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Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. And I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Well, Happy New Year everyone! It’s good to be with you in 2026. I hope you’ve had a good year so far. Two of my boys are in college now but were able to be back with us over the winter break, and we got to have some fun in the snowy mountains of Japan, including an overnight snowshoe camping trip up one of the tallest mountains in Japan. It was beautiful, but it was also very, very cold. So cold, in fact, that the water in our water bottles froze almost immediately. And my fingers stuck to any kind of metal I touched. But so many good memories.
Anyway, I want to thank you so much for your support of our newest children’s book, The Tsunami Violin, which was released late last year. Many of you have been writing me notes of encouragement, telling me who you’ve gifted the book to or your own experiences with the story. I want to share one of them with you. One woman read the book to her granddaughter’s elementary school class. In her note to me, she wrote,
“Every child was wide-eyed and engaged. Students were able to identify how the characters were happy at the beginning, how they were changed by the tsunami, and how at the end of the story they were happy again because they were able to bring others hope through their story and their music. I will always cherish this special time with the students and that it was possible because of your book.”
So of course I’m encouraged to receive notes like this and pray that this book will continue to have an ongoing impact in people’s lives.
In our last episode, we shared a little bit about the making of The Tsunami Violin and the people involved. I thought you may also like to hear a little bit more about the background of what went into the making of the book. We consciously followed the traditional sonata-allegro form that is so common in much of classical music. In the beginning, we have the exposition, when the main theme is introduced. The main character is introduced as a tree, living in a literal garden of paradise, a forest that was planted 400 years ago and was designated as one of the most beautiful sites in all of Japan.
Then everything falls apart. The tsunami comes and physically breaks the tree, tearing her up by the roots. This is the beginning of the development section, when the melodic theme is broken into fragments. Also, the development is usually in the minor key to express sadness.
Then in the story the craftsman shows up, has the tree cut into smaller pieces, takes them to Tokyo, and begins to build a violin out of them. So this is the part where the development continues, where melodic fragments are taken through different keys and different ways: backwards, forwards, and upside down. Sometimes they find new relationships with a secondary theme. In other words, the fragments are put back together in new ways.
And then the story ends with the main character finding hope and new life as a violin, surrounded by community through her music. And this, of course, is the recapitulation, the opening musical theme but as a new creation. Somehow that theme is deeper and more beautiful for having gone through the trauma of the development, through the breaking, through the minor key, and we hear the melody with new ears. I pray that as you read this book, you will be filled with new wonder as to how God brings hope into broken lives.
Okay, today I want to share with you a conversation I had with Jerrod Partridge, a phenomenal artist working in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. He and his wife Jessie play a central role in the life of the community there, running a studio right on the main strip, and also in the lives of so many artists including, recently, a Japanese intern who came from our community here in Tokyo to spend the summer with that family. I so appreciate them and am happy just to be able to share this conversation with you so that you can get to know them as well.
Jerrod
Hello Roger.
Roger
Thank you so much for being on the show.
Jerrod
Yeah, I’m thrilled to be here.
Roger
Yeah, I really wanted people to know you, not just because you’re a phenomenal artist, but also because of your story.
Jerrod
Well, I mean, you’re very integrated into that story. So, it seems appropriate that we’re sitting here talking.
Roger
Yeah. So let me just try to share with listeners what happened. You came to Japan on a 10-day trip, two weekends with a week in between. And during that time, you did a number of events. For example, there was a church that was just starting in a new location called Double O Cross, and they wanted to introduce their space to the community. And so, in order to do that, they hosted, for the first time, an event. I think it was the first event they ever had in that space. They hosted an art show of your work. It was an amazing event. We had a live musician playing a traditional Japanese instrument, and we had wine and cheese. It was sophisticated. A lot of people came in for the first time, and the pastor was so happy.
Jerrod
That was a really incredible experience for me to get to experience the church in Japan, to get to experience the culture, meet so many wonderful, gracious people. It was really, honestly, a life-altering experience for me.
Roger
Also, there’s more about the story of this church. They wanted to plant a second location to have another service, but everyone wanted to be in that one space where the art gallery was because, somehow, I think through events like that, that we were able to do afterwards, people were really drawn into that space. It felt like a place of home. The community really liked being there. It was a space that was a gift to the neighborhood. To introduce that space to the neighborhood through the arts really was a powerful message.
Jerrod
It was very welcoming. The artwork, how it was displayed, and then having the musician play. I did a drawing while she was playing. So that was a neat collaboration. Then, even one of the guys from the church made some refreshments and snacks that related to the work. Because I do a lot of drawings with walnut ink, he had snacks that were made with walnuts and things. And I thought that connection and relationship was so thoughtful and really made the whole thing have depth and meaning beyond just pictures on the wall.
Roger
Right, and you should know, too, that some of the relationships made for the first time in that event have continued through that church and through our artist community. I still am talking to those people.
Jerrod
Yeah, that’s amazing. And likewise, relationships that I’ve made have continued.
Roger
So cool. Well, then the next day, I think it was, or a day later, we had an event at our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, where we hosted a talk and luncheon before worship and sold some of your works. You were able to talk about it over a sushi lunch, and we also had a Q&A time.
Jerrod
Yeah, that was really fascinating. It was eye-opening for me, some of the questions that came out, because there are things that we just don’t think about necessarily. We don’t consider how a different culture is going to see your processes and interpretations. One thing that I specifically remember I do a lot of work on handmade paper, and the paper is intentionally really textured. I leave openings and holes. It’s real rough. But I know the Japanese people are used to paper making in such a high form. The paper that they make is so gorgeous and perfectly done. So there was a little confusion of why would you make paper that’s so rough and imperfect. But when I explained the process, there was a really neat connection of understanding why I would choose to do it in that form. So that was a really wonderful memory. Then also the question of why I might have been painting some of the things I was painting.
Roger
Yeah, I remember that. My church sponsored the event, and we made it clear you were a Christian. It was not necessarily a Christian event, but it was hosted and sponsored by Christians. One of the people asked, “Why do you, as a Christian, why are you painting Shinto Shrines? Why are you painting Buddhist temples?”
Jerrod
Yeah, that was fascinating. It was an eye-opening question for me because as a foreigner, everything was new and different and visually exciting. I didn’t think too much about why, as a Christian, I might be drawn to these things visually.
Roger
Do you remember what your answer was to their question?
Jerrod
Only vaguely. Because I was a little bit surprised by the question. So, you tell me what you remember.
Roger
I remember you saying, “Because it’s beautiful. I wanted to paint it because it’s beautiful.” But they were a little bit surprised by that because I think there’s a pretty strong message to, especially Christians in Japan, that you should not go to shrines, you should not go to temples, that it is contrary to what the God of the Bible desires. And they try to avoid that side of Japanese culture, which is such a huge part of Japanese culture. It’s a real struggle in the Japanese church, I think.
Jerrod
Yeah, and I could see that struggle and was glad to be aware of the sensitivity of that. But at the same time, I did feel like the message of the fact that a Christian can see the beauty of what is created by non-Christians, but also the beauty of the fact that everybody are children of God, that whatever understanding we may have of religions, of culture, that there is beauty all around us in God’s creation, but also in man’s creation. And that can be celebrated. That can be celebrated through our approach as Christians without having to limit ourselves to the person making the creations. They have to believe what I believe for me to appreciate what they’re doing. And I just think that that limitation is unnecessary and not helpful.
Roger
Yeah, I actually I have a lot of discussions with Christian artists in Japan about this, and t
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 jus
Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. I’m your host, Roger Lowther.
I have an exciting announcement to make. Our next book, “The Tsunami Violin,” comes out next month, November 2025. We’ve been working on this project for some time now, and we are so excited to finally be able to share it with all of you. This book is based on real-life events that happened after a tsunami hit the northeast of Japan in 2011 and tells a story about a tree that is completely destroyed, along with a forest she lives in and her town. And then a master craftsman, a woodworker, comes along and redeems her and forms her into a beautiful violin, which now currently travels around Japan and around the world, giving concerts and telling people her story. We’ll have more information about that in our next podcast.
For now and along this same theme, I want to share a conversation I had with Vince Black. He is a woodworker and pastor from Fort Collins, Colorado. Every month, we invite an artist to come and share their art with us after a meal and then lead a discussion. “What does their art have to do with our lives? What does that have to do with the Christian faith?” Art, life, faith. When this artist can speak English, I ask them to record one of these podcasts so that we can share the story with you as well.
Vince looks for downed trees in the forest, which are badly damaged. Either they’re badly burned or beetle-eaten or something else happened to it. It just looks like trash laying on the ground. And then he redeems them and carves beautiful objects out of them: flower vases, bowls, cups. His whole message is about finding beauty and hope in this world coming from brokenness and death.
In the very beginning of the event, Vince shared a little bit about one of his projects sculpting people without any limbs, which led to a fascinating discussion in perfectionist Japan. He talked about Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” which seeks to show the perfect proportions of the male body. And the question was what happens when a body does not meet those proportions? Does that mean it’s no longer ideal? Does it mean it’s broken? Does it mean it’s not beautiful? The Bible tells us that in heaven our bodies are perfect. Does that mean that everyone has all their limbs in heaven? These are just some of the things that we talked about.
Vince also shared about the death of his 18-year-old son. Then my wife, Abi, shared a little about her 18-year-old niece, Lydia, who had a genetic mitochondrial disease. At that time, all the organs of her body were slowly shutting down. She was suffering and in a lot of pain, and there was nothing the doctors could do to heal her. When Vince spoke, it was earlier this year in January, and Lydia died that very next month. Abi went to the funeral and brought one of Vince’s flower vases and gave it to Lydia’s mom and told her the story. This flower vase was particularly damaged by a forest fire and showed its suffering. And yet, it was beautiful. It was the perfect gift for that time of grieving, and to show the incredible beauty we can find in brokenness, and to share that we’re not alone in our grieving, and that God is always present with us, and that suffering is not the end. His art gives just a little peek into what God is doing in this world and the beauty that he will one day bring out of all suffering.
