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.

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.

Take it away, sister.

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.

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.

Yes. And I…

Fairly small…

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

Totally.

You’re doing what I want to do.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

Yes.

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.

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.

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

…and I can bring one..

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

Yep.

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.

Thank you so much, 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.

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.

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.

Wow.

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.

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?

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.

Right.

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.

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?

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.

Oh, yeah.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Oh, yeah.

Thank you for all your hard work preparing for this.

It was my pleasure.

Thank you.

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

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.”

Are you a college student? If you are, have you ever considered doing an internship somewhere in the world with a missions team? In this episode, we’re going to talk a little bit with two interns who spent some time with us this summer. Internships are a great way to see what God is doing around the world. But I do have to warn you, they can be a bit dangerous. And I don’t mean in the sense of that you may get sick or physical harm, but rather they may impact your life in ways you never expected. For example, just this week, we had an intern start a three-year term with our team, who was with us for two months last year.

This summer, we had five college students come from around the United States, and because of a gathering with Mission to the World missionaries from across Asia that happened right in the middle of the summer, we decided to split their time. So their first half was spent in Tokyo, and then the second half some of the interns went on to Nagoya, a city a couple of hours south of us with our teammates who run an art gallery there.

We had so many great events. We had some creative art nights where we rented a ballet studio as an open space to gather artists from across the city. It was a time to talk with one another other, hang out together, and make things together. We also had our ongoing monthly Art Life Faith gatherings. One of the interns, Rebecca, spoke about a book that she’s writing, and it was really moving how she shared some of the hard things that she’s experienced in her life, and it gave us a chance to invite some people in our network who have been experiencing something similarly hard. It was a way to discuss these things openly and build deeper community. We also gave lots of concerts and performances here and there. We also held two charity events to raise money for Noto Help, a Christian relief organization that’s working in Ishikawa, the area where that terrible earthquake struck on January 1. The first event was a classical concert where we invited numerous musicians from our network to perform.

Last month, we did a bigger event where many people were involved, called TOGETHER. In the event, we brought together various types of art genres that don’t usually go together. For example, we had Japanese manga and American jazz. Vanessa, one of our interns, shared a little bit about a manga book that she’s writing. She showed her work on the screen, which was at a very high quality. And even though she is just learning Japanese, she worked really hard to speak in Japanese about her time as an American in Japan and how she’s been impressed and changed by Japanese manga. That was paired with a Japanese woman, a pianist, who just got back from her internship in Memphis, Tennessee. She shared about being impacted by American jazz, American gospel music as a Japanese person.

That time was then followed by another set where we had combination of fashion design and western dance and the Japanese koto. The fashion designer handmade the costumes for both the dancers and the koto performer on the theme of butterflies. Then there was a seven-movement work through each of the days of the week with a different theme for each one. I have some great pictures in the show notes, if you want to see. This was followed by another set where we combined the Japanese art of nihonga, where minerals are crushed and attached to paper with an adhesive. While one Japanese artist was making nihonga, another next to her performed the Japanese Art of Tea. I was next to them playing harpsichord music from the 1500s, which is the time when nihonga and the the Art of Tea were developed. So it was an interesting contrast with this western music and Japanese art forms from the 1500s. We ended the whole thing with a live painting by a Japanese artist, who painted with glue on a blackboard though we couldn’t see what she was doing. And then at the end, she threw glitter on, and the whole theme of the event TOGETHER came out in bold letters across it. And then this banner came down in the back, made by this church in Memphis, First Evangelical Church, bringing together people in America and people in Tokyo for the people of Ishikawa. People were invited to come up and collaborate by adding to the work.

And, we had these really cool T-shirts made that said TOGETHER on it, which we were selling in order to make money for the charity event. Half the proceeds of the T-shirts went to the people in Ishikawa. There was also an art gallery where various artists showed their work. And there was ways that people could then interact with those artists, get to know them, and find out how to purchase their work. By the way, if you are interested in buying one of these T-shirts, we still have some leftover for sale and can send them to you. (Please contact us at [email protected].)

An event like this is a great way to bring together Christians and those who are not Christians. Church members may not feel comfortable inviting their friends to a worship service, but to invite them to an art event like this, where their church community is going to be, is just a great way to do it. And a lot of the relationships built there last for a long time. They remember who they met, and who they want to meet again. And it leads into other things. In fact, I remember an event, one of the artists at the end, who threw the glitter, actually met her husband at an event like this a number of years ago. And so that just goes to show you. It’s about relationships. It’s about community building.

Another thing about this event that’s kind of cool was that it was an unveiling, a kind of dedication of the space, almost a blessing of the space that we were going to be using from then on many times in worship as Grace City Church Tokyo, right next to the imperial palace, right downtown. Most of the church members had never been there before. By coming to this art event, it was a way to kind of get to know the space that we’ll be using many times in the future, throughout the summer and into the fall.

We left the very next day to go to Ishikawa for a relief trip. Man, I wish I could have taken all of you with me. It was a very moving experience. The first day we spent working on an old home in the city of Wajima, which is one of the cities that was hurt worst by the earthquake. 97% of the homes were badly damaged in the earthquake. Most of what we were doing was trying to clear out the large debris and carry it to the street where it could be carried off in order that the owners could go to the next stage of being able to fix the house. The owners, the family, guided us what they wanted done. They live in a temporary home nearby but want to move in as soon as they can get their house fixed.

We fixed the home in the morning and the early afternoon, and then we went downtown. Wajima is famous globally, actually, for the fire that spread through the area downtown, especially the arts district. Wajima is famous for its pottery. We saw a whole area of melted pottery all over the ground. As a team, we prayed over that area. We prayed for the recovery of the area, and we prayed for those grieving over those that were lost.

Then we went to the busiest intersection downtown, the place with the most cars are and many people walking by. There was a famous scene on the news, here in Japan at least, of a building that fell over, a tall building, almost completely intact. It just fell over on its side, you know, 90 degrees. We set up our music right there at the base of this building, pretty close to the stoplight. And it was, you know, it felt a little bit strange. It was noisy. There were all these cars going by, and none of them could be used because they hadn’t been fixed yet. And it was just like, what are we doing here? But we set up and started to play, and magical things started to happen. I mean, the cars, they could have gone up to the stoplight, but instead they were stopping right in front of us, rolling down the windows and listening. And then finally, when they had to drive off, they would call out, “Ganbatte kudasai! Arigatou gozaimasu!” (“Keep it up! Thank you for being here!”). And they’d call out both sides of the window to those of us who are just watching on the other side. And then to the performers.

My son Coen played the Japanese koto, and I played on mostly Bach on a keyboard. And one of the interns danced. And throughout the time, oh, I don’t know, hundreds of cars went by. It was a really busy intersection, and we were worried when the police came by, but they didn’t stop us. They just watched and listened and then went on. And, like, every 15 minutes, they came by to check on us again. But they never did stop us, which was really cool.

We had one man came up to us and ask, what are you doing? And so we explained, that we just wanted to bring beauty to this downtown area. And he said, “Oh, let me go get my food. I’ll be right back. Don’t stop.” Apparently, he lived in a temporary home not too far away, and he got his dinner, because it was almost dinnertime, and brought it back and sat on the sidewalk to listen to us. And we saw a lot of couples walk by and stop. By the end, we had this ring of people on the sidewalk listening to the concert. And then a TV crew came by who videoed us, watched us, interviewed us, and they said they were going to broadcast us in Tokyo and then nationally throughout the country. So that was kind of cool.

The whole experience was just very moving, with this like, you know, cello in Sarajevo-type feel this event, in the destruction to bring this beauty. It made me think about the concerts I’ve heard about in the news in the Ukraine, of going down in the subway stations and giving concerts because that’s the only safe place that people can gather. It’s just…you wouldn’t expect music to be useful or beautiful in that kind of situation, you know, in the devastation. And at that busy intersection: people are busy. They have busy lives. They’re going places. And yet to be come across these unexpected encounters with beauty on a sidewalk at the base of a building that fell over. It was just so moving for everyone involved.

Anyway, there are so many more stories I could share about our time up there. We also partnered with a church, a local church up there, and gave a concert in a preschool in order for him to build relationships in the community. We also did a BBQ children’s festival, where we did hand painting, games, a story time, and gave concerts at the church.

There’s so much more I could say, but I think I better just stop there and let you hear from these two interns themselves.

I am sitting here with two guests, Anna Gardner and Jack. Would you say hi to our listeners?

Hello.

Hi.

Hello. We’re so glad you are here. This summer, we had five interns working with us, artists from the United States, here for the summer. And I invited you two to talk a little bit, to share stories of what has been going on this summer. But maybe a good way to start is for y’all to introduce yourselves a little bit. So, Anna, who are you?

Who am I? Oh, I’m a child of God. I don’t know. I am born and raised in Alabama, but right now I’m living in Nihonbashi, and it’s actually my last day in Tokyo.

It’s so sad. Your last day in Tokyo. And so how long you been here?

Like, almost two months. I’m going to Nagoya, so I have, like, one more month of the internship left.

Very cool. And, Jack, who are you?

Raised in sweet home Alabama. I am also living in Tokyo but just got here about two weeks ago, and so I’m here for about three and a half months holding down the fort over here, I guess.

Awesome. Thank you for doing that. Let me start by just asking you, what does it look like to be an intern here in Tokyo? What kinds of things have you been doing?

Yeah, Roger, this is not our first rodeo. And, yeah, so what have we been doing? Well, working with Community Arts, we do a lot of events and things around the grand old city of Tokyo. Maybe doing some dancing and some guitar playing…

I would like to see that…

No, you do not. But, yeah, there’s such a range of things, because art is such a range. Like a spectrum, in a sense. It has gone from formal organ and dancing events to just, like, almost busking in the streets, you know, with a guitar or something. And so, yeah, what are we doing here? Sharing the gospel through something that God created, which is art, and showing people that we’re creating art because we serve a greater Creator.

Yeah. What about you, Gardner? Why are we doing all these activities?

