have been writing, end up having those themes of the suffering servant or the God who knows our pain. Ron Yeah, I have a friend who wrote a dissertation on looking at some American songs and hymns and whatnot, and there is that tendency, like you’re saying, of this everything’s great, everything’s fine, looking ahead at what’s what, and not always dealing with some of the hard realities of life. In any culture, I think there needs to be some balance and not neglect one and just focus on the other. Roger Yeah, I really believe God speaks through our cultures in different ways, showing his glory, but in ways that help us see him that really fit where we are at as a culture. Some cultures have been really beaten down over the years. And so you end up seeing that in their prayers. You end up seeing that in their worship songs. Ron Again, it’s both/and. You have to transcend the culture in a certain sense because you can’t just stay wallowing in the sadness and whatnot because there is victory in Christ and whatnot, but you need to bring the reality of life into our expressions and lament and things like that and have an appropriate place as well. Roger Yeah, I want to ask. This conference you’re referencing is GCAMM, Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions. There is a conference coming up this September, which is really exciting. You’re on the board of this organization. I’d like to hear from you more about what this is and how it got started. Ron Well, this is our 20th anniversary celebration. We started 20 years ago, and we’re going to be at the same location we started at 20 years ago at Southwestern Baptist Seminary in Fort Worth, who has welcomed us with open arms and are really helping us get this thing going. Since then, we met in Minnesota, then we moved overseas. We met in Singapore, Chiang Mai, Thailand, and Nairobi, Kenya. And the last one was during COVID. We had to do an online version of it, as so many other organizations did. We’re back in person, and we’re excited about this 20th anniversary. Right before COVID, we decided to change the name. Originally, it was GCoMM, Global Consultation on Music and Missions. We realized that we needed to broaden it, that there’s a place for all of the arts, so visual arts, spoken arts, dance, and all the others. And so, we decided to change the name. We were already reflecting that in what we did, but we wanted to make it more explicit and honor the other arts and not just be primarily about music. So it is now the Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions. Roger Why did it start? What was the purpose of these? Ron Well, it was to gather people from many different nations and basically celebrate the diversity we’re talking about, and expressions in worship and music, the arts and music in worship in the church, and also in outreach and missions and ministry and discipleship and whatnot. These gatherings have usually been about 200-250 people from about 35 different nations. We have had and will have this fall, plenary speakers giving some biblical foundations again, but there are also a lot of breakout groups talking about specific arts, areas of the arts, specific issues that we face. We’ll gather in breakouts in regional, global regions of the world and break up that way. Lots of time for fellowship and interaction. That networking is just a huge aspect of that. 20 years ago, when the first GCoMM was held, another group was born at the same time called the International Council of Ethnodoxologists. The name has since been changed because ICE sounds too much like border control in the United States. And so they changed the name to the Global Ethnodoxology Network. GCAMM is an event and GEN is a global organization, not really an organization so much as an umbrella network of people all over the world that are involved in using the arts in different ways in missions, work, outreach, worship, teaching, discipleship, and whatnot. It’s just a way to connect people and resource people and help people see how they can cooperate together. It’s been wonderful how both the organization GEN and the event GCAMM have grown over the years and have been particularly valuable. I think you, Roger, yourself have given testimony to what it’s meant in your life. Maybe you want to comment on that. Roger Yeah, definitely! But as you were speaking, I was thinking about the discussion you led at the gathering in Kenya. It was interesting to me how they were talking about which instruments are okay to use in worship. There was a traditional instrument that, I forget the name of it, but that the people were like, “Oh, no, you can’t use that instrument in worship because it has religious significance that isn’t Christian. That’s very distracting, so we can’t use that.” But in the discussion, we found out that if they had just moved … what was it? … a piece of red cloth, one little change to the instrument, and suddenly it was okay. Because then it wasn’t used for idol worship anymore, it could be used for Christian worship. We