There was another person we also gave Vince’s bowl to that was going through a very difficult time. We always keep one of his flower vases in a place of honor in our living room where everyone can see it and be continually reminded of his message. If you ever come to Japan and visit us, you can see it sitting there in the living room. Vince’s time with us was really meaningful, and I’m so glad that I now get to share it with all of you.
Roger
Vince Black. Thank you so much for being here.
Vince
It’s good to be here. Thanks for having me.
Roger
Yeah, I’m really intrigued by you and your art. We’ve talked a little bit before we started recording. Why don’t you introduce yourself?
Vince
Sure, I am Vince Black. I have a history in art. I’ve always wanted to be involved in art. It’s something I grew up desiring to be in. I went to a small school and studied sculpture, so I have the very useful degree of sculpture that will get you a job in a coffee shop or something like that. I studied classically under one artist. We had a lot of fun and worked on the human form for four years. It was a beautiful time. From that point on, I moved toward ministry, toward being a pastor. People have brought up the corny joke that I am now sculpting hearts instead of sculpting other materials.
Roger
Oh, nice.
Vince
But I’ve been a pastor for about 20 years and have always been interested, still interested in art, and have been in art circles, talked to artists, had artist groups at our church, but have just recently, over the last couple of years, gotten back into art again. Physical, tangible, sculpting art.
Roger
Now, you’ve brought some of these pieces with you. I have them right here on the table, and I’ve been noticing some are heavy, some are light. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what we have seen in front of us?
Vince
Yeah. About two years ago, I started turning wood on a lathe. I was given a lathe, an old lathe from a friend. A lathe, if you don’t know what it is, it’s a tool that will turn wood very quickly toward you. It’s spinning at 2,000 RPMs towards you.
Roger
That’s dangerous.
Vince
Yeah, so it can be dangerous. This old lathe that was given to me, I had no idea what I was doing, took a spin on it, and threw the wood across the room that I was in. I knew that that was a dangerous thing but was intrigued enough by it. This is something that could really be interesting. Got a newer lathe and started turning wood, and we can talk through all of that. But I’ve got here four pieces that I brought with me to give a sense of what I’m doing. The whole thrust behind the work that I’m doing is taking something, a piece of wood, that has been either gone through fire or death through beetle kill or some other insect that has been downed. That would typically be either thrown in a fire or brush pile or just lay to rot. I’ve taken those pieces and turned them into what I think is a beautiful piece of work.
I have a bowl here that’s about 6 inches in diameter. It’s aspen. Aspen you see all over Colorado, but this one has burn marks on it from a fire that it has gone through in a canyon that’s near our house. That’s one piece. You can see the beautiful white or yellow tones of the wood with some scarring on it from the fire. I have another smaller vase that was pine. And pine in Colorado goes through a couple of different destructive things. One is beetle kill. Beetles will infest a pine tree and then begin to go from pine tree to pine tree, and just take out entire forests through the kill. And what happens is it leaves them, leaves the sticks or the stumps of these trees there dry, which makes them very susceptible to fire. So many trees will be killed by beetle kill and then taken out by forest fire. So you can see on the edge of this one, the charred bark around the side of it that’s been taken out by fire, but probably before that beetle kill.
Roger
Yeah, it’s gnarly, like how it sticks out like that. I really like it.
Vince
So what I’ve been trying to do over the past couple of months is bring some smooth, beautiful edges out of the harsh, as you said, gnarly pieces of wood to show both the beautiful and the destroyed in one piece.
Roger
It’s a nice color contrast, too. It has the black against the white with the brown texture of the wood. What about that one?
Vince
So this one is ash, and you can see the visible marks of the beetles that trace all the way through it, eating away the wood and eventually killing it. So that’s what took this tree out. And again, leaving some of the bark edges on the side of it, trying to pull up some of the beautiful smooth insides of it, but still leaving the remnants of the beetle killer. And then this one is a small juniper vase, probably three or four inches tall. And the juniper, it’s also called redwood. It’s got the red inside of it coming out of some of the white flesh here and then leaving some of the bark that’s been taken down as well. That’s been my desire recently from these turnings is to have some of the remains of what we see in the death of the tree, but from that, carve out some or turn some of the beautiful softer edges of it to show both, to show the contrast, which I think, and my whole desire this is to show the beauty that comes from the brokenness that has been left. So we see the discarded, the destruction that’s there, and the redemption that can come from some of those harshly treated pieces.
Roger
Why would you want to do that? I think we’re often taught to try to look away from brokenness and from pain, from suffering. For you, too, when people make things, they try to make it usually as perfect as possible, to have no blemish. You’re embracing the brokenness. Why? Tell me more about that.
Vince
Yeah. There’s a story behind a story, and part of this goes back to two years ago. We have five boys. Two years ago, we lost a son to cancer, 18 years old, fought for a year and a half. Even in the hospital, he began sketching out. He would draw and sketch some things. He began sketching out this image of a skull that had been turned upside down, and he drew flowers coming out of it, even in the hospital, as he was thinking through this. As we talked to him, he said, “One day, there will be some beautiful things that come from death.” This was before he knew his end was near. That really has struck me. From that, my wife and I began talking after we lost our son, Ezra, we began talking about just some healing for me and a place of being able to be creative again. I wanted to show some of the beauty that can come from death. You brought up many people try to turn from
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
Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther.
Well, before we get this episode’s interview, I want to share a couple of updates with you. A couple of weeks ago, we launched the Japanese edition of Third Culture Kids, which is designed to help Japanese families living overseas with the challenges that come from raising kids in a foreign context. We know it’s going to be a big help to a lot of people, and so we’re excited to see that it made it to the top 10 for Christian books in Japan and the top 20 for family relationships.
We are also looking forward to the launch of my next book, Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan on August 1. The book is about seeing the beauty of God that’s hidden within the art, history, and lives of people in Japan. In fact, this is a book that has grown out of our Art Life Faith gatherings. Most of the people I tell stories about in the book have been featured speakers in the past. By writing it down with them, this has been one more way to help Japanese people articulate how they see connections between their art, life, and faith. It’s been really fun to see the excitement on their faces as these stories now come out in print. I really hope that even if you’re not interested in Japanese culture at all, that through these books, you will gain a fresh perspective on how God can be worshiped in your daily life.
Well, for this episode I have the privilege of talking to Takahiro Nakamine, otherwise known as Tone, who leads a Christian heavy metal band called Imari Tones, and he led our Art Life Faith discussion the evening after recording this interview. There were a lot of people there, very interested in hearing what he had to say, hear his music, and watch some of his music videos. He has quite a following here in Japan, and it really was an honor talking with him.
I find discussions like this particularly fascinating, because when we consider what it means for ethnodoxology, the praise of the nations of the world, sometimes it’s not what we expect. Takahiro’s music is very Japanese, not because he plays traditional Japanese instruments, and not because he is singing in Japanese, and not even because he incorporates Japanese scales into his music. It’s because he is authentically praising God. It just flows out of his music and leads us to worship God as well. No one can say the West imposed their culture on him. Rather, he took an art form that spoke to him and made it his own. I mean, there is no other heavy metal band in the world quite like Imari Tones. He said he was born to play heavy metal, and I have to agree. Here’s just a little taste of his music.
[“Passion” by Imari Tones]
Roger
So, Takahiro, thank you so much for sitting down with me to talk with people on this podcast.
Takahiro
Konichiwa! Arigato Gozaimasu! Thank you for having me. My name is Tak. I’m from Japan, and I’m in a band called Imari Tones, and we play Christian heavy metal.
Roger
So that I have so many questions for you, but let me first start with your name. So, Takahiro Nakamine, but you said that you’re also called Tone. Why are you called Tone?
Takahiro
Yeah, some of my close friends call me Tone, and basically it’s about my guitar sound. People call it Tone. And because I have a good tone, people call me Tone.
Roger
That’s awesome.
Takahiro
Also, you know, my name is Takahiro Nakamine. That’s my real name, and the first and last letter of these goes like T, O, N, E, so that’s where I got my nickname.
Roger
Very cool. I love it. A musical nickname. And your band is called Imari Tones. Now how did the band get that name?
Takahiro
It’s a long story. Imari is a name of Japanese porcelain, like dish pottery. Japanese old pottery from like the 18th century. We had very beautiful traditional pottery. And this pottery was exported to Europe and was very expensive. So, in a sense, it means Japanese beauty. So that’s one explanation. Since we are a Christian band, I can also say porcelain pottery is made from clay. It’s a jar of clay, like in the Bible.
Roger
That’s so cool. Well, actually, one of the most famous Christian bands in the United States is called Jars of Clay. You are Jars of Clay Japan.
Takahiro
Yeah, you can say that. But the real reason I named our band Imari Tones is because Imari is actually my wife’s name. We were together since we were in high school, so we’ve been together for very, very long time now. We became Christians after we got married. When we were young, we were not Christians yet. But for some reason when I started making music, I named my band after my wife Imari.
Roger
Beautiful.
Takahiro
She’s now playing bass in our band. When we were young, she was not in a band yet. She joined later, and she claimed the band because she was like, this is my band.
Roger
Yeah, it’s named after her.
Takahiro
It’s my name.
Roger
That’s so cool.
Takahiro
It’s beautiful. It’s all hers now.