That’s such a good question. I was actually asking myself that when I came last year and trying to honestly justify to myself, like, why is it okay for me to go be a missionary in an amazing city like Tokyo. Because that just seems like a gift, not a mission trip, to come to such a beautiful place. But I think, to me, what I have mostly experienced is that dance and art and fashion and all of these arts that we use are a bridge. A bridge not only to connect people, but to connect us to God and to allow us to share the gospel. I can’t speak Japanese, but I can dance. And that is a beautiful thing as a college student, to be able to share the gospel through an art form. And I think it’s so much deeper because it connects to something that’s a part of everyone, which is a longing for something more and a longing for heaven. And so that, to me, is what I’ve experienced the most: connecting with other people in the city of Tokyo through dance, through the arts, and then talking about God through the arts.

So, yeah, something I was kind of thinking about when you were saying that is, you know, when you watch a movie, it has you know, the speaking, and it has the visuals, and has the music in the background. And when those movies are translated into other languages, the only thing that they change is just the talking, maybe the subtitles or something, but the music doesn’t change. The visuals don’t change. It’s just the language, but it’s still conveying. You need the music to convey that emotion. And so, in a sense, that’s kind of what we’re doing. We’re just, in a way, it’s like we’re giving this soundtrack to life and the visuals to show God’s love just through the arts.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, art is a kind of language, right? It’s communicating something. Even if you’re watching a show with no words and just listening to the music, you are hearing. It’s affecting your emotions. But it’s more than that, too, right? It’s like how many ways we’ve been able to connect with new people by having you here these past couple months. Just like all the different things that have been going on, new people are being brought into our network. There’s more people that are being brought into deeper relationships through the things that are happening. They’re like, oh, now I see what this community is about. I love it. I want more. That’s exactly what we’re wanting to communicate. Have you seen that? What kinds of stories do you have from your time here?

I feel like I have so many stories, it’s hard to tell.

I feel like you do, too.

Every week, we meet on Fridays and our team gets to talk about what God has been doing that week. And that is the most beautiful thing because you don’t really hear that in America of, oh, yeah, what has God been doing in the lives of non-Christians in your life this week? That’s not as common where I’m from. And so I’ve seen God just use people, simple ordinary people, to connect through the arts to Christ. Our friend Rebecca, she shared her story at an Art Life Faith event. And even from that moment, I just saw so many people come and connect with Christians about deeper issues, like family relationships or depression or suicidal thoughts or deeper matters that no one’s going to talk about on their own. But because we had this Art Life Faith event, I met so many people that maybe I had already known, but I was able to have a deeper relationship with because of this event or, you know, that’s why we have events.

Yeah, exactly. It’s like a door gets opened to something that you don’t get to talk about very often. And we went to a university close by and got to, in a sense, perform for what we were told was a small class, which ended up being about 200 students.

It was so big.

I was like, you know, walking into little classroom, oh, there’s a million kids here. These are all college students. And I, we got to dance and play hymns. This was an introduction to Christianity class, and so they were kind of familiar with some Christian terms, Christian songs, Christian hymns, Christian poems. It’s funny looking out over the sea of students, and no one seems to care. No one’s asking questions. No one’s engaging. And then we get their written responses at the end, and we see so many hearts being touched by what we’re saying. I feel like God called me here and students were saying, I wonder if God’s going to call me somewhere. Gardner said something about not being perfect and that that’s okay, because only God can be perfect. And if we were perfect, then we would be God.

I don’t think there was a student who didn’t talk about that. I think all of them had something to say. Like, “I guess I don’t need to be perfect, but I struggle with that.” And so it was cool to watch them open up. And I think it was only because we were singing and performing for them that they felt comfortable to open up.

Like, we were so uncomfortable up on that stage that it made them comfortable, which is such a weird thing.

Yeah, I thought we did awful. Not we, I feel like I did awful.

No, I thought I did. I definitely did awful.

But the Holy Spirit spoke louder than we did and opened up a lot of conversations after. And I feel like God was really in the midst there. And so again, a door was opened through the arts.

Yeah, definitely. I have a good picture of you singing, playing the guitar in front of everyone. I’ll put that up in the show notes because I think it’s pretty cool, to give an idea of the event.

Yeah, you can’t see in the picture, but I’m shaking.

In front of the sea of people? The stadium of Tokyo Dome?

Oh, man. Oh, no.

And also, there was another concert that I really, really enjoyed because it was a collaboration. It wasn’t just a bunch of American college students performing. We had a concert called TOGETHER. What is it? In Japanese?

Tomoni?

We had this collaboration between a bunch of artists in Tokyo that we knew and some that we didn’t. Some first time meetings. But I’ll let Jack tell you about his act. But my act was dance with my friend Kanako-chan. We both wore butterfly costumes that were designed by a Japanese fashion designer from our church. And then we danced to koto music played by a woman from our church as well. And it was the most beautiful thing, because even though we couldn’t collaborate very easily. I don’t speak Japanese. I mean, I’m trying, but it’s not great. Even without the language, we were able to communicate through our faith and through things that we saw God doing in each other’s artwork and things that we saw in each other’s thoughts and ideas and creations. And that was so beautiful. And not only that, but we got to perform it on a stage and show people that God isn’t just American. God isn’t just Japanese. God is so much bigger than we could ever imagine. Yes, it was beautiful for us, but it was also an opportunity to share that God is big and God is real.

And all of us are up there saying that we believe in God on a stage, unapologetically, but also in a beautiful way. And so that was one of the most beautiful parts of the internship, I think.

Absolutely. I think y’all’s dance, specifically, was one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. It really got me choked up just watching it, and so again, also for people maybe who don’t know about koto—I didn’t know what a koto was a while back until I saw some American kid named Coen playing it—

My son, yeah.

It’s like a traditional Japanese instrument, the coolest thing ever. And the dance was like, it was like you were a reflection of each other. You and Kanako, sisters in Christ, separated by, you know, worldly borders. But it’s like, that was shattered, and you guys were…Yeah, it was just, I don’t know, it was beautiful.

My bit, my part…Usually I was wearing all black and rushing around the stage to move things.

Yeah. You’re a great stagehand and videographer, of course.

Yes, yes, thank you. I got to play piano for Mayuko. She did this, like, invisible painting. She painted with glue while I just played a six to eight minute rendition of Come Thou Fount on the piano, dynamically increasing and decreasing as she was getting more energetic or kind of going into finer details.

It actually made me cry, y’all’s collaboration. It was actually so beautiful.

I’m so glad. Thank you. And kind of like the climax of the song, she threw glitter at this painting, and it revealed an incredible drawing of Christ, and it said TOGETHER over it, and I didn’t know what that was. I honestly couldn’t see it from where I was. She was just putting something on a black canvas, and then, boom, there it was. And so I was trying to keep playing the piano while I’m, like, stunned, you know, at this amazing artwork I’m seeing. I don’t think a single person wasn’t just blown away by that. And that was the last one of the night. What a way to close it out with a bang, honestly.

Yeah, definitely. I’m just thinking, as you’re telling these stories, thinking about the different people who have come into the Grace City church community as well through these events, like those in the past. When I’ve spoken to that classroom and some of those students have come to Grace City, they’re just interested in wanting to know more. And then through the other events, too, people have been coming. And, like, one of our Friday mornings, when we were talking about how have you seen God work this week, and there was a story of one young woman who was going through a kind of hard time in her life, and she was invited in by a friend who’s a Christian. And then just meeting you all there in the youth group was so exciting for her. It just drew her into the community, like this is so much fun. I like this. I want to be part of this more.

That young person was in junior high. This other person was in high school, and we’ve been trying to invite her into the youth group for a long time, but she’s never been very interested. But suddenly, with you all here, she’s like, oh, this is cool. I like this. It just gives so much energy to what we’re doing, and it makes everything so exciting. People ask if it is really helpful to come for a little while, and then leave again. How is that helpful? It gives so much energy and, like, excitement to the ongoing things that we have going, so to be able to pull people into that and then those relationships continue long after you’re gone.

That’s actually something I was thinking so much about in my questioning about, should I come? Should I come back? And I talked to your wife Abi a lot about this last year and this year, but one of the things that made me want to come back is the fact that when Americans come, we are so open that it allows other people to have the freedom to open up about their faith, about their life. And to me, that’s really uncomfortable, because I feel like it should be Japanese people opening up to other Japanese people. But right now, it’s not like that. And maybe one day it will be. But there’s also such a deep beauty in these silly little interns coming from America and talking in our loud, annoying, noisy way and giving others the freedom to really be free in Christ when they come to church. And while that makes me a little uncomfortable that it can’t just or doesn’t naturally happen with Japanese people, I feel like we’re, in a way, helping that become more natural just by being our awkward selves and not being afraid to be who we are.

Yeah, definitely. There’s this image here around church that it’s a duty or something like, obedience is the main thing. And I’m thinking specifically of one family who had been coming, and then they kind of fell away, and they haven’t been coming recently. So we invited them to Rebecca’s talk at that art gallery that we did, and they were a little bit uncomfortable because it hadn’t been around the community very much lately. And then Rebecca afterwards, invited them to Sunday, and then sat with them, and I’ve never seen that woman smile so big before. It was like she was like a completely different person. And then I talked to her husband for a long time and had a really good conversation. I was like, that is why we did that event on Friday is so that they could have this joy today on Sunday. And all the people are saying, “Welcome back! Welcome back!” Their concept of an obedience duty thing turned into a place of joy, a place of community, a place of fun like we want it to be. So thank you all for that and so many other times. I’m trying to keep people’s names anonymous for sake of privacy. Like, I want to tell you all their names…

I’m just trying to remember that as well…

Yeah, yeah. On Friday mornings, we say their names and pray for them that God would continue to work in their lives. So let me ask you. The reason I’m specifically talking to both of you is because you were here last year as well. Why did you come back this year? I think there’s a lot of people when they go on missions trips, they want to see what God’s doing around the world and like, oh, I’m going to go to this place and that place and do a different country each time, a different city. But y’all came back. Why did you do that?

Well, in all honesty, the first time I came is because I kind of felt specifically called to Japan in the first place. And that was just from my university and meeting some Japanese students, asking them about their religious background, learning that there was not even a thought behind whether there is a God. You know, I never thought about that before, although it was so interesting. And so I found myself looking up, what does Christianity look like in Japan? And then finding an incredibly low statistic and then being like, what’s stopping me from going? That’s stupid. I’m a college kid. I can’t go. And then, you know, now I’m in my second trip here, so God has a way, but why come back? I guess at its root I love Japanese people. I was very surprised. I love the people of Japan because God loves them more. And so I want to keep coming back because I’m seeing this growth.