all around the room were like, “Oh, interesting!” To be able to share stories like that and to hear about the debates that people are having around the world and to share that together was fascinating to me. Ron Because it’s part of that whole discussion is that as we say, we want to value and validate local expressions. It does not mean that anything goes. We don’t just pull anything from the culture. One of the most common questions I get when I travel is the question, “Is such and such music appropriate for use in Christian worship?” It can be in all different kinds of categories. It’s a difficult question. Sometimes, like I said, even in my country, the generations will have different ideas about what’s acceptable and what isn’t. But the fact of the matter is that it’s tricky, and it doesn’t mean you just pull anything in from the culture, but you have to use some discernment and biblical wisdom. A lot has to do with associations, as you were saying, if a particular instrument or a particular music or art form was used in ancestor worship or demon worship even, that maybe you better leave it alone or at least remove the “red cloth,” to make it acceptable. Actually missionaries, ethnodoxologists or arts consultants as they’re sometimes called, are receiving pretty advanced training now to be able to go into these fields and use discernment and help the people consider together some of these things and what can be fruitfully brought in and what best be left alone. It’s a tricky thing. The Bible doesn’t address all these different instruments and art forms and whatnot, so we need to bring biblical wisdom to bear. Paul says, “All things are lawful, not all things are profitable.” What’s going to be profitable? That will differ from culture to culture. What can be brought in and what should we best leave alone and not bring in? It takes care. It needs wisdom. It takes some specialized training, but also listening to the locals, as you’re saying, to hear their stories and what their real intentions are and meanings and associations are, so we can make those decisions in a biblical and wise way. Roger Yeah, definitely. The first GCAMM I went to was in Chiang Mai, Thailand. First of all, the thing that impressed me the most was the love that everyone was showing for each other. These are people from all over the world wrestling with these questions. What does worship look like in our context? We met at a school there, a Christian art school, and dance is really big at that school. So we were led in worship through traditional Thai dance. I guess before that point in my mind, I thought of the arts as something like contextualization, only a tool that you try to use to reach people. But when it comes from the native people themselves, like the Thai saying, “This is our native dance. We want to use this to worship God. What does that look like?” And to figure it out within that community was just such a beautiful thing. It didn’t seem contrived. There was a beauty about it that just made my own heart sing, “Oh, there’s so many ways that we can praise God.” And I felt like I was getting a picture of heaven itself, where I’m not just praising God in different languages, but through every culture, every dance, all the traditional clothing of the world. To see just a little glimpse of that was such a beautiful thing that led me in worship. I think as missionaries, sometimes we have this concept that we come in and think, “Okay, how can I contextualize this so that those people know the gospel?” and fail to see the reverse happening. Like, “Oh, I am led in worship of God because of what I am seeing the people here doing.” Ron Right. The beauty of that diversity is what you’re talking about, I think. Like you say, there can never be too many ways to praise our Almighty God. God is a creator God. He’s created a world of incredible diversity. I think that diversity honors him and glorifies him when we can bring all that to bear from all the nations of the world and give our own expressions to it and not a one-size-fits-all approach to it. Roger Yeah, I think what you just said there, that explains why people should come to GCAMM in September, right? Is to see all these different ways that God is being praised and be drawn in themselves. Is there anything you’d add to that? Why do you think they should go? Ron As I said before, a lot of it is just networking and connecting with people and learning from what others are doing. But how can we cooperate together? We’d love to see regional conferences like this spun off, or people from East Asia, like you, and there’s a group in Europe that’s talking about having one there. There’s a group in the Caribbean that would like to pull one together. South America. We’d love to see that happen as well. You’re informing, enriching one another, instilling cooperation and mutual aid and cooperative efforts and things we can do together. There’s a lot of opportunity for that. There’s a rich learning environment. Networking is the name of the game, I