Roger
All right, so I have so many questions about heavy metal music. The image that comes to my mind is that heavy metal is meant to be anti-establishment, in your face. On your website, you advertise as the first heavy metal Christian band. Right?
Takahiro
From Japan.
Roger
From Japan. Right, of course.
Roger
So what does that look like here? And what kind of response are churches giving you here?
Takahiro
As you know, Christianity in Japan is very small, and the church music scene is obviously very small. Everybody knows everybody. It’s a really small community. But basically we’ve been trying to be not too close and not too far. We have that kind of relationship with the Japanese church, if that makes sense.
Roger
Yeah, maybe most of the churches here are kind of older in age and smaller and maybe traditional in a lot of ways. At least that’s a strong image.
Takahiro
Yeah, I think that’s true.
Roger
So how do they respond to your music?
Takahiro
Many churches don’t allow us to play our music because it’s too loud or something like that. But most people in the Japanese Christian community simply ignore us or try to stay away. Generally speaking, that’s the most common reaction from Christian people here in Japan. But sometimes we have very passionate people who go crazy when they see us perform because we are doing something different.
Roger
Right.
Takahiro
And we are doing something really passionate, energetic, and we are very fun to watch. Yeah, that’s what people say.
Roger
So, yeah, I’ve seen some of your videos up on YouTube, and you have quite a following here with a lot of subscribers. It is a lot of fun to watch.
Takahiro
Thank you.
Roger
I can’t wait to get to see you guys live sometime. But I’m still trying to put this together, the idea of heavy metal and Christianity in Japan. Even before we started, we were talking and you were telling me about how you try to put even some of the Japanese scales into your music. I find that fascinating. I’d love to hear more about that.
Takahiro
So, you know, we’ve been playing this Christian heavy metal music in Japan. When we say we play Christian metal, Japanese audiences say, like, oh, you sing chorus hymns like in a cathedral. And heavy metal, the only Christian band they know is Stryper. That kind of reaction we always receive. When we say Christian metal, people always think of this Western European, traditional kind of church, cathedral thing. But we play something different. Like in the past five years, we have been trying to play heavy metal music based on Japanese traditional music.
Roger
So you play those scales on your guitar?
Takahiro
Yeah, now I’m playing them often. I’m playing Japanese traditional scales like the Hira Joshi, Kokin Joshi, Kumoi Joshi, and Ryukyu scales.
And you know the Japanese national anthem “Kimi Ga Yo.” It sounds like old traditional music. And we turned Kimi Ga Yo into a Christian metal anthem Praising Jesus. We were kinda worried because when we play this song, it’s really obvious it’s the Japanese national anthem, but we are singing the words that praise Jesus in the Japanese language. And so with conservative kind of people in a political sense, we worried some people may get angry and we would get shot or something.
Roger
Oh, no.
Takahiro
So we were kind of worried when we decided to play that song. It is called “God Anthem” and I think it’s one of our most popular songs. And yeah, it’s called Gat Anthem instead of Japanese national anthem. It turned out people love it.
Roger
So is that one of the ones we can hear on YouTube?
Takahiro
Yeah, you can hear it. You can watch it on YouTube.
Roger
Okay, maybe I’ll play a little bit of that in this episode.
Takahiro
Yes, please.
[“God Anthem” by Imari Tones]
Roger
You mentioned earlier that some people just go crazy over your music. They get so excited because it’s so different and unique. Do you have any stories you can share from concerts of people reacting to the music?
Takahiro
Yeah, people always go crazy. People always go nuts. When we play live shows, it’s always exciting, awesome. We have this amazing reaction from people and people say something like, you guys are ridiculously awesome or stupid good. Something like that, you know? So we are not just good, we are like crazy good, stupid good.
Roger
Awesome. I can kind of imagine it because I’ve been to quite a number of black gospel choir concerts where there ends up being this mosh pit up front with people jumping up and down and screaming, waving their arms. Yeah, that’s so cool.
Takahiro
It’s about happiness, joy, overflowing and … I don’t know how to put it in English, sorry. But it’s about the Holy Spirit. Yeah, I believe that.
Roger
So talking more about the style of heavy metal a little bit, how do you think that that style can uniquely praise Jesus? What does it mean for you to praise God through your music?
Takahiro
Yeah, it’s a really deep question. So many Christian people ask me, why are you playing heavy metal? Why did you choose heavy metal? But my honest answer is I didn’t choos
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 runni
Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther.
This episode, I have the privilege of talking with Mike Nawrocki, co-creator of VeggieTales and the beloved voice of Larry the Cucumber. Mike teaches at Lipscomb University, Nashville, Tennessee, and he came over to Japan with his family, a group of students, and another teacher on a mission trip during spring break. We all had an amazing time together making a couple of films and also doing an Art, Life, Faith gathering together. In that event, we showed a short teaser trailer from one of the films made that week, talked about the experience of making the films, including with one of the actresses. We showed some of the short films the students had made in college and then ended the evening with Mike singing some of the VeggieTale songs together with the students. We had so much fun, and I accompanied them on the piano. We also heard a lot about Mike’s new children’s animated series, The Dead Sea Squirrels, which just came out in mid-February, and I can’t wait to share that conversation with you in a little bit.
There were probably, I don’t know, 50-60 people at this event, and one person came up to me afterwards and said, “I don’t know who all these people are, but I want to know who all these people are.” It just shows one reason why we do these. It was a wonderful opportunity to make new friendships. And hopefully, those friendships will last for a long time to come.
Before we get to my conversation with Mike, I want to share a little bit about how this film project came to be, because it’s a really good example of how the arts plays a role in ministry. At one Art, Life, Faith event, I met Kei, a fashion designer and artist. And since then, we’ve often talked about gospel themes in Japanese food. He knows a lot about Japanese food. Eventually, that led into me writing a book, A Taste of Grace, which came out just last summer, full of meditations on the gospel through Japanese food. Well, when that book was released, we did an art life faith together in a beautiful home/art studio that we rented. And in that event, the owner of the venue shared a little bit about his experiences with nukatsuke, a special kind of pickling. And for those of you who’ve read my book, you may remember there was one moment where I whacked my head so hard on a low-hanging door frame. In traditional Japanese homes, the door frames are a lot lower than you expect. You need to duck when you go through. Anyway, at that event, the owner shared this story about how nukatsuke is the haha no aji, the taste of mother, and how it’s one of the most important assets that a family has. He said he was taught that as a child, if the home ever came on fire, it was his job to grab the nukatsuke and make sure it was saved and run out of the house with it, because there’s no way to replace it. If you want to hear more about that story, you can listen to Episode #47 of this podcast.
Well, I was so moved by that story that shortly after we had a church winter retreat, and I shared a little bit with the group. And during it, a young Japanese woman began to cry. After then, she came up to me and she’s like, “You made me cry.” And I said, “Yeah, I noticed that. I was curious, what moved you so much about it.” And she told me the story of how she had a really difficult time growing up with her family. There were many times that she felt isolated, alone, even bullied, and she didn’t have a lot of good memories of that time. And yet when I was sharing about nukatsuke being a way that through Japanese pickling, within a family, it’s one way that God shows his love and care for us. And as she heard that, she realized that even back then, she didn’t know God, but that God was with her, walking with her. And it seemed to redeem that memory for her. It wasn’t all bad. There was some good in her childhood. By the way, this young woman is now one of the leaders in our church in Tokyo. Her story stuck with me.
Well, at another Art, Life, Faith event, I met a young actress in her early 20s, and after talking with her for a little bit, I was like, “It’d be fun to make a movie together.” She’s like, “Yeah, we should do that.” Well, not long after that, Jesus Film Project approached us and wanted to commission us to write and make a couple of films to be able to put on their website for sharing the gospel through Japanese culture. And so it wasn’t too hard for me to come up with a screenplay because I basically just wrote that young woman’s story about nukatsuke in a short film format.
Then the next step, I heard about a group of college students from Lipscomb that wanted to come on a mission trip to make a film. I was like, I have a screenplay, I have an actress, I have a place to film it, I have funding, and now I have a film crew. It’s just amazing how God brought all the different elements together.
It was such an amazing experience with those film students. We had such a good time that who knows, the group may come back next year and make a couple more films for us. But even on top of that, there is also some interest by a couple of the students to become summer interns and stay for longer, 2-3 months next summer. I hope that happens, but we’ll see. So I share that story just to show you how making art isn’t just about coming up with a project and then making something, and then moving on. But it’s all about relationships from beginning to end, seeing discipleship happen, and even seeing people become Christians through the experience.
That’s the reason why we write and publish books. That’s the reason I give concerts and we host exhibitions. That’s the reason that I’m recording this podcast. That’s the reason we continue to invite people into our community through the different events that we do.
Let me tell you just a couple more stories about this. In our church, we have a makeup artist that I was talking with about this film project, asking her to be involved in it. And she said, “Do you need an actress?” And there actually was another actress that we did need for the second film. I said, “Yes, do you know anyone?” She said, “Yeah, my good friend. I’d love to invite her.” I remember this lunch that we had together in our apartment where she wanted to know more. It was basically a get to know each other time and talk about the film. But she wanted to know more. She said, I don’t know anything about Christianity. You’ve told me this has Christian themes in it, so I want to understand that better. Can you tell me what you’re thinking? I turned to the makeup artist and asked, “Why don’t you tell her?” I’m thinking, first of all, she’s your friend, and you speak Japanese better than I do. But also, it was a great opportunity for discipleship, for her to be able to answer the question, to try to put in her own words what Christianity is in the gospel. But she gave me this look back like, “Why are you looking at me? You’re the missionary.” I’m like, “No, you can do this.”