I can’t name names. I want to, but so many people just, it’s like their eyes keep getting opened, and I’m getting the front row seat to that. And so why would I not want to come back to this incredible view that God’s, you know, this performance, in a sense, God is making an incredible performance, and we get the front row seat. And so, of course I want to keep coming back to see that.

That’s awesome. And you are very well-loved. People have been mentioning your name for months before you came back. Like, oh, he’s coming back. Jack’s coming back. And I remember, you arrived, I think, Wednesday night, something like that. And then Friday morning, we did our first, “So how have you seen God working this week?” And you’re like, “Oh, I have a story.” I’m like, “What? You’ve been here one day. You can’t possibly have a story.” And you’re like, “No, no, let me tell you Roger.” And you told us about the coffee shop that you went to a lot last year. And then when you came back this year, they’re like, “Oh, Jack’s back.” And it was so funny because, you know, all these non-Christian staff people at this coffee shop were so excited that you’re back. And I think one of the regular customers recognized you too and invited you out to dinner or something. Just to be able to build on those relationships is so important here in Japan. You haven’t just burned out, you know, or gone somewhere else. But that kind of commitment is really important to Japanese people.

Yeah, it was wild. She basically said, “Welcome back! Long time no see.” And then she was like, “Do you want that honey cinnamon latte?” And it was like I never left. It was awesome.

That’s amazing.

So good.

Yeah. What about you, Gardner?

There are so many reasons why I came back, but probably more surprising is that I came at all in the first place because I just… Long story short, last year I decided to go on a missions summer internship somewhere with Mission to the World. I didn’t know where. I just told them to place me somewhere, and they put me in Japan. And I said, “Why? I don’t speak Japanese. I had never even thought about ever going to Japan.” But while I was having this conversation, there was actually one of my friends, a Japanese exchange student, was living at my house with me over Christmas break as I was making the decision to go or not to go. And she said, “You should definitely go.” And she actually convinced me that I should go. So I came to Japan last year of all places.

I paid her to do that, actually…

Oh, right, right. I’ll have to introduce y’all someday.

I’d love to meet her.

But she had recently become a Christian. Or actually, when she convinced me to come, she wasn’t yet a Christian, but she became a Christian three months later, and then I left for Japan two months after that. And so while I was in Japan, I had the opportunity to meet several people who were Christians in Japan, Japanese Christians. And there’s actually this couple who live in Fukuoka, a Japanese wife and a Korean husband. I would say that they’re the reason why I wanted to come back, the biggest reason, because I saw them living in Fukuoka, which is a place where they don’t have a single church and they don’t have a church community. They don’t have any Christian community, but they are being faithful to God by raising a family and living as Christians among their friends and neighbors in Fukuoka. And whereas, while they really hope to one day have a church, to have a family in Christ in Fukuoka, they have said goodbye to everyone in Tokyo that they know and all the Christians that they know and moved to this place to raise their family and hopefully one day to be a part of a church.

And I was both heartbroken and so encouraged watching them because their love for the Lord is so evident, but they also are very honest about their struggles, and that allows their friends and the artists around them to see that there is a different way to live. And it was literally the most beautiful thing, just living with their family. Their kids are so cute, and because of them, I realized that there really is a need for Christians. Like, I knew the statistics, but that’s when it hit me, is that in this huge city, there’s not one church that they can go to that believes that Jesus is Lord. And so because of that, I came back, and I actually came back to that city first, and it was, like, the most beautiful thing. They still don’t have a church, but they’re hopeful that one day they will.

Yeah, that’s powerful. And it reminds me, too, I want to move into talking about this amazing trip we took over the weekend where there’s very few churches. It’s one of the least churched areas of Japan. We went and stayed in this church where the closest other church in the denomination is a three-and-a-half-hour drive away, if you can imagine. So it’s not like, which church should we go to this morning? It’s like, well, this one or the one three-and-a-half hours away, you know? And on really bumpy roads. So, this past weekend, in response to the huge earthquake that happened in Ishikawa on January 1, there was a lot of devastation. And our church has been sending up teams in order to respond to that. And we had the special privilege to be able to go up this weekend as a group artists. What were your impressions of that trip? Tell me a little bit about it.

It was really encouraging for me, actually. In spite of the destruction, in spite of the toppled buildings and the bumpy roads, there was so much joy. We met at the church, and they started with a devotion and prayer and sent us out. And, you know, we worked with other Christians, and I just ended up just talking to a guy as we were, like, shoveling debris onto a tarp. And he was just, he’d been doing this for a while now, helping out with destruction, and he was kind of a pro at it. But you know, there’s kind of that thought of, you know, if you’re around destruction for so long, it can be really depressing because of the idea of, like, when will this end? How can we fix this? But he was so joyful, and his joy was so contagious too, like, the people that were living there, and it was so beautiful to watch them smile.

Just to emphasize your point. Like, this is July 4. The earthquake happened January 1. They told me that only 3% of the homes have been fixed so far. 3%! That’s 97% of the devastation that is still there. And so, yeah, to be able to have this joy…

Yeah. And it was like, the people, we were helping out some people in their home, which was pretty messed up from the earthquake, and watching them smile as we were leaving, and they were just so thankful. The lady with the cane was struggling to keep up with the van as it was pulling away so she could wave goodbye, you know, like, it was hard not to tear up.

She makes me want to learn Japanese so badly.

Oh, I know. Yeah, she was awesome. And she was a trooper. I don’t know. It was encouraging just to see this joy that we have because of Christ is contagious to these people. And my prayer is that if we weren’t able to really have a one-on-one conversation with them and tell them, Christ is our savior, that someone in the body of Christ will later share the gospel with them, and they’ll be like, this is the joy that I felt that day. And they’ll remember the smiles we had and maybe the contagious joy that we were able to spread hopefully and see the body of Christ and the Holy Spirit working.

That family was not Christian. They are friends with Christians who belong to the church, so it was interesting for us to witness in that way with this Christian group. Noto Help keeps coming back day after day after day. We were only there for one day, but every day this Christian relief group is coming back and asking what can we do today? How can we help fix this house? I think it’s a great testimony, and they loved having us there.

They did.

Especially your accordion playing.

I was just thinking about that. I was gonna say, I found an accordion in the midst of the garage, and I was like, can I play this, please?

We put on an improv concert at the end. Yeah, I forgot about that.

I played Come Thou Fount, on guitar this time.

Yeah, and Gardner, you danced around the debris, surrounded by broken things.

It was a real Cellist in Sarajevo moment.

Yes, it was.

One last thing I was gonna say, and then I’ll had it over to Gardner, I promise. I think of art as a constructive thing. Like, you’re creating something, you’re constructing something, in the midst of all this deconstruction, all this, you know, rubble and things, and we were able to construct something. There’s whole modes of therapy that are devoted to this, for people that feel like their lives are crumbling apart and everything is destructive. They can construct something through art, through music or something. And so, in a way, that’s kind of how I felt going into Ishikawa, is we’re creating something in the midst of all of this deconstruction.

Yeah, definitely.

It was also, I think, so beautiful to revisit this family that I met last year. And I remember being so disheartened last year when I met them, saw their church. I think there were maybe four members other than their own family, and all over the age of 90, probably. So the church was literally dying out when I saw them last year. And for me, that was so disheartening as a missionary to go and see this family working so hard. And it just felt like they were stuck between a rock and a hard place. They’re in the middle of nowhere, 3 hours away from anyone in their denomination, and they’re working so hard. And for what? It was so difficult to see that last year and this year, I felt that there was such a big change. And it was so beautiful to see just a couple more people and just a little bit more joy. And just, I felt the change from last year that the Lord has been at work. And this passage that you actually spoke on was so powerful in that moment. You spoke on Ephesians 3 that talks about, “so Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know that the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

And then it continues, of course, to “To him who is able to do far more abundantly than all we ask or think.” I just think that was like the verse of the weekend. Honestly, through all of our conversations and literally everything that happened that weekend, I felt like we saw God work abundantly and deeply. And maybe the buildings were not rooted firmly, but we have a firm anchor in Christ, and maybe your house may fall or your entire city be burned down, but we have hope in Christ, and we have something far more abundant and beautiful that is not on this earth. And that was really beautiful. So thanks for preaching on that passage.

Yeah, I remember we had a kind of kansou where the pastor had us go around and just give our impressions of the time, and he was telling us how encouraged he was by us being there. When we first arrived late that first night, he seemed a little cold to us, or a little stressed, I guess. But by the time we left, I felt like we were best friends. He’s like, please come back. He was just so encouraged by our time there. And I remember there was a non-Christian family in the community that I had lunch with. We did this BBQ festival, and talking with her I was really curious what would draw her in. She’s like, I just really love the pastor and his wife. They’ve been such an encouragement to me. And so to see this pastor as he’s pouring into people in his community and giving everything he has, and then we’re able to come in as these outsiders and encourage him to give him strength to keep going, I think was really strategic and important.

And then we gave a concert. And you danced, Gardner, and the news.

Oh, yeah, that was interesting…

You want to tell that story?

Yeah, you know, I was dancing, so I don’t really know what happened with the news.

Well, I saw her talking to, Rebecca, but I didn’t know who was she was talking to. People with fancy cameras came walking by, and I was like, oh cool, they’re taking a little, you know, photo shoot or something like that. And then Rebecca walks over after she’s been talking to this lady for a while. Yeah, you’re gonna be on Channel 4 News in Tokyo tomorrow. And I was like, what? So, yeah, they thought it was super cool. And they were just walking around the area and happened to see that. So they got a cool story out of you guys.

We were trying to decide after fixing that home what to do. We wanted to bring beauty to this devastation. Where should we go? So first we went by, which has become world news of the whole downtown area of Wajima was burned to the ground just completely with a very hot fire. And so, we visited there first, and we’re like, should we give a concert here? And I talked to the security guard who was keeping people out of the devastation. Can we give a concert here? He’s like, “uh, sure, why not?” But as we talked about it, we’re like, well, we don’t really play for dead people. Like, there’s nobody here. It’s all devastated. And so, then we ended up going downtown to the major intersection cross section of Wajima, where there’s a huge building. It was really tall, and the whole thing just fell over intact. Like, completely horizontal.

90 degrees all the way. I’ve never seen anything like that in my life.

Yeah. And we’re like, well, this is downtown. A lot of cars are going by here in front of this building. How would this be? And we started setting up.

I changed into a dress in the car.