think, in many ways when it comes to this, that’s just mutually enriching. It’s a great place to network, like you said, on a level that comes from a common love and commitment not only for the Lord, but for worship and for artistic expressions of worship. Just to bask in the glory of all that diversity is something that is really rich. I’ve come away really impressed and loving the Lord more and his people more just from seeing that glory. Roger Well, I can’t wait. Hey, let’s do it now. No, I guess we’re going to have to wait. Ron Till September. September 11-14 in Fort Worth, Texas at Southwestern Baptist University. You can find out all the information at https://gcommhome.org/. All the information is there about all the things happening and how you can register and whatnot. The GEN, the Global Ethnodoxology Network, this umbrella organization has a website too that’s called https://www.worldofworship.org/. But the event in September, we’re really excited about it. People are signing up or gathering that diversity from the nations to come and celebrate together. We’re very excited that Roger Lowther is going to be one of our plenary speakers, and he’s going to speak to us from his context of his fruitful artistic ministry in Japan. But he’s also, as he was telling me today, is going to share about just what GCAMM has meant to him and how it’s enriched him and widened his horizons. He’s just a great poster boy for the event and what it can mean among an arts worker. Roger Yeah, I’m really honored to have the chance to share how it really has changed the way I think about ministry as we do it in Japan. Ron That’s wonderful. That’ll be really encouraging to hear at this 20th anniversary celebration as well. Very cool. Roger Well, we need to stop soon. But before we do, I’d love to let people know about your book that’s coming out. It’s pretty exciting. Can you tell us something about that? Ron Well, I’ve got a basic course that I teach on the biblical foundations of worship that just walks people through and deals with some fundamental introductory issues about worship, the revelation and response paradigm of worship, and walks the students through the Old Testament, the New Testament, talk about the centrality of worship throughout the Bible and how that’s a major theme, if not the integrating theme of the whole scriptures and the biblical story. I’ve been teaching this course, and I’ll be teaching this fall in Turkey, which will be the 40th country that I’ve had the opportunity to teach on worship. I’ve had tremendous opportunities. One benefit along with all the downsides of COVID was that it gave me an opportunity, because of not being able to travel so much or at all, to actually put that course into book form. That’s what I’ve done. As I grow older and maybe will travel a little less if I’m not able to come. I’ve got a book now to say this is the course. This is basically everything I’ve been talking about, everything I’ve been teaching for the last 20 years I’ve now got into a book. I’m really excited about that. I have a publisher. It’s in process. It’s going slowly. Hopefully, it will be out this fall, I think. But anyway, it’s called, Let Us Draw Near: Biblical Foundations of Worship. That phrase, of course, comes from Hebrews 10:19-22, where it says, “Since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh,” the writer says, “let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith.” Christ has opened the way, done everything necessary to have free access into the presence of God, a uniquely New Testament understanding of worship. And that open access we have in and through and even with Christ into the presence of God. That’s the title, Let Us Draw Near. It’s laying biblical foundations of Worship. It’s going to be a big book. It’s a textbook. But I’ve just poured everything into it, everything I know virtually and everything I’ve been teaching about for 20 years. I’m excited that it’s down and I’m excited too that it’s going to come out. I hope this textbook will be useful in schools and to lay people, anybody who wants to know these biblical foundations in our worship. Roger Yeah, it’s very exciting. I’m so glad it’s finally getting into print form because I’ve been able to hear you speak in a number of places in the world now, including Japan. I remember when you were teaching in my home, we had a large group of people, and that ended up sparking conversations that lasted for months afterwards, people just trying to wrestle with the content that you’re bringing up. So it’s going to be used mightily, I know. So, Ron, thank you so much for sitting down tonight. It was awesome to be able to talk with you about these things. Ron Well, it’s a pleasure. Thank you. I always love talking about it. And looking forward to maybe seeing many of you at GCAMM in September. Roger Yeah, I’ll see you there! So GCAMM is pretty cool, and I really do hope to see many of you there. This is Roger Lowther, and you’ve been listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”