Roger W. Lowther's Blog

69. Beauty from Brokenness and Death with Vince Black

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 suffering or turn from that. I think beauty is more beautiful when it’s juxtaposed against suffering. When you actually see the brokenness and see the thing that’s underneath it, to see the beauty that can come from that makes it even more beautiful.

It shows a beautiful picture of redemption and what I believe God can do to the that we experience is bring some beauty from that. I wanted to make that visible in the pieces that I was bringing to life.

Roger

Yeah, and it definitely comes through. Actually, I was at an art gallery showing last week talking to an ikebana artist, which in the Japanese flower arrangement form, they try to juxtapose life and death in the textures and in the materials that they use. I showed her pictures of what you make and she thought that they would work perfect with her ikebana. She would love to something together.

Vince

Yeah, that’d be great. I would love it.

Roger

It’s definitely part of the Japanese aesthetic, I think. It is beautiful. You call it black cone, right? I see black cones, your logo at the bottom of these.

Vince

About five years ago, our family took a trip to Sequoia National Park. As we were there, we would see these massive trees and massive pine cones. We have a picture of our son, who was probably five or six at the time, holding this pine cone that was literally half his size. A foot and a half long pine cones. We read one of the plaques at this National Park that said the optimal situation for a pine cone, especially a sequoia pine cone, to release its seeds from the cone is under forest fire. So these pine cones have been designed by God to pop open under the pressure of heat. And the seeds are released then only when the pine cone busts open from destruction. And my wife and I were out on a date about two years ago, talking through this idea of turning wood, and what could this be, and could we name this something? And so we took our our name. My last name is Black. Took our name and put that in with this story of the pine cone. And the artist I had designed the logo has this pine cone with five seeds that are busting out of it, and each of those seeds represents one of our boys. There’s this beauty that comes from the cone, and that beauty is only there because of the pressure that it’s been under. That’s become the name Black Cone.

Roger

Yeah, that’s great. Even the logo then has that symbolism. Why is this not just pleasing to the eye, but something good for society, for us, to think about?

Vince

I think for me, it is, again, I want to bring to light the things that we often discard. I want to put those things in the spotlight. There’s an artist who used to put up installations, where he would put up a large wall. I think he did one on Central Park in New York. He would put a wall along Central Park. And people would walk around thinking, What’s on the other side of this wall? And they would get to the end of the wall and look around and see Central Park and say, “Wow, that’s a beautiful park.” The whole point was this is something that’s been here all along, but you’ve not looked at it because it’s always been there. Now I’ve blocked it from your vision. And as you walk around it, you look in with some intentionality again and see the beauty behind it. And he did several installations like that where you would wrap bridges in canvas or wrap things in canvas so that people couldn’t see them and then take it off and people would enjoy the image again.

So I think there’s a piece of that for me is this is something that we would… If we were walking through a forest and saw a tree that was knocked over and burned, we probably would just keep walking. Why not take that, put it in front of us and say, There’s beauty in this as well that mirrors the lives that we have? We all have stories. We all have a piece of us that’s broken, pieces of us that are broken. There’s the temptation to say, That piece is broken. I need to hide it, not talk about it, push that aside. But to bring that to light and say, This is a part of who God has made me, something that others may shove aside, I want to see as something beautiful that would bring to light who our God is.

Roger

And who is he? Well, you’re a pastor, and so you talk about this all the time. I’m actually really intrigued by the fact that you’re a pastor and an artist making these things and the combination between the two. Tell me a little bit about that.

Vince

God is Creator. This is something I learned from my sculpture professor, he taught me. He would correct me all the time when I would say, Oh, I just want to create. And he would say, You can’t. And I would say, What? And he said, There’s only one Creator, and all we do is mirror our Creator in being creative. So he would allow me to use those words, You can be creative, but you cannot create because there’s only one Creator, and we get to mirror that. So that’s what I want to point to, that God created these things for our enjoyment so that we could see more of him. So let’s bring to beauty some of the things that he has created that we would often discard.

Roger

I’ve heard it said that the new heavens and new Earth, that somehow through the brokenness, it’s more beautiful for having been through the brokenness. God doesn’t just wipe it away, but the scars are there to point to his glory, as part of the story, which is exactly what you’re putting in your woodwork here.

Vince

Yeah, that’s what I want. I want to do it. I want others to see that. It’s been an avenue for me to have these conversations with others. It’s been a unique opportunity to bring both, yes, I’m a pastor, but I also do this, and there’s a reason I do it, and there’s a story behind it, and there’s been some real meaningful conversations that have come from it.

Roger

Well, hey, you should import your your work here. I’d love to see more work like this around. I’ve actually never seen anything like this with wood. It’s very interesting. You’ve probably heard the Japanese aesthetic about kintsugi and how pottery that’s broken, put back, and made more beautiful, more valuable, stronger for having been broken with the gold veins. That’s such an interesting way that you’ve done that with wood, the same aesthetic and thought process. I love it.

Vince

Yeah, thank you.

Roger

How can people get in touch with you?

Vince

That’s a good question. I do have a website that I try to keep up to date with the things that I have, blackconeworks.com. I also post things as much as I can on Instagram. You can message me through there as well. So it’s all right there.

Roger

Very cool. Thank you so much for sharing with us this evening. Looking forward to tonight, to see who comes and have a great discussion.

Vince

Yeah. Thanks for the time.

The post 69. Beauty from Brokenness and Death with Vince Black appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

68. The Purpose of Beauty

Hello and welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast. I’m your host, Roger Lowther.

Every year, we have interns come work alongside us in what God is doing here in Japan through the arts. This summer, one of our interns was a phenomenal dancer named Anna Gardner Herren, with a huge heart for missions around the world. This was her third summer with us here in Japan, and she also made trips to Taiwan and Korea.

Last August, I interviewed her in this podcast—”#61 Summer Internships” if you’d like to have a listen—so I thought it would only be fair to give her a chance to interview me this year. She has her own wonderful podcast called The Purpose of Beauty, where she explores the role of beauty in our lives talking with various artists from around the world. In this episode that I’m about to share with you, we discuss some things that I’ve never talked about before on this podcast, especially about the music of Bach and its impact in Japan, so I think you’ll enjoy it.

You can find other episodes of her podcast by searching for The Purpose of Beauty or by going to our show notes. Here is our conversation:

Anna Gardner

Hello and welcome to the “Purpose of Beauty” podcast. I’m here with Roger W. Lowther, founder and director of Community Arts Tokyo and worship director at Grace City Church Tokyo. He also just happens to be my boss as the Mission to the World team leader in Japan. So let’s welcome Roger.

Roger

Thank you. Great to be here. Looking forward to talking with you about this.

Anna Gardner

I’m so excited to talk to you because you have so many books written about beauty, so I really wanted to hear some things that you had to say.

Roger

Sure. Well, where do we start?

Anna Gardner

Where do we start? Well, one of the things that I really enjoyed hearing you talk about is Bach, and especially Bach in Japan. So for those of you just tuning in, he is a really amazing organ player, has played all over Japan and America and probably other places as well. And he was telling me more about how Bach is so influential and important in Japan, possibly more so than America.

Roger

Yeah, I would say so.

Anna Gardner

But how did you first encounter Bach?

Roger

Oh, interesting question. I’ve actually never been asked that before.

Anna Gardner

Really? Well, I would love to know.

Roger

I was about to switch teachers between elementary school and junior high, and the teacher wanted to test me, audition me to see if he would take me on as a student. And so he gave me a lesson and said, “I want you to learn this piece.” It was from the Liturgical Year, the little pieces that Bach wrote, each one’s like a page long, so it’s not too hard. And I passed the audition. He said, “Wow, I’ve never had someone learn this so quickly.” I had nothing to compare it to so I didn’t know. I practiced really hard.

Anna Gardner

So Bach is one of your origin stories of playing the organ?

Roger

Yeah, I mean, it was a very stressful situation, so I didn’t actually enjoy playing the piece very much. But that was my first interaction. Yeah, and then it’s grown from there.

Anna Gardner

Wow. Did you ever think you would be playing it here in Japan?

Roger

No, Japan was not on my radar at that point. But actually after that, my audition to Juilliard, to college, was through a piece. They make you memorize and play a prelude and fugue of Bach, which are much longer as organ works than piano. It’s about 15 minutes, something like that. And so that was my first piece on the audition, and I will never forget any of the notes in that piece ever, because I had four other auditions before that one, and I recorded it, and it is permanently etched into my head. So yeah, right now I’m actually going through a whole project to record all of Bach’s sacred organ works.

Anna Gardner

Why his sacred organ works?

Roger

Because people really haven’t focused on that. They’re not technically as showy and interesting for people in concert situations. They’re like, “That’s a little too slow” or “a little too long.” And yet in worship, it’s “a little bit too long.” They don’t really want them in worship either. So people don’t really play most of the pieces in that collection. I thought, “Okay, well, the only way it’s going to be heard, is if I record it, maybe do a whole set.” I’m thinking of doing a whole marathon of it. It’ll be many, many hours to play them all in a row.

Anna Gardner

You’re going to play them all in a row?

Roger

At some point. This is a long-term project. Either next year or the year after that I’m getting ready for it.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy. Well, best wishes for that. I also am curious, since coming to Japan and playing Bach, do you have any stories about your interactions with Bach here in Japan?

Roger

Oh, yeah. It really shocked me. I’m used to playing Bach in America, and you’ll probably have smaller audiences if you do an all-Bach concert with the organ. I think in America, we like having lots of color and orchestration and loud/soft dynamic changes and things like that. The organ is so good at changing colors. But Bach tends to be a more similar sound for longer periods of time. And yet it’s been amazing the reactions I’ve gotten from Japanese people. So a story: Just my first year here, I was meeting with a language partner to help me learn how to speak Japanese. We’d meet once a week and have conversations together. And one of the things I wanted to do was just practice speaking about Christianity in Japanese.

Anna Gardner

Oh, that’s actually so scary.

Roger

I knew it was needed. I needed to learn how to do it, but she didn’t want to talk about religion at all. She’s like, “No, no, no, let’s stick to politics and art and culture.”

Anna Gardner

You mean politics was easier than religion? Oh, my goodness.

Roger

Yeah, so we had a great friendship, but that topic was off limits. We’re not talking about religion. And I’m like, okay, well, I guess I’ll have to learn it some other way. Then Easter, that first year, I gave a concert at a local church and invited her. She wanted to support her language student, so she came. And at the end of the concert, she was in tears. And I was thinking to myself, What’s wrong? Maybe she got bad news. A family member is sick or something like that. And she said, “I can’t talk right now. We’ll talk next week.” I’m like, Okay. I hope she’s okay. And so then the next week, we got together for our usual scheduled language conversation. And she said, “I’ve never thought about hope that way. And the way you talked about it through the music of Bach and from the Bible. I’ve never heard that message before.” And that was the beginning of something. We were able to talk about religion quite frequently after that.

Anna Gardner

Because of Bach?

Roger

Because of Bach. It opened this doorway in her heart to something that was off limits before and to a little bit of herself. I still talk to her now. This is, I don’t know, 20 years ago. I’ve been here 20 years. So it opened doors to deeper relationships. And I have so many stories like that.

Anna Gardner

Do you have maybe one more that you want to share with us? Because I love that story.

Roger

Well, we’re looking out the window of my living room here, and at that building way over there, I gave a concert in the lobby of that business building. It’s a huge space, and I brought my organ and a battery, and I was playing music by Bach, and this guy came by. He’s like, “Oh, Roger. It’s so good to see you again.” He was a conductor who had hired me a number of years before to play the St. Matthew Passion.

Anna Gardner

Oh, beautiful.

Roger

Playing the organ continuo part. So those of you know the St. Matthew Passion, it requires quite a few singers. There’re multiple choirs and two orchestras. There’s a lot of echoing going back and forth, calling to each other. There’s a lot of people. First of all, I was the only non-Japanese in the room, but also I was the only Christian in the room.

Anna Gardner

Wait, you’re playing St. Matthew Passion? And you’re the only Christian?

Roger

Yeah.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy.

Roger

And there’s one point in the rehearsal, the director knew that I was a missionary, and he stops. He was trying to explain like, “well, this is the point where, let’s just let Roger explain it because he’s a missionary. Roger, would you stand up and explain to everyone?” And I’m like, okay, first of all, I knew everyone in that room spoke Japanese better than me, and I’m like, That’s quite a lot of pressure for not making mistakes. But anyway, I did my best. And it was just through these rehearsals, people would ask me questions after like, “What does this mean?” And I remember during the concert itself, the conductor broke down in tears, and the orchestra members were looking at each other like, “What’s wrong with him?”

Anna Gardner

Like, while you all are performing?

Roger

While we were performing.

Anna Gardner

Oh, my goodness.

Roger

The musicians were like, “Is he having a heart attack? Should we stop and help him?” Because he’s faltering. This isn’t a professional orchestra. It’s a volunteer orchestra. And afterwards, I talked with him. He said, “I want to be a Christian. Never before has the message hit me so deeply.” That was a fall concert, October, and he was baptized that following Christmas worship.

Anna Gardner

Okay, that’s crazy.

Roger

Yeah. There were others as well in the orchestra who were reading through the text and trying to figure out why this was so powerful and what was going on. Where else would Japanese people who have never seen a Bible before…here they were reading scripture in this context because of the music of Bach. It’s just amazing how God has provided this doorway.

Anna Gardner

It’s such a bridge to use the arts to share the gospel. And you would know that because you lead Community Arts Tokyo here. But that’s really special that Bach was such a gateway for you to be able to talk about God. So wow.

Roger

Yeah. Praise God.

Anna Gardner

I was reading one of your works. You’ve written so many books, and we need to talk about that soon, too. But I was reading one of your books about Bach in Japan and was wondering why it’s specifically impactful for Japanese people. Do you have any ideas?

Roger

That is a difficult question to answer.

Anna Gardner

Sorry.

Roger

I’ve been trying to figure it out for years. I think that in the arts, there’s this idea of trying to give an image to yourself in order to sell more works to be more successful like that. Bach was completely the opposite. He’s more like a craftsman. He just wanted to do the best he possibly could in his local context. Leipzig was not one of the biggest cities in Germany at the time. And so he’s just doing his thing, doing it to the best of his ability. And I feel like a lot of artists in Japan are like that, too. It’s more about the work they make rather than the name attached to it. Some of the greatest works of art here, it’s not about their name. It’s not written on there. You may not even know who wrote it. It could be anonymous…Oh, man, who made this?…that craftsman mentality. So I think that’s part of the answer.

Anna Gardner

That makes sense because even from something like rice balls, there’s this idea of making it right and making it well. And there’s people who are famous for making a rice ball well. But of course, they weren’t making it well to be famous. Why would you want to become famous for making rice balls? But at the same time, there’s something really Japanese to me about that, about investing your time to make something really well, not for other people to look at you and say you did it well, but just to do it well.

Roger

Yeah, definitely. Actually, the most famous artist in Japan for the music of a Bach, Masaaki Suzuki…he’s really famous, I mean, when you go to the Leipzig Museum, the foremost museum about the music of Bach, it seems like half the recordings there are by Suzuki. So a Japanese group, the Bach Collegium of Japan, is representing the music of Bach globally, but he’s a very humble man. He wasn’t doing it for his own glory or anything like that. “Let’s record all of the cantatas of Bach to the best of our ability and just see what happens.” And God has really blessed his efforts in that.

Anna Gardner

That’s so beautiful. I think it inspires me that people would care about doing something well, not to be seen. I feel like as a Christian artist, sometimes I’m saddened by seeing non-successful or Christian works that to me, aren’t that great. But then when I see people who are Christians or non-Christians just doing something really well. I feel like we, as Christians, should also work so hard to do things well for Christ.

Roger

I appreciate beauty and things done well for sure. Because it lowers walls and it allows for more people to interact with the artwork, to build community around that artwork. I feel like when things are not done as well, it feels like it’s…I don’t know, if you’re trying to put more meaning on the message…then it’s almost manipulative. “You should care about this because of the message.” Well, if it’s good, you can’t help but be drawn in.

Anna Gardner

I think that’s one thing that I’ve really been encouraged about with Community Arts Tokyo. For reference, this is my third summer interning with Community Arts Tokyo.

Roger

Thank you for coming back so many times!

Anna Gardner

I’m so happy to come back because not only do we get to interact with a bunch of really amazing artists, but Christian artists who are making works really well for God. You’ve probably experienced that way more than me here.

Roger

We feel really blessed that we’re surrounded by such an amazing community of people who do their art to the best of their ability. We really inspire each other and encourage one another. I love that community.

Anna Gardner

It’s really a community. I think that you and your family and these other artists from the church and Community Arts Tokyo have created a community where we are able to invite people in who are not Christians, even who are not artists. It’s something that’s been special to me and special to some of my friends. To me, it’s really beautiful. That brings me to the point of, what is the purpose of beauty in your life?

Roger

Oh, you need to read my books!

Anna Gardner

Oh, yes. Tell us about your books, please.

Roger

Aroma of Beauty is one. Hidden Beauty is another.

Anna Gardner

That one’s my favorite.

Roger

Yeah, I mean, I thought a lot about this… Let me tell you a story. It’ll be easier that way. I used to think that beauty was something decorative, that it was something unnecessary. It’s only something for when you have the time or money to do. And then in 2011, we had that large earthquake, and I ended up going up as a truck driver bringing food, water, supplies.

Anna Gardner

To the countryside of Japan, right?

Roger

Yeah, and I thought, that’s what people need in that situation. But we found out from day one, from my very first trip, that beauty was just as important as all those other things, that people actually could not live without it or it led to despair. It led to “Why go on living? We lost everything.” And yet, somehow, beauty would bring not just encouragement, but hope, which is really powerful in that situation. And so that’s why I called the book Aroma of Beauty. It’s a bunch of stories about how people are finding hope through beauty in that terrible situation.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. How can we find your books?

Roger

They’re all on Amazon or wherever you buy books online.

Anna Gardner

I’ll link it in the show notes. Okay, great. And tell us about your new book, too.

Roger

Yeah, my new book comes out August 1.

Anna Gardner

Yes. So the day this podcast airs, your book should be live.

Roger

Awesome. Go buy my book.

Anna Gardner

Yes. Go check out his book.

Roger

I really had fun writing this one. It’s called Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan.

Anna Gardner

Wait, is this the one that you wrote on the plane?

Roger

I don’t think so.

Anna Gardner

Okay, no. I just remember you writing one book, literally on your plane ride to or from Japan.

Roger

I’m always writing on my plane rides.

Anna Gardner

I love it. Okay, but the Hidden Beauty book.

Roger

Yes.

Anna Gardner

Which I’ve gotten to preview, and y’all haven’t.