And the police came by. I’m like, “Oh, no, they’re not gonna let us do this.”

They kept going by.

Yeah, they just kind of looked at us and kept driving by.

They drove by like five times.

They kept driving by just checking us out, but never stopped to tell us not to do anything. And so we started giving this concert at the base of this fallen building in downtown.

Yeah, your son on the koto.

What was most encouraging to me was that time one van stopped, not at the line, you know, when the light turned red. He didn’t go all the way up to the line, but stopped in front of the performers just to watch, and then the light turned green. He still didn’t want to move, but then he’s like, oh, I guess I have to, because there were a lot of cars behind him. So he rolled down his windows and he started yelling something to you. And he held up his thumb up. You could see the excitement on his face.

To be able to bring that joy and that creativity, that art, that beauty, to downtown Wajima, the most devastated city in that whole peninsula, I thought was really meaningful.

Yeah.

The only word I caught from him was “steki!”

“So beautiful.”

I heard “Ganbatte!” like, “keep going,” you know? It was awesome.

As he drove off, I’m like, okay, I guess we’ve chosen the right place because hundreds of cars were driving by as we were performing.

Not a few of them were just craning their necks to see what was going on.

I was so nervous, partly because the ground was really hot and I was trying not to burn my feet while I was dancing, but also because these cars are driving by. Normally when we’re doing dance or koto music or piano for you, we’re just trying to create something beautiful, not something that will be beautiful in the 10 seconds that it’s seen. And so it was a little bit of a challenge, but it was also so cool to see how even catching bits and glimpses of the piece, people would start coming back. And so I saw a couple of people that were in cars, and they went and parked somewhere and walked all the way over, which is impressive in Japan, to actually spend the time and money to park.

Yeah. And there was one guy who was sheltering who, his home was destroyed, and he was in a shelter nearby, and he’s like, what are you all doing? Well, we’re just trying to bring beauty here. And he’s like, oh, great, let me go get my lunch. I’ll be right back. He went home and he got an obento lunch and then brought it back, and he was sitting on the sidewalk eating and watching the concert.

I love it. As much as it was cool, I’m sure, dancing and performing, it was also just cool, like, sitting there watching it, and just seeing all the people stopping and getting their phones out, recording and, like, talking to their friends, like, wow, this is so cool. It was awesome.

Yeah, it was so cool. Well, we’re almost out of time, so what would you say to people who are considering an internship in the future? Should they. Should they consider Japan? Why? Why do an internship for a summer?

Well, of course, I would recommend it heavily. I think it depends on if you really feel like God’s calling you to do this, and if that’s the case, then absolutely. I think for people that maybe they just want to visit Japan, think Japan’s cool or they want to go overseas or something, they may not really get a lot out of it. But if you feel like you want to see God working, if you want to see lives changed by the great commission, then absolutely. If you want to see worship, you know, personified by these artists and their performances, and you want to share the gospel, then absolutely. But if you just want a cool trip. No, because it is work. But it is so beautiful. And so I do recommend it. Absolutely.

Awesome.

Yeah. I definitely agree with what you said. It’s not just to come be a tourist, right? I think the most beautiful part was just getting to dwell in the city and live here. I really think that God will be glorified whether or not we come, and he will make himself known whether or not we come. But the fact that he uses us is the most incredible thing.

It is amazing, isn’t it?

I remember praying when I first arrived in Japan this summer. I was so sort of, like, had this conversation with God about, like, I don’t feel like I’m equipped to be here. Like, I feel like there’s so many more qualified people that could have come. Like, why am I here? And I really just felt the peace and assurance that was very uncomfortable, but really wonderful that, yes, there’s so many more better equipped people to come, but if you’re willing, come and God will use you.

Thank you so much. And thank you, both of you, for coming and pouring your time in this summer. It’s really been an amazing summer. I look forward to seeing how God continues to use these relationships, to build these relationships that you’ve helped start and grow during your time here.

So people can follow you, I’m going to list on our show notes your websites, and also an article that Gardner has written. You can also get their newsletters and see some of the artwork that they’ve done here. Jack’s music. Gardner’s dancing. Thank you so much for your time.

Yeah, thank you.

Thanks, Roger.

Anna Gardner’s Article

Anna Gardner’s Podcasts

Jack’s Music

My family and I live on an island that’s part of the reclaimed land of Tokyo Bay. It’s at the mouth of the Sumida River, which flows down from the heart of Tokyo. And this is a very interesting place, one reason why we chose to live here.

This island is where the fishermen used to live that went out into the bay to catch the fish. And when they brought it back, they would give the best of it to the Imperial Palace. But then the rest they would take up the canal to Nihonbashi. Now, if you come into Haneda Airport in Tokyo, you know a little bit about this bridge because there’s a huge replica of it in the airport where all of the stores and restaurants are. And the reason is because that was the commerce center of Tokyo.

Nihonbashi literally means the “bridge of Japan.” You know the phrase all roads lead to Rome? Well, all roads in Japan lead to Nihonbashi. It was the center of five ancient roads, highways that went out throughout the country. And even now, when you’re driving and you look at a sign and it says such and such kilometers to Tokyo, it’s telling you exactly how far it is to Nihonbashi.

And further afield, if you go around the world, Paris or Sydney or somewhere like that, and it says Tokyo is 7,300 miles that way, it’s telling you how far it is to Nihonbashi. When Tokugawa united the nation of Japan, he made this place the main exchange ground for so many different things. Like one of them was the arts. As an artist, I really like that part. Ningyocho is right next to it.

“Ningyo” means doll. So “doll town,” it’s the place where all of the kabuki theaters and puppet shows were. I know it pretty well because the pastor I used to work with, who planted the church where I work, used to live in Ningyocho. And so we had a lot of meetings there.

Nihonbashi is also where the first department stores of Japan were invented. Mitsukoshimae is a subway stop that’s near there. Mitsukoshi is a very famous department store. It’s the first department store in Japan. And shortly after that, many other department stores were built.

When I’m describing Nihonbashi, I’m telling you like, this is my front yard in a sense. I bike through there all the time. And you always have all these men in their white gloves, kind of ushering in the cars to get into the parking lots to go to the mall. It’s not really what you consider like an American mall. It’s a very high end Japanese mall.

Another thing that Nihonbashi is known for is a financial district. It’s where the big banks were made. The Bank of Japan, the First National Bank, and the Tokyo Stock Exchange is in Nihonbashi.

But what I want to talk to you about today is that it’s also the center of where sushi was invented, the kind of sushi that we know today. You have to understand that for a long time, and today too, Tokyo is the biggest city in the world. And that was the main cultural exchange place. So many different people, 1.2 million people in the 1700s. And with all these people wandering around, they needed to eat. They needed to eat quickly. And so, because it was a fish market of raw fish, it made sense that they’d want to make a fast food with the fish with mouth-sized bites to give to people in order to be able to have a quick lunch. So I think it’s funny, you know, when I travel in America, often I’ll see sushi in gas stations or airports. That sushi is not quite the same as the sushi that we have here, but it does serve the same purpose. It’s fast food. You’re going through somewhere, you get it, you eat it quickly, and you’re done. And even now, I’ll often eat sushi as fast food. If I’m rushing to something, I’ll grab it from a convenience store and eat it. It’s not too bad.

However, the other day I had an important meeting, and we ate lunch at a sushi place in Nihonbashi. And it was amazing. Not like what you get in a convenience store or gas station or a supermarket. Very high end. And yet it wasn’t that expensive. So when y’all come visit us in Japan, I’ll have to take you there. It’s pretty good.

And by the way, the other interesting thing to me about sushi is the wasabi, or horseradish, the green spicy part put between the fish and the rice. The center of the farming of wasabi comes from the Izu Peninsula, which is a mountainous region, the closest mountainous region to Tokyo. Our church has gone there for a retreat, and so I know the area pretty well, running through all the farmlands. Wasabi comes from big leafy plants that grow right in the middle of the cold, rushing mountain rivers. And so when I think wasabi, I’m thinking the sound of rushing rivers and cold mountain rivers. And so there’s always this fresh, clear crispness of mountain streams brought into my mind in the hustle and bustle of the city. It’s kind of a neat combination.

So every Sunday, I bike from my home where the fishermen used to live through Nihonbashi, and I’m thinking about all these things to the place where we meet near Tokyo station for worship. It’s very close to where we live, and it’s very close to the culture of Japan and the culture of Tokyo.

And so what I want to do is help people taste the answer to the question, “How does this help us see the grace of God?” About a month ago, my book, A Taste of Grace came out, and the purpose of that was to help people taste the message of the gospel, how God loves us and cares for us in a world which is really, really hard. There are so many expectations put on us, and I see people torn apart by that time and time again. Families fall apart. Communities fall apart. This world is hard.

It’s really only the message of the gospel that gives us the freedom and hope that we need to live in abundance. That despite our brokenness and our failings and our mistakes, that God is working to redeem us, to sustain us. He has our best interests in mind, and he is building his perfect kingdom through us, through everything we do, everything we say, everything we make. Our pain, our suffering, is not without meaning. God’s message is not amorphous. It’s clear, it’s distinct, and it’s for us.

And when I eat sushi in Japan, I sense this so deeply, and I want Japanese people to sense that as well. So in the book, I ask the question, “What is the gospel according to sushi?” And you know, when you ask that question, you get some really interesting answers. So for this episode, I’d like to share with you from the audiobook version of the book, A Taste of Grace. This is the chapter on sushi. Please have a listen.

Every meal in Japan begins with one word.

“Itadakimasu.” (“I humbly receive and eat.”)

There is so much meaning in this one word! Literally, it expresses thankfulness both for the people who prepare the food and for the plants and animals which are the food. At each and every meal, we receive the life of another. For one to live, another must die. Sacrifice resides at the heart of every meal.

Perhaps no food in Japan is more deserving of the sentiment of itadakimasu than sushi and sashimi. You watch as the chef cuts the fish right in front of you. Sometimes you even see it alive first, swimming in a small tank in the restaurant. Unlike beef, pork, or chicken, it is actually safe to eat as soon as the chef slices it, creating what I consider an intimate connection with the sacrifice of the fish.