Anyway, she did, and they talk back and forth about it, and then she wanted to know more. So I said, “Well, actually, this is taken from Luke 15 in the Bible. It’s a story that Jesus told.” And she was interested in that. She has heard of Jesus but didn’t know anything that Jesus said. And so we opened up Luke 15 together and read through the parable of The Lost Sheep, then The Lost Coin, and then The Prodigal Son. And she was really engaged. She kept asking questions, and the makeup artist kept answering the questions. It was so cool to see that experience happening because we were making a film. Do you see? It wasn’t really about the film. It was about this relationship, these conversations happening, and the film was just the catalyst for these conversations to happen.
Through the experience, we got to know this actress pretty well, and at the end of it, she’s like, “I’ve never worked with Christians before, but this was so much fun. Please invite me again. I’d love to do this again.” And I told her we’d love to have her again. So, who knows when the next opportunity may be next year. Maybe we’ll be able to do that again. I also gave her one of my books, The Broken Leaf, the Japanese version, saying, “You may find this interesting. Here’s the other things that I’ve been talking about, the gospel through Japanese art and culture, and how I have no right to talk about these things.” I do a whole introduction in the Japanese version that isn’t in the English about what right do I have to talk about this and in a humorous way. Anyway, so the conversation continues.
The other experience I’d like to share with you is how when we were trying to plan the filming for the movie that was going to happen later that week, we also decided to plan a little bit of the Art, Life, Faith gathering that was going to happen, and it ended up turning into this media fest where the students were showing one another the work that they made and talking about it. Then we rehearsed with Larry the Cucumber, with Mike Nawrocki, with various VeggieTales songs. I’m accompanying, and he’s singing Larry, and another student’s singing Bob the Tomato, and another’s Junior Asparagas, and the rest. It was just so much fun. When I asked the students later what the highlight of their trip was, they all said it was gathering in my apartment, overlooking the city, seeing all the lights of the city, all the people out there, knowing that they’re not Christians, and here we were talking about these kingdom themes and how through the arts we’re going to bring it displayed to all these people. And they said they really enjoyed hearing from each other what they had made. It was like this great, encouraging atmosphere of sharing one another’s work with each other, to be inspired also in their own work like, “Oh, what’s the next project I want to do? Maybe I want that person involved in it.” Sometimes I forget how powerful those connections are because that’s my daily
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
Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther.
I’d like to continue in this episode what we began in the last, reflecting on the Lausanne Fourth Congress that happened at the end of September 2024, which I had the honor of attending. Now, these events don’t happen very often. The previous one was in 2010, 14 years ago. This one was by far the biggest, with 5,000 people from over 200 nations, and I’m still trying to process all the material that was there and all the relationships and new people that I met. So in this episode, we will have a longer conversation at the end with Doug Birdsall, who was chairman of the Lausanne Committee for 10 years, as he reflects on Lausanne and its purpose and where it has come from. But first, I’d like to begin by introducing you to some of the people that I met. Here are just some of the conversations I had with people there.
Roger
Please introduce yourself and where you live.
Attendee 1
I am Pastor Philip from Bangladesh.
Roger
What brings you to the Lausanne conference?
Attendee 1
I think Lausanne is a great movement. I already attended Lausanne Cape Town in 2010, and this time I’m here because the main topic is collaborating. This is my desire to collaborate with different people.
Roger
Great. It’s interesting. You went to the previous one, too. How would you compare the two so far?
Attendee 1
That time it happened in Africa. Culturally, it’s a little bit different because we really enjoyed the arts and culture in the African context. Now this is in Korea. There is a big difference of cultural contents.
Roger
Please share your name and where you’re from.
Attendee 2
Well, my name is Jamshetu. I’m from the capital city of Pakistan, Islamabad.
Roger
Awesome. What do you do there?
Attendee 2
Well, I’m running a ministry with the name of MAM, Music on Mission. We are trying to reach children and youth through music.
Roger
What are you hoping for in this conference?
Attendee 2
Well, I like to meet like-minded people and to learn from their experiences and, of course, the networking and collaboration. When you come to the other countries, you see different people with different gifts and different blessings. It’s always encouraging for the people who are serving. You get ignited. You get refreshed. And you get charging in your power bank to work effectively for the kingdom of the Lord. I feel that I’m getting refreshed here because I’m watching so many enthusiastic people for the ministry and people are using their talent skills for the glory of the Lord. It’s really encouraging.
Roger
Nice. Thank you so much.
Hello.
Attendee 3
Hello.
Roger
Now, I’m not going to ask you what your name is or where you’re from because you’re wearing one of those white name tags. Can you tell me what that means?
Attendee 3
For those of us who don’t want to have our picture taken, for the security of our ministry, we’re identified with these white lanyards and a little sticker on our name badges that say no photography, just so that when people take our pictures accidentally those pictures don’t go public or just don’t take pictures at all. Mostly that’s for the sake of security issues within our ministry that we’re serving in closed countries and things like that.
Roger
Now, we’re standing here in a seminar room. Can you tell me what the theme is of the talk that’s just about to happen?
Attendee 3
Oh, yeah. This is the Islam track. We’re all divided into discussion tables talking about different issues in Islam.
Roger
I see there’s a lot of people here.
Attendee 3
There is. It’s pretty packed. Yeah.
Roger
This conference covers people in restricted countries across the globe, right?
Attendee 3
Yes. Even in my little table of six people, there’s different contexts in Central Asia, the Persian world, university ministries, but all within Islam.
Roger
Yeah. And you told me just before we started recording that one of the things you’re hoping to get out this conference is really to connect and be able to collaborate with others. Is that right?
Attendee 3
That’s right. We have Christians and really top experts from all over the world talking about the Great Commission, trying to figure out how to push forward the goal of the Great Commission and mission. And so I’m here to really hear some of the answers to that question.
Roger
Yeah, it really is phenomenal. The people who are here are just amazing.
Attendee 3
Yes, I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been a great time.
Roger
Well, thank you. Thank you for sharing.
Attendee 3
Thank you.
Roger
What is your name and where do you serve?
Attendee 4
My name is Jarvis. I was born and raised in Ghana, but now I’m in Canada serving there in a church and also with the denomination in church planting and church health.
Roger
Okay. What do you do with the church?
Attendee 4
I currently serve with the Free Methodist Church in Canada as Senior Director of Church Health and Church Planting. But as a musician and artist, my music is always going with me wherever I go. I do a lot of singing and worship. I also bring people into my Ghanaian culture with my music. So that’s what I do in Canada.
Roger
That’s cool. What brought you to the Lausanne congress?
Attendee 4
In 2016, I was part of the worship team that led worship at the YLG conference there, the Younger Leaders Gen conference. I’m not sure if I was nominated by somebody there, but two people nominated me. Anyway I have some connection with the Lausanne Movement, so I’m guessing that may have been the reason.
Roger
That’s awesome. It’s great to meet you.
Attendee 4
Thank you.
Roger
Please tell me what you’re doing here at the Lausanne Movement.
Attendee 5
I’m a volunteer. My name is Abel. I’m from Nigeria, but I came in from Germany. I’m a volunteer with the videographer team.
Roger
You just had me record something here. For what video are you making right now?
Attendee 5
The videographer team is doing videos for post-Lausanne. In the next couple of years, we want videos that are evergreen, expressions of God through the Lausanne movement with vision statements and some of the statements for the Great Commission are what we are recording for posterity.
Roger
Great. You’re trying to expand the awareness, too, of what Lausanne is about?
Attendee 5
Yes, definitely. Lausanne is the global church, and the Great Commission is our collective goal. It’s something that all of us should be doing. We are supposed to be disciples of all nations, spreading the gospel throughout the world. That is the aim, and we want to contribute our part to doing that.
Roger
That’s awesome. Thank you.
Attendee 5
Thank you very much. God bless you.
Roger
Would please let me know your name and where you serve?
Speaker 6
My name is Joel, and I come from Rwanda. I serve at my local church as a deacon and a worship leader, but I also serve in the Peace Plan Initiative as a volunteer.
Roger
Okay, now what’s the Peace Plan Initiative?
Speaker 6
The Peace Plan Initiative was started by Pastor Rick Warren from Saddleback Church, and it’s about equipping servant leaders to go for the Great Commission.
Roger
Okay. What is the situation like in Rwanda? What can you tell us about the church in Rwanda?
Speaker 6
Well, the church is growing, and yes, they are being requested to do more at this moment. I like this collaboration that is happening because I believe that there’s a huge gap in unity, but I also see many people rising.
Roger
Yeah, I see that around the world.
Speaker 6
Yes, I see many people rising together to really collaborate and work together for the Great Commission in Rwanda. It’s healing because the past has been a bit hard, but I see the church doing a lot of things in all spaces, education, health, and reaching out to the whole man with love, with God’s love.
Roger
That’s awesome. Thank you. We’ll be praying.
Speaker 6
Yeah. Thanks.
Roger
It truly was an honor to meet all these people from countries across the planet. I think that’s something the Congress did really well, representing the world and fellowshipping together and tackling various themes and problems in the world today. How do we see evangelism expand? You could especially see that around my discussion table in the plenary sessions, where each person was from a different country in the world.
One of the things that we kept hearing time and time again was started by one of the plenary speakers who said that the world today is not post-Christian, but pre-revival. And then that became one of the themes that was repeated over and over again throughout the week. And personally, I really appreciated this optimism about the future, that the church is continuing to grow and that the gospel of grace is reaching more and more people.
Okay, so there’s one more conversation I’d love to share with all of you, with Doug Birdsall, who was the chairman of the Lausanne Committee for 10 years. I came to know him at the same church on the North Shore of Massachusetts, and also he previously served as a missionary in Japan for many years, so we have a lot in common.
He’s just such a kind and generous person. And I thought, who better to help us process the Lausanne Fourth Congress and to help us put it in context of where we where it come from.