Roger

We do a series every month called Art, Life, Faith. It’s a great opportunity for artists to try to connect and work out what it means to connect their art, their life, and their faith. We feature a different artist every month. Those are great, but I realized that I wanted to share those stories with more people. We had the gathering, the event, but what if we try to get this in print? Try to continue the process, continue the conversation. And so quite a few people in that book were part of those Art, Life, Faith discussions. I wanted to get their stories out there and work with them. And it was amazing to see the excitement on their faces. Like, “Oh, my story is coming out in print. Thank you, Roger.” So I’m working with them asking, “Is that accurate? Would you change the wording of that.” And they’d respond like, “Yeah, maybe I would change that, but that sounds good.”

And so seeing God in Japan, it’s about Japanese people seeing God in their lives, but also through the art, culture, and history of Japan. I would say that even if the readers are not interested in Japanese culture at all that they would still be interested in the book. “How do we see God in our daily lives? How can we worship God through anything that we do every day?” That’s basically the message of the book.

Anna Gardner

Which is a lot about ethnodoxology, another thing I really wanted to ask you about. I don’t know if you remember this, but about a year ago, I went and met one of your friends in Korea who is an artist, and we talked about ethnodoxology in Korea. But I would also love to talk about ethnodoxology for our listeners in Japan. What does that look like? And first of all, what is ethnodoxology?

Roger

Okay, first, ethnos means the peoples, the nations, and doxology means praise, praise of the nations. People were thinking how do we get the Bible, how do we get scripture, how do we get the gospel into every language in the world, worshiping God through their heart languages rather than translating into English or something like that. But then about 25 years ago, there was this big movement to ask what does that look like through the art languages: the ethnic instruments, musical forms, ways like that… Because there’s still this image in Christianity of importing either contemporary worship songs or traditional hymns, and that those are the only things that are legit when it comes to worshiping God. So how do we encourage the nations by saying, “Your art forms are legitimate in worshiping God.” At the time, that was basically unheard of. It was very controversial, and people got angry, and they stood against it. Even here in Japan, we’ve seen that. Okay, can I share a story about this?

Anna Gardner

Please do. I would love to hear a story.

Roger

So we’re sitting here next to some kotos. [music] You just heard me pluck one of the strings. My son is learning the koto from Chieko.

Anna Gardner

I love Chieko-san.

Roger

Her story is great. She became a Christian, and she was a professional koto player, a traditional Japanese harp. And when she became a Christian, she’s like, “Oh, now I have to give up the koto and learn the piano.”

Anna Gardner

Wait, what? That doesn’t make sense.

Roger

Because she’s a Christian now, and that’s the only legitimate art formsfor Christianity.

Anna Gardner

The only instrument you can play as a Christian is the piano?

Roger

Or the guitar.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. No.

Roger

In Japan, there is that image, and the koto is associated with the temple or the shrine. She’s like, “Oh, no, that can’t worship God. That’s another religion.” And so she was bummed about that because she was a professional and that was what she had dedicated her life to.

Anna Gardner

Wait, first of all, that’s incredible that she would be willing to become a Christian knowing that.

Roger

I know.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. That’s actually really moving.

Roger

That’s part of the power of her testimony. But we invited her as a church staff at Grace City Church Tokyo. We prayed about it and approached her and said, “We would like you to play in worship on the koto.” And she’s like, “No, I can’t do that. It will not go well.” And we’re like, “No, no, no. We want to do this. We think it’ll be good.” And she’s like, “Okay.” So she did. And she was shocked as she was playing. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she felt like for the first time she was able to worship through her heart language of koto music. She had no idea that she could worship God through koto music. It just had never occurred to her before with the image she had of Christianity, that God would love her to the depths of her being, the very identity of who she was as a koto player. So it was really moving to have her play.

Anna Gardner

That’s really beautiful.

Roger

But…

Anna Gardner

But? Oh, no.

Roger

After worship, that’s when the trouble started. There were a lot of angry people. We had a lot of meetings, not the types of meetings that you really want to have. People were saying, “I could not worship because of that instrument. How dare you sneak in that instrument? It prevented me from worshiping. It was very distracting.” They were very upset.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy because to me, I feel like it would be very moving and beautiful in worship.

Roger

Yeah, you would think so. I mean, it’s not a loud instrument. It’s pretty subtle.

Anna Gardner

It is so subtle.

Roger

But do you know what the key was? When we shared, “Did you see the tears coming down her cheeks as she was playing? It was so powerful. She was worshiping God through her instrument. And we want to first love her and embrace her. And personally, I too was drawn in praise alongside her. I was able to worship God more fully because of her playing. Can’t you see it in that way?” Then they were like, “Oh, well, I guess if you put it in that way.” They thought we were trying to be clever and tricky, sneaking in our agenda of bringing in traditional Japanese instruments just to be cool or something, like a gimmick. No, it’s not about being a gimmick. It’s about a relationship with Chieko and loving her, embracing her, allowing her to worship God and coming alongside. That was the key. So then next time she played in worship, they were able to worship as well because they felt, even though they didn’t know how to worship God through that, they could worship alongside Chieko in her relationship with God. It was so powerful and so good.

Anna Gardner

I love that story, and it makes me so happy to hear that she was able to use her art form for Christ, even though it’s not a traditional Christian instrument, if you will. It reminds me of another artist that I think might be in your book, Kei-san. We have this wonderful friend at our church. His name is Kei-san, and he makes fashion design beautiful clothing. He’s a Japanese fashion designer. I remember putting on one of his designs and thinking, I want to dance in this. He actually allowed me to borrow this design and take it to Nagoya and perform in it. I bring this up because maybe it’s not a traditional way to worship through dance or to worship through wearing a costume or a fashion design. But to me, this fashion design was part kimono and part Western wear. I wore this to portray the story of Ruth, who was a foreigner living in Israel. While I, as an outsider to the Japanese culture, I first see the kimono fabric. I see that it’s in the shape of a kimono, and to me, it seems so Japanese. But to all the Japanese, they only see how it’s different.

They think, “Oh, that’s not a kimono. That’s so different.” It’s different. How they see me. They don’t see me as “she’s nice and respectful.” They see me as, “she’s an outsider.” And so it helped me to see the story of Ruth and to see how she might have experienced herself in Israel, being an outsider and people seeing her as an outsider. But yet she made this firm commitment to God, to our God, despite her being a Moabite. And so if she could worship the God of Israel, and I can also worship God with dance, and you can worship God with the organ, and Chieko-san can worship with the koto, then that is ethnodoxology in our daily lives.

Roger

Yeah, it’s something that only every individual person can answer because sometimes it surprises us what that looks like. For example, I was thinking recently about my recent podcast with a heavy metal musician. He has a very large following here in Japan.

Anna Gardner

Wait, is he Japanese?

Roger

He’s Japanese.

Anna Gardner

But he does heavy metal? Yes. And he’s a Christian.

Roger

Yes. And he’s a Christian.

Anna Gardner

And he’s a Christian? Tell me more.

Roger

Okay. I mean, it really fits the subject of ethnodoxology because you may think, “Okay, koto, that makes sense. A traditional Japanese instrument. Heavy metal? Not so much.” I mean, that’s a Western art form. The West is imposing their musical styles on the rest of the world. Isn’t it terrible? But this singer, we call him Tone…

Anna Gardner

Tone?

Roger

In our interview, he told me how he felt like he was born to this, that God called him into this. If you listen to his music, you notice, first of all, it’s heavy metal, but he’s singing in Japanese. So okay, it’s in Japanese language. And he’s using Japanese traditional scales.

Anna Gardner

Actually? Wait, are they different than the ones we use in America?

Roger

Yeah, they’re actually koto scales. It’s different. And so you can hear it very clearly on his guitar, he’s going through the Japanese scales. But he says the reason this is Japanese music isn’t for those reasons but because he’s a Japanese man worshiping God in his context. That makes it Japanese. That makes it the praise of the nations. When you think ethnodoxology, you wouldn’t think particularly of a Japanese person worshiping God through heavy metal music.

Anna Gardner

No, that’s not what I would think of, Roger.

Roger

That’s not the image that comes up. And yet that fits the category as well, right? I mean, he is very good at what he does. He’s very technically proficient, loves high quality. When you watch his music videos online, you’re like, “Wow, that’s really good.” And I think we are going to see Tone in heaven leading us all in worship of God through heavy metal music.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy.

Roger

Yeah. And it’s going to be representing the country of Japan in a sense. It’s all about how we praise God in our context with who God called us to be. And it’s different. With heavy metal music, it’s an in-your-face-a-little-bit art form. It’s very loud. It’s very fast. And yet there’s this sense that through it, you are giving everything—all your mind, body, soul, all your technical proficiency, all your energy, all your passion, it’s all coming through. And heavy metal as a style can do that better than, well, koto music, as a contrast.

Anna Gardner

You know, koto is like the silent version, the inner version.

Roger

Yeah. So I think God gifts these art styles to us in order to praise him. That’s what ethnodoxology is. To be able to praise through this gifting that God gives us, whether it’s organ music or dance or whatever it might be in our context, in our communities, for his glory.

Anna Gardner

That’s beautiful. The praise of the nations. Well, thank you so much for telling us about ethnodoxology and about how God can be glorified not just in piano and guitar. I want to ask you just a couple more questions. The first one is, is there any way that we can be praying for you?

Roger

Yes.

Anna Gardner

How can we pray for you?

Roger

Well, as you know, as a church we’ve been on the move for 15 years with no permanent worship space.

Anna Gardner

What does that look like on a Sunday morning?

Roger

So that has been very busy. We had all of our church equipment stored in a van in a large building on a weird elevator mechanical robot system.

Anna Gardner

Like one of those rotating car things? Oh, my goodness.

Roger

We’d have to do that and drive it to the venue wherever it was. There were many different venues, and then unload and set up, and then do the whole process in reverse.

Anna Gardner

Which is just so exhausting on a Sunday morning. The sound people and the helpers set up the whole church, which is not a small church.

Roger

No.

Anna Gardner

And then take it down and then start over the next week and not have anywhere to come during the week.

Roger

So from June 1, for the first time, we have a semi-permanent space we can use throughout the week. We thought, great, we’re going to have more time. And we do but for different things. Now that we have a space throughout the week, we’ve been using it throughout the week for so many great things. And God has really been giving us many opportunities for meeting new people, for evangelism, for discipleship. And it’s so exciting. But it’s also very tiring. And the setup process from June first until now, we’re speaking mid-July. We’re a little bit tired. We’ve really been pushing. It’s been really good, but I’m looking forward to resting a little bit for the rest of this summer and recovering from that.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. I wonder if you could talk to any of our listeners who might be artists who just need some rest. How do you find rest in God or in art when you’re exhausted from working so hard?

Roger

Well, I’m probably not a good example of that. What I do personally is change the art that I’m focused on for a little bit.

Anna Gardner

Okay, well, that is true. You never stop.

Roger

So if I’m focused really hard on music and then I get really worn out from music, I can switch then to writing. And in different genres of writing, whether it be writing fiction or non-fiction. And personally, I find that really energizing to switch what I’m focused on in my creative projects.

Anna Gardner

I do understand that, though. It’s a different pathway of your brain. Well, I know we can be praying for you about getting some rest, whether that’s changing your art form for a little while or whatever. But is there anything else we can be praying for, for Community Arts Tokyo as an organization in the future?

Roger

Yeah, I’ve been actually a little bit disappointed about the way this movement hasn’t grown like I had hoped within the church in Japan, this idea that art plays an important role in worship, in evangelism, in discipleship. There’re so few Christians in Japan. Churches are small with mostly older people. We’re seeing great things happen in our church and churches in our immediate network, but I really need to see this movement spread further, wider. How can we help the nation hear these stories? That’s one reason I started writing. We really need more people to come alongside us so we can be in more cities, working with more churches. And I would love to see God grow the church here in Japan, to see his kingdom grow and for arts to be a part of that.

Anna Gardner

Well, we will definitely be praying for that. I think we can all agree that that is something we all also want. So thanks for sharing that. I have one final question for you, but I’m going to give you a second to think about it while I close out the podcast. Do you have any advice that you would give to our listeners? I don’t know if I have any listeners who are organ players currently, but we might start something. But just artists or people who use the arts in their daily lives or are no longer professional artists but are Christians. For that purpose, as they pursue beauty, whether that’s in just going to worship and getting ready for worship and putting on a Sunday dress, or whether that’s making beautiful things for Christ. Do you have any advice that you would personally give to our listeners who are artists and also not artists.

Roger

Yeah, sure.

Anna Gardner

While you think about that, I’m going to briefly close out the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. The goal of this podcast is not to get famous, but just to share some beautiful stories of people that I have met and to hopefully allow you to be encouraged by the way that they see Christ through their art. And I’m really excited to have Roger on here. He’s written some wonderful books. So if you’re more interested in learning about the purpose of beauty or the aroma of beauty or the hidden beauty of art in Japan, and Christianity in Japan, you should go check out his books. I’ll definitely link it in the show notes. They’ve been really helpful for me as an artist, so I hope you’ll go check them out. They’ve been so encouraging.

Roger

Thank you for that endorsement.

Anna Gardner

That is not a paid endorsement. I want y’all to enjoy this and be encouraged by something that is so encouraging to me. So with that, I’ll turn it over to you to close this out.

Roger

Well, the advice, I guess I would say to artists is to not be discouraged, that God has given us certain gifts and passions to do things. And if we rely on people for encouragement to do it, then a lot of pathways end up being closed. For example, when I first started writing, people were like, “You’re an organist. You’re not a writer. Why are you writing?” And I had people saying, “Missionaries, you’re supposed to be in meetings all the time.”

Anna Gardner

What? Aren’t you supposed to be serving?

Roger

If I had just listened to people’s voices when I started writing during COVID, I would have not been writing now. And I do feel like God has blessed that to get certain stories, certain messages out to wider groups of people. And so that’s the message I have for other artists, too. Be creative. Enjoy what you’re doing and see God enjoying what you’re doing and delighting in it. And if you are able to praise God through what you’re doing, others will come alongside and be able to praise him as well.

Anna Gardner

Amen to that. That’s so encouraging. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for joining our podcast.

Roger

Thank you for inviting me.

Anna Gardner

Hope to have you back on again sometime. Which means I have to come back to Japan, right?

Roger

Okay. Well, we’ll be here.

Anna Gardner

Thank you so much. I hope you’ll have a wonderful rest of your day.

Roger

Bye.

Thank you for listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

The post 68. The Purpose of Beauty appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

The Purpose of Beauty

LISTEN TO PODCASTAnna Gardner

Hello and welcome to the “Purpose of Beauty” podcast. I’m here with Roger W. Lowther, founder and director of Community Arts Tokyo and worship director at Grace City Church Tokyo. He also just happens to be my boss as the Mission to the World team leader in Japan. So let’s welcome Roger.

Roger

Thank you. Great to be here. Looking forward to talking with you about this.

Anna Gardner

I’m so excited to talk to you because you have so many books written about beauty, so I really wanted to hear some things that you had to say.

Roger

Sure. Well, where do we start?

Anna Gardner

Where do we start? Well, one of the things that I really enjoyed hearing you talk about is Bach, and especially Bach in Japan. So for those of you just tuning in, he is a really amazing organ player, has played all over Japan and America and probably other places as well. And he was telling me more about how Bach is so influential and important in Japan, possibly more so than America.

Roger

Yeah, I would say so.

Anna Gardner

But how did you first encounter Bach?

Roger

Oh, interesting question. I’ve actually never been asked that before.

Anna Gardner

Really? Well, I would love to know.

Roger

I was about to switch teachers between elementary school and junior high, and the teacher wanted to test me, audition me to see if he would take me on as a student. And so he gave me a lesson and said, “I want you to learn this piece.” It was from the Liturgical Year, the little pieces that Bach wrote, each one’s like a page long, so it’s not too hard. And I passed the audition. He said, “Wow, I’ve never had someone learn this so quickly.” I had nothing to compare it to so I didn’t know. I practiced really hard.

Anna Gardner

So Bach is one of your origin stories of playing the organ?

Roger

Yeah, I mean, it was a very stressful situation, so I didn’t actually enjoy playing the piece very much. But that was my first interaction. Yeah, and then it’s grown from there.

Anna Gardner

Wow. Did you ever think you would be playing it here in Japan?

Roger

No, Japan was not on my radar at that point. But actually after that, my audition to Juilliard, to college, was through a piece. They make you memorize and play a prelude and fugue of Bach, which are much longer as organ works than piano. It’s about 15 minutes, something like that. And so that was my first piece on the audition, and I will never forget any of the notes in that piece ever, because I had four other auditions before that one, and I recorded it, and it is permanently etched into my head. So yeah, right now I’m actually going through a whole project to record all of Bach’s sacred organ works.

Anna Gardner

Why his sacred organ works?

Roger

Because people really haven’t focused on that. They’re not technically as showy and interesting for people in concert situations. They’re like, “That’s a little too slow” or “a little too long.” And yet in worship, it’s “a little bit too long.” They don’t really want them in worship either. So people don’t really play most of the pieces in that collection. I thought, “Okay, well, the only way it’s going to be heard, is if I record it, maybe do a whole set.” I’m thinking of doing a whole marathon of it. It’ll be many, many hours to play them all in a row.

Anna Gardner

You’re going to play them all in a row?

Roger

At some point. This is a long-term project. Either next year or the year after that I’m getting ready for it.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy. Well, best wishes for that. I also am curious, since coming to Japan and playing Bach, do you have any stories about your interactions with Bach here in Japan?

Roger

Oh, yeah. It really shocked me. I’m used to playing Bach in America, and you’ll probably have smaller audiences if you do an all-Bach concert with the organ. I think in America, we like having lots of color and orchestration and loud/soft dynamic changes and things like that. The organ is so good at changing colors. But Bach tends to be a more similar sound for longer periods of time. And yet it’s been amazing the reactions I’ve gotten from Japanese people. So a story: Just my first year here, I was meeting with a language partner to help me learn how to speak Japanese. We’d meet once a week and have conversations together. And one of the things I wanted to do was just practice speaking about Christianity in Japanese.

Anna Gardner

Oh, that’s actually so scary.

Roger

I knew it was needed. I needed to learn how to do it, but she didn’t want to talk about religion at all. She’s like, “No, no, no, let’s stick to politics and art and culture.”

Anna Gardner

You mean politics was easier than religion? Oh, my goodness.

Roger

Yeah, so we had a great friendship, but that topic was off limits. We’re not talking about religion. And I’m like, okay, well, I guess I’ll have to learn it some other way. Then Easter, that first year, I gave a concert at a local church and invited her. She wanted to support her language student, so she came. And at the end of the concert, she was in tears. And I was thinking to myself, What’s wrong? Maybe she got bad news. A family member is sick or something like that. And she said, “I can’t talk right now. We’ll talk next week.” I’m like, Okay. I hope she’s okay. And so then the next week, we got together for our usual scheduled language conversation. And she said, “I’ve never thought about hope that way. And the way you talked about it through the music of Bach and from the Bible. I’ve never heard that message before.” And that was the beginning of something. We were able to talk about religion quite frequently after that.