The kind of sushi most often enjoyed around the world today, also known as nigiri sushi or Edomae sushi, developed in the early 1800s within walking distance of my apartment in Tokyo. Roadside stands began placing bite-sized pieces of fish on top of hand-molded balls of rice mixed with vinegar. The pairing with wasabi, or Japanese horseradish, happened almost immediately. We find the birthplace and largest production of wasabi in the mountain river streams of Shizuoka Prefecture, just south of Tokyo.

I can’t help feeling fascinated by the close attachment of sushi to the history, land, and sea of Japan. Sushi expresses in a microcosm the value of contrast in the culture, the strong tastes of vinegar and wasabi against the relatively mild fish and rice. And when I eat sushi, I think of Jesus on the cross. The clean flesh of the fish, his sinless sacrificial body. The vinegar, his bitter drink. The sharp taste of wasabi, his agony. The sushi chef bears witness to the beauty and bitterness of Christ’s sacrifice for the world through every serving.

Sushi gives a delectable reminder of the gospel, humbling us in thankfulness for Jesus’s sacrifice while encouraging us to celebrate him with every meal.

Itadakimasu.

I humbly receive and eat.

You’ve been listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. If you’d like to hear more examples of how we taste the grace of God through Japanese food, please check out my book, A Taste of Grace, just released. And after reading the book, would you consider leaving a review? It’s a huge blessing not only to me, but to those who are trying to figure out what this book is about.

As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne!” We’ll see you next time.

When you walk out of an airport and enter a country that’s foreign to you for the first time, one of the things you might notice is the different smell in the air. And, you know, often these differences come from the food. Food is so closely tied to the identity of a nation which plants you in that place. And cultures are practically defined by their food. Think of spaghetti: Italy. Fish and chips? England. Tacos? Mexico. Curry? India. The list goes on. Obviously, these are only just a few examples.

There are many kinds of foods in each country, and you can find these things in the restaurants as well, right? If you go to an Italian restaurant, you’re going to find spaghetti. In fact, it’s going to be called an Italian Restaurant. The nation and the food are almost synonymous with each other. Now, in the process of becoming a missionary, we are taught to be attuned to cultural elements that can be used for contextualization, for talking about the gospel. So what does the gospel look like in this culture?

Since food is so closely tied to culture, it makes sense to ask the question, what does the gospel look like in this culture’s food? It’s the clearest entry into the ways of thinking of a people. And so I wrote a taste of grace to answer this very question. What is the gospel according to Japanese food? And, you know, when you ask that question, you come up with some pretty interesting answers.

Now, we’ve talked a lot in past episodes about the Japanese aesthetic of finding beauty in brokenness, and I’ve written quite a bit about this as well. My book The Broken Leaf looks at many examples of this in the traditional Japanese arts. In the tea ceremony, the leaves must be broken for the flavor and the aroma and the color to come out. In kintsugi, broken bowls are repaired with golden cracks, and the bowl is more beautiful and more valuable and stronger for having been broken. In the Japanese incense ceremony, the tree must come under severe distress in order to produce the kind of wood that releases a pleasant aroma when heated.

And we find this same aesthetic, beauty and brokenness, in Japanese food. We find it in natto fermented soybeans, Japanese pickling, tsukurani, and so many others. But in this episode, I want to talk about how we see it in Japanese rice cakes called mochi. Now, mochi nowadays can be bought very cheaply at the supermarket, and it is also made in a lot of household machines. But one of my strongest memories from my early years in Japan is the sound of mochi being pounded the way it historically used to be made, with a big wooden mallet.

And this sound is very much ingrained in the memories of everyone who lives in Japan, which is one reason why we have mochi pounding ceremonies every year. As I meditated on mochi, I was amazed at how it led me in worship of God and Jesus sacrifice on the cross. And so here’s a chapter on this from the audio version of my book, A Taste of Grace, released just one week ago on May 27. Have a listen.

The sound of laughter fills the air, along with a distinctly sharp sound of pounding.

Thud. Thud.

The woman next to me turns and smiles. She sports a bright red and white headband and a festive blue, white, and red coat known as a happi, which sounds joyful in English as well as in Japanese. She points to a large wooden mallet the size of a sledgehammer as she encourages me to take a turn.

“I don’t think that . . .” I begin to say, but stop. I can tell by the look on her face that I’m not going to be able to back out of this one. I pick up the mallet, surprised by the weight of it and roughness of the texture, and turn to face the big wooden mortar filled with hot steaming rice.

A man crouches next to the rice, ready to turn it over with his hands between each of my hits.

Don’t hit his hands, Don’t hit his hands, I repeat over and over to myself as I raise the mallet over my head. Or any other part of his body.

Thud. Thud.

I had no idea that mochi-making was such a violent process. In order to make these common Japanese rice squares, the mallet needs to come down hard, hard enough to crush and compress the cooked rice. Every single kernel must be pounded, over and over again.

Hours later, we all suffer from blistered hands and sore backs.

Strangely enough, the source of mochi’s “strength” is in the pounding. The source of its endurance is in its “suffering.” Mochi keeps for a very long time without spoiling. Two little pieces have about the same number of calories as an entire serving of rice. In the cold winter months, this durable food source keeps the body warm.

We often feel like mochi, pounded over and over again by brokenness in this world. Broken relationships. Deceased family members. Unrealized dreams. Sickness. Grief. Our physical bodies naturally pass out to protect ourselves when wounded or in pain or when we hear horrific news. Our emotions and psyche sometimes go numb when faced with an overload of traumatic events. Nothing good can come from pain, we often think. Yet, if perhaps like mochi, pain and suffering can transform us into something stronger, experience shows that the very things which hurt us can actually help us grow.

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.” (James 1:2–4)

We obviously don’t want to face trials of any kind. We don’t want to suffer. Suffering comes nonetheless, and God brings hope into these times by working through the brokenness to shape us into people who are “mature and complete, not lacking anything.”

It’s a fact: comfort does not change us for the better. Just the opposite. It can ruin us, making us unable to change or grow or empathize with others. We must experience brokenness to be reshaped.

I think of Job, a man in the Bible who lost everything—his children, his health, his property—but came to a place where he knew God better and became a blessing to his friends.

“I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes.” (Job 42:5)

I think of many men and women in the Bible pounded over and over again with trials of many kinds that gave them their endurance and strength. I think of the persecution of the early church and the growth that came through it.

God wants good things for us. He does not allow the pain and suffering of this world to be meaningless. By his mysterious power and grace the crushing produces endurance; the pounding brings strength. Adversity prepares us for something greater. Trials push us to know God and rely on him more deeply, to rely on his power rather than our power, to look to him rather than look to ourselves.

Jesus trusted God yet died so that we may trust God and live. He received beatings and suffering for our iniquities so that we may be healed. The hands and feet of Jesus were literally pounded onto the cross for our sake, and the sound of it echoes all the way from the cross to the people of every tribe and nation.

“It was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.” (Hebrews 2:10 ESV)

This life and even our own hearts may try to pound us into the ground, but in the hands of God, our process of suffering merely transforms us to be more like Jesus. Not only that, but he understands what we face. He empathizes with our trials. He experiences our pain. He shares in our suffering.

Here, on this day, as I pound this mochi and eat the fruits of our labor, I have hope, because I remember how, by God’s grace, my suffering is not my destruction.

Thud. Thud.

May the pounding on Jesus, and the sound of the gospel, reverberate in our hearts and around the world.

You’ve been listening to the Art Life Faith Podcast. If you’d like to hear more examples of how we can taste the grace of God through Japanese food, check out my book A Taste of Grace, just released last week, available in webstores wherever you get your books. Ja, mata ne! We’ll see you next time.

Well, it’s here! The day has finally come. The launch of my next book “A Taste of Grace” is right around the corner, coming this Monday, May 27, on Memorial Day Weekend. I’m so excited to finally be able to share this book with all of you.

Now, this book has really been a long time in coming. I began writing it in 2020 during the lockdown as part of a series of finding beauty in brokenness, along with my other books “The Broken Leaf” and “Aroma of Beauty.” During that year and the years since, we all desperately needed to hear the message of how we could find hope in our suffering.

“A Taste of Grace” continues this series by looking specifically at the beauty and brokenness we find in Japanese food. Most of the stories come from our early years in Japan as missionaries, when we were encountering many Japanese foods for the first time. And some of these stories I hope you’re going to find pretty humorous. And others, I hope you’ll find thought-provoking, food for thought per se. Now, it’s taken me a couple of years to get this book out to you because it has gone through so many different versions during that time. But I’m pretty happy with the finished product, so I guess it was worth the wait. And I hope that many will find it as an encouragement for many years to come.

There’s really two reasons that I wrote this book. One is so people could feel the presence of God, not just on Sundays, not just when they pray, but every day and every meal. Food gives us energy to keep us going, and it’s a wonderful way to connect with people around the table. Eating is certainly at the core of almost every single event that we do here in Tokyo. But food is so much more than that, so much more. It’s no coincidence that the Bible starts with food in the Garden of Eden and ends with food at the Wedding Supper of the Lamb. Food is one of the primary ways that God continually shares his love and care for us. That’s one reason why the sin of taking the fruit from the forbidden tree was so destructive. And that’s also one reason why the imagery of heaven is so often described as gathering around a table, and especially as the Wedding Supper of the Lamb.

You see, food is not just food. It’s not mere stuff. But through food, God is communicating his love to us. And this book explores how he does that and what that looks like. So, I want people to feel the love of God, to feel his care for us. But also, I wrote this book specifically for Japanese people. There’s an incredibly strong image here in Japan that Christianity is a Western religion. In fact, that image is so strong that for different Christian events and holidays, churches often feel like they need to celebrate with Western foods. In one of the conversations sparked by this book, I was talking with a Japanese woman, and she’s like, “After Christmas worship, we wanted to go out and eat as a group. One woman stopped and wanted to eat sushi. Another said, ‘No, you can’t eat sushi on Christmas. This is a Christian holiday. We need to eat Christian food.’ And so they went back and forth, ‘Wait, sushi isn’t Christian?’ and ‘Wait, what food is Christian?’ ‘Well, bread is. We have to go to a bakery.’

Just to emphasize this point, one of the biggest bread companies here in Japan is called Yamazaki Bread Company, started by Japanese Christians after World War II. They always have an ad on the back of our quarterly missionary magazine, a full-page ad that shows a picture of a Western-looking white girl eating their bread. So the image is very strong. Bread is Christian. Rice is not. But what I’m hoping that people will see is that it’s not only bread that’s from God, but rice is God as well. God is intimately sharing his love and care for people through the foods that we eat every day here in Japan. In fact, God is intimately working through all the cultures of the world, to share his love through all the foods of the world. And so I believe, too, that even if you as a reader are not interested in Japanese food or culture at all, that you’ll be able to taste the gospel in new ways through this book.