Thank you, Doug, so much for being on the program.
Doug
Thank you, Roger. It’s really a pleasure to be with you.
Roger
I’m really especially happy to talk to you about the Congress that just happened to help me process it. I mean, there are so many people we met. There’s so much information. There’s so many themes that were in the Congress. But before we get to that, I want to start with one of the sessions there celebrating the first 50 years of Lausanne. I’d love for you to talk about that a little bit.
Doug
Sure. Well, the evening that we celebrated the 50 years of Lausanne, I was asked by one of my colleagues, a friend from the Philippines, what she thought Billy Graham would say if he was there, or if he knew that there were
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 currentl
Are you a college student? If you are, have you ever considered doing an internship somewhere in the world with a missions team? In this episode, we’re going to talk a little bit with two interns who spent some time with us this summer. Internships are a great way to see what God is doing around the world. But I do have to warn you, they can be a bit dangerous. And I don’t mean in the sense of that you may get sick or physical harm, but rather they may impact your life in ways you never expected. For example, just this week, we had an intern start a three-year term with our team, who was with us for two months last year.
This summer, we had five college students come from around the United States, and because of a gathering with Mission to the World missionaries from across Asia that happened right in the middle of the summer, we decided to split their time. So their first half was spent in Tokyo, and then the second half some of the interns went on to Nagoya, a city a couple of hours south of us with our teammates who run an art gallery there.
We had so many great events. We had some creative art nights where we rented a ballet studio as an open space to gather artists from across the city. It was a time to talk with one another other, hang out together, and make things together. We also had our ongoing monthly Art Life Faith gatherings. One of the interns, Rebecca, spoke about a book that she’s writing, and it was really moving how she shared some of the hard things that she’s experienced in her life, and it gave us a chance to invite some people in our network who have been experiencing something similarly hard. It was a way to discuss these things openly and build deeper community. We also gave lots of concerts and performances here and there. We also held two charity events to raise money for Noto Help, a Christian relief organization that’s working in Ishikawa, the area where that terrible earthquake struck on January 1. The first event was a classical concert where we invited numerous musicians from our network to perform.
Last month, we did a bigger event where many people were involved, called TOGETHER. In the event, we brought together various types of art genres that don’t usually go together. For example, we had Japanese manga and American jazz. Vanessa, one of our interns, shared a little bit about a manga book that she’s writing. She showed her work on the screen, which was at a very high quality. And even though she is just learning Japanese, she worked really hard to speak in Japanese about her time as an American in Japan and how she’s been impressed and changed by Japanese manga. That was paired with a Japanese woman, a pianist, who just got back from her internship in Memphis, Tennessee. She shared about being impacted by American jazz, American gospel music as a Japanese person.
That time was then followed by another set where we had combination of fashion design and western dance and the Japanese koto. The fashion designer handmade the costumes for both the dancers and the koto performer on the theme of butterflies. Then there was a seven-movement work through each of the days of the week with a different theme for each one. I have some great pictures in the show notes, if you want to see. This was followed by another set where we combined the Japanese art of nihonga, where minerals are crushed and attached to paper with an adhesive. While one Japanese artist was making nihonga, another next to her performed the Japanese Art of Tea. I was next to them playing harpsichord music from the 1500s, which is the time when nihonga and the the Art of Tea were developed. So it was an interesting contrast with this western music and Japanese art forms from the 1500s. We ended the whole thing with a live painting by a Japanese artist, who painted with glue on a blackboard though we couldn’t see what she was doing. And then at the end, she threw glitter on, and the whole theme of the event TOGETHER came out in bold letters across it. And then this banner came down in the back, made by this church in Memphis, First Evangelical Church, bringing together people in America and people in Tokyo for the people of Ishikawa. People were invited to come up and collaborate by adding to the work.
And, we had these really cool T-shirts made that said TOGETHER on it, which we were selling in order to make money for the charity event. Half the proceeds of the T-shirts went to the people in Ishikawa. There was also an art gallery where various artists showed their work. And there was ways that people could then interact with those artists, get to know them, and find out how to purchase their work. By the way, if you are interested in buying one of these T-shirts, we still have some leftover for sale and can send them to you. (Please contact us at info@communityarts.jp.)
An event like this is a great way to bring together Christians and those who are not Christians. Church members may not feel comfortable inviting their friends to a worship service, but to invite them to an art event like this, where their church community is going to be, is just a great way to do it. And a lot of the relationships built there last for a long time. They remember who they met, and who they want to meet again. And it leads into other things. In fact, I remember an event, one of the artists at the end, who threw the glitter, actually met her husband at an event like this a number of years ago. And so that just goes to show you. It’s about relationships. It’s about community building.
Another thing about this event that’s kind of cool was that it was an unveiling, a kind of dedication of the space, almost a blessing of the space that we were going to be using from then on many times in worship as Grace City Church Tokyo, right next to the imperial palace, right downtown. Most of the church members had never been there before. By coming to this art event, it was a way to kind of get to know the space that we’ll be using many times in the future, throughout the summer and into the fall.
We left the very next day to go to Ishikawa for a relief trip. Man, I wish I could have taken all of you with me. It was a very moving experience. The first day we spent working on an old home in the city of Wajima, which is one of the cities that was hurt worst by the earthquake. 97% of the homes were badly damaged in the earthquake. Most of what we were doing was trying to clear out the large debris and carry it to the street where it could be carried off in order that the owners could go to the next stage of being able to fix the house. The owners, the family, guided us what they wanted done. They live in a temporary home nearby but want to move in as soon as they can get their house fixed.
We fixed the home in the morning and the early afternoon, and then we went downtown. Wajima is famous globally, actually, for the fire that spread through the area downtown, especially the arts district. Wajima is famous for its pottery. We saw a whole area of melted pottery all over the ground. As a team, we prayed over that area. We prayed for the recovery of the area, and we prayed for those grieving over those that were lost.
Then we went to the busiest intersection downtown, the place with the most cars are and many people walking by. There was a famous scene on the news, here in Japan at least, of a building that fell over, a tall building, almost completely intact. It just fell over on its side, you know, 90 degrees. We set up our music right there at the base of this building, pretty close to the stoplight. And it was, you know, it felt a little bit strange. It was noisy. There were all these cars going by, and none of them could be used because they hadn’t been fixed yet. And it was just like, what are we doing here? But we set up and started to play, and magical things started to happen. I mean, the cars, they could have gone up to the stoplight, but instead they were stopping right in front of us, rolling down the windows and listening. And then finally, when they had to drive off, they would call out, “Ganbatte kudasai! Arigatou gozaimasu!” (“Keep it up! Thank you for being here!”). And they’d call out both sides of the window to those of us who are just watching on the other side. And then to the performers.
My son Coen played the Japanese koto, and I played on mostly Bach on a keyboard. And one of the interns danced. And throughout the time, oh, I don’t know, hundreds of cars went by. It was a really busy intersection, and we were worried when the police came by, but they didn’t stop us. They just watched and listened and then went on. And, like, every 15 minutes, they came by to check on us again. But they never did stop us, which was really cool.
We had one man came up to us and ask, what are you doing? And so we explained, that we just wanted to bring beauty to this downtown area. And he said, “Oh, let me go get my food. I’ll be right back. Don’t stop.” Apparently, he lived in a temporary home not too far away, and he got his dinner, because it was almost dinnertime, and brought it back and sat on the sidewalk to listen to us. And we saw a lot of couples walk by and stop. By the end, we had this ring of people on the sidewalk listening to the concert. And then a TV crew came by who videoed us, watched us, interviewed us, and they said they were going to broadcast us in Tokyo and then nationally throughout the country. So that was kind of cool.
The whole experience was just very moving, with this like, you know, cello in Sarajevo-type feel this event, in the destruction to bring this beauty. It made me think about the concerts I’ve heard about in the news in the Ukraine, of going down in the subway stations and giving concerts because that’s the only safe place that people can gather. It’s just…you wouldn’t expect music to be useful or beautiful in that kind of situation, you know, in the devastation. And at that busy intersection: people
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.
When you walk out of an airport and enter a country that’s foreign to you for the first time, one of the things you might notice is the different smell in the air. And, you know, often these differences come from the food. Food is so closely tied to the identity of a nation which plants you in that place. And cultures are practically defined by their food. Think of spaghetti: Italy. Fish and chips? England. Tacos? Mexico. Curry? India. The list goes on. Obviously, these are only just a few examples.
There are many kinds of foods in each country, and you can find these things in the restaurants as well, right? If you go to an Italian restaurant, you’re going to find spaghetti. In fact, it’s going to be called an Italian Restaurant. The nation and the food are almost synonymous with each other. Now, in the process of becoming a missionary, we are taught to be attuned to cultural elements that can be used for contextualization, for talking about the gospel. So what does the gospel look like in this culture?
Since food is so closely tied to culture, it makes sense to ask the question, what does the gospel look like in this culture’s food? It’s the clearest entry into the ways of thinking of a people. And so I wrote a taste of grace to answer this very question. What is the gospel according to Japanese food? And, you know, when you ask that question, you come up with some pretty interesting answers.
Now, we’ve talked a lot in past episodes about the Japanese aesthetic of finding beauty in brokenness, and I’ve written quite a bit about this as well. My book The Broken Leaf looks at many examples of this in the traditional Japanese arts. In the tea ceremony, the leaves must be broken for the flavor and the aroma and the color to come out. In kintsugi, broken bowls are repaired with golden cracks, and the bowl is more beautiful and more valuable and stronger for having been broken. In the Japanese incense ceremony, the tree must come under severe distress in order to produce the kind of wood that releases a pleasant aroma when heated.