Anna Gardner

Because of Bach?

Roger

Because of Bach. It opened this doorway in her heart to something that was off limits before and to a little bit of herself. I still talk to her now. This is, I don’t know, 20 years ago. I’ve been here 20 years. So it opened doors to deeper relationships. And I have so many stories like that.

Anna Gardner

Do you have maybe one more that you want to share with us? Because I love that story.

Roger

Well, we’re looking out the window of my living room here, and at that building way over there, I gave a concert in the lobby of that business building. It’s a huge space, and I brought my organ and a battery, and I was playing music by Bach, and this guy came by. He’s like, “Oh, Roger. It’s so good to see you again.” He was a conductor who had hired me a number of years before to play the St. Matthew Passion.

Anna Gardner

Oh, beautiful.

Roger

Playing the organ continuo part. So those of you know the St. Matthew Passion, it requires quite a few singers. There’re multiple choirs and two orchestras. There’s a lot of echoing going back and forth, calling to each other. There’s a lot of people. First of all, I was the only non-Japanese in the room, but also I was the only Christian in the room.

Anna Gardner

Wait, you’re playing St. Matthew Passion? And you’re the only Christian?

Roger

Yeah.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy.

Roger

And there’s one point in the rehearsal, the director knew that I was a missionary, and he stops. He was trying to explain like, “well, this is the point where, let’s just let Roger explain it because he’s a missionary. Roger, would you stand up and explain to everyone?” And I’m like, okay, first of all, I knew everyone in that room spoke Japanese better than me, and I’m like, That’s quite a lot of pressure for not making mistakes. But anyway, I did my best. And it was just through these rehearsals, people would ask me questions after like, “What does this mean?” And I remember during the concert itself, the conductor broke down in tears, and the orchestra members were looking at each other like, “What’s wrong with him?”

Anna Gardner

Like, while you all are performing?

Roger

While we were performing.

Anna Gardner

Oh, my goodness.

Roger

The musicians were like, “Is he having a heart attack? Should we stop and help him?” Because he’s faltering. This isn’t a professional orchestra. It’s a volunteer orchestra. And afterwards, I talked with him. He said, “I want to be a Christian. Never before has the message hit me so deeply.” That was a fall concert, October, and he was baptized that following Christmas worship.

Anna Gardner

Okay, that’s crazy.

Roger

Yeah. There were others as well in the orchestra who were reading through the text and trying to figure out why this was so powerful and what was going on. Where else would Japanese people who have never seen a Bible before…here they were reading scripture in this context because of the music of Bach. It’s just amazing how God has provided this doorway.

Anna Gardner

It’s such a bridge to use the arts to share the gospel. And you would know that because you lead Community Arts Tokyo here. But that’s really special that Bach was such a gateway for you to be able to talk about God. So wow.

Roger

Yeah. Praise God.

Anna Gardner

I was reading one of your works. You’ve written so many books, and we need to talk about that soon, too. But I was reading one of your books about Bach in Japan and was wondering why it’s specifically impactful for Japanese people. Do you have any ideas?

Roger

That is a difficult question to answer.

Anna Gardner

Sorry.

Roger

I’ve been trying to figure it out for years. I think that in the arts, there’s this idea of trying to give an image to yourself in order to sell more works to be more successful like that. Bach was completely the opposite. He’s more like a craftsman. He just wanted to do the best he possibly could in his local context. Leipzig was not one of the biggest cities in Germany at the time. And so he’s just doing his thing, doing it to the best of his ability. And I feel like a lot of artists in Japan are like that, too. It’s more about the work they make rather than the name attached to it. Some of the greatest works of art here, it’s not about their name. It’s not written on there. You may not even know who wrote it. It could be anonymous…Oh, man, who made this?…that craftsman mentality. So I think that’s part of the answer.

Anna Gardner

That makes sense because even from something like rice balls, there’s this idea of making it right and making it well. And there’s people who are famous for making a rice ball well. But of course, they weren’t making it well to be famous. Why would you want to become famous for making rice balls? But at the same time, there’s something really Japanese to me about that, about investing your time to make something really well, not for other people to look at you and say you did it well, but just to do it well.

Roger

Yeah, definitely. Actually, the most famous artist in Japan for the music of a Bach, Masaaki Suzuki…he’s really famous, I mean, when you go to the Leipzig Museum, the foremost museum about the music of Bach, it seems like half the recordings there are by Suzuki. So a Japanese group, the Bach Collegium of Japan, is representing the music of Bach globally, but he’s a very humble man. He wasn’t doing it for his own glory or anything like that. “Let’s record all of the cantatas of Bach to the best of our ability and just see what happens.” And God has really blessed his efforts in that.

Anna Gardner

That’s so beautiful. I think it inspires me that people would care about doing something well, not to be seen. I feel like as a Christian artist, sometimes I’m saddened by seeing non-successful or Christian works that to me, aren’t that great. But then when I see people who are Christians or non-Christians just doing something really well. I feel like we, as Christians, should also work so hard to do things well for Christ.

Roger

I appreciate beauty and things done well for sure. Because it lowers walls and it allows for more people to interact with the artwork, to build community around that artwork. I feel like when things are not done as well, it feels like it’s…I don’t know, if you’re trying to put more meaning on the message…then it’s almost manipulative. “You should care about this because of the message.” Well, if it’s good, you can’t help but be drawn in.

Anna Gardner

I think that’s one thing that I’ve really been encouraged about with Community Arts Tokyo. For reference, this is my third summer interning with Community Arts Tokyo.

Roger

Thank you for coming back so many times!

Anna Gardner

I’m so happy to come back because not only do we get to interact with a bunch of really amazing artists, but Christian artists who are making works really well for God. You’ve probably experienced that way more than me here.

Roger

We feel really blessed that we’re surrounded by such an amazing community of people who do their art to the best of their ability. We really inspire each other and encourage one another. I love that community.

Anna Gardner

It’s really a community. I think that you and your family and these other artists from the church and Community Arts Tokyo have created a community where we are able to invite people in who are not Christians, even who are not artists. It’s something that’s been special to me and special to some of my friends. To me, it’s really beautiful. That brings me to the point of, what is the purpose of beauty in your life?

Roger

Oh, you need to read my books!

Anna Gardner

Oh, yes. Tell us about your books, please.

Roger

Aroma of Beauty is one. Hidden Beauty is another.

Anna Gardner

That one’s my favorite.

Roger

Yeah, I mean, I thought a lot about this… Let me tell you a story. It’ll be easier that way. I used to think that beauty was something decorative, that it was something unnecessary. It’s only something for when you have the time or money to do. And then in 2011, we had that large earthquake, and I ended up going up as a truck driver bringing food, water, supplies.

Anna Gardner

To the countryside of Japan, right?

Roger

Yeah, and I thought, that’s what people need in that situation. But we found out from day one, from my very first trip, that beauty was just as important as all those other things, that people actually could not live without it or it led to despair. It led to “Why go on living? We lost everything.” And yet, somehow, beauty would bring not just encouragement, but hope, which is really powerful in that situation. And so that’s why I called the book Aroma of Beauty. It’s a bunch of stories about how people are finding hope through beauty in that terrible situation.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. How can we find your books?

Roger

They’re all on Amazon or wherever you buy books online.

Anna Gardner

I’ll link it in the show notes. Okay, great. And tell us about your new book, too.

Roger

Yeah, my new book comes out August 1.

Anna Gardner

Yes. So the day this podcast airs, your book should be live.

Roger

Awesome. Go buy my book.

Anna Gardner

Yes. Go check out his book.

Roger

I really had fun writing this one. It’s called Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan.

Anna Gardner

Wait, is this the one that you wrote on the plane?

Roger

I don’t think so.

Anna Gardner

Okay, no. I just remember you writing one book, literally on your plane ride to or from Japan.

Roger

I’m always writing on my plane rides.

Anna Gardner

I love it. Okay, but the Hidden Beauty book.

Roger

Yes.

Anna Gardner

Which I’ve gotten to preview, and y’all haven’t.

Roger

We do a series every month called Art, Life, Faith. It’s a great opportunity for artists to try to connect and work out what it means to connect their art, their life, and their faith. We feature a different artist every month. Those are great, but I realized that I wanted to share those stories with more people. We had the gathering, the event, but what if we try to get this in print? Try to continue the process, continue the conversation. And so quite a few people in that book were part of those Art, Life, Faith discussions. I wanted to get their stories out there and work with them. And it was amazing to see the excitement on their faces. Like, “Oh, my story is coming out in print. Thank you, Roger.” So I’m working with them asking, “Is that accurate? Would you change the wording of that.” And they’d respond like, “Yeah, maybe I would change that, but that sounds good.”

And so seeing God in Japan, it’s about Japanese people seeing God in their lives, but also through the art, culture, and history of Japan. I would say that even if the readers are not interested in Japanese culture at all that they would still be interested in the book. “How do we see God in our daily lives? How can we worship God through anything that we do every day?” That’s basically the message of the book.

Anna Gardner

Which is a lot about ethnodoxology, another thing I really wanted to ask you about. I don’t know if you remember this, but about a year ago, I went and met one of your friends in Korea who is an artist, and we talked about ethnodoxology in Korea. But I would also love to talk about ethnodoxology for our listeners in Japan. What does that look like? And first of all, what is ethnodoxology?

Roger

Okay, first, ethnos means the peoples, the nations, and doxology means praise, praise of the nations. People were thinking how do we get the Bible, how do we get scripture, how do we get the gospel into every language in the world, worshiping God through their heart languages rather than translating into English or something like that. But then about 25 years ago, there was this big movement to ask what does that look like through the art languages: the ethnic instruments, musical forms, ways like that… Because there’s still this image in Christianity of importing either contemporary worship songs or traditional hymns, and that those are the only things that are legit when it comes to worshiping God. So how do we encourage the nations by saying, “Your art forms are legitimate in worshiping God.” At the time, that was basically unheard of. It was very controversial, and people got angry, and they stood against it. Even here in Japan, we’ve seen that. Okay, can I share a story about this?

Anna Gardner

Please do. I would love to hear a story.

Roger

So we’re sitting here next to some kotos. [music] You just heard me pluck one of the strings. My son is learning the koto from Chieko.

Anna Gardner

I love Chieko-san.

Roger

Her story is great. She became a Christian, and she was a professional koto player, a traditional Japanese harp. And when she became a Christian, she’s like, “Oh, now I have to give up the koto and learn the piano.”

Anna Gardner

Wait, what? That doesn’t make sense.

Roger

Because she’s a Christian now, and that’s the only legitimate art formsfor Christianity.

Anna Gardner

The only instrument you can play as a Christian is the piano?

Roger

Or the guitar.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. No.

Roger

In Japan, there is that image, and the koto is associated with the temple or the shrine. She’s like, “Oh, no, that can’t worship God. That’s another religion.” And so she was bummed about that because she was a professional and that was what she had dedicated her life to.

Anna Gardner

Wait, first of all, that’s incredible that she would be willing to become a Christian knowing that.

Roger

I know.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. That’s actually really moving.

Roger

That’s part of the power of her testimony. But we invited her as a church staff at Grace City Church Tokyo. We prayed about it and approached her and said, “We would like you to play in worship on the koto.” And she’s like, “No, I can’t do that. It will not go well.” And we’re like, “No, no, no. We want to do this. We think it’ll be good.” And she’s like, “Okay.” So she did. And she was shocked as she was playing. Tears were streaming down her cheeks as she felt like for the first time she was able to worship through her heart language of koto music. She had no idea that she could worship God through koto music. It just had never occurred to her before with the image she had of Christianity, that God would love her to the depths of her being, the very identity of who she was as a koto player. So it was really moving to have her play.

Anna Gardner

That’s really beautiful.

Roger

But…

Anna Gardner

But? Oh, no.

Roger

After worship, that’s when the trouble started. There were a lot of angry people. We had a lot of meetings, not the types of meetings that you really want to have. People were saying, “I could not worship because of that instrument. How dare you sneak in that instrument? It prevented me from worshiping. It was very distracting.” They were very upset.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy because to me, I feel like it would be very moving and beautiful in worship.

Roger

Yeah, you would think so. I mean, it’s not a loud instrument. It’s pretty subtle.

Anna Gardner

It is so subtle.

Roger

But do you know what the key was? When we shared, “Did you see the tears coming down her cheeks as she was playing? It was so powerful. She was worshiping God through her instrument. And we want to first love her and embrace her. And personally, I too was drawn in praise alongside her. I was able to worship God more fully because of her playing. Can’t you see it in that way?” Then they were like, “Oh, well, I guess if you put it in that way.” They thought we were trying to be clever and tricky, sneaking in our agenda of bringing in traditional Japanese instruments just to be cool or something, like a gimmick. No, it’s not about being a gimmick. It’s about a relationship with Chieko and loving her, embracing her, allowing her to worship God and coming alongside. That was the key. So then next time she played in worship, they were able to worship as well because they felt, even though they didn’t know how to worship God through that, they could worship alongside Chieko in her relationship with God. It was so powerful and so good.

Anna Gardner

I love that story, and it makes me so happy to hear that she was able to use her art form for Christ, even though it’s not a traditional Christian instrument, if you will. It reminds me of another artist that I think might be in your book, Kei-san. We have this wonderful friend at our church. His name is Kei-san, and he makes fashion design beautiful clothing. He’s a Japanese fashion designer. I remember putting on one of his designs and thinking, I want to dance in this. He actually allowed me to borrow this design and take it to Nagoya and perform in it. I bring this up because maybe it’s not a traditional way to worship through dance or to worship through wearing a costume or a fashion design. But to me, this fashion design was part kimono and part Western wear. I wore this to portray the story of Ruth, who was a foreigner living in Israel. While I, as an outsider to the Japanese culture, I first see the kimono fabric. I see that it’s in the shape of a kimono, and to me, it seems so Japanese. But to all the Japanese, they only see how it’s different.

They think, “Oh, that’s not a kimono. That’s so different.” It’s different. How they see me. They don’t see me as “she’s nice and respectful.” They see me as, “she’s an outsider.” And so it helped me to see the story of Ruth and to see how she might have experienced herself in Israel, being an outsider and people seeing her as an outsider. But yet she made this firm commitment to God, to our God, despite her being a Moabite. And so if she could worship the God of Israel, and I can also worship God with dance, and you can worship God with the organ, and Chieko-san can worship with the koto, then that is ethnodoxology in our daily lives.

Roger

Yeah, it’s something that only every individual person can answer because sometimes it surprises us what that looks like. For example, I was thinking recently about my recent podcast with a heavy metal musician. He has a very large following here in Japan.

Anna Gardner

Wait, is he Japanese?

Roger

He’s Japanese.

Anna Gardner

But he does heavy metal? Yes. And he’s a Christian.

Roger

Yes. And he’s a Christian.

Anna Gardner

And he’s a Christian? Tell me more.

Roger

Okay. I mean, it really fits the subject of ethnodoxology because you may think, “Okay, koto, that makes sense. A traditional Japanese instrument. Heavy metal? Not so much.” I mean, that’s a Western art form. The West is imposing their musical styles on the rest of the world. Isn’t it terrible? But this singer, we call him Tone…

Anna Gardner

Tone?

Roger

In our interview, he told me how he felt like he was born to this, that God called him into this. If you listen to his music, you notice, first of all, it’s heavy metal, but he’s singing in Japanese. So okay, it’s in Japanese language. And he’s using Japanese traditional scales.

Anna Gardner

Actually? Wait, are they different than the ones we use in America?

Roger

Yeah, they’re actually koto scales. It’s different. And so you can hear it very clearly on his guitar, he’s going through the Japanese scales. But he says the reason this is Japanese music isn’t for those reasons but because he’s a Japanese man worshiping God in his context. That makes it Japanese. That makes it the praise of the nations. When you think ethnodoxology, you wouldn’t think particularly of a Japanese person worshiping God through heavy metal music.

Anna Gardner

No, that’s not what I would think of, Roger.

Roger

That’s not the image that comes up. And yet that fits the category as well, right? I mean, he is very good at what he does. He’s very technically proficient, loves high quality. When you watch his music videos online, you’re like, “Wow, that’s really good.” And I think we are going to see Tone in heaven leading us all in worship of God through heavy metal music.

Anna Gardner

That’s crazy.

Roger

Yeah. And it’s going to be representing the country of Japan in a sense. It’s all about how we praise God in our context with who God called us to be. And it’s different. With heavy metal music, it’s an in-your-face-a-little-bit art form. It’s very loud. It’s very fast. And yet there’s this sense that through it, you are giving everything—all your mind, body, soul, all your technical proficiency, all your energy, all your passion, it’s all coming through. And heavy metal as a style can do that better than, well, koto music, as a contrast.

Anna Gardner

You know, koto is like the silent version, the inner version.

Roger

Yeah. So I think God gifts these art styles to us in order to praise him. That’s what ethnodoxology is. To be able to praise through this gifting that God gives us, whether it’s organ music or dance or whatever it might be in our context, in our communities, for his glory.

Anna Gardner

That’s beautiful. The praise of the nations. Well, thank you so much for telling us about ethnodoxology and about how God can be glorified not just in piano and guitar. I want to ask you just a couple more questions. The first one is, is there any way that we can be praying for you?

Roger

Yes.

Anna Gardner

How can we pray for you?

Roger

Well, as you know, as a church we’ve been on the move for 15 years with no permanent worship space.

Anna Gardner

What does that look like on a Sunday morning?

Roger

So that has been very busy. We had all of our church equipment stored in a van in a large building on a weird elevator mechanical robot system.

Anna Gardner

Like one of those rotating car things? Oh, my goodness.

Roger

We’d have to do that and drive it to the venue wherever it was. There were many different venues, and then unload and set up, and then do the whole process in reverse.

Anna Gardner

Which is just so exhausting on a Sunday morning. The sound people and the helpers set up the whole church, which is not a small church.

Roger

No.

Anna Gardner

And then take it down and then start over the next week and not have anywhere to come during the week.

Roger

So from June 1, for the first time, we have a semi-permanent space we can use throughout the week. We thought, great, we’re going to have more time. And we do but for different things. Now that we have a space throughout the week, we’ve been using it throughout the week for so many great things. And God has really been giving us many opportunities for meeting new people, for evangelism, for discipleship. And it’s so exciting. But it’s also very tiring. And the setup process from June first until now, we’re speaking mid-July. We’re a little bit tired. We’ve really been pushing. It’s been really good, but I’m looking forward to resting a little bit for the rest of this summer and recovering from that.

Anna Gardner

Yeah. I wonder if you could talk to any of our listeners who might be artists who just need some rest. How do you find rest in God or in art when you’re exhausted from working so hard?

Roger

Well, I’m probably not a good example of that. What I do personally is change the art that I’m focused on for a little bit.

Anna Gardner

Okay, well, that is true. You never stop.