And so, this book is launching this coming Monday, Memorial Day. And if you’re at all considering buying this book, can I ask a special favor? If we can get enough people to buy the book on the day of the launch, it’ll move into a bestseller status, especially on Amazon, not that I’m pushing Amazon. Wherever you buy your books is great. But if we can get the book into the bestseller status, then it becomes more visible to everyone. And once it’s more visible to everyone, then even people who aren’t searching for that particular book, people who’ve never heard of me, people who aren’t listening to this podcast. It allows that message to reach a much broader audience of people.

And so I encourage you to at least consider buying the book on launch day, if you’re willing, and then after that, to leave a review, because that, too, is huge in helping people find the book and learn what it’s all about. And so that’s what it’s all about, to get the message far and wide to larger groups of people than I could possibly meet with in person. In the past, I’ve seen my book spark so many amazing conversations and build new relationships. And I’m hoping for that with this book as well. It’ll be out in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook.

In this episode, I’d love to give you just a little taste from the audiobook edition. This is going to be about utage or the Japanese form of feasting. We just celebrated the cherry blossom viewing season here in Japan, and so I use this imagery to help us see the Wedding Supper of the Lamb in new ways, to help us see this amazing future that God has in store for us. Please have a listen.

Outside my apartment building, we sit on mats by a river that flows through the center of Tokyo. A gentle wind rustles the pinkish white petals of the cherry trees, which float down around us like snow. Laughter fills the neighborhood with the joyful sounds of hanami cherry blossom viewing.

A dizzying array of foods spreads out before me as each person arrives: karaage fried chicken, deep-fried potato korokke, sushi, onigiri, tsukemono pickled vegetables, fruit, various kinds of sake. One friend brings something a little more elaborate—a portable gas stove on top of a cart bearing a large pot of oden soup. My wife brings asparagus wrapped in bacon and homemade chocolate pudding.

The Japanese word utage means “feast” or “banquet.” More than physical nourishment, the word conveys connection and community, happiness and blessing through celebration with food.

The Japanese word for “taste” (“ajiwau”) includes broader and deeper connotations of experience than the English equivalent. Japanese expressions such as “taste the beautiful colors” or “taste the music” or, on the darker side, “taste suffering” sound strange in English.

At heart, homo sapiens exist not just as “knowing people” but as “tasting people.” The Latin word sapiens for “knowing” can also mean “tasting.” By tasting, we learn not just about the world, but about each other as well. For example, those first moments after birth build a crucial bond between mother and child through breastfeeding, and we can not leave out the importance of a kiss. Mealtimes together as families, friends, or coworkers create essential opportunities for connecting and sharing stories.

When we eat together and provide food for one another, we fill our table with compassion, kindness, connection, acceptance, and love. We build relationships with each other and with God, and we experience a foretaste of the abundant and eternal nourishment of God in heaven.

“Blessed are those who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb!” (Revelation 19:9)

All our best banquets give but a small taste of the wedding supper of the Lamb that awaits us. Will this glorious celebratory banquet occur in some large banquet hall made of stone? Or perhaps in the cozy setting of an upper room? Personally, I imagine it might take place outside, on mats laid out by the river that flows through the middle of the city as the wind of the Holy Spirit gently rustles the blossoms of the tree of life. Petals float down around us like snow. A dizzying array of the best foods, from every tribe and nation, spreads out before us as each person arrives. Laughter and joy overflow.

The aromas of this incredible banquet already begin to waft through the air of our waiting world. Can you sense them?

You can read the show notes for this episode at my website, www.rogerwlowther.com. Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, ”Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”

Just the other day we hosted a Zoom call for our friend Satomi Suzuki to help raise money for her upcoming artist residency. She’s a visual artist and a writer here in Tokyo, but she’s about to head to Ocean Springs, Mississippi. And so in advance of her departure, I asked if she wouldn’t be willing to have a conversation with us.

I’m sitting here with Satomi Suzuki, and this person . . . I don’t know why it’s taking me so long to introduce y’all to her. She’s been a long-time attender of our Art, Life, Faith gatherings, and she’s so caring, giving to other artists in the room who haven’t been coming very long or who are younger. She has a very caring heart. She is a writer and a visual artist, and you can see that in many of the works that she does. She has published books. She has gallery showings with her paintings. She has been writing lyrics for worship songs that we have at Grace City. It’s so cool that we have many new songs introduced at our church because she’s been writing lyrics for us. And Satomi really is a pillar of Grace City Church. She leads the prayer ministry at the church. Once a month, during COVID, she was doing it online and did an amazing job. Now we meet in the back of the sanctuary before worship every week. And she’s just a help in so many different ways.

Anyway, I’m very glad to have you here, Satomi.

Thank you so much, Roger. It’s too much big compliment to me.

No, no, no. It’s not big enough. It’s not big enough.

Thank you.

Yeah, I really want people to get a little picture of who you are and what it is that you do. So you’re a visual artist. And I remember I went to your gallery showing last year, and there were so many people there.

Oh, I’m so grateful for that.

And they were so happy to be there, too.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

And just the way that you cared for everyone that walked in the room. I wonder, can you tell me a little bit about how would you describe your art to our listeners?

Thank you. I really like to draw, but I want to express my image of something like God’s love. I want to express something important we can’t see always, real beauty we can’t see.

So there’s a beauty that we have that we can’t see ourselves, that God sees in us? Is that what…

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right, right.

I mean, that’s… As I look at your artwork, it’s so colorful. You know what I mean? Bright colors and lots of colors. And use the image of flowers a lot and oceans. So the beauty we see in nature, I see a lot in your artwork. And so you’re saying that also helps us understand the beauty that God sees in us as his creation?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I just like to draw and using colorful stuffs. And there is a wonderful thing. Art is so free, and we don’t have rules when I draw, so I can feel more freedom.

That’s good to hear. There’s actually in organ music, there’s a lot of rules. People come up to me, they’re like, “You can’t play it that way.” I’m like, “Why not?”

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Actually, I don’t know. Even I don’t know the rules of the visual art. So yeah, might I should to know the rules of the visual art?

Well, I think you clearly know what they are.

Hope so.

Yeah. Well, I want to ask you, too. You put out a children’s book recently called I Am An Apple. Can you tell us a little bit about the story of that?

Sure. As you know, I’m still an English learner. But when I was learning English, I like this idiom, “You are the apple of my eyes.” And this word is really interesting as Japanese because you are the apple of someone’s eyes, really important to me. So I wanted to express that the apple, the main character is apple, and the apple finds himself. And we always want to know real identity. And if someone says, “You are the apple of my eyes” to someone, it’s really wonderful. And I wanted to express God’s love through the apple.

It’s beautiful. It’s exactly like you’re saying what you’re trying to say, the message in your art is what you’ve put in the book as well. Just this poor apple. He’s around other vegetables, right? And he’s different. He’s like, oh, he doesn’t know what his identity is, but in the end finds it and the intrinsic beauty that he has.

Yeah. And if someone asks you, “Who are you?” can you answer exactly? I’m always thinking those kinds of questions. But if I could say, God is loving me. It’s really great.

That’s such an important message that people understand how they’re loved. I heard someone say, actually at church just a couple of weeks ago, we had someone come through and share about their ministry and said that in Japan, a lot of people don’t feel loved, that it was something like 50% or something like that, compared to Americans, where it was a much higher percentage. Is that one reason that you are trying to express that as a Japanese artist, as a Japanese person living in Japan? Is it a message that’s really important for people to hear?

Right, right. Exactly. And I wanted to share that beauty is not one style. So even if you think yourself, I am ugly, but God says, You are so beautiful because I made you.

Yeah. I mean, I’ve found… It’s just amazing to me how the words of others really impact us so deeply. If it’s a kind word, we feel encouraged. If it’s an unkind word, it seems to last like 100 times more powerfully than the kind words for some reason. And so I feel like we really need that encouragement, that message that you’re telling, because we forget, because there’s a lot of unkind words that people say, and we can’t seem to knock them out of our head. And so the more people that are sharing, this is God’s love. He sees you as beautiful. You’re important. He gives you your identity. Not what others say, not even what we say about ourselves. We may have a very low image of ourselves, but that’s different than God’s eyes, where he’s like, “No, I made you. You’re important to me. I love you.” I really appreciate how your art speaks that.

Thank you.

I know soon into your journey of becoming a Christian, you went to Israel to learn more. And then you joined Grace City Church soon afterwards, which is the church that I work at. And you told me that I was the first person that you met at Grace City?

Yeah, I remember you talked me about… Actually, my name is Satomi. It’s really Japanese common name. Then I hated that. But Roger said, “Oh, Satomi? It’s a beautiful name.”

It is a beautiful name.

Oh, really? Well, thank you. So I was so surprised, and my heart became warm.

Oh, good. I’m glad we could encourage you. And then soon after that, you started coming to all the different art events we did, and then became a part of the artist community.

Because Roger and Abi are always so welcoming. So I can easily join and enjoy the time with people. So I really appreciate that.

Well, thank you. So then soon after that, I know you joined what we call the Samurai Project here, which is training to learn more about the Bible. It was like a part-time job, right? You’re paid a little bit, and you attend classes all day, and then you do an internship with a church. So now you’re going to Mississippi for this artist residency. You’re going down to Ocean Springs, right on the coast. A beautiful place. I wish I could go to. Tell me what your are hoping for in that residency?

Actually, this is super unexpected opportunity for me. So it doesn’t feel like real still. I hope I can meet many people, Christian people. Actually, I don’t have exact what I want to do, but I want to draw, and I want to get so many inspirations from their place and people.

Yeah, I know you’re going to be spending a lot of your time in an art gallery that just opened up, a husband and wife. And she is a floral arranger making decorations for huge parties and weddings and all sorts of events. I know that’s going to be an amazing experience. And connected to a great church there and all the people there. And there’s this amazing artist community that I got to meet last year when I was there. I’m so excited for you to meet them because I know they’re going to be a huge encouragement to you as well. There’s a number of potters and a lot of visual artists. It’s just such a beautiful place. So I’m really hoping it’s going to inspire you to be able to go to different places and draw and paint and create a lot of work and sell a lot of work.