And we find this same aesthetic, beauty and brokenness, in Japanese food. We find it in natto fermented soybeans, Japanese pickling, tsukurani, and so many others. But in this episode, I want to talk about how we see it in Japanese rice cakes called mochi. Now, mochi nowadays can be bought very cheaply at the supermarket, and it is also made in a lot of household machines. But one of my strongest memories from my early years in Japan is the sound of mochi being pounded the way it historically used to be made, with a big wooden mallet.
And this sound is very much ingrained in the memories of everyone who lives in Japan, which is one reason why we have mochi pounding ceremonies every year. As I meditated on mochi, I was amazed at how it led me in worship of God and Jesus sacrifice on the cross. And so here’s a chapter on this from the audio version of my book, A Taste of Grace, released just one week ago on May 27. Have a listen.
The sound of laughter fills the air, along with a distinctly sharp sound of pounding.
Thud. Thud.
The woman next to me turns and smiles. She sports a bright red and white headband and a festive blue, white, and red coat known as a happi, which sounds joyful in English as well as in Japanese. She points to a large wooden mallet the size of a sledgehammer as she encourages me to take a turn.
“I don’t think that . . .” I begin to say, but stop. I can tell by the look on her face that I’m not going to be able to back out of this one. I pick up the mallet, surprised by the weight of it and roughness of the texture, and turn to face the big wooden mortar filled with hot steaming rice.
A man crouches next to the rice, ready to turn it over with his hands between each of my hits.
Don’t hit his hands, Don’t hit his hands, I repeat over and over to myself as I raise the mallet over my head. Or any other part of his body.
Thud. Thud.
I had no idea that mochi-making was such a violent process. In order to make these common Japanese rice squares, the mallet needs to come down hard, hard enough to crush and compress the cooked rice. Every single kernel must be pounded, over and over again.
Hours later, we all suffer from blistered hands and sore backs.
Strangely enough, the source of mochi’s “strength” is in the pounding. The source of its endurance is in its “suffering.” Mochi keeps for a very long time without spoiling. Two little pieces have about the same number of calories as an entire serving of rice. In the cold winter months, this durable food source keeps the body warm.
We often feel like mochi, pounded over and over again by brokenness in this world. Broken relationships. Deceased family members. Unrealized dreams. Sickness. Grief. Our physical bodies naturally pass out to protect ourselves when wounded or in pain or when we hear horrific news. Our emotions and psyche sometimes go numb when faced with an overload of traumatic events. Nothing good can come from pain, we often think. Yet, if perhaps like mochi, pain and suffering can transform us into something stronger, experience shows that the very things which hurt us can actually help us grow.
“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2–4)
We obviously don’t want to face trials of any kind. We don’t want to suffer. Suffering comes nonetheless, and God brings hope into these times by working through the brokenness to shape us into people who are “mature and complete, not lacking anything.”
It’s a fact: comfort does not change us for the better. Just the opposite. It can ruin us, making us unable to change or grow or empathize with others. We must experience brokenness to be reshaped.
I think of Job, a man in the Bible who lost everything—his children, his health, his property—but came to a place where he knew God better and became a blessing to his friends.
“I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes.” (Job 42:5)
I think of many men and women in the Bible pounded over and over again with trials of many kinds that gave them their endurance and strength. I think of the persecution of the early church and the growth that came through it.
God wants good things for us. He does not allow the pain and suffering of this world to be meaningless. By his mysterious power and grace the crushing produces endurance; the pounding brings strength. Adversity prepares us for something greater. Trials push us to know God and rely on him more deeply, to rely on his power rather than our power, to look to him rather than look to ourselves.
Jesus trusted God yet died so that we may trust God and live. He received beatings and suffering for our iniquities so that we may be healed. The hands and feet of Jesus were literally pounded onto the cross for our sake, and the sound of it echoes all the way from the cross to the people of every tribe and nation.
“It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (Hebrews 2:10 ESV)
This life and even our own hearts may try to pound us into the ground, but in the hands of God, our process of suffering merely transforms us to be more like Jesus. Not only that, but he understands what we face. He empathizes with our trials. He experiences our pain. He shares in our suffering.
Here, on this day, as I pound this mochi and eat the fruits of our labor, I have hope, because I remember how, by God’s grace, my suffering is not my destruction.
Thud. Thud.
May the pounding on Jesus, and the sound of the gospel, reverberate in our hearts and around the world.
You’ve been listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. If you’d like to hear more examples of how we can taste the grace of God through Japanese food, check out my book A Taste of Grace, just released last week, available in webstores wherever you get your books. 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”
Just the other day we hosted a Zoom call for our friend Satomi Suzuki to help raise money for her upcoming artist residency. She’s a visual artist and a writer here in Tokyo, but she’s about to head to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. And so in advance of her departure, I asked if she wouldn’t be willing to have a conversation with us.
Roger
I’m sitting here with Satomi Suzuki, and this person . . . I don’t know why it’s taking me so long to introduce y’all to her. She’s been a long-time attender of our Art, Life, Faith gatherings, and she’s so caring, giving to other artists in the room who haven’t been coming very long or who are younger. She has a very caring heart. She is a writer and a visual artist, and you can see that in many of the works that she does. She has published books. She has gallery showings with her paintings. She has been writing lyrics for worship songs that we have at Grace City. It’s so cool that we have many new songs introduced at our church because she’s been writing lyrics for us. And Satomi really is a pillar of Grace City Church. She leads the prayer ministry at the church. Once a month, during COVID, she was doing it online and did an amazing job. Now we meet in the back of the sanctuary before worship every week. And she’s just a help in so many different ways.
Anyway, I’m very glad to have you here, Satomi.
Satomi
Thank you so much, Roger. It’s too much big compliment to me.
Roger
No, no, no. It’s not big enough. It’s not big enough.
Satomi
Thank you.
Roger
Yeah, I really want people to get a little picture of who you are and what it is that you do. So you’re a visual artist. And I remember I went to your gallery showing last year, and there were so many people there.
Satomi
Oh, I’m so grateful for that.
Roger
And they were so happy to be there, too.
Satomi
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Roger
And just the way that you cared for everyone that walked in the room. I wonder, can you tell me a little bit about how would you describe your art to our listeners?
Satomi
Thank you. I really like to draw, but I want to express my image of something like God’s love. I want to express something important we can’t see always, real beauty we can’t see.
Roger
So there’s a beauty that we have that we can’t see ourselves, that God sees in us? Is that what…
Satomi
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right.
Roger
I mean, that’s… As I look at your artwork, it’s so colorful. You know what I mean? Bright colors and lots of colors. And use the image of flowers a lot and oceans. So the beauty we see in nature, I see a lot in your artwork. And so you’re saying that also helps us understand the beauty that God sees in us as his creation?
Satomi
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just like to draw and using colorful stuffs. And there is a wonderful thing. Art is so free, and we don’t have rules when I draw, so I can feel more freedom.
Roger
That’s good to hear. There’s actually in organ music, there’s a lot of rules. People come up to me, they’re like, “You can’t play it that way.” I’m like, “Why not?”
Satomi
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I don’t know. Even I don’t know the rules of the visual art. So yeah, might I should to know the rules of the visual art?
Roger
Well, I think you clearly know what they are.
Satomi
Hope so.
Roger
Yeah. Well, I want to ask you, too. You put out a children’s book recently called I Am An Apple. Can you tell us a little bit about the story of that?
Satomi
Sure. As you know, I’m still an English learner. But when I was learning English, I like this idiom, “You are the apple of my eyes.” And this word is really interesting as Japanese because you are the apple of someone’s eyes, really important to me. So I wanted to express that the apple, the main character is apple, and the apple finds himself. And we always want to know real identity. And if someone says, “You are the apple of my eyes” to someone, it’s really wonderful. And I wanted to express God’s love through the apple.
Roger
It’s beautiful. It’s exactly like you’re saying what you’re trying to say, the message in your art is what you’ve put in the book as well. Just this poor apple. He’s around other vegetables, right? And he’s different. He’s like, oh, he doesn’t know what his identity is, but in the end finds it and the intrinsic beauty that he has.
Satomi
Yeah. And if someone asks you, “Who are you?” can you answer exactly? I’m always thinking those kinds of questions. But if I could say, God is loving me. It’s really great.
Roger
That’s such an important message that people understand how they’re loved. I heard someone say, actually at church just a couple of weeks ago, we had someone come through and share about their ministry and said that in Japan, a lot of people don’t feel loved, that it was something like 50% or something like that, compared to Americans, where it was a much higher percentage. Is that one reason that you are trying to express that as a Japanese artist, as a Japanese person living in Japan? Is it a message that’s really important for people to hear?
Satomi
Right, right. Exactly. And I wanted to share that beauty is not one style. So even if you think yourself, I am ugly, but God says, You are so beautiful because I made you.
Roger
Yeah. I mean, I’ve found… It’s just amazing to me how the words of others really impact us so deeply. If it’s a kind word, we feel encouraged. If it’s an unkind word, it seems to last like 100 times more powerfully than the kind words for some reason. And so I feel like we really need that encouragement, that message that you’re telling, because we forget, because there’s a lot of unkind words that people say, and we can’t seem to knock them out of our head. And so the more people that are sharing, this is God’s love. He sees you as beautiful. You’re important. He gives you your identity. Not what others say, not even what we say about ourselves. We may have a very low image of ourselves, but that’s different than God’s eyes, where he’s like, “No, I made you. You’re important to me. I love you.” I really appreciate how your art speaks that.
Satomi
Thank you.
Roger
I know soon into your journey of becoming a Christian, you went to Israel to learn more. And then you joined Grace City Church soon afterwards, which is the church that I work at. And you told me that I was the first person that you met at Grace City?