Roger

So if I’m focused really hard on music and then I get really worn out from music, I can switch then to writing. And in different genres of writing, whether it be writing fiction or non-fiction. And personally, I find that really energizing to switch what I’m focused on in my creative projects.

Anna Gardner

I do understand that, though. It’s a different pathway of your brain. Well, I know we can be praying for you about getting some rest, whether that’s changing your art form for a little while or whatever. But is there anything else we can be praying for, for Community Arts Tokyo as an organization in the future?

Roger

Yeah, I’ve been actually a little bit disappointed about the way this movement hasn’t grown like I had hoped within the church in Japan, this idea that art plays an important role in worship, in evangelism, in discipleship. There’re so few Christians in Japan. Churches are small with mostly older people. We’re seeing great things happen in our church and churches in our immediate network, but I really need to see this movement spread further, wider. How can we help the nation hear these stories? That’s one reason I started writing. We really need more people to come alongside us so we can be in more cities, working with more churches. And I would love to see God grow the church here in Japan, to see his kingdom grow and for arts to be a part of that.

Anna Gardner

Well, we will definitely be praying for that. I think we can all agree that that is something we all also want. So thanks for sharing that. I have one final question for you, but I’m going to give you a second to think about it while I close out the podcast. Do you have any advice that you would give to our listeners? I don’t know if I have any listeners who are organ players currently, but we might start something. But just artists or people who use the arts in their daily lives or are no longer professional artists but are Christians. For that purpose, as they pursue beauty, whether that’s in just going to worship and getting ready for worship and putting on a Sunday dress, or whether that’s making beautiful things for Christ. Do you have any advice that you would personally give to our listeners who are artists and also not artists.

Roger

Yeah, sure.

Anna Gardner

While you think about that, I’m going to briefly close out the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. The goal of this podcast is not to get famous, but just to share some beautiful stories of people that I have met and to hopefully allow you to be encouraged by the way that they see Christ through their art. And I’m really excited to have Roger on here. He’s written some wonderful books. So if you’re more interested in learning about the purpose of beauty or the aroma of beauty or the hidden beauty of art in Japan, and Christianity in Japan, you should go check out his books. I’ll definitely link it in the show notes. They’ve been really helpful for me as an artist, so I hope you’ll go check them out. They’ve been so encouraging.

Roger

Thank you for that endorsement.

Anna Gardner

That is not a paid endorsement. I want y’all to enjoy this and be encouraged by something that is so encouraging to me. So with that, I’ll turn it over to you to close this out.

Roger

Well, the advice, I guess I would say to artists is to not be discouraged, that God has given us certain gifts and passions to do things. And if we rely on people for encouragement to do it, then a lot of pathways end up being closed. For example, when I first started writing, people were like, “You’re an organist. You’re not a writer. Why are you writing?” And I had people saying, “Missionaries, you’re supposed to be in meetings all the time.”

Anna Gardner

What? Aren’t you supposed to be serving?

Roger

If I had just listened to people’s voices when I started writing during COVID, I would have not been writing now. And I do feel like God has blessed that to get certain stories, certain messages out to wider groups of people. And so that’s the message I have for other artists, too. Be creative. Enjoy what you’re doing and see God enjoying what you’re doing and delighting in it. And if you are able to praise God through what you’re doing, others will come alongside and be able to praise him as well.

Anna Gardner

Amen to that. That’s so encouraging. Thank you for that. And thank you so much for joining our podcast.

Roger

Thank you for inviting me.

Anna Gardner

Hope to have you back on again sometime. Which means I have to come back to Japan, right?

Roger

Okay. Well, we’ll be here.

Anna Gardner

Thank you so much. I hope you’ll have a wonderful rest of your day.

Roger

Bye.

BUY “HIDDEN BEAUTY”

The post The Purpose of Beauty appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

67. Christian Metal with Imari Tones

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 choose it. I don’t think we had a choice. It just turned out this way, and we were born this way. God chose us to play metal, and this is something given by God. I totally believe rock and roll music is a gift from God, and it should be used to praise God. You know, God creates something awesome and it’s always the devil who comes later and make things go bad.

Roger

Yeah.

Takahiro

We have to use it for God. It’s all about freedom and using all your soul, all your body, all your passion, all of your energy. We are using it to praise God. Really loud and everything for God’s glory. I wish I had more English vocabulary.

Roger

Yeah. Don’t let me put words in your mouth, but it seems to me that the style, as you were saying earlier, it’s loud blues, it’s fast blues, it’s very energetic. And somehow you’re able to give glory to God through the loudness, through the fastness. And there’s an excitement there that isn’t in other forms of other styles. Usually, if you think about classical music, it’s a little bit more subdued.

Takahiro

I think every Christian metal musician will say this, but many people think their idea about heavy metal is the devil’s music. But as a Christian metal musician, we have to claim it back from the devil. Did I say that right? Is my English even correct?

Roger

Yeah, yeah.

Takahiro

We have to get it back from the devil. So much heavy metal music is actually influenced by or based on classical music in so many ways. Many metal musicians are actually classically trained. We have to play it as it is intended to be, and I mean to praise Jesus.

Roger

That’s cool. You know, I’m a pipe organist and the reason I got into the pipe organ music is because I liked how loud it was. No kidding. Like I would “pull out all the stops,” an English expression we have, which means basically as loud as it can get. And I’d be playing away and I love just being loud and have the sound wash over me. I can see that same kind of thing with heavy metal. And back when I was younger, I used to play very technically, I loved playing fast and technically proficiently. Heavy metal is very fast on the guitar. The things I’ve seen you play, there is a sense that you can say something, you can give praise to God in a different way than you can in other styles and other art forms. And I think that’s part of the beauty of what you do.

Takahiro

Thank you.

Roger

Yeah.

Takahiro

Pipe organs are cool. They are like, literally, the biggest musical instrument in the world. The whole church, the whole building, the whole cathedral is a musical instrument.

Roger

Right, right.

Takahiro

That’s awesome.

Roger

Yeah, all the walls are shaking and everyone’s sitting there, their bodies are shaking.

Takahiro

Wow.

Roger

There’s even some types, they’re very rare, that have a 64 foot, which means it’s a very, very low note. You can’t even hear it. It’s only meant to shake you.

Takahiro

Some of those sounds, like really low frequencies, get harmonically distorted like electric guitars. So I think that these loud, big organs have many things in common with electric guitars.

Roger

Well, people are going to be coming in soon, so I guess we’d better stop there. I’m so looking forward to tonight. Thank you so much, too, for sitting down and talking with us.

Takahiro

Thank you very much. You’re welcome.

Roger

Thank you for listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

The post 67. Christian Metal with Imari Tones appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

67. Heavy Metal with Imari Tones

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 choose it. I don’t think we had a choice. It just turned out this way, and we were born this way. God chose us to play metal, and this is something given by God. I totally believe rock and roll music is a gift from God, and it should be used to praise God. You know, God creates something awesome and it’s always the devil who comes later and make things go bad.

Roger

Yeah.

Takahiro

We have to use it for God. It’s all about freedom and using all your soul, all your body, all your passion, all of your energy. We are using it to praise God. Really loud and everything for God’s glory. I wish I had more English vocabulary.

Roger

Yeah. Don’t let me put words in your mouth, but it seems to me that the style, as you were saying earlier, it’s loud blues, it’s fast blues, it’s very energetic. And somehow you’re able to give glory to God through the loudness, through the fastness. And there’s an excitement there that isn’t in other forms of other styles. Usually, if you think about classical music, it’s a little bit more subdued.

Takahiro

I think every Christian metal musician will say this, but many people think their idea about heavy metal is the devil’s music. But as a Christian metal musician, we have to claim it back from the devil. Did I say that right? Is my English even correct?

Roger

Yeah, yeah.

Takahiro

We have to get it back from the devil. So much heavy metal music is actually influenced by or based on classical music in so many ways. Many metal musicians are actually classically trained. We have to play it as it is intended to be, and I mean to praise Jesus.

Roger

That’s cool. You know, I’m a pipe organist and the reason I got into the pipe organ music is because I liked how loud it was. No kidding. Like I would “pull out all the stops,” an English expression we have, which means basically as loud as it can get. And I’d be playing away and I love just being loud and have the sound wash over me. I can see that same kind of thing with heavy metal. And back when I was younger, I used to play very technically, I loved playing fast and technically proficiently. Heavy metal is very fast on the guitar. The things I’ve seen you play, there is a sense that you can say something, you can give praise to God in a different way than you can in other styles and other art forms. And I think that’s part of the beauty of what you do.

Takahiro

Thank you.

Roger

Yeah.

Takahiro

Pipe organs are cool. They are like, literally, the biggest musical instrument in the world. The whole church, the whole building, the whole cathedral is a musical instrument.

Roger

Right, right.

Takahiro

That’s awesome.

Roger

Yeah, all the walls are shaking and everyone’s sitting there, their bodies are shaking.

Takahiro

Wow.

Roger

There’s even some types, they’re very rare, that have a 64 foot, which means it’s a very, very low note. You can’t even hear it. It’s only meant to shake you.

Takahiro

Some of those sounds, like really low frequencies, get harmonically distorted like electric guitars. So I think that these loud, big organs have many things in common with electric guitars.

Roger

Well, people are going to be coming in soon, so I guess we’d better stop there. I’m so looking forward to tonight. Thank you so much, too, for sitting down and talking with us.

Takahiro

Thank you very much. You’re welcome.

Roger

Thank you for listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

The post 67. Heavy Metal with Imari Tones appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

66. Moon Creature with Verity Hayhow

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. It’s really hard to find a space to worship. Renting halls in downtown Tokyo is really expensive, and we’ve been turned down by so many people who won’t let us use their spaces when they’re not using them. Some of the cheaper halls that we are able to find have a lot of restrictions like not allowing food so we couldn’t do communion, or not allowing children, which … What hall doesn’t allow children? … And then things like not allowing the collecting of funds, which rules out collecting tithes and offerings. Sometimes we weren’t able to find a place at all and we had to meet in a park at the mercy of the weather. And the few times that we did that, thankfully, God protected us. Rain fell and we were like, Oh, we have to cancel, and then it stopped just long enough for us to gather 70 people in the park, and then it started raining again and we had to go home.

But now things have changed. An opportunity was made available for us to move into a place 24/7 that we can use throughout the week. So we started something called the Tokyo Tabernacle Project to raise funds for it and moved into the space on June 1. The room was not quite finished. All the past week, the construction crew was trying to finish that up, get the rest of the wallpaper up, get some monitors up, things like that, and then for the church’s 15th anniversary this past Sunday, we were able to celebrate together and invite a lot of guests in to celebrate with us. We had some pastors come in who used to be on staff but have since gone out, sent out to plant other churches in Tokyo. We had the building committee up front to thank them for all their hard work. We had a representative from the building itself come and speak to us about the whole process and thank him for everything he did to make possible. We also had a video greeting from our founding pastor, and we were even honored to have the missions pastor and head of the missions committee from a church in the States to help support this project. It all smoothly proceeded forward under the fearless leadership of our pastor, Daisuke Kimura.

The building where we’re meeting, Ochanomizu Christian Center, has a number of churches that meet for worship on Sundays. We’ve been working very hard over the past few months to develop those relationships. We were honored to have pastors from the church that meets just above us to come and bless us and pray for us, to share a meal with us during the two-hour party after worship. And they also bought us a big bouquet of flowers, which we were able to put in the entryway. It’s been so cool to see how God has pulled all this together as we look expectantly to see what he’s going to do in the future.

We have other cool things to share as well. On July 1, we are launching a new book called Third Culture Kids. It was written by a missionary kid, Ulrika Ernvik, who was raised overseas. She wrote this book to help people understand the various things they need to think about when raising their children overseas in a third culture setting. There was a Japanese missionary family who went to Papua New Guinea, Yu Fukunaga, and he was so moved by this book and how helpful it was for him that he decided to undertake the task to translate it and then look for a publisher. He found us, and we agreed to work with him. This project has really been going on for a year now, and we are so proud of the results. So, this is the Japanese edition of Third Culture Kids, written from a Christian perspective. There really was nothing like this in the Japanese language before. So we’re really excited about how this is going to help families in the future. If you’re interested in learning more about this book, please contact me and check out the show notes. We pray that this book will really be a blessing to many Japanese families living around the world, whether in missions or not, even if it’s a transfer for a company. We believe this book would be really helpful for them.

I’m also happy to announce that my next book will be coming out this summer called Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan. It’s about the Japanese aesthetic of beauty in hiddenness, and it’s also about seeing the hidden beauty of God in Japanese art and culture. Now, this is a project that’s been on the back burner for a while. I’m so happy it’s finally coming to fruition. We plan to launch it on August 1. I submitted the audiobook version just last week, so we’re going through the process of having that approved, and I’m waiting for proofs to come from England right now so I can make sure the covers look okay. It’s been quite a process giving birth to this book, but I’m so excited to finally be able to release it to all of you. There are a lot of stories in there that have meant a lot to people in our congregation. I tell stories of five of them in there, along with a lot of other stories as well. And they were saying, Oh, you’re finally coming out with that book, so we’re celebrating together. Anyway, I can’t wait to share it all with all of you.

This episode, I talk with Verity Hayhow, who has been interning with us for the past three months. She’s an illustrator and designer who worked with Harper Collins in London just after college and took a break from that to work alongside us for a little bit, and we are so grateful. She immediately dived into many of the book projects we had going on at the time, as well as writing and illustrating her own book called Moon Creature, which we’re going to talk a little bit about. I’m also happy to announce that since the recording of this podcast, Verity has asked to be part of our missionary team, and we accepted. Now she’s going through the process of being approved by a mission agency and raising support. So we can’t wait to see her again in Japan as soon as she can raise those needed funds. I’ll have more information about that at the end of the podcast if you’re interested in supporting her and helping her get here. So for now, let me invite Verity into the conversation.

Verity

Welcome to the Art Life Podcast, and I’m your host Verity Hayhow.

Roger

Nice. I love it. Thank you, Verity, for being on the program.

Verity

Thank you for having me.

Roger

So I am excited to sit down with you and share some of the stories of what God has been doing during your time here in Japan. I would love to start by interacting with you about the Art Life Faith event we had last week that you led. Thank you for doing that. It was really well-attended, and I thought the atmosphere was great. What are your feelings about it?

Verity

It was a good time. Yeah, I was pretty nervous running up to it, but I hope people had a good time, and I had a good time talking about my work.

Roger

Tell us a little bit and what you shared in that time together.

Verity

So the event was divided up into two parts. The first part, I just talked about myself, my favorite thing to do. And then the second part was my second favorite thing to do, which was to engage other people in something creative. I talked a bit about where I’m from, the work that I like to make, and this project that I’m working on at the moment, The Moon Creature.

Roger

Okay, we’ll be getting more into that in a little bit.

Verity

We will be. Yeah, I guess I started off by talking about why I make art and what I enjoy about it and my creative journey as well.

Roger

I know a big part of what we did that evening was a workshop of making bags. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why you decided on that project?

Verity

Everybody got a bag and everybody got to paint one and take one home with them. This was something I decided on doing that I think maybe you don’t usually do in Art Life Faith events. But I think part of my practice as an artist is getting people involved in creating art themselves rather than just creating art by myself. There’s something very spiritual about getting other people involved in making art for themselves. Because I think that when I’ve run events like this, people come along and they always start off by saying, “Well, I’m not creative” or on Friday, “Oh, I’m not a painter. I don’t make images. I’m a musician or I’m a director.”

Roger

It was a little scary for me, not a painter, as a musician to try to paint a bag and be like, “Oh, what if I make a mistake?”

Verity

Exactly. It’s this unfamiliar territory. What if I do something wrong? What if it ends up looking bad? And people always have these fears, and they always, in my experience, come away from the event feeling like they did something special, which I think then leads on to something that I believe about the process of creating art is that it responds to something deep within us. That is not necessarily about just creating something that looks nice, but also making things echoes who we are as human beings made in the image of God. And that’s why, to me, workshops are something that I enjoy running because I think they give people an opportunity to answer this call within them, whether they consider themselves a creative professional or a professional creative or not.

Roger

Yeah. Well, let me ask you. So I know one of the cool things about it were the conversations that we were having. I was on that side of the room, and you were at the table with the other side of the room. We had some really amazing conversations in our group together because we were painting side by side and just talking as we were painting. So is that part for the community building aspect?

Verity

For sure. I think that people start to open up when they’re making things together. They start having these conversations. Maybe it’s easier to open up when you’re making something with someone else because your attention is directed elsewhere. So, yeah, I find that you do end up having these interesting conversations with people.

Roger

It was Good Friday. It was Easter weekend. And so you were leading us on a resurrection theme. For me, the most moving story was of the actress who we talked about in the past podcast, who we’d worked with, made a film together, and what she had painted. Did she interact with you as she was doing it, or was it more at the end?

Verity

A little bit throughout, I didn’t fully understand what she was painting until she had finished and she explained it.

Roger

Yeah, and what was it?

Verity

So this actress, she doesn’t speak a whole lot of English, and I don’t speak a whole lot of Japanese.

Roger

Right. I guess that’s a problem.

Verity

Our communication is pretty bare bones. But in the beginning, she was like, “I’m going to paint a sake bowl.” And I was like, “Okay, cool.” Then at the end, she shows me this painting that she’s made. And she’s like, “This is resurrection sake.” It’s an image of the sake and the cup, and then there’s some pickled vegetables on the plate. Those were also resurrection imagery. Bearing in mind that this girl, I don’t think that she’s a Christian, but she was telling us about how this sake has this resurrection imagery built into the process of drinking it. And how these pickles are stored underground. So there’s also that resurrection imagery of them being brought up into the light in order to be consumed. And she was talking about this with me, and I thought that was such a thoughtful response to the prompts of resurrection. That’s such an interesting interpretation, right?

Roger

I explain this a little bit in the past episode, how she has not met with Christians much. With the idea of painting the resurrection theme, she’s like, “Oh, my goodness, I don’t know what that is.” The sake imagery you mentioned, she explained in Japanese how there’s this sake that you bury out of the light for a long time in order for its taste to grow. And then after five years or so, when you open it up, you want to warm it up. And as you warm it up, the flavor really comes out. So you have to have hidden it away in the dark, and then you bring it out and it has to be warmed up in order for the flavor to come out. It was buried in a sense, and then it’s being brought out. And so as she’s trying to interact with the theme of resurrection, that’s what she came up with. And then the other was the movie, the film that she was involved in with us making from my book, A Taste of Grace, pickles that you keep underneath the floorboards in the kitchen, and you have to go in and you have to stir every day. Otherwise, it gets moldy, and fermentation stops if you don’t keep stirring it. You bring it back out then and the flavor comes out and it’s healthy for you. And so it has this resurrection theme in the pickles itself. And it was just so cool for her to be thinking through traditional Japanese culture, and interacting with what the resurrection looks like. As she’s heard now about Jesus, really for the first time last month, she’s trying to contextualize it with what she knows and interacting with all these Christians around the table, painting her bag, talking with you about it. It was just really cool to hear her story and watch her work through that process.