Thank you, Roger. You always give me so many hopes.

When I saw your gallery exhibit last year, it really struck me that Ocean Springs would be a good place for you to be because of some of your themes of flowers and trees and ocean and sunlight. That’s exactly what that place is. I do pray that it’s going to be a good time for you. Rest and inspiration, and that God will be close to you during that whole time. Do you know yet what your hopes are for the fall when you get back?

I always want to live as an artist in Japan. In the world, it’s maybe difficult to live as an artist, but I want to live as an artist because God gave me the gift as a talent and because when I draw, I feel so much joy. I want to spread and I want to share this joy with people through the art. I want to share my artworks more after autumn, after this year. I hope this summer will be my jumpboard of my life to the next step.

Very cool. And you were telling me before we started recording that you think your next exhibit in Japan will be probably in January after you get back and make a lot of work here. I’m hoping you’re going to sell a lot of what you make in Mississippi. It’s going to be hard to get it all back here.

Yeah.

So how can people see your work? How can people buy your work? How can people hear your story?

Yes, through my website. And I write a blog, but all in Japanese, so you can see my website or Instagram.

Okay. And that website is www.satomisuzuki.info. If you go there, you’ll see her artwork. Also, there’s a place where you can click Contact. If you do, and I encourage you to do that so you can get updates from Satomi and hear in her newsletter—which is in English, her blog’s in Japanese, but her newsletter is in English—so you can hear about what she’s doing down in Mississippi and her journey going forward.

Yeah.

Thank you so much for sitting down to record with me today.

Thank you so much, Roger. And thank you so much for the listeners, being patient of my English.

Your English is great. Thank you. Well, during your time in Mississippi, I know you’re going to have a lot of practice.

Yeah, I’m so thankful.

Anyway, thank you so much.

Thank you for having me.

I hope you’ve enjoyed these conversations with Satomi. Now, if you want to support her residency, she actually has quite a bit of money to raise. Her budget is very low. I’ve seen the budget. It’s $6,000, the very bare minimum of what she needs. And she’s raised $2,000 of that so far, but still has another $4,000 to go. And so if you’re interested in supporting her, I encourage you to go to the show notes for this episode at www.rogerwlowther.com and there you’ll see links about how you can give to her. Before we sign off, I wanted to give you just one more picture of her heart and her vision as she shared it in the Zoom call earlier this week.

I always want to express God’s love and beauty of God, but we can’t see it. So I want to express it always. Ten years ago, I became a Christian, and at the same time, I started to draw. So I believe drawing is a gift from God. And when I draw, my heart is filled with joy. If the artist doesn’t share the artwork with anyone, the artwork is unfinished. The artwork wasn’t born yet. So I think sharing art is so important as an artist, and I want to share my joy and beauty of God to many people.

So that is what success means to me, that my artwork will be a bridge that connects non-Christians and the gospel.

This is Roger Lowther, and you’ve been listening to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. As we say in Japan, ”Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”

Satomi’s Instagram account

GIVING
US citizens may give a tax-deductible gift toward Satomi’s residency through the following link:

https://mtw.org/projects/details/community-arts-tokyo

(Please send a note through Satomi’s website so that we can designate that money toward her, as a number of projects are going through this account.)

I want to give a brief report from our relief trip to Ishikawa Prefecture last weekend, responding to the needs from that enormous 7.6 magnitude earthquake that struck the region on January 1, 2024. I led a youth team of 3 adults and 7 junior high, high school, and college students from my church, Grace City Church in Tokyo. It was basically a mini-missions trip, which for many of them was their first experience to do anything like this in their entire lives.

Man, it was a really long day. We left the cabin where we were staying in Nagano just after 4 AM and drove just over 3 hours through the sleet and slush, actually kind of dangerous conditions, to get to Uchinada Bible Church, the church in Kanazawa City that is serving as the largest base for Christian relief work in Ishikawa. This Christian effort is called NOTO HELP, which is a combined effort from Christians all over Japan. Noto is the name of the peninsula in Ishikawa where the earthquake damage is the worst.

After receiving a short orientation, we received special shirts marked NOTO HELP, which proved essential for getting by the roadblocks into the peninsula where the damage was worst. I guess they don’t want people traveling up there just to see the destruction. From there, we drove to the city of Nanao, where NOTO HELP has their warehouse with all the supplies people are sending from all over Japan. From there, we split into three different teams.

The job of Team 1 was to organize the warehouse. NOTO HELP’s warehouse in Nanao City has been receiving supplies from churches all over Japan. We created an inventory of the new donations and organized them: blankets, blue tarps, adult diapers, toilet paper, and so many other things. One youth commented, “I counted 5,418 masks! Just in the regular size! Not including small size, sort of small, or oversized…I’ve never seen so many masks in my life!”

The youth also made 122 variety bags full of essential items like toothbrushes, toothpaste, wet towels, soap, little heating pads to warm your hands, and these bags will be handed out later at shelters. They also made small cards for each of the bags with the NOTO HELP logo and messages like “We’re praying for you!”

Three of us headed to the largest shelter in the region, which housed over 750 people after the quake. Now almost two months later, 173 people still live there waiting for temporary housing or to find another living space. We received permission from the director of the shelter to give a concert and set up in the lobby just outside the doors to the main room where everyone could hear us. My 14-year-old son, Coen, played the koto, the traditional Japanese harp, and I played the grand piano. Many people stood in the hallway or sat on chairs to watch and listen. Those who walked by paused for a bit to listen or comment, “Beautiful!” or “I wish I could play like that” or to just wipe tears from their eyes. One woman told us the music was so deeply moving that it gave her peace. “Thank you for today,” she said. “Because of you, I’m going to sleep well tonight.”

Outside the shelter, there were 20 temporary toilets lined up next to a big pool. You were supposed to fill a bucket with water to flush afterward. One of the youth was carrying a bucket up the stairs to the toilet when an older woman began to come down. Afterward, she remarked how she just couldn’t imagine living that way. She couldn’t imagine how they expected older people to carry a bucket of water upstairs, somehow hold it in one hand while opening the door, and then somehow get in without spilling any. Even the simplest things like using the toilet are challenging after an earthquake, she realized. We learned how many older people don’t drink water often enough to keep from having to use the bathrooms much, which leads to other kinds of health problems. Anyway, the plan is to shut down this shelter at the end of March and move everyone into temporary housing that is currently being built.

The third team from our youth group went to Suzu City, another 2.5 hours north up the peninsula. Most of the buildings were destroyed or heavily damaged by the earthquake and the 6-foot tsunami that followed. We brought 60 cases of water to a medical clinic, a shelter in a school, and a private residence. Many sections of the road were impassable due to landslides, requiring the trucks to frequently use hastily made alternate routes.

On the way back, my 18-year-old son Eastin found a clock in the destruction. It stopped at the exact time the tsunami had hit at 4:49 PM. He stood there and looked around, trying to imagine what it was like on that day. It was very moving. It’s much different seeing the destruction on TV and seeing it in person, you know?

By the time we all got back to the cabin around midnight, we were so tired I can’t even tell you. But God really blessed that trip. During our worship time together the next morning, on a Sunday, it was great to hear the youth process their time. One youth commented on how everyone knew we were Christians by what was written on our shirts, and on the jacket of the guy from the Salvation Army as well. He wondered aloud what that would look like in Tokyo. How do we make our identity known as Christians in Tokyo? How do we show the presence of God in Tokyo? That led to a very interesting discussion as well.

Quick story: In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake 13 years ago, we became good friends with a local family participating in our relief efforts. Their daughter, then in third grade, is now 21 years old and recently became a Christian through their ongoing relationship with our family and the church community. She joined us on this recent relief trip to Ishikawa, excited to help as her parents did 13 years ago but also to share her new faith in a God who is with us even in disasters.

It was a really powerful trip, and there’s a lot more I could share about it. You know, March 11, the anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that struck the northern part of Japan is right around the corner. There are events planned up north to remember that day and the people lost, so I’m going to make the ebook versions of my books Aroma of Beauty and Pippy the Piano absolutely free through Amazon on that day, March 10-11. This goes for the Japanese version as well as the English version. These books tell the stories of how God worked after those terrible disasters. If you’ve already bought a copy of the paperback, hardcover, or audiobook, thank you! That means so much to me! Well, this is a great time to pick up the ebook as well, completely free. If you’re studying Japanese, it might be fun to pick up the Japanese version as well and try to read some of it. If you do get one, it would be a great help if you would rate it and leave a review on Amazon so more people can find the books.

In our last episode, I told you a little bit about the trip Tsumugu and I took to Fukushima for Christmas concerts. Tsumugu played the “tsunami violin” made from debris from the tsunami. The sound post of that violin was made from one of the most famous trees in Japan, the Kisseki no Ippon Matsu, the “Miracle Pine Tree.” In one of the concerts, I played a piano famous in that area, the Kisseki no Piano, the “Miracle Piano.” And then, right next to the broken nuclear power plants, I played what is now known as the “Fallen Organ.” It was such a powerful trip in so many ways, and I think I will never forget the people or events from that trip. If you want to hear more about it, you can listen to the previous episode, Episode #55 of the Art, Life, Faith Podcast.

This episode, I would like to share with you a conversation I had with Tsumugu just before our trip to Fukushima, which I already told you about in the last episode, so here you’ll hear us talk about our feelings going into it. It is also just before the Art Life Faith event in December.

I first met Tsumugu when he was only 15 years old. He had just entered high school and was volunteering in Ishinomaki in the area where the earthquake and tsunami had hit. I heard him play, and was like, oh man, I need to bring him down to Tokyo to perform in our next conference. He did and did an amazing job. Well, he recently graduated from the Berklee School of Music in Boston, which many Japanese consider the best jazz school in the world because of some very famous Japanese jazz artists who graduated from there, and he moved to Tokyo where we reconnected just a few months ago.

Here is our conversation.

So I’m sitting here with Tsumugu Misugi, who is going to be doing an Art Life Faith event for us tonight. Thank you so much for sitting down for this podcast.

Thank you for having me here. I’m very excited to be here today.

Yeah, well, you’re not the only one. I mean, I’ve been getting emails from a lot of people from far-off places that are coming tonight to hear you and hear you’re going to have to share.