Satomi
Yeah, I remember you talked me about… Actually, my name is Satomi. It’s really Japanese common name. Then I hated that. But Roger said, “Oh, Satomi? It’s a beautiful name.”
Roger
It is a beautiful name.
Satomi
Oh, really? Well, thank you. So I was so surprised, and my heart became warm.
Roger
Oh, good. I’m glad we could encourage you. And then soon after that, you started coming to all the different art events we did, and then became a part of the artist community.
Satomi
Because Roger and Abi are always so welcoming. So I can easily join and enjoy the time with people. So I really appreciate that.
Roger
Well, thank you. So then soon after that, I know you joined what we call the Samurai Project here, which is training to learn more about the Bible. It was like a part-time job, right? You’re paid a little bit, and you attend classes all day, and then you do an internship with a church. So now you’re going to Mississippi for this artist residency. You’re going down to Ocean Springs, right on the coast. A beautiful place. I wish I could go to. Tell me what your are hoping for in that residency?
Satomi
Actually, this is super unexpected opportunity for me. So it doesn’t feel like real still. I hope I can meet many people, Christian people. Actually, I don’t have exact what I want to do, but I want to draw, and I want to get so many inspirations from their place and people.
Roger
Yeah, I know you’re going to be spending a lot of your time in an art gallery that just opened up, a husband and wife. And she is a floral arranger making decorations for huge parties and weddings and all sorts of events. I know that’s going to be an amazing experience. And connected to a great church there and all the people there. And there’s this amazing artist community that I got to meet last year when I was there. I’m so excited for you to meet them because I know they’re going to be a huge encouragement to you as well. There’s a number of potters and a lot of visual artists. It’s just such a beautiful place. So I’m really hoping it’s going to inspire you to be able to go to different places and draw and paint and create a lot of work and sell a lot of work.
Satomi
Thank you, Roger. You always give me so many hopes.
Roger
When I saw your gallery exhibit last year, it really struck me that Ocean Springs would be a good place for you to be because of some of your themes of flowers and trees and ocean and sunlight. That’s exactly what that place is. I do pray that it’s going to be a good time for you. Rest and inspiration, and that God will be close to you during that whole time. Do you know yet what your hopes are for the fall when you get back?
Satomi
I always want to live as an artist in Japan. In the world, it’s maybe difficult to live as an artist, but I want to live as an artist because God gave me the gift as a talent and because when I draw, I feel so much joy. I want to spread and I want to share this joy with people through the art. I want to share my artworks more after autumn, after this year. I hope this summer will be my jumpboard of my life to the next step.
Roger
Very cool. And you were telling me before we started recording that you think your next exhibit in Japan will be probably in January after you get back and make a lot of work here. I’m hoping you’re going to sell a lot of what you make in Mississippi. It’s going to be hard to get it all back here.
Satomi
Yeah.
Roger
So how can people see your work? How can people buy your work? How can people hear your story?
Satomi
Yes, through my website. And I write a blog, but all in Japanese, so you can see my website or Instagram.
Roger
Okay.
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
A little update about the situation in Ishikawa since that magnitude 7.6 earthquake on January 1, 2024. What a way to start the year! I talked to some people on the ground today and got the latest news. It’s still a very hard situation. The whole peninsula of Noto, that northern part of Ishikawa, only has a few roads, but they’re still broken. So, it’s making travel really difficult. In order to get from the southern end of the peninsula to where the need is most, it takes at least three hours. And I even heard a report that one trip took nine hours, one way, to get where they were going. Now, this is a real problem because supplies are collecting down in the major hub areas.
The main Christian relief effort is called Noto Help, and it’s being based out of a good-sized church there called Uchinada Church in Kanazawa. They’re making many trips almost daily, but because of the length of the travel time, all they can really do is drop the supplies off and then come straight back. It’s been really hard for them to develop relationships like the churches were able to do after the 2011 earthquake. And so they’re saying that really the biggest need right now is for young Christian workers to be able to relocate into those hardest hit areas for long periods of time. Then they can not only assess the needs and distribute goods, but they can build relationships with people there and become part of the community.
It’s not an easy thing to ask, though. I mean, without electricity, first of all, it’s really cold. And without running water? Means there’s no toilets and no showers. Noto Help did mention that they’ve been thinking about bringing in some portable showers in order to create a base in the northern part of the peninsula, and also to make it available to people in the shelters. But the thing is, it costs like $30,000 US dollars per shower, and they really are only needed for a couple of months or so. They’re really hoping that by that point the water will be running again. However, the showers could be used in future disasters like this. Japan has many disasters, so there is a need for it. So this is one of the conversations that’s being had.
Anyway, they’re hoping that in two months, once roads are easily passable again, there’ll be a big influx of Christian volunteers and longer-term relationship building. Our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, is considering various ways it can help. In fact, we’re planning to take a youth team of junior high and high school students this weekend. A cabin has been offered where the 15 of us are going to stay. Actually, our family went last week to that cabin in order to get it ready. It needed firewood in order to keep the place warm for all of us. And so we found out where the firewood could be bought and carried it in and spent a whole day doing that. After this trip next weekend, I’ll be able to share a lot more about what’s happening in Ishikawa.
This episode, I want to share some stories from Christmas concerts in Fukushima. Yes, that Fukushima, the second-only-to-Chernobyl-nuclear-meltdown-disaster-of-epic-proportions Fukushima. We were invited to that area to give some Christmas concerts. I went with Tsumugu Misugi, who’s a composer and a violinist. Actually, I have an interview with him in the next podcast episode, so you can stay tuned for that. But first, before I tell you about these Christmas concerts, I need to tell you about the tsunami violin that Tsumugu was playing. I actually have a whole episode on it, Episode #31, which if you’re interested you can find on my website.
The tsunami violin is a special violin. It was made specifically from debris from the tsunami in 2011. And the soul of the violin, the sound post which enables the violin to vibrate and make music, came from the Kiseki no Ippon Matsu, the very famous here in Japan “Miracle Pine Tree,” which was the sole survivor of 70,000 trees which lined the coast until they were knocked down by the tsunami. And then it, too, died later from salt left behind by the tsunami. The violin maker, Nakazawa Sensei, made this violin to bring hope to all of Japan. And his aim is for a thousand performers to eventually play this violin. Tsumugu was the 833rd performer. So we were able to take this violin which had so much symbolism to various locations.
First, we were able to go to the top of the Shioyasaki Lighthouse near Iwaki to play some music. I have a picture of Tsumugu playing at the top of it in the show notes for this episode. It’s a very famous landmark in that area. It was really badly damaged in the earthquake, repaired, and now, once again, it’s a source of light in the darkness. And it’s within sight of a town called Usuiso that was completely destroyed in the tsunami. Now, listen to this. Over 20% of the population was lost in the tsunami, the highest percentage of any town in Japan. When you look at how the town was built, you can kind of see why. The main road goes along the beach, and all the homes and stores are right there on the other side of the road. You actually have to go down the road quite far to the north or to the south in order to leave the beach area and go up into the hills. And next to it, there’s these cliffs, so steep that it doesn’t look like there’s any way to really climb up them. And so I’m told that some people just stood there by the side of the road and watched that tsunami come, facing it head-on, knowing that they didn’t have time to get away, that there was nowhere to go in time. I can’t imagine. Here it is 13 years later, and they’re still continuing to build that area, but it’s mostly just vacant lots.
That next day, we took the violin and my portable digital organ to give a concert to hundreds of people in an event called Iwaki Christmas. 30 churches from across the city of Iwaki came together for this event to bring unity across the city. After the nuclear power plant disaster, tens of thousands of refugees had to flee the area very quickly and moved into the city of Iwaki. And this huge influx of people really caused a lot of tension in the city. Roads were crowded, lots of traffic jams, and many were not happy about the money that was being given to these refugees who had to flee their homes due to the radiation. There were often news reports on how people would wake up in the morning and find their cars or places where they’re staying spray-painted with the message, “Go Home,” which is especially terrible since that’s the very thing that they could not do. So, 30 churches hosted this Christmas celebration in a huge wedding complex, and it was also televised for national broadcast later.
At this event, I played the organ and Tsumugu played the violin. Actually, there was another musical instrument as well. I was asked to play the “Kiseki no Piano,” the “Miracle Piano,” which was carried from the nearby 3.11 Memorial Museum. And this piano has a story of its own. It was inundated, completely destroyed in the town of Usuiso, that town I mentioned earlier. And water is not very good for pianos, and so it was dumped out in the street along with all the other trash. But a local piano tuner saw it, rescued it, and spent years fixing it, hoping to make it play again. And he deliberately left in the body damage from the disaster—chipped wood and paint, gouges and scratches. And despite all this damage on the body and the outside, it sounds really good. And it was just a wonderful opportunity for all of us to be reminded of the miracle of Christmas, in a place where so many lives were lost, and yet there is hope. There is hope of resurrection. And we really rejoiced in that new life together through the new life of this piano. There’s a picture of me playing this piano in the show notes as well.
Well, then the next day was Sunday. So on Sunday morning, we gave a concert at the new building for the Fukushima Baptist Church in the city of Iwaki. And I also gave a sermon on the Christmas message. And this church, I have a long relationship with. It actually was the very first church I worked with, with relief work after 2011. And so after that morning concert, we traveled together while eating lunch in the car to their original worship location, which is the very closest church building to the nuclear power plants, if you can believe it, less than three miles away from the broken power plants. And I have to tell you, I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was completely totally otherworldly going to this church. It was like entering a movie set or something. It felt like we were entering some other planet that suffered a terrible disaster centuries before.