Verity

Yeah, for sure. I think it’s also just so interesting it’s such an unexpected image, but I think it really shows how, again, she’s an actress. She’s not a painter, but she had this really, I don’t know, really creative interest. It made me start to think about this whole idea of resurrection. It was just so unexpected, and it was very special.

Roger

Yeah, I felt like that, too. I was getting a new insight into what the gospel looks like in Japan. It made me praise God more by hearing her story. To see this person who isn’t a Christian, who has interacted with Christians, to be trying to wrestle with what it is that Christians believe and what does that look like. It was only because of this event that she could do that, that she was put in that community. And afterwards, it was really the community aspect of it, just how she was so excited to be like, “Let me know when there’s another event. I want to come back.” And then we had a professional film director who was also here at the event, and the two of them got to meet and talk. They said, “We should do something together. We should make a film together.” And my heart was just leaping for joy to see that new friendship. I do hope they make a movie together. I’d love to see that. The film director is a Christian. And so, again, to meet more Christians, be around more community, and just to keep interacting with these themes. But It’s really all about that. These events building community, building friendships that go way past the event itself.

Verity

I think they also create a far more accessible environment for people to start thinking about their faith. As creative people, but also just as people. If you stood up in church and started telling a room full of people about the resurrection, some people would hear that. Some people would understand what you were saying, and they resonate with it. Some people would just be like, this is just some American guy proselytizing to me, and they would go away and they wouldn’t think twice about it. But I think that when you create these environments for people, then I think it opens them up to this idea of resurrection through the art, because the art is this third space. It’s like a neutral space to talk and to think about these ideas.

Roger

Definitely. I was just embarrassed when comparing her bag with what I made. I was like, I don’t know how to paint a resurrection theme, so I’m just going to make a musical theme. And I made this rainbow city with a black note on top of it. Well, it’s very practical anyway. I used it for carrying my music to worship on Easter Sunday, so that was appropriate.

Verity

There you go. I made mine themed to the book that I’m writing so that when people comment on it, then I can tell them about the book.

Roger

Okay, so I want to get to talking about the book. Before I do, what have… Well, first, let’s go back even further. Who are you? What are you doing here in Japan?

Verity

What am I doing in your apartment? It’s scary. So I’m Verity. I’m an illustrator and designer from London, and I’m currently here in Japan. I’m interning with Community Arts for the past nearly three months, headed back to London soon.

Roger

We love having you here.

Verity

I’ve been having a great time, been learning about this whole intersection of faith and art and how they work together. Yeah, it’s been amazing.

Roger

I know you worked a little bit in the book publishing industry before you came here. We’ve had you in some book projects since you’ve been here. What are some of the projects you’ve been working on while you’re here?

Verity

Well, the first one is this one with you, Roger. Roger is an author, and one of the books that he’s got coming out in the next few months is this book called Hidden Beauty, which is about this whole idea of the idea that something is more beautiful if it’s more hidden in Japanese aesthetics and how God is hidden within Japanese culture as well, that we don’t explicitly see a Christian God in Japanese culture, but he’s still there because he’s everywhere. And so I’ve been working with Roger on a cover for that.

Roger

And that hasn’t been easy, has it?

Verity

No, it hasn’t been a straightforward road.

Roger

Because even when we both agree this is good, and then show it to some Japanese people, they’re like, No, you can’t do that.

Verity

I will say one thing that I’ve been learning in my time in Japan is Japanese aesthetics have so much more nuance than people think that they do. They’re very unexpected, and you can think that you understand them, and then you really don’t, which is what I’ve been finding. But yeah, this cover has … It’s been had a lot of U-turns and going back on itself, but I think we’re getting somewhere.

Roger

Thank you for your patience and endurance to keep going. What about the children’s book? Tell me about that.

Verity

Yes. I have been very willingly roped into advising on this kids’ book, also written by Roger and illustrated by our other lovely intern, Holly. Tsunami Violin is the title, and it tells the story of this tree by the coastline in Japan. Her home, her whole life is ripped apart by the 2011 tsunami. But she, through the course of the story, she finds a new purpose, very musical purpose, and it’s a real story. I have been advising on the illustrations as an illustrator myself, also on some of the text and then typesetting things as well.

Roger

Yeah, that has been a huge help because I know in our first book, Pippy the Piano, we weren’t thinking… I was putting the text in. You were doing an amazing job of thinking, “Why don’t we have the text fit the image and have it not just straight lines but wave around and do interesting creative things with the words.” So, I’ve really been appreciating that.

Verity

It’s been a learning process for me as well.

Roger

Yeah, so let’s talk about your book, The Moon Creature.

Verity

Right. The Moon Creature is this book that I’m writing and illustrating, and it tells the story of this little creepy cat, rabbit, animal. She lives on the moon. She’s best friends with the moon. When they have a big falling out, then she is left unmoored. She has to figure out her life. And the story just follows her as she makes a lot of mistakes as she figures out who she is and she figures out what it means to love another person and to be loved by another person and how she might have been getting it wrong all along. And It’s a book very close to my heart as a young person, because I think as a young person, that’s a journey that everybody has to go on. They have to figure out how to be a healthy adult with healthy adult relationships. And so, yeah, I hope that it resonates with other young people, too, when it comes out.

Roger

I know it will. And I can’t wait until it’s finished so more people can see it. But you’re doing the illustration as well, right? I think the story is powerful and the illustrations, too, are just amazing. So your goal is to finish part one, right? And get that done before you go back to the UK? It takes more time than we thought, doesn’t it?

Verity

It is. Actually, writing and illustrating a whole book by yourself is so much more work than I thought it would be. Yeah, so part one is hopefully coming out sometime in the near future, even if it happens while I’m in the UK. But yeah, it’s a story in four parts. I think it might take a while, but I’m hoping to be releasing a web version and then maybe some print versions as well to be able to share it with as many people as possible.

Roger

When this project is done, how can people find it?

Verity

Keep checking my website https://verityhayhow.com/. There will be more details on there shortly about how you can access the first chapter.

Roger

When it’s done, we’re definitely going to announce it on this podcast as well. So keep listening to future episodes and you’ll hear more about that. Is there anything else you’d like to share before we end our time together? While you’re thinking about that, I can say that one thing that I know that we’ve really enjoyed doing, especially with the children’s book, The Tsunami Violin, working together, there’s really been four of us sitting around the table meeting almost weekly to talk about the direction of the book and how much fun it’s been to not feel like you’re alone in a process, and interacting with you about The Moon Creature as well. It inspires you. I feel like each of these projects have gone infinitely better by working together, and it keeps you motivated to keep going on them and feel like you’re really, I don’t know, somehow providing a work that’s going to make a difference in people’s lives.

Verity

I agree. I think Moon Creature is so much better for the collaboration aspect. I think it also is what we do as Community Arts Tokyo, is that we’re producing work together. It’s not just for us, it’s for everybody.

Roger

Yeah, definitely. Well, that’s all the time we have today. Thank you so much for being here in Japan, for coming, sharing your life, your time with us here. We can’t wait to see the Moon Creature completed.

Verity

Thank you, Roger. And thank you for having me on the podcast, for having me in Japan. I hope to be back soon, and I hope to be sharing Moon Creature with everybody soon as well.

Roger

Awesome. Thank you. God bless.

Thank you for listening to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. If you’d like to give to Verity so she can join us here in Japan, please click this link or message me personally. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

The post 66. Moon Creature with Verity Hayhow appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

65. Dead Sea Squirrels with Mike Nawrocki

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 life here. I’m always surrounded by artists or making things together and just love encouraging one another to make really high-quality art, but also to talk about the gospel through the art that we’re making.

It’s just so cool to be here in the city of Tokyo, where there are so few Christians and to be able to see how God is building his church and sharing his gospel and seeing lives change through the arts. There’s a lot more I could say about that. But I really want to share with you this conversation with Mike, and especially about his new series, The Dead Sea Squirrels.

Roger

Mike, thank you so much for being here today.

Mike

Roger, thank you so much for having me. I’m super excited to be with you here in Tokyo.

Roger

Yeah, so we are looking out the window of my living room where you can see along the river here in downtown Tokyo. We had an Art, Life, Faith event last night. We were going to do here, but there was so much interest we had to move it to another location, and that was basically because of you!

Mike

Well, I’m honored. What an event. It was so cool to see the folks there and to get to share what we did. I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about that. But this whole trip for me and the students that I’m with has just been so fantastic.

Roger

So tell me about that. Why are you in Japan right now?

Mike

I am a professor at Lipscomb University, and we have a missions trip here through our film department. Another leader and I, another faculty member, brought 12 film students to Tokyo to work on filming a couple of narrative films that you wrote. So that’s been wonderful.

Roger

That was fun.

Mike

And then also doing a documentary. And it’s just been such a great experience. I mean, I’m so proud of the students. They’ve just done really wonderful work. All the principal photography is done. We still have a lot of work to do in the editing bay, but they’ll be two short films. They’ve gotten a chance to obviously experience the culture, meet people, and be on a mission in the field that they’re studying and be able to serve others through the work that they love doing in film.

Roger

Yeah, I’m so grateful they came here and did that with us. The teaser trailer we showed last night, it was amazing, just the quality of it.

Mike

Oh, my goodness, yes. I was off in a different area the day that they shot that so for me to see that, I was just blown away, too. I was just so proud of them and just the types of images they were able to capture. And then just the facilities that you all provided, the traditional Japanese house that we filmed in, and the Japanese actors that were there. It was all just amazing and very magical for them.

Roger

Yeah, those actors were great. On Monday, we filmed A Taste of Grace, which is going be about a three-and-a-half-minute film, something like that. Friday, we filmed what we’re calling The Lost Sheep, about a sheep that goes wandering, but the sheep is actually a bicycle, and how the actor finds it in the end and brings it in. Both are based upon themes in the Bible. I’m really looking forward to seeing more people drawn in to the Bible, perhaps for the first time through these films.

Mike

Yeah, and our students are so excited about that, the fact that they can create something that’s going to just have a potential impact on others. They’re very interested in sharing their faith, and that’s just a wonderful opportunity for them.

Roger

Yeah, let’s talk about the event last night a little bit because one of the things I thought was cool was for the students to be able to share a little of the work they’ve been doing up to this point. They can tell people, “Yeah, I had a film screening in Tokyo.” Perhaps they can use that language?

Mike

Yeah, it premiered in Tokyo.

Roger

But yeah, it was really neat for them to share a little bit about their work and their time here. People seemed to really engage with them over that.

Mike

Yeah, they loved it. I think you had four students share their films. We have one animation student with us here, so she had a little animated short that she played, which was just adorable about a couple of beavers. Then a few other students shared films that they have worked on just in the context of their school work at Lipscomb. They’re talented students, and they’ve got great hearts. For them to have that opportunity to share with an audience. They were speaking in English and being translated in Japan. Just that experience for them was just…it just blew their minds, and they loved it.

Roger

Yeah, I love, too, what one of the actresses said who was up there saying how she happens to be a Christian. The others involved were not. Just how amazing the experience. It was her first opportunity to work as an actor with Christians.

Mike

That’s wonderful.

Roger

There are so few Christians here in the film industry. For her to say, “It was different, and it was rewarding, and it was encouraging.” She wasn’t sure quite what words to use. It was really interesting.

Mike

That was really touching. The other thing that Tyler shared with me, the other leader who was on the shoot that day, when you were opening up in prayer, a couple of the actors, probably who weren’t Christians, he was saying the older lady there, the older lady actor, she was just looking around as people were praying. When he finished, Tyler said she shared with him that that day was the 80th anniversary of the firebombing of Tokyo. I’m going to break up a little bit, but just how much she appreciated the fact that we’re friends now, and just that obviously horrible event, and the fact that we could be in a room working together and just communing together as friends was just a wonderful thing.

Roger

Yeah, it really was a special moment because she asked me, “Can I say something?” “Sure, of course.” Then we weren’t quite sure where she was going with this. “Well, 80 years ago…” “I was like, eighty years ago? Why are you talking about that?” But it was moving. Just interacting, too, with her. There were a lot of conversations that happened before the filming about the content. She was trying to understand what it meant. She was interacting with me over the script and saying, “You wouldn’t really say this about pickles. Why are you saying this?” I said, “Well, that’s actually the point because it’s a metaphor for something else. It’s a metaphor for us and how God takes care of us in our brokenness and our darkness And so by the way you use the language, you want to make people think, ‘Wait, we’re not talking about food? We’re talking about something else?’” And we went back and forth with what she was comfortable saying. So I think she really was drawn in by that. And then on Friday with the other actress, we did a film was based on the parable of the lost sheep. Jesus tells the story of the shepherd who leaves the 99 in search of the one. And then, so all of Luke 15, which then goes with the lost coin parable, and then the The Prodigal Son. We read that together before, while we were waiting for the film crew to get ready. And it was the first time I think she had ever read the Bible before. Opening the Bible, and putting it in front of her, and she’s reading it, and then we’re interacting with the story, and she’s like, “Oh, I see. I didn’t know that this was what it was about,” and it was a really good discussion.

Mike

That’s so wonderful. To me, that’s so amazing because you hear people going on missions trips and sharing their faith, and you get this idea about preaching on the streets and doing that thing. But to go over and just be able to do what you do as an artist and interact with other artists and share your faith that way is just an incredible opportunity.

Roger

Yeah, God really gives us opportunities through the arts, in Japan in particular. I think that the arts is a great inroad into people’s lives. We love seeing that and love seeing how God continues to bless our efforts in that.

Mike

That’s wonderful.

Roger

Let’s talk about VeggieTales a little bit, if that’s okay.

Mike

Sure.

Roger

I have always been amazed at how famous VeggieTales is in Japan.

Mike

And I’m finding that out. I knew that we had some of the episodes dubbed in Japanese, and the Japanese Larry the Cucumber happened to be my favorite foreign language dub of Larry. I’d heard a number of other Larrys in other languages, and the Japanese version was by far my favorite, the best that I heard, the Hairbrush Song in Japanese, as the kids say, totally slaps. It was really great. But being here and hearing that, just the popularity of it among the people that I’ve met so far has just been fantastic. I just would have never known that.

Roger

When I travel around giving concerts in small churches, I shared this last night as well, but how it’s very hard for churches to provide children’s ministry because they’re so small. Most of the people are older, and when kids come, they’re like, “Oh, no. What are we going to do? We’re all in our 70s, and now we have some kids here from the neighborhood.” But something that every church has is a VCR. And I think your distribution strategy of, Well, let’s get this into VHS and get it out there was perfectly suited to Japan’s needs at the time.

Roger

Even the smallest towns I’ve been to…very rural parts of Japan. And the VeggieTales VHS is right there.

Mike

Oh, my goodness. And did they ever… Did DVD follow or is it still VHS?

Roger

I’m not sure. I think it’s still VHS, actually.

Mike

That’s incredible.

Roger

Change is hard. But it was just the fact that you worked so hard to put this product into a medium to get the Christian message out there, and then how God blessed that by having it distributed throughout this country, which has so few resources in Christianity, is just a tremendous gift to us. So thank you so much for doing that.

Mike

Oh, my goodness. I mean, it’s an honor and it’s truly humbling. I just remember thinking all those years, because it’s animation, you’re in your animated studio and you’re making, I call it making the donuts. You’re making the show and then you’re sending it out there. But it’s been so amazing for me to see just the impact that it’s had in people’s lives. I meet a lot of now college-age kids who grew up on VeggieTales and tell me what it’s meant for them. God’s word, when it goes out, does not return void. And it’s just been amazing to be a part of that. And I’m so honored to know that I’ve had the chance to do something that has been so well received all over the world.

Roger

Would you be willing to share Larry’s voice with us a little bit?

Mike

“Sure. If I don’t blow out your microphone, I don’t know if you got a compressor on this baby or not. But yeah, there’s Larry right there.”

Roger

That’s awesome! Thank you, Larry, for being here also. But I don’t want to take too much of your time, so let’s go into what your current project is right now. Tell us about that.

Mike

So I’m really excited. We just launched. I left VeggieTales full-time in 2016. You mentioned the home video market. VeggieTales started on VHS and moved its way into DVD. The home video market was very strong for a number of decades. But in the mid-teens, people just stopped buying home videos, by and large, or at least not enough people did which brought an end to that business model. I left Big Idea in 2016 and started working on a new series that I had in mind for a few years. It started with the bad pun, the Dead Sea Squirrels. One of the lines that we drew in the sand very early on with VeggieTales was to never depict Jesus as a vegetable. We were irreverent in many other ways, but we just wanted to draw the line there. I started thinking about, “What other vehicle could we have as a show to be able to tell more New Testament stories, more gospel stories?” That title popped into my brain one day, and I started to form a world around it. When I left Big Idea, I started to develop that as an animated series.

But then a friend of mine who was in the publishing industry suggested, “Hey, have you ever thought of an early reader series with this?” I hadn’t, but I thought it was a great idea. I went away, did some research, and then I worked up a pitch to Tyndale Publishers. They loved it, and I started writing the books. Each book is about 8,000 words, so they’re ideal for early readers, from when kids first start reading in kindergarten up through about fifth or sixth grade. The books were doing well. In the meantime, I also went back to school to get my MFA to be able to teach at the university level. I did that and then started working at Lipscomb University with my good friend Steve Taylor, who brought me in. Steve and I had worked together on a number of projects for VeggieTales. And so went in, began teaching, and then had the opportunity to create a pilot based off of the first book. It turned out great.

From there, we were able to raise the rest of the funds for a full 13-episode first season based off of 12 books that I had written. It tells the story of Merle and Pearl, an old Jewish couple from Galilee, who lived in the first century. Merle has it in his brain that he wants to take a little trip down the Jordan River to the Dead Sea because you can’t sink. He and Pearl get on this raft and spend the day in the sun and in the salty water. Of course, discover it’s a hot, and they seek out shade in a cave. They get lost in the cave. They’re salt-encrusted and dehydrated and that preserves them for 2,000 years in that cave. Flash forward to present day, a little boy named Michael, 10 years old, is with his dad, who’s an archeologist. He’s at a dig in the area, and Michael stumbles across these dead squirrels, and he thinks that they’re cool. So he smuggles them home back to Tennessee and sets them up on his windowsill so they don’t stink up his room. It rains that night, and they rehydrate, desalinate, and come back to life.

So they help Michael as he’s going through things that 10-year-olds go through in the modern day with flashbacks to the first century. Michael’s dealing with a problem with a bully at school. He’s plotting revenge on getting back at the bully. But the squirrels will say, “Hey, we have a story about that,” and we go back and hear a song called “Do Unto Others,” which is Jesus at the Sermon on the Mount. They’re able to plant those seeds, and that works its way through the story. It’s an opportunity to tell those gospel New Testament stories in a way that’s really helpful for kids in the modern day. Then later in the series, we actually share the full birth and death and resurrection gospel message through the story as well.