Yeah, I heard that people coming from faraway places. And I’m very honored to be given this opportunity to share. And I hope that I make the trip worthwhile for them.

I’m sure. Well, I mean, you live this dream life, I would say, for so many. You’re, what, 26 years old, and you are accomplished in composition, writing scores for video games, Korean dramas and Japanese films, live performances with orchestras… I want to hear from your own words. It’s pretty cool.

Yeah, I would say it’s not a normal life for sure. I’m very blessed to be able to live just writing, making music. I write music for video games. I write music for TV, drama, films, and mainly for orchestra context. But yeah…

I remember you showed me a picture of your home studio that you had to live a little bit outside the city in order to be able to get a place where you could record. It looks sci-fi with all these monitors and equipment. And there you are, recording yourself on the violin. It looks pretty cool.

It’s a really cool space that I’m very proud of. I’m very blessed and honored that I have the opportunity to work in a space like that. It’s also a space that I’m in more than 10 hours a day. So I just wanted to make sure that I am the most inspired when I’m in that space. So I had to go a little outside of the city to find a place where I could make music 24/7. When a composer, you don’t have office hours.

It’s very project-based, right?

Deadline-based. Yeah. When you’re working on a couple of projects at a time, that means you’re writing overnight and sleeping during the day. It depends on where the client is in the world because of time zones and everything. You have meetings at like 3:00 in the morning. So yeah, I’m very happy about my studio currently.

You said you didn’t always… We were talking before we started recording, that your very first recording space was an abandoned church.

Yeah. I got into this line of work. I mean, I’ve been playing music my whole life, but I started writing music for film and video games during COVID. And at that time, I was looking for a space that I could make into a studio without getting disturbed by my dogs at home.

Oh, yeah. That would be a problem for recording.

Yeah. I found a church that was abandoned because they had to stop service during COVID and couldn’t get enough money to last through COVID. It was an abandoned church, abandoned floor in a building with just a bunch of chairs for the congregation. I set them up. I stacked the chairs to make it look like an acoustic panel Looking back, it’s definitely not the best sound, but it worked. I’m still very fond of the music that I wrote in that space. It was a very strange working environment, but that’s where it started.

I imagine you having these bedsheets over it as well. Or some soundproofing blankets?

Yeah, I would try to pull the curtains from the windows. Imade it work. But yeah, I recorded violin, I recorded cello in that space. I wrote probably my first few scores in that space.

That’s really cool. All right, so what projects are you working on now that you can tell us about, that you’re allowed to?

Currently, I’m writing music for a video game that’s being produced in Singapore. We are targeting to release a beta version for Tokyo Game Show next year in September and a full release to the public at the end of the year. I’m not allowed to say the name of some of the projects that I’m working on, but I’m writing currently for a couple of Korean dramas. And I also did orchestration and violin recording on a movie called My (K)Night that came out in Japan two days ago.

Awesome. I can’t wait to see it.

Yeah, it’s in theaters right now. So if you have time.

Very cool. All right. So a lot of people try to imagine what video game music is like with Mario Brothers. Is that what you’re talking about, or what music are you writing?

Yeah, I think that’s what a lot of people grew up with. I think that’s… It’s really cool music. A lot of that came because of the limitations of the gaming consoles and devices that they had, the technology at that time.

It was analog, right?

Yeah, but now we have the technology to basically put in audio files and program them into the game. A lot of the music that I write for video games is orchestral or hybrid orchestral, so a mix of electronics and orchestra. That’s where you get huge, epic, orchestral scores for music. That’s the, I guess, the genre of gaming music that I write.

That’s awesome. You said that there’s a little clip of something that we could play.

Yeah, this piece of music, when you first start out, I think a lot of people have this question, “How do I become a film composer? How do I become a game composer when there’s no game or a film?” I went through the same questions and I realized that the first thing I had to do was to prove to people that I could write music. This piece of music was really what started everything for me. It’s called She Comes From the Stars. It was a random name that I came up with because I had no film, I had no game. But I just thought I just had this image after I wrote the piece. I didn’t have to title before, but just of this heroine just zooming through the cosmos. I think we can play a little bit of that.

Great. Let’s have it here.

[PLAY: “She Comes from the Stars”]

All right, so now might be a good time to jump back when we first met up in Ishinomaki in the disaster area soon after the tsunami had hit, and you were working up there. And then I invited you to come down and perform in one of our conferences. And what, you were 15 at that time? Is that right?

I think so, yeah.

You played the guitar in a style that I have never really heard someone play, at least live before, in that way. It was pretty darn cool. So anyway, I just want to play a little clip here for our listeners.

Man, it’s so awesome. I love hearing it again. I think it was the highlight of the conference. To have this… Well, you appear to be this child prodigy, slapping away the guitar and just not playing the way normal people do. You were saying you were just having fun with it, right?

Yeah. I mean, growing up playing classical violin and music was always an extremely serious business. Going to church as a kid, my friends would be like, “Hey, let’s go to dinner after service.” I would ask my mom, “Hey, can I go to dinner with this friend?” She would be like, “You can make a choice. You can play or you can go home and practice for your competition next week.” That was the childhood that I had. So guitar, I picked up way later than violin, but it was my escape. It was where I learned that, “Hey, music can be fun.” I think that’s why I gravitated towards that side of playing guitar, which was just slapping the strings and slapping the body and things like that.

Yeah, I’d love to hear you do it again sometime.

For sure. I would have to practice. I’m a little rusty now.

So after that, you graduated. You went to Berkeley in Boston.

Yeah, I went to Berkeley College of Music. Singapore is where I grew up, so there’s a two-year mandatory military service right out of high school. I did that. And then I went to Berkeley, and I actually just graduated this year.

Congratulations. Then, you moved to Tokyo to work here?

I moved to Tokyo with no plan. But I’m very glad I came, and I’m gradually getting connected to the community here.

Yeah, we’re really glad you’re here. And I’m looking forward to… So listeners, Tsumugu and I are going to head up to the disaster area for Christmas this month and give a bunch of concerts, which I’m really looking forward to.

Yeah, we’re going to be, or I’m going to be playing the tsunami violin. Do you want to talk a bit more about that?

Definitely. Yeah. So just before we started recording, the two of us went to go pick up this instrument, and it was made by a violin maker who wanted to do something to bring healing in the disaster area and help people remember and to bring hope to bring life. And so we went and talked to the company a little bit. There were two tsunami violins you got to try. Tell me what your impressions were of that.

Yeah. Initially, when you proposed the idea that we do this concert on this violin, I was a little afraid. Violin is a very complicated instrument. It’s made out of wood with no nails, none at all. And so every single instrument is slightly different. And so your intonation, how you play, really changes according to the instrument. I have never performed on an instrument that isn’t mine. So this is the first time, and I was slightly like, “Am I going to be able to adjust to this instrument?” But once I played it, it’s like everything fell in place. I was telling you that the violin had tonal qualities that I look for in a violin. I think we’re going to be okay. I think I’ll be able to get used to it pretty soon.

Yeah, I heard you asking the staff, you’re like, “Is it okay if I record some things with this?”

Yeah. I’ve not said this to you, but it’s just been in my brain that on top of being a violinist, I’m also a composer, and I don’t know if anything has been written for the instrument. Since I have three weeks with the instrument, I thought maybe it might be cool to write something and record it. If that leads to anyone getting hope from that instrument, even if they’re not able to make the concert, I think, yeah, But I’ll have to start working on that soon.

I’d love to see what you come up with.

Yeah. She told us that there’s a quartet of a tsunami instruments, so it might be cool in the future if I could write something for the tsunami instruments as a quartet.

Yeah, definitely. So not with organ, hunh?

Okay, the solo violin will be with organ.

I guess there is no tsunami organ.

You could make one.

But yeah, I found it interesting. Their project was to have a thousand performers of this violin. And what number was it she said that you were going to be?

I am the 833rd performer.

That’s so cool.

That is really cool. Yeah.

And they were saying how there’s been thousands of concerts because each performer does quite a few concerts with it.

I was telling you before that because so many people have played it before me, you can really sense the thoughts and the heart behind every single performer that has performed on the instrument. I could immediately tell the moment I picked up the instrument that I was playing something special.

It’s definitely special. And there’s quite a history, too. She was telling us how Yo-Yo Ma has played the cello, and the Emperor himself herself has played the viola.

I think it’s pretty awesome that our current Japanese Emperor is a violist. Yeah.

Definitely gives a better image to the viola. All those viola jokes, you can’t tell them in Japan. That’s now a rule here.

Or you’ll be offending the Emperor of Japan. That’s right.

Yeah. So we are going up. Actually, it’s going to be a special a couple of days in Iwaki because that Saturday is the very first church that we had connected to after the earthquake and tsunami in order to bring up supplies, and we still have that relationship today. Then the next day, we’re going to be giving concerts with First Baptist, which is a church that was right next to the nuclear power plants, and some of their church members worked at the nuclear power plants, and then they had to leave and were migrating all over, trying to find a new home and settled in Iwaki. So first we’re going to give a concert with them. But then we’re going up and giving a concert right next to the nuclear power plant. It’s just three miles away to the chapel that they had just built. They had just dedicated their organ. And now we’re going to be going back into that space, which at first I was a little bit fearful of whether this is a good idea or not.

I remember you sending me the email like, “we’re going to be really close to the power plant. Do you still want to do this?” I called my mom. I was like, “hey, I just got this email from Roger. What do you think?” And she was like, “You know, if it’s meant to be, if this is God’s plan, he’ll protect you.” And I was like, “Okay.”

Yeah. I mean, because I remember back when the disaster happened, I thought they were saying, you have to wait 50 years before you can go back into the area. But now it’s only been 12, and they reopened that area this year. And so they wanted to have a rededication of the building and of the organ, and to be able to bring the tsunami violin into that space and give a concert, I think, it’s going to be really special.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. Thank you so much for having me on this such a special event, not just for myself. I think it’s going to really make a mark on my journey as a musician, and hopefully, I can bring some hope to the people coming for the concert.

Yeah, it’s an amazing story, too, about this violin. I probably shouldn’t talk about this now, but I’m playing in my head with an idea for a children’s book. We’ve put out a children’s book about the tsunami piano before, Pippy the Piano. And now I’m having an idea for this Vivi the Violin, and just her seeing the story of living a happy life, and then this disaster comes, and her life is completely torn apart