It’s hard for me to paint a picture for you, but every structure and road was completely overgrown with plants. The homes were still destroyed from the earthquake because no one has been back there to be able to fix them yet. And when we stopped at one of the buildings to take pictures, I was struck by the complete absence of human noise. It felt like we were the only people on the planet. Not a car in sight. Not a single person moving anywhere. It was really spooky. It’s a wasteland that’s been stopped in time.
Last year, electricity finally came back on in the area. So this is 12 years after the disaster, right? And people have been given permission to move back into the area, even though radiation levels might still be high. We’re not quite sure. Many of the church staff had gone back before then with HAZMAT suits to gather some of their things, and they found the organ, the digital organ they had, fallen over. Well, they set it back up, but had no idea whether it worked or not because there was no electricity to turn it on. And so last year, when they were able to turn it back on, they’re like, “Okay, we have to give a Christmas concert!”
They wanted to gather folks from all the regions in order to have this concert and have this reunion. So they spread the word, and all the folks that had relocated, like from S
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 hor
Welcome back to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host Roger Lowther. This really has been fun for me, sharing conversations in the past two episodes recorded at the GCAMM Conference, the Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions, as it helps me remember what I learned and also the people I befriended there. In this third and last episode, let’s do this just one more time, and continue to travel from table to table during lunch time and see who else we can meet.
Attendee
Hey, Roger. My name is Rob Still. I’m a worship leader based out of Nashville, Tennessee. I lead worship in the Nashville area, most Sundays somewhere. In the last 20 years, I’ve been doing a lot of short-term missions trips where I’ll go and either lead worship or I will teach on songwriting and Biblical foundations of worship. I taught for over 10 years at a school of worship in Romania, teaching basic Biblical foundations and songwriting. Next month, I’ll go to Greece. I’ll lead worship for a missions organization called SIM for their global leadership development track, and then I’ll go to Romania after that.
Roger
Awesome. What brings you to GCAMM this week?
Attendee
I’m so glad you asked. I just finished my doctorate with the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies because I just wanted to become more well-informed about what I was learning and speaking about in terms of Biblical foundations of worship and that kind of thing. Some friends told me about GCAMM, and I feel like I’ve found my tribe. I didn’t even know this kind of thing existed. From a distance, I knew something about maybe ethnodoxology or ethnomusicology, but not at this level. It’s amazing. It’s inspiring to be here.
Roger
Awesome. It’s great to meet you.
Attendee
Okay.
Roger
Who are you?
Attendee
Hi, my name is Mike. Originally, I’m from South Korea. I’ve been involved in ministry for Afghanistan for last 20 years.
Roger
Wow. What do you do now?
Attendee
Me and my wife, we produce Afghan worship TV content for the Afghan Church. Afghan Church is a real thing. It exists and keeps evolving, especially in their refugee settings. They have freedom of religion, like in Turkey or other places. So, the Afghan Church is growing right now. As an ethnodoxologist, we support those churches in our capacity.
Roger
That’s awesome. Thank you so much.
Attendee
Thank you.
Roger
And who are you?
Attendee
I am Hoiling Poon from Hong Kong.
Roger
And what do you do there?
Attendee
I teach in a Bible seminary in Intercultural Studies, and I’m an ethnodoxologist.
Roger
Okay, and so what does that mean?
Attendee
That means I’m a catalyst and encourager to encourage people and churches, Christians, to discover creativity in their life, and also encourage them to use their heart languages to know God and worship him.
Roger
And are you an artist yourself?
Attendee
I’m a singer, and I’m a worship artist. I’m open to all kinds of arts.
Roger
Oh, great. Thank you.
And so who are you?
Attendee
My name is Janice.
Roger
And where do you live? What do you do?
Attendee
I live in Thailand as a missionary, and I’m doing arts ministry in Thailand.
Roger
What kind of arts ministry?
Attendee
Normally, I will teach the kids art. And also, I will host some art workshops in the church, like art meditation workshops for the church members.
Roger
Are you an artist yourself?
Attendee
Before that, no.
Roger
Okay. Yeah, that’s great.
Attendee
I don’t have artist background, but during the COVID time God gave me to see that I have that kinds of talents and can use it to my ministry.
Roger
That’s great. It’s great to meet you.
Attendee
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Roger
So please tell me what you do.
Attendee
I am a world arts advocate, ethnodoxologist. Currently, I’m in a PhD program in world arts.
Roger
Awesome. Can you tell me where you were working before?
Attendee
I have worked in North Africa. And then also in the Middle East.
Roger
Awesome. Thank you.
So, tell me about yourself.
Attendee
My name is Chris Gasler. I’m an ethnodoxologist and used to work in Cameroon with SIL. Now I’m covering all of Africa area and doing that from the United States, which makes no sense.
Roger
Wow. What did you do in Cameroon?
Attendee
I did a lot of songwriting workshops and various arts advocacy things, but songwriting workshops is the biggest thing that I did, the most common thing.
Roger
Awesome. Are you a singer yourself?
Attendee
I am not a singer. I have a strange musical background. I used to be a trombonist.
Roger
Okay, so you are a musician.
Attendee
I am a musician.
Roger
Great to meet you. Thank you.
Attendee
Thanks.
Roger
And how would you introduce yourself?
Attendee
My name is Mary Hendershott, and I’m here in the Dallas area as well at Dallas International University and with SIL.
Roger
And where were you before doing what?
Attendee
I worked in Burkina Faso for about 26 years in surrounding countries.
Roger
Okay. And what did you do there?
Attendee
I was there as an ethnomusicologist and an ethnodoxologist.
Roger
Which means what? You were helping people get worship music in their own language?
Attendee
In their own language, using scripture as a base, and did songwriting workshops, and also did seminars for different arts.
Roger
Great. Thank you.
Hello. So it’s very good to meet you. What is your name and where are you from?
Attendee
My name is Mani.
Attendee
I’m from Hong Kong.
Roger
And what do you do in Hong Kong?
Attendee
I’m a worship pastor in a church and in a university, and I have a ministry about emotion, mental wellness care.
Roger
Okay. And why are you here at GCAMM?
Attendee
I want to explore more about arts and music in mission.
Roger
Awesome. Well, this is definitely the place for that.
Attendee
Yeah.
Roger
Good to meet you.
Attendee
I love that.
Roger
Hello.
Attendee
Hello. How are you?
Roger
So what is your name?
Attendee
My name is Stanley Amukwa.
Roger
And what do you do?
Attendee
I’m a pastor with an organization known as Christ is the Answer Ministries, CITAM, way back in Nairobi, Kenya.
Roger
So you came all the way from Kenya for this event?
Attendee
Yes, I came all the way from the way Kenya.
Roger
Why would you come all this way for GCAMM?
Attendee
In 2018, GCAMM was held in Kenya at Brackenhurst, and I was able to participate. And in participating, I was greatly blessed and also enriched. And so with that in mind, I had no choice but to come again for the same.
Roger
And so what is your involvement in the arts?
Attendee
I’m a pastor, as I’ve said, I’m a pastor of a congregation of about 2,000 people. And one of the things that I believe in is that in the service, there are two things that people come for. People come for a worship, WOW worship, and a WOW word. So the two go hand-in-hand, worship and the ministry of the word. And when I attended GCAMM in 2018, Ron Man’s lecture really impacted me. I actually borrowed the lecture notes, and I’ve been using them to train my worship team, my worship leaders. And so with that in mind, that’s how I’m involved. I’m not a worship pastor yet, but I’m the senior pastor and being the senior pastor, I oversee the ministry. And of course, with the preaching schedule, I preach every Sunday, I need the worship team to complement what I do in the pulpit ministry.
Roger
That’s amazing. For you to have that commitment as a senior pastor, a huge church with all these responsibilities, and you come all the way here to learn more about how to encourage the artists in your church. I love it. Thank you.
Attendee
Thanks.
Roger
Well, I think we’d better stop there. There’s so many more cool people to talk to, but I can’t get over that last conversation. Isn’t that amazing? A pastor of a large church, with so many responsibilities, was willing to fly halfway around the world, literally, to care for the artists in his church. I’d love to see more and more pastors attend events like these.
Well, there’s two people that I had a longer conversation with that I would love to share with you. First, I would like to introduce you to Jill Ford.
Well, I’m sitting down here with Jill Ford, who is working with All Nations Christian College in the UK. Thank you so much for sitting down with me.
Jill
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Roger
Yes. So, I have heard through GCAMM conferences over the past, many times, people talk about All Nations, and this glow comes in their eyes like, “Oh, All Nations.” Can you tell our listeners what is All Nations?
Jill
Oh, I’m glad there’s a glow. Yes, so All Nations is a cross-cultural mission training college based in the UK. We train and equip men and women for effective participation in God’s mission to his multicultural world. And we love to train people for all areas of mission, particularly in the area of integral mission, helping people to be rounded and grounded as they move into missions in whatever sphere that might be.
Roger
Awesome. Now, where exactly are you located in the UK?
Jill
Yeah, we’re actually located in the county of Hartfordshire, but we say to people, North London, because we are actually only 45 minutes from central London.
Roger
That’s easy to get to.
Jill
Yeah, and close to three airports. Heathrow, Luton, and Stanstead in particular, so very easy to get to.
Roger
Okay. And do students at the college come from England only or are they broader?
Jill
We’re international, inter-denominational, and intercultural. We have people coming from all over and from different cultures and different denominations, which is really exciting. Our current student body is probably more predominantly UK and Europe-focused due to the many challenges of Brexit and international visas and those kinds of things. But we do have quite a proportion of capacity for international students, and we do always encourage those as well. But there are more and more challenges coming about for some of our international students to actually come in person to all nations. But we do have opportunities now online for people to ac
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 loc