Yeah, just really excited about the series and its launch.

Roger

You’re the voice of Merle, is that right?

Mike

“I’m Merle, yes. I’m Merle the Squirrel.” He’s not as famous as Larry yet.

Roger

How can people watch this show?

Mike

We are on a streaming service called Minno, the number one Christian streaming service for kids, gominnow.com. We did a deal with The Wonder Project, if folks are familiar with the House of David, which is out now on Amazon. Eventually, we’ll be under their umbrella within Amazon, but they sub-licensed us out to a company called Minno, where we’ve got great friends. In fact, they stream VeggieTales, so all that content is also available there. They’re just wonderful folks. We released February 14th with our first three episodes.

Roger

Congratulations! That’s pretty recent.

Mike

It’s very recent, and we’ve been adding two episodes every week. In the next two weeks or so, all 13 episodes will be out. We’ve been hearing great things, great feedback from folks. On the 15th, the day after the release, we had a really wonderful premiere in Nashville, where about 700 folks showed up and lots of kids. We showed the first three episodes and had just a really, really great reception. Super excited to see where the show is going to go.

Roger

Yeah. Would you say it reaches the same audience? If people love VeggieTales, they’re going to love Dead Sea Squirrels?

Mike

Yeah, I think so. That’s what I’ve heard from a lot of people. It’s a different type of show. VeggieTales was an ensemble cast of vegetables. Every episode was a different story, like a short film with the beginning, middle, and end, and you could watch each of them of a la carte. Squirrels is different in that it is a story that spans 13 episodes. It’s got these great little cliffhangers that hopefully keep you wanting to watch and see how that first season resolves. Then there’s enough threads there to keep you going into season 2, that type of thing. I think nowadays, what people are drawn to about streaming, I think it fits into that format really well.

Roger

Cool. Well, I can’t wait to see it.

Mike

Thank you.

Roger

Also, you have a podcast you want to let people know about?

Mike

Oh, yeah. It’s The Bible for Kids. It’s a podcast that I do. Trisha Goyer is my current co-host. The idea around our podcast was, back in the day, if folks wanted to hear more about great resources for kids, faith resources, they would go to their local Christian bookstore. In the States, they were everywhere. In fact, that’s where we got started with VeggieTales in Christian bookstores, initially. But by and large, most of them are not around anymore. That’s happened to a lot of bookstores. We wanted to provide a podcast for parents who are looking for those resources for their kids. We talked to a lot of authors who have new books coming out, musicians who have projects coming out for kids, filmmakers. Just Any of those types of projects that want to pass on biblical values to kids, we’re interested in talking to authors about that.

Roger

That’s awesome. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.

Mike

Roger, this has been so wonderful. Thank you for being such a gracious host here in Tokyo. We’re just over the moon about our time here with you all.

Roger

Loved having you here. I hope you bring the students back. They really were a joy to have here.

Mike

Thank you. We haven’t left yet, and they’re already talking about coming back. So thank you so much.

Roger

Awesome. God bless.

Mike

God bless.

Roger

Thank you so much for listening to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

The post 65. Dead Sea Squirrels with Mike Nawrocki appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

64. Lausanne Conversations 3

Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther.

This is the third in a series of conversations I’ve shared with you from Lausanne Congress 4, which took place September 22–28, 2024 in Seoul, South Korea. Because it was the 50th anniversary of the Lausanne Movement, it was the largest gathering yet, with over 5,000 people in person and another 2,000 online, plus over 200 nations were represented. I had so many amazing conversations, and I’m so glad that through these three episodes, you can get just a little peek into what God is doing around the world.

David

My name is David. It’s nice to meet Roger, my friend again.

Roger

Where do you serve?

David

I serve in the Sahara, region of Africa that comprises 15 countries. We are targeting Unreached People groups in 15 countries from Gambia, Senegal, Niger Republic, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibuti, and Mali.

Roger

Are you a pastor?

David

I’m not the main pastor of the church, but I assist in pastoring, and I’m a missionary.

Roger

Great. Do you do something in the arts as well?

David

Yes, I’m a musician. I specialize in producing indigenous resources for Unreached People groups. I play the local instrument called the kora. I play the ngoni. I play the guitar.

Roger

I think I’ve heard you play one of those traditional instruments at a previous GCAMM conference. Is that right?

David

Yes, I brought my kora to GCAMM in Nairobi. I also played in GCAMM in the US.

Roger

I was at both of those events. It was beautiful. Thank you. And so what brought you to Korea?

David

I was invited to be part of the Congress. The work that I do needs more people. I need to be connected to people who are also doing the work that I’m doing. So I pray to God that I would be able to see people from Chad, people from Niger, people from Mali who are probably doing some of the things that I’m doing so I can collaborate and learn from them.

Roger

That’s one of the key themes of this whole congress, collaboration, isn’t it?

David

Yeah, collaboration is key. My ministry that I work with is Declare Global, and that’s one of the things we are doing. If you are going to really declare the gospel, it must be culturally relevant to the people you are reaching. And that’s one of the key things that I’m also learning from here.

Roger

Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing.

David

Thank you for having me.

Roger

So I hear you have a story. Could you please share it with me?

Attendee

I grew up as a pastor’s kid using arts and ministry in different forms: singing and acting as a tool to reach out to people in evangelism. And then later on, I served in Cambodia in a cross-cultural setting. And I realized that using arts cross-culturally has to be different in our approach than when I was in the Philippines using arts and reaching out to people. And I learned that I should be more of a learner. I’m not going there to teach them arts but to learn their arts. So I learned to dance their dance, learn their music, and appreciate their arts. I realized that it connected us, and it was a pathway for me to build relationships with them and have meaningful conversation about life and other spiritual things that led us to talk about the master artist who is God. Some of them came to Christ, and it was a great way to reach out to people for the gospel. Arts is a pathway for the gospel to reach the unreached for Christ.

Roger

Definitely. You’re a missionary from the Philippines to Cambodia?

Attendee

But now I’m back home to mobilize Filipinos to go for missions, to be engaged in missions.

Roger

That’s so great. Please send some to Tokyo. Send them to my location.

Attendee

We have people in Japan.

Roger

Awesome.

Attendee

Actually, we don’t need to talk about Japan or mobilize for Japan. Even if we don’t talk about Japan, I think God is really doing something after praying for Japan. People will just come to us like, “I’m interested in Japan” even when we didn’t say anything about Japan.

Roger

Well, send them on!

Attendee

We have people. We actually have a long-term worker there, and there are people who are on the process of going to Japan.

Roger

Great. Well, thank you so much.

Attendee

Thank you.

Matt

I’m Matt Menger. I am the Global Ethnodoxology and Arts Coordinator for SIL.

Roger

What does that mean?

Matt

SIL is mostly a linguistics organization that does a lot of Bible translation and things like that. But we also have the Ethnomusicology and Arts Department. I wish we could just call ourselves the Ethnodoxology Department. But we work with all of the locally meaningful forms of artistic communication around the world, anywhere that there’s Bible translation going on, and coordinate with local musicians and artists and dancers and people telling stories and all that stuff to work with them to get scripture into more forms of communication.

Roger

Yeah, it’s very cool. Both of us were just in the seminar, talking about ethnodoxology and the things that are happening around the world. It’s really exciting. Is there anything you’d like to share about that?

Matt

Yeah, I’m just excited to see the amount of interest. I think in the session that you and I were both just in, we had over 50 people, and most of them I’d never seen before. That’s really exciting to me to see more people involved with churches and other things. It’s not just cross-cultural workers anymore. There’s more organizations that are aware of this. Several conversations I’ve had this week with music foundations and others in the Christian music world have never really thought about ethnodoxology before, and they’re starting to ask questions. That’s just really exciting to me to start to see that interest grow where it’s becoming a little more mainstream.

Roger

Yeah, I think so, too.

Matt

I feel like, and I may misquote him, but Jaewoon Kim has a term that he calls multicolor worship or things having the color of the multicultural, but they’re not truly multicultural. I feel like that’s a recurring theme here this week at Lausanne as we also try to worship together with people from over 5,000 people from over 200 countries and how many different worship traditions and different flavors of Christianity arehere. Jaewoo’s thought, I forget where I read that, and I hope I’m quoting him correctly, but the idea of so many people experiencing the color of the world. It’s a big question in the world today with urbanization and with cities.

Roger

The way I really see it in my context is it gives the artist permission to explore and be creative and think what is possible rather than thinking they have to adopt what they’ve been told or what traditionally has been done.

Matt

Yeah. Another thing I heard from artists this week that I met with was just the need for more acceptance from the church and the need to be better understood and supported by the church. Sometimes they need to do commercial things to make a living, and the church doesn’t understand why it’s not all free. But I think there’s a growing recognition. I don’t know if there’s a solution yet, but there’s more recognition that the church and artists need to have a better relationship.

Roger

I’m sitting here with Daniel Kim, who is a seminary professor and a pastor and an artistic director of theodrama. Thank you so for talking with us. I’m curious, since you live in Korea and Japan, and it’s only two hours away, there’s been a lot of talk at this conference, especially last night. We had a big presentation on the history of the church in Korea and the bad blood, literally, between Japan and Korea. What is your take on that? How can the Korean church reach Japan?

Daniel

Okay. I’m a Korean, so like any Korean, we have memories. Not that I was born in that era, but my parents have told us about this. We hear it everywhere in the churches and as a nation. It is not just Korea. Many nations have suffered under the colonialization of Japan and Japan’s imperial power and their military tyranny and so forth.

Roger

I’m so sorry, on behalf of Japan, my home.

Daniel

I don’t want to just go on and on, but I think it’s pretty much understood that we’ve been the victims of that.

Roger

It wasn’t that long ago.

Daniel

No, it wasn’t. There’re people alive now that remember it. We naturally have this trauma. Yet the Bible says that we must forgive our enemies. We must bless our enemies and pray for them. Japan is in dire need of the gospel. All the resources of the Korean churches have to be poured out into Japan. But why is that not happening? Certain churches, like Onnuri Church, on an annual basis have the Love Sonata, and they send armies of people.

Roger

Yeah, they’re the biggest church in Korea. Is that right?

Daniel

It’s one of the largest churches. It’s not the biggest.

Roger

70,000 people or something?

Daniel

I’m not sure it’s that big, but we’re talking tens of thousands. But they have tremendous resources. They have a publishing house, and they have so many networks. It’s one of the really, I would say, good modern churches here in Korea. Yet, many Korean churches are still hesitant about Japan.

Roger

Why?

Daniel

Well, because of the history. Yet, the Lord’s word is very, very clear that we must, especially when we look over to Japan, we know that the Christian population is less than 1%. We’re sending thousands of missionaries out all over the world, and we have missionaries sent to Japan, too.

Roger

That’s what they said last night, that Korea is the second largest mission-sending country in the world.

Daniel

But we’re not that enthusiastic about Japanese evangelism yet. How can that happen? I’ve been thinking about this because it can’t just be verbally. It can’t just be because we have missionaries as agents of Christ, there’s got to be certain means that will be a connection that will touch the hearts of the people, really connect. Now, let’s say just for the sake of argument, if we were to take a bunch of artists from Korea and we meet a bunch of artists from Japan and they start dialoguing. Before long, when you start singing together and dancing together and articulating together and join the common projects, all this hostility, it fades into the background. And Christ’s love, I think that’s why they call it Love Sonata, it’s like a love song. They’re singing love songs to one another.

Roger

You think arts is that connection point?

Daniel

Yes, I believe that creative arts is the natural cultural bridge to mission.

Roger

Thank you so much. God bless your ministry. It’s so exciting what you guys are doing.

Daniel

Thank you so much.

Roger

I can’t wait until I get to see a performance.

Daniel

Thank you.

Roger

God bless.

[Music of musicians walking down hallway]

Roger

That was rather spontaneous, wasn’t it?

Andy

That was a special moment right there.

Roger

You just never know what you’re going to run into when you’re here at Lausanne #4.

Andy

It’s great to be here.

Roger

Tell me, who are you and what are you doing? Where do you serve?

Andy

Hi, I’m Andy Game, and I’m serving in Japan and from Japan into Asia, really looking at new media that will be engaging for the young generation.

Roger

Now, we’ve known each other a long time, serving in Japan. We move in the same circles and want to see Japanese become Christians, specifically through the arts. Your realm is media. What have you been getting from this conference? You were telling me before that you’ve been able to be in some discussions, and maybe there’s some thinking that needed to be tweaked a little. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Andy

Yeah, it’s just great to be here because we’ve got so many people who are working in media and tech, and also there’s a lot of conversation around AI, and what will that be for the future. We’ve had some great sessions in the afternoons where we’re really looking at collaboration. What does it look like to come together? It’s actually been a little bit low tech. We’ve had all these sheets of paper that we’ve been had lying on the table to help put all the ideas there.

But it’s been really great to just meet people from different parts of the world. I’m excited to see how we could really grow together in the coming years. I think what we would really love to see from this is a fresh expression of the gospel that would really be done in an Asian voice that would really communicate the gospel in a way that would really connect with hearts and minds of younger generation.

Roger

So not just translation, but collaborating together? Coming up with new ideas and creating together?

Andy

We get so many people who come to me saying, “Can you just translate that?” If I go back to my team and ask them to do that, I think they might scream at me. The good conversations that are shaping up here are really the ones where we’re talking about how could we co-create together. How can we bring the best experience, the creative ideas, some of the initiatives and campaigns that have been seen in other countries.

Take the very expressive and vibrant culture here. Everyone knows K-POP and BTS, right? But also coming from many Western nations. But we’d love to build out relationships into the coming years that we could really see co-creation that could really give a fresh expression to the gospel in a vibrant way and an exciting way.

Roger

Yeah, definitely. Well, thank you. It’s good to see you here. We’ll see you again in Japan.

Andy

We’ll see you again in Japan.

Roger

I’m sitting here with Mary Katherine, who I briefly met and got to hear from at the Ethnodoxology breakout session yesterday. Thank you for being willing to sit down for a longer conversation.

Mary Katherine

Absolutely, I’m happy to be here.

Roger

Tell me a little bit about what you do.

Mary Katherine

I’m a visual and performing artist. That’s my marketplace job. I spend a lot of time in the secular world with non-believers in the arts. But I also work as a global arts strategist with an organization called Global Strategy Forum. We’re a think tank and action tank working in 12 spheres of culture, of which arts and entertainment is one of those spheres. I’m one of their global arts strategists, looking at ways to incarnate God’s Kingdom in this sphere globally and to bring, hopefully, human flourishing and point people to Jesus.

Roger

Okay, that sounds really exciting. Can you help flesh it out for me? What does that look like?

Mary Katherine

Our members, we get together. Our think tank is our R&D. We’re doing research and development. We’re talking with Christian futurists. We’re speaking with people that have done research in these different spheres of culture, like arts and entertainment. We’re coming together and saying, “Okay, how can we give a Christian voice, given all this information that we have, how can we give a Christian voice into these different areas, these different issues or mega trends.” How do we give a Christian voice into that sphere? What are some strategies, some projects, some initiatives we could implement around the globe that could bring glory to God, ultimately. Once we’ve created strategies with our members, we also are looking at partnerships, who are the partners globally doing a good job? Who could we collaborate with or catalyze? Who could implement these different strategies globally?

Roger

That’s great. At the end of this session here, Lausanne was announcing about the collaborative action that we’re all going to be signing tomorrow and how important that is in filling the gaps that we’re seeing in the spread of God’s Kingdom around the globe. Are there parts of the world that you focus on, or is it just global at this point?

Mary Katherine

It really is global. Based on partners. Being at Lausanne, for me, has been creating partnerships, networks, getting introduced to people I didn’t even know existed in different parts of the world. I feel like for me, sometimes there’s gaps, there’s regions where there’s gaps, and I don’t know anyone. I feel like the more people that I know that are in the arts world or in the entertainment media sphere globally, then I have more of an opportunity to see, okay, where are the actual gaps? Who are the people who can fill those gaps?

Roger

Yeah, that’s so needed.

Mary Katherine

What I find everywhere I go, there’s people that don’t know about another organization. One organization of Christians doing in the arts don’t know who another organization is, or they don’t know who’s working in Asia if they’re in Africa. I feel like what God wants to do is bring us all together so that we can not only know what’s happening in other areas and be encouraged by it, but also look for opportunities to work with one another and partner.

Roger

I love it. I know your heart is to collaborate. How can people contact you?

Mary Katherine

You can contact me at admin because I’m also the administrator for Global Strategy Forum Admin, admin@globalstrategyforum.com. You can learn more about our work at globalstrategyforum.com.

Roger

So thank you so much. God bless.

Mary Katherine

Thank you so much. I appreciate it, Roger.

Roger

So I’m now sitting here with Dr. Nelson Jennings, who was a missionary back in the day in Japan. We’ve known each other for quite a while. I’m so glad that I got to connect with you here. What do you think of this conference so far?

Nelson

Well, it’s actually my first Lausanne Congress to attend. Because I teach missions, I include the Lausanne Movement. In understanding contemporary Christian missions and especially evangelical missions. It’s just interesting to be a part of this Congress for many reasons, because it’s the 50-year anniversary of Lausanne. It’s here in Korea, where I’ve had a lot of very close connections over the past several years, and how digital this Congress is. But just, of course, people from over 200 countries, 5,000 people assembled, 2,000 more taking part virtually. It’s just quite the event to be a part of and appreciate all the preparation, involved, which I know a lot of the Korean side of things for the preparation. It’s just interesting and heartwarming.

Roger

Yeah, there’s so many volunteers and staff here. I can’t imagine having to put all this together. But it’s interesting. You said you studied this a little bit. Why is Lausanne important?

Nelson

It’s a good question. I mean, Lausanne began in the early 1970s, largely as a reaction to trends that many people were alarmed about that were developing in the World Council of Churches. Billy Graham and John Stott and others wanted there to be more of an evangelistic church planting focus that was reclaimed, and thus Lausanne began. Lausanne has, over the past 50 years, incorporated increasing arenas of mission-related interest. There’s an ongoing, not controversy I don’t think, but discussions within those involved in the movement about keeping evangelism and church planting at the center while acknowledging that God’s mission is far-reaching. Thus, the different areas of concern about what mission means, how Christian churches and agencies are to be involved in Christian mission. There’s a wide scope of interest that has developed within the Lausanne Movement, definitely. That’s the one reason why it is important.

Roger

We’re sitting just under where the workplace ministry is happening, and that is a very large ballroom full of people. I do wonder if the past congresses have had so many people from the workplace.

Nelson

Well, I think that is a striking feature of this congress, to be sure. I think it’s relieved some people involved in Lausanne to hear that sending missionaries and having unreached people groups as a central focus is a part of Lausanne. Because some people, when they see the emphasis on workplace ministry and see the other emphases, whatever they might be in social justice or whatever, might sense that, Oh, the center of mission’s concern is dissipating a bit. I just think it’s incorporating more of what Christian mission involves while keeping a central focus on unreached peoples and the need for people, whoever we are, wherever we are, to hear and believe the good news of Jesus.

Roger

Yeah, that’s good.

Nelson

It’s more holistic, rather than techniques about how to evangelize by getting into certain ways. It’s more like, how does it affect all of life, including business? I think one feature I’ll mention, too. The Lausanne Movement can give the impression that the global church is here. There are representatives from many different churches and Christian organizations that are here. This does not represent the entire Church of Jesus Christ. I take a rather wide view of who we are as the worldwide Church of Jesus Christ and various traditions they’re in.

I think perhaps a bit more modest self-understanding of who the Lausanne Movement involves, both in terms of evangelical, charismatic, Pentecostal groups, as well as there are many, many churches and agencies around the world who fit those categories but have no idea what Lausanne is about.

Roger

That’s interesting.

Nelson

This is a representative group of a sizable portion of the worldwide Christian movement.

Roger

That’s interesting because I have heard it described as the umbrella under which all other umbrellas exist. It’s the overarching, but you’re saying it doesn’t quite . . .

Nelson

Not quite. Let’s not downplay the importance and the wide scope of the Lausanne Movement, but let’s not over-extend, really, who it represents.

Roger

All right. Well, thank you so much for your time.

Nelson

My pleasure. Great to be here.

[Music of people singing in a breakout session of artists]

Roger

You were just listening to a breakout session of artists at the Congress being led in worship in different languages. Next, I’d like to have a longer conversation with a friend of mine, Younhee Deborah Kim, who is a Korean missionary serving other parts of the world who I’ve become friends with over the years. She leads Arts in Mission Korea, and her specific vision is to train Korean missionaries how to incorporate the arts and missions to the rest of the world.

Younhee has this wonderful example of how when she was serving in Africa and working with a group of women with fabric. They didn’t see their fabric as anything special. It’s just what they were used to. She said, oh, but it’s so beautiful. It’s so colorful. And through the workshop, convinced them to try making various things like jewelry, bags, hairbands, and souvenirs. And through it, they rediscovered beauty within their own culture. And also through it, found new ways to praise God. Without further introduction, here’s my conversation with Deborah.

Now we’re sitting here outside the Songdo Convencia of the Lausanne Congress. I’m sitting here with Deborah Kim, and I wanted to have a longer conversation with you. So thank you for being willing to do this.

Younhee

Thank you for having me here.

Roger

I really want to thank you for the time that you spent with the interns. We had two of our summer interns, Garner and Rebecca, come join you for a week?

Younhee

I think they spent four or five days. Yeah.

Roger

And you took them to some tourist places, maybe?

Younhee

Yes. A little taste of Korea on the first day. You asked me to meet them, so of course, I can do that. And they were really sweet. They’re lovely girls. I greeted them and I showed some art exhibition, photography, because one of them is a photographer. So, I wanted to show them a photography exhibition. I invited them to nice café. And the café is a gallery café.

Roger

Rebecca took some beautiful photos while she was here. I don’t know if you got to see the results of that because then they took that back to Seto, near Nagoya, Japan, and had an art exhibit there.

Younhee

“Seasons of the Soul.” I know. That was just so impactful. People were very moved by that whole exhibit and relationships were built. I think this is a very good way to interact with different cultures because they didn’t spend that time as tourists. They are artists, and then they actively interact with the different cultures. Then they got the idea, and then they got inspired, and then they made something new.

Roger

Yeah, that’s such a good point because there’s this fear that if you’re going to send people over for mission trips or something like that, that they’re basically like Christian tourists. Are they really doing any good and all that. But I think just the beauty of how they were able to interact with you, see the beauty of Korean culture, but also use that for ministry in Japan. And relationships were built, and people were brought into the church in Japan through that. It was just… Yeah. Thank you so much for doing that, for sacrificing your time.

Younhee

No, it was really a pleasure. I liked their attitude. They wanted to learn. They wanted to be inspired by a new culture, and then they just didn’t want to waste it. They wanted to do something more than that. So I like that. I like that idea. We really enjoyed our time together, and then we became friends.

Roger

That’s so cool. So can you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Younhee

I’m Younghee Deborah Kim from South Korea. I’m working as a Director of Arts Mission Korea, which mobilizes and trains Korean Christian artists for God’s Kingdom and cross-cultural missions. Usually, I offer a seminar or trainings to encourage Korean Christians to use the artist’s talent and also learn why art is important and how to use art in a mission setting. On the other hand…

Roger

Yeah, you’ve done a lot of traveling, haven’t you?

Younhee

Yeah, because I’m also staff of Inspiro Arts Alliance, which is an art mission team in OM, Operation Mobilization.

Roger

They make a good magazine, too, don’t they?

Younhee

Yeah, it’s called Vivid. Very high quality. My role is Ethnodoxology Consultant and Trainer in Inspiro Arts Alliance. And we have a lot of short-term projects, and we offer different types of training for artists or non-artists. Now, I do cultural research and also work with local partners on how we can develop our workshops or training to be more culturally relevant. Basically, in the heart language of the people, how do you connect that more with what the Bible teaches, rather than importing it from somewhere else, especially Western culture? They have their own artistic expressions, their art forms. For me personally or as a team member, I equally encourage them to use their own artistic language or artistic expressions.

Roger

Yeah, that’s great. We just had dinner together, and you were sharing how you’ve been to Tanzania, right? Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Younhee

I worked with the local partners or local pastors, and I asked them, “Do you need any art project or art workshop?” And then, “Yeah, it would be great.” They invited me to come. I had several art workshops and seminars for women and for children.

Roger

What was the workshop you did with the women and the children?

Younhee

I helped them to see their cultural beauty. Also, mostly, I wanted to use local materials. I found out their African fabric has very vivid colors, and they’re so beautiful. I encouraged them to use that local fabric. I encourage them to try making something new rather than just making clothing. So they made some different sized bags and jewelry and some fashion items.

Roger

And how did they respond to that?

Younhee

Well, first they had no idea what they were doing. “I don’t know how to do it.” But you know what? The first 10 minutes, I just waited. And then they started making something new. And then they found that, “Oh, I can do this. I can be creative. I can make something new.” So that was a good experience. And also one lady said, “Well, first, I didn’t like your idea because it’s just plain clothes. It’s just plain fabric. There are lots of good things from outside the country.

Roger

“Outside is better.”

Younhee

Yeah, but then she realized, “Oh, our fabric is also beautiful. Now I can see it’s beautiful.” That was an eye-opening moment for her.

Roger

Yeah, it’s so interesting that it took someone from the outside. You had to come from Korea in order for her to be able to see the beauty of her own fabric that she’s been around her whole life.

Younhee

Yeah. I mean, that was also a learning moment for me as well because usually people think they know their culture. “Oh, I know my culture very well.” But when I ask a question in a specific way, and then they realize that, “I don’t know about my culture.” That always happens.

Roger

That’s beautiful. Just seeing the beauty of your own culture. It’s so important. I’d like to talk a little bit about the Congress. All these people are walking by us. You can hear everyone having conversations around us. So much great fellowship. So many great things going on. I want to specifically talk about the various art elements that we saw. A lot of people have been asking me what my opinion was of the virtual artist that was up there. Let’s see, I wrote his name down: Patrick Bezalel, the virtual reality artist. I’ve actually never seen anything like that. He was up there on stage with . . . what do you call those things?

Younhee

Those goggle-type things?

Roger

Yeah, that. Goggles, right? He’s moving his hands. I think he had special gloves on that could see where he was painting. It was up on the screen that was I don’t know, like 30 feet tall. It was a really huge screen. You see this guy dancing around on stage. It’s an amazing artwork, which ended up being Christ on this tree of the cross. There was light coming out from it. It was beautiful. It was on fire. It was like, vivid glowing fire. I’ve never seen anything like that.

Younhee

It was amazing, wasn’t it?

Roger

It was two songs, I think, that he did that. What else did you notice about this conference related to the arts?

Younhee

There’s also the drama team. They did a short drama and also spoken word. They mixed different types of art forms in drama.

Roger

It made the Bible readings just that much more interesting. What else has struck you about this conference? Has it been good for you? Are you glad you’re here?

Younhee

Okay, so for me personally, one of the struggles is that the praise time . . . all the songs are in English, right? Only in English. But this is an international conference. How many countries came here?

Roger

A lot. I don’t remember the number.

Younhee

More than 220 countries.

Roger

220? Wow.

Younhee

That means there are more than 200 cultures here. So I hoped that . . . I mean, the music is excellent, the band is great, and all the techniques and musical experience is good. But what if all the songs and languages and expressions were diverse?

Roger

It is interesting to think what it would have been like if they had had various instruments from around the world and various musical styles from around the world.

Younhee

Yeah, I mean, it’s not easy to get 200 languages at the same time. I know that. But at least maybe we can try. Okay, let’s make four or five bands representing different continents. So we can have an African continent worship band and Asian and Latin American and North American and European and then Océanean. And then we can feel at least five different continents represented. And then it can be more diverse.

Roger

It’d be easier to feel the international presence here.

Younhee

Of course. For me, the life verse is Revelation 7:9–12. Every nation, every tribe, every people, and every language standing together in front of the throne. We will sing and dance together to worship God. I can’t wait. What will it look like? We cannot imagine, but we can imagine in part because of that cultural diversity. This is one of the complaints. It can be better. They can do better.

Roger

Yeah, I understand. Well, thank you so much for taking this time with me.

Younhee

Thank you for having me. And I really appreciate what you are doing in Japan because I know it’s not easy to do that work, but you’re an artist, a great artist, and also you are doing arts ministry there. So I do appreciate it.

Roger

Thank you so much. God bless.

Thank you for listening to the Art Life Faith podcast. As we say in Japan “Ja, mata ne.” We’ll see you next time.

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63. Lausanne Conversations 2

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 5,000 of us who were in Seoul celebrating the 50th anniversary. And I said, well, I don’t know what he would say, but I know what he would think. He would be very surprised. Billy was actually ambivalent about an ongoing movement.

Roger

Really? I didn’t hear that.

Doug

Yeah, he was. Billy Graham, as a person was a crusade evangelist, he never wanted to compete with any established entity. After they would hold a preaching campaign somewhere, they would dissolve the corporation, and whatever fruit came from that meeting was to be enjoyed and cared for by the local committee. So with the Lausanne Congress, he was planning a 10-day event. He never imagined that there would be an ongoing movement. So it was a surprise to him. But it was interesting. I also shared that shortly before he died, when he was interviewed by Newsweek Magazine for a cover story, which they entitled Billy Graham and Twilight. Towards the end of that interview, they asked him what he thought might be his most enduring legacy. Well, of course, he’s known for his crusades. He’s known for Decision Magazine. He was known for helping to establish Christianity Today. Of course, they established the Billy Graham Center at Wheaton College. There were so many things that he was a part of in one way or another. He was friends with presidents and prime ministers and kings. He was really a towering figure. But in response to that question, he said to them, it just might be the Lausanne Movement.

Well, they hadn’t done any preparation. They weren’t that familiar with the Lausanne Movement. But it’s very interesting that Billy Graham himself had that opinion. The only way that I know that is that Billy Graham’s assistant, David Bruce, called me and told me that. And when he told me, I said, did he really say that. It was a surprise to me. But I had the privilege of meeting him after I became the leader in 2004, and he was a source of great encouragement. So to be there in the Fourth Congress, and each Congress has its own flavor. It has its own context. It’s meeting in a certain time in history. They build one upon the other. But Lausanne, essentially, is a global network of trusted friends across organizational, geographical, theological boundaries, people who are committed to the extension of the gospel, the whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world. That was the vision. And as you’ve intimated, there are many, many organizations, thousands of them. There are many, many networks, hundreds of them. There are significant global networks, perhaps dozens of them. But I think Lausanne has been used of God in a special way, largely because of the towering influence of both Billy Graham and John Stott, who was also ambivalent about Lausanne.

He didn’t want to come to the Congress in ‘74. He had to be persuaded, both by Bishop Jack Dain and by Billy Graham, who both went and visited him and called him before it eventually came. But probably John Stott…the movement would not have happened without John Stott and Billy Graham and gave leadership to the ongoing movement. And Gottfried Osei-Mensah of Ghana became its international director. But it does provide this place we can get together and talk about both the proclamation and the demonstration of the gospel. We can talk about theology and strategy. Those are really the twin pillars of the Lausanne Movement. And once again, we met in Seoul.

I was the leader for the Third Congress in Cape Town. And oftentimes, I said to our leadership team, which started as a team of five and grew to about 120. I said, we do not want to compare ourselves with Lausanne One and Two. We want to learn from them. But it was said of David, he fulfilled the purposes of God and his generation, and then he died, and he was buried, and he saw corruption. That is, he rotted. Well, there’s a sense in which we did our best, and we had a certain set of challenges and circumstances in 2010 that were different from both ’74 and ’89 and 2024. But the amazing thing is that in each of these congresses, when you bring together, whether it’s 2,500 or 4,000 or 5,000 people, and the Holy spirit is present, and you have people who are eager to learn from each other what’s happening, what are the opportunities, amazing things happen. And I often said to our team also that the fruit of Lausanne grows in other people’s trees. Movements are not interested in counting their members or their money. They’re trying to see what influence we have together for the gospel.

Roger

Yeah, definitely.

Doug

That’s the history it was on.

Roger

All right. So help me process now this Congress in particular. I mean, there’s so many people they met from all over the world. So many themes were discussed. What do you see as the vision for each Congress in particular? Most of the people listening did not have the chance to be able to go to Seoul. What is the Lausanne Movement about, specifically, in these congresses?

Doug

Sure. Well, Billy Graham shared the fact that as a preacher who God used around the world, he had met people from every part of the world, and he had met many of the greatest leaders. They had been involved in his preaching campaigns. He had started Christianity Today, which was really a forum for people to discuss the great ideas before the church. And then he said, in the crusades, we met the people. We had the magazine with the ideas. We needed to bring them all together. And that’s really what 1974 was all about. The whole church taking the whole gospel to the whole world. Let the Earth hear his voice. And by virtue of the fact that it was Billy Graham and John Stott, two, I’m going to say maybe once in 500 years figures at the same time and had a trusting relationship. And then the people that they brought, there were just so many really brilliant people there, including a person like Ralph Winter, a breakthrough thinker in unreached people groups, Samuel Escobar, Rene Padilla, and Orlando Costas, recapturing the social responsibility of the Church, which we had lost.

There was a great Protestant liberal divide. More conservative Christians like us, evangelicals, focused almost exclusively on the proclamation, the salvation, and forgot about the incarnation. So that was a great contribution of the First Congress: unreached people groups, the Lausanne Covenant, and social responsibility. The second Congress in Manila brought together Pentecostals, and Charismatics, and evangelicals in a new way. That was another phenomena. We had been walking parallel to one another but not walking together. And again, God used some great people there, J. I. Packer, for one, and Jack Hayford, for another, representing different schools who really embraced each other in every sense of the word. And then the third Congress in Cape Town was a renewal the Lausanne Movement, a revitalization. You may know that the Lausanne Movement almost died in the ’90s. There were no major events for about 10 or 15 years, but I think one of the great contributions of the Lausanne Congress in Cape Town was the Cape Town 2010 Commitment. We live in a new world, and much of the old Christian world is post-Christian. And so we had to have not a Lausanne Covenant or a Manila Manifesto, but a Cape Town commitment.

We’re making these commitments, and it was written in the language of God’s covenantal love. That was really, I think, a wonderful gift of that Congress. And of course, it renewed relationships. At Seoul 2024, I think there was a real emphasis on, in a sense, getting the job done. A lot of talk about the gaps. Where is the work undone? Where are the opportunities? And so maybe it was a bit more, shall we say, practically focused than the previous. Those are differences. And it’s obvious that when we find another one, we look back in terms of what was done, what was strong, what was weak. And we look ahead, what are the challenges and the opportunities? So you wouldn’t want them to be cookie cutter replicas. You come to the same party, but they will naturally be different. So Seoul was the largest Congress, 5,000 people. That created some great opportunities. It also creates some challenges logistically. But perhaps those are some of the highlights, some of the distinctives.

Roger

Something you said before we started recording was the fact that there were so many, not just people represented there, but so many movements in so many countries. And Lausanne has always tried to not manage these movements, but rather be a catalyst for what are the things that keep putting the vision out there. What are the things we need to be talking about? How do we need to bring people together? Is that something you saw at this Congress?

Doug

Well, I think that I didn’t see that as much, perhaps, as I might have liked, Roger. I think that perhaps there was more of a commitment to, let’s organize, let’s strategize, let’s close the gaps. I think Lausanne had spoken in terms of we’re taking on the mantle for, finally, a comprehensive, coordinated, well-sustained effort, something like that. I’m not quite sure of the exact language. That, I would say, is a bit new to Lausanne. And I think that that needs to be evaluated carefully, because I would say that as a missionary and as a mission leader who has been involved for some time. I’ve always gone to Lausanne events, large or small, thinking I’m going to meet some really interesting people, and I’m going to get some very high-quality information that’s going to help me as a leader, help the organization for which I’ve been responsible. So we’re not Lausanne Japan. We were a mission in Japan, but I benefited enormously from what was going on. And if we had more time, I would tell you about the result of Lausanne 2 in Manila.

I took a 12-country tour to try to understand what are the implications for a mission organization like ours. The impetus for that came from the Congress. It’s still working itself out in our mission all these many, many years later. So I think that Lausanne is perhaps best when it’s providing ideas and providing the arena, literally, in this sense, the convention, there were the 5,000 people, where people come together. And rather than us trying to coordinate it all, it’s a matter of we’re creating the environment in which people will meet over lunch and in bigger sessions and smaller sessions. I think that’s where Lausanne is the best. And then leaders, in particular, take it back to the organizations which they are leading. And that’s why I think it’s important to get the right people in the room so that a person who has new material has somewhere to go with it, as opposed to, I went unattached, and I left unattached. You don’t really join Lausanne. Lausanne does not have any members. We talk about the fact that Lausanne doesn’t have delegates. Nobody sent them. Lausanne has participants and volunteers. That’s what’s the nature of the movement.

Roger

That’s so well said, because that’s certainly the experience I had at this Congress. There are artists around the world that I got to meet that weren’t part of the networks that I usually am part of. I was like, Who are these people? I want to know these people. I was so thankful that Lausanne brought them together and look forward to the next opportunity to meet them and talk with them.

Doug

Yeah. And you see, it’s interesting because there were some very significant artists who were there, and there are artists networks. I think there may be an artist network in Lausanne, Byron Spradlin, who is a very large organization. But if his organization, and Byron is a very good friend, but if he hosted an international gathering, it’s like, oh, well, the thought is, is he asking us to come to help promote his organization? But when you come to Lausanne, there’s a sense of like, no, Lausanne doesn’t plant churches or start seminaries or mission organizations. And so, we were able to come as a particular individual, part of an organization, part of a network, part of the theological stream, but realizing what a feast. And the fact that was on made a special effort to make sure that artists were connecting. And there’s a sense in which we’re just going to trust God that out of that room, there will be musicians, poets, painters, sculptures, architects that are going to do things and say, it’s interesting. We met for dinner in Seoul, or we went to a session. That’s where the really good stuff happens in my observation, my experience.

Roger

Definitely. I love the meals I had together. There were other artists I really wanted to connect with that were spending a lot of time in the workplace forums. They said that, I I really want to connect with the business people around the world and make…Because arts, for it to succeed, really does need to be connected to the business world. It’s really cool to see that happening as well. What about going forward? Where do you hope to see Lausanne go in the years ahead?

Doug

Well, Lausanne has made a real intensive, intentional commitment to developing younger leaders. But under the leadership of Nana Yaw, it’s not just younger leaders. It’s like, how do we help each generation where they are? How do we help them learn from one another so that the older people are still being sought out for their experience and wisdom, and they have the joy of encouraging younger leaders and seeing them do new things. I think that’s a very important part. I would hope that Lausanne would strengthen its theology working group and its strategy working group, those who have historically been pillars of the movement. And I think we’re facing some very significant issues, theologically, when it comes to a matter of human identity, the questions having to do with the sexual identity and artificial intelligence, those are very complex problems, and they need really brilliant, Godly people working together to help all of us, because my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren yet to be born, they’ll be dealing with some of these issues. And so I think, especially people who are working in the university world, you would want to go to Lausanne and say, what are we saying about these issues. Identifying the issues and then bringing together the best minds and the people of greatest courage and character, that’s where I think we really need help.

Roger

Right. Yeah. And Lausanne still, it really can play that role, right? Because it’s a global network…

Doug

Yeah, it’s a trusted broker. And it’s trusted because of the fact that it has a generous spirit. I hope it has a wise spirit, but also the sense of we’re here to help others. They have a trusted broker of ideas and relationships like Lausanne is really a gift. We received it, and it’s important for us to steward it and to pass it on.

Roger

Thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Doug

Thank you, Roger. I’ve enjoyed this. It’s been nice to see you again.

Roger

Yeah, it’s good to see you again.

Doug

We couldn’t meet at your house or my house, but this has been very nice.

Roger

God bless.

Doug

Okay. We’ll see you. Bye-bye.

Roger

You’ve been listening to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. If you’d like to read the transcript from these conversations, you can find it on my website, www.rogerwlowther.com. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne. See you next time.”

The post 63. Lausanne Conversations 2 appeared first on Roger W. Lowther.

62. Lausanne Conversations 1

Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther.

In September, I had the honor of attending the 4th Lausanne Congress on World Evangelism in Seoul or Incheon, South Korea. The Lausanne movement celebrated its 50th anniversary with 5,000 people from over 200 nations. There were so many people!

The Lausanne Movement has significantly shaped Christianity since it was started by Billy Graham 50 years ago in 1974. And there are so many powerful moments that I want to share some of them with you in this and some upcoming episodes.

One of those powerful moments for me was on the Thursday night of the conference when we had a kind of musical presentation of the history of Christianity in Korea. It was really well done, top notch in quality. It was almost like a Broadway show with professional singers and choruses. They symbolically led us through every stage of the growth of the church in Korea, from its founding by missionary Presbyterian missionaries, and then to this wildfire that spread across the nation into the power giant that it is today. But also some of the current challenges it has. In fact, one of the most moving parts of it was toward the end when they talked about how, yes, the church is big and strong now, but that’s also led to some of its problems, that some of the struggles for power and the pride have led many young people today to see the church as irrelevant. And they were actually seeing a decline of young people in the church. And so we need to pray for Korea. And then a Japanese woman came up and prayed for the country. Now, most of you probably know about the oppression the Japanese people had over the Korean people for a long time, and that was actually part of the reason for the growth of the church. And so, at the very end, to have a Japanese woman praying for the country, that God would continue to work mightily in Korea was just such a fitting end to that time.

One of the biggest things I learned from that evening is how the spark of Christianity which spread across the nation started in Pyongyang, which is, you know, the capital of North Korea, where Christianity is now outlawed. So there we were not too far from North Korea where we were meeting for the conference. And we can’t go. No one can go to Pyongyang. And the center of where Christianity started on the Korean Peninsula is now outlawed for Christianity. And that pains us, right? So much has changed in the past 100 years.

Some of the best times for me at the conference were to meet with other artists. We had two artist gatherings at the Congress one was an artist breakout time where we all gathered around tables in a room, I guess there were probably 60 of us there, and discussed challenges facing us in the arts and missions today. Around our tables, we would talk about that and then share from each table. And you could tell from the comments that there was a lot of emotion behind what people were saying. Unfortunately, the time was only 45 minutes and I really wanted it to be longer. And then we all had to rush off to something else. Two days later, we gathered again with a smaller group of artists and talked more about it.

The arts were represented in the congress in a number of ways. First, the Broadway-like musical I told you about before with the presentation of Christianity in Korea. Also, there was an artist who was a virtual reality artist. I’ve actually never seen anything like it. He was standing up there with goggles on his eyes and painting in the air. And then we could see what he was painting on the digital screen behind him, which was a very tall screen. So it was pretty powerful in what he was doing. We also had a number of dramatic skits during the conference, and of course there was music.

What was especially fascinating to me were two artists who were working up front doing live painting during the plenary sessions. They would take the theme for that day and represent it visually for all of us. And then after that, that painting was moved out into the lobby area where people could see it. They did this every single day. Well, after that very last plenary evening, I was able to talk with them a little bit for this podcast about their experience at the conference and to share a little bit of their story.

Roger

So I’m standing here with Bryn and Alexis, who’ve been painting these amazing paintings up here in the front of this hall. And so I want them to kind of share a little bit with all of you about what they’ve been doing up here.

Bryn Gillette

Take it away, sister.

Alexis Newsom

Hi, everyone. Yeah, so I’m Alexis, and Bryn and I have been here. We have been brought into the Lausanne family per se, through different channels. And Bryn has been the artist here for 10 years, and I was invited in earlier this year. So we have now known each other for just a few months. And this has been such an unbelievable week and such an unbelievable picture of collaboration. Yeah, so Bryn and I, we’re both artists, but we are artists of such differing styles.

Bryn

On the spectrum of styles, they don’t really get a whole lot wider. I’m not hyper-realistic and representational, but I definitely err on the side of the representational figurative work.

Alexis

Yes. And I…

Bryn

Fairly small…

Alexis

…typically paint very large, very contemporary artwork. Abstract artwork.

Roger

Totally.

Bryn

You’re doing what I want to do.

Alexis

Well, you’re kind of doing what I want to do.

Bryn

I need more of your work in my work. That’s why I think the Lord brought us together.

Alexis

Absolutely. I think that has a big part of it.

Bryn

Well, we’ve been joking all week as we have experienced working together in real time, side by side for the first time. We’ve been collaborating up until now on the 50th anniversary painting. But it was only with us handing the work off to each other and then, but not in the studio at the same time. So this was the first real time together. And our kingdom math, our kingdom collaborative math, became one plus one equals seven. But we kept turning around and being like, oh, my goodness, what you’re doing just so enhanced this and feeling like the Holy Spirit was the third undeniable partner with us.

Alexis

Yes. We’d be standing there. It’s such a crazy dynamic of standing there side by side with another artist and even passing off brushes and passing off colors and switching sides or being like, that’s amazing.

Bryn

I’ve never seen it. Like, can I try that?

Alexis

I’d paint something and come back to the same section and there’s a new, better addition. And it’s…it’s beautiful.

Bryn

Well, we talked about that. Like, when you do artwork on your own, you’re the master of your own little universe. Like everything answers to you. And so a couple of the things we’ve debriefed and just realized made the collaboration easy because we were like, why does this feel so easy?

Alexis

Yes.

Bryn

And I think a big part of that is that when you’re already used to collaborating with the Holy Spirit, you’ve already learned to surrender control. Like, it’s not your universe, it’s his. And you’re trying to serve the work. You’re trying to serve the Lord as he prompts. So there’s that already, that call and response. Like, it’s a give and take dance with the Holy Spirit and coming alongside another master and another deep disciple of Jesus Christ who knows how to dance with the Spirit. Lexi’s already doing that with the Lord. And it’s so natural. And I’m drinking from the same well, and I’m doing it. So we’re both collaborating and uniting that way. So it’s not hard to turn and then be humble before her and be attentive to her and surrender control to her because there’s…I just feel like that that’s what we’ve been learning about collaboration. And the honor is really important. The fact that I honor her capacity.

Alexis

Respecting and coming into this and coming into the…whatever it may be, the situation, the painting, and coming in with a spirit of humility and as was spoken about earlier in the week, just saying I need you and understanding that you do need others and other people need you. And it’s absolutely a partnership between each other and with the Lord.

Bryn

Yeah, like if we’re going to reach seven in the kingdom math, like I can bring one…

Alexis

…and I can bring one..

Bryn

…but I need you if we’re going to reach seven because that’s the way the Lord designed it.

Alexis

Yep.

Roger

Thank you. That’s such a beautiful picture of what we all are hoping for in the movement here. So thank you so much. It’s been a blessing to us.

Alexis

Thank you so much, Roger.

Roger

On the next morning, the very last day of the conference, they did a beautiful display of what we’re all trying to accomplish through the Lausanne Movement. And that was they worked with this broken globe. We didn’t really know what it was till it was finished, but they ended up putting together this like 5-foot diameter globe of the earth together up on stage. It was broken in all these pieces. They put the pieces together, then they painted in the continents and the ocean, and then they painted over the cracks with gold. So that ancient Japanese art of kintsugi where you bring the broken together through gold to bring healing, to bring beauty into the brokenness. And to see that visual representation on stage in the last day was so powerful. I wish you all could have seen it.

Well, I wanted to end our time together in this first episode about the Lausanne Congress with a conversation with Victor Nakah. He and I were at a missions conference together in Chattanooga, Tennessee, of all places, right after our trip to Korea. And we were waiting for an event to begin in a park. So we sat down on a park bench and just talked a little bit about it.

Victor is the International Director for Mission to the World for Sub-Saharan Africa and has an important voice for what happens in Mission of the World around the globe. He is from Zimbabwe but currently lives in South Africa. During the missions conference in Tennessee on Sunday, he gave us an important reminder that all of us in the US and in Africa are among those foreign nations, those faraway gentile lands, that Israel constantly prayed for in the Old Testament. And his words really struck me because sometimes we in America think of the US as kind of a center for Christianity. But he powerfully reminded us of how we are brought into the family of God as outsiders, how we’ve been adopted as his children and invited into his family. In other words, we’ve already seen evidence of God’s desire to see the nations come to him. We’ve seen it in America. We’ve seen it in Africa. We see it across the globe. He will continue to make good on his promises. So Victor was on the theological committee for Lausanne, helping to form the Seoul Statement. The previous two congresses also had statements like the Manila Manifesto and the Cape Town Commitment. You gotta love the alliteration there. Victor was kind enough to sit down with me and interact a little bit about this statement and also his experience with Lausanne.

Roger

So I’m sitting here with Victor Naka in a park in Chattanooga. We are here for a missions conference at First Presbyterian Church, and I wanted to ask you some questions about the Lausanne Conference that we were both part of. Can you tell me just a little bit about your experience there? Yeah.

Victor

Thank you, Roger, for having me. I co-chair the Lausanne Theology Working group, and it’s a group of global theologians who were working on what then became the source statement over a period of four years. But I’ve been involved with the Lausanne movement for the last 20 years.

Roger

Wow.

Victor

And my first kind of active involvement was in 2010 when the Congress was held in Cape Town in South Africa. And I was in the theology working group with Chris Wright and others. Really, I was the youngest, so I was learning. I say to friends, I was carrying their bags when we went from one meeting to another.

Roger

So there have been various statements over the years: the Manila Manifesto and Cape Town Commitment, for this one, the Seoul Statement. What were you all trying to encompass? Was it building upon the past? Was it something new?

Victor

Well, obviously any document that Lausanne comes up with builds up on the previous documents so that there is consistency in terms of theology and the vision mission of the Lausanne movement. But the difference with the source statement is in the name. It’s not a commitment, it’s not a covenant, it’s a statement. And you can see how that is emphasized right throughout the statement itself, you know, beginning with the gospel.

Roger

Right.

Victor

So it’s a statement, a statement that tries to identify theological gaps that the global church needs to wrestle with as we work on the Great Commission. And these theological gaps were identified as part of the listening process in the Lausanne movement. You know, the same process that produced the state of the Great Commission is the same process that helped us identify these theological gaps, and then we started working on them. But it’s a statement. It’s not a covenant. It’s not a commitment.

Roger

Yeah. I was very impressed by how clearly the gospel was displayed in the opening pages of it. Can you summarize what the major gaps were that were identified?

Victor

Yeah, if I can remember all of them. So we obviously started with the Gospel because we realized that, you know, globally whether we’re talking about global north or global south, there are all these distortions of the gospel. There are many gospels. And that’s why we thought, if we are to talk about fidelity to the gospel, fidelity to the Scriptures, well, we must begin with answering the question, what is it? You know, what is the gospel? And so the gospel is the first one right at the top.

Another issue that is in this statement is to do with how we read, study, and interpret Scripture. And we’re asking the question, is there an evangelical hermeneutic that unites evangelicals? Because we feel like, you know, all our different differences are really to do with how we read and study Scripture. So there is a section on evangelical hermeneutics. And then we have all these very hot issues around identity, sexuality, and technology. And the theology working group was very much aware of the fact that what we were going to end up with in this statement are conversation starters, as opposed to this is the final. Because how can you get the global evangelical body agreeing on anything, right? Especially on these issues, you know, that have divided churches, issues that have resulted in splits in denominations. So they’re conversation starters. And in one sense, as soon as people received this statement, that began to happen.

Roger

Yeah, I heard a lot of conversations happening about it.

Victor

Some distancing themselves from this statement. Others not happy with the way the sentences were constructed. And I think that was the objective behind this.

Roger

You know, one of my main impressions, just about the conference in general, was the way it felt like there were so many things happening around the world, so many movements, so many nations leading so many different ways. It didn’t feel like, in some ways it didn’t feel unified because there was so much…I don’t know if chaos is the right word…but definitely very diverse in what is happening. And I’m still trying to process it all. Can you help me process it?

Victor

Well, yeah, I don’t know if I can help, but I think the emphasis on polycentric mission helps speak to that. The fact that it’s no longer a mission or missions from one region of the world to another. We no longer have one who sends and the other who receives. It’s from everywhere to everywhere. Even when we talk about Africa, the African church is not waiting to send missionaries. We have already done that. Perhaps we need to organize better, train better. So it’s already happening from everywhere to everywhere. And even, you know, when we talk about unity in diversity, there’s a sense in which we’re quite happy to celebrate the diversity. But what’s more complicated is the unity. What is it that unifies us as evangelicals? I think there was a sense at the congress that perhaps this broad church has reached a point where there’s need to revisit the fundamentals, the essentials of the faith that unite us. Are we still united around those essentials or fundamentals and the non-essentials? To what extent have the non-essentials seeped into the essentials box and they need, you know, to refine that?

But what I found interesting, I think, is the need for that is being manifested over things we’re fighting over issues of identity, issues of technology. I mean, we realize, for example, that the global church needs a theology of technology so that we’re not dealing with issues, but we are providing broadly what the Bible would help us think about as we think about technology. So a theology of technology that is all-encompassing. But we’re right at the beginning of doing that. I don’t think we’ve arrived yet. And when we’re talking about issues of identity and sexuality, we realize that perhaps the real need is to revisit our doctrine of humankind. We need a robust anthropology that speaks to and helps us engage with what society is grappling with. So we kept going back to the fundamentals. What are these fundamentals of the faith? What are these robust theologies that we need to revisit? Perhaps they need to repackage the same, but repackage in a way that millennials and Gen Zs can understand and process.

Roger

Yeah, it’s so good to be having these conversations because I know, like, for example, this past summer we had five summer interns come, undergrads from the States, and it was so different. I felt the difference between interns in previous years that this generation really understands social media and technology in ways that I’m always playing catch up.

Victor

Oh, yeah.

Roger

And so to have these conversations allows them to have a voice and say, well, here’s how I’ve been impacted in positive and negative ways. I really appreciate that.

Victor

Yeah. One of the things that I’ve appreciated is at times how the world, the secular world generally tends to be way ahead of us as believers. Because the secular world in business has talked about peer mentoring, I think, for the last 10 years, where you have a millennial, a young leader mentoring an older leader into the world of social media because they understand, understand social media better and they’re helping the CEO understand how do we use it and where should we be careful. I think it’s the same thing with us. We need to find ways to allow the younger generation to have a voice. I mean, one of the things the Lausanne movement talks about a lot is what will the church look like in 2050? Well, most of us are not going to be there in 2050, so why not allow the millennials and Gen Z’s, those who are going to be there, to have a voice and perhaps influence how we’re going to get to 2050?

Roger

That certainly was what I saw as the beauty of the Lausanne Congress. To be able to create unity, you need to have relationships. You need to be talking about these things together to be together and to be able to bring people from all over the world of all age categories. We had a Gen Z at our table. In fact, she was the table leader, the group discussion leader, and she was amazing.

People keep asking, was it worth it? Going all the way there: was it worth the money? Was it worth the time? And I have to say yes.

Victor

Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, especially when you consider the fact that this doesn’t happen often. The Lausanne movement is not the only one that tries to bring together the global church. And so any opportunity to meet with more than 5,000 leaders from 200 countries at least. What an opportunity. I mean, when people talk about a taste of heaven, right? In terms of diversity and unity, the fact that we actually came together, just that by itself is good cause for celebration.

Roger

Certainly is. I can’t wait for the next one.

Victor

Oh, yeah.

Roger

Thank you for all your hard work preparing for this.

Victor

It was my pleasure.

Roger

Thank you.

Victor

Roger, good to talk to you. Thank you, brother.

Roger

So I think you can see from this short conversation that there’re so many things that were talked about at the conference and that we could talk about in this podcast, and I’ll be sharing some of those in the episodes ahead. Something that Lausanne did really well at the Congress was to represent the nations of the world at my discussion table at the plenaries. We had eight people from eight different countries, and in every mealtime and every seminar and everything that I went to, I was always talking with people from all over the world. So, what was clear coming away from the Lausanne Congress is that God is working around the globe and he will continue to do so. He is building his church, and he is spreading his kingdom across the face of this planet for the sake of his glory.

Thank you so much for listening to the Art Life Faith podcast. As we say in Japan “Ja, matane. We’ll see you next time.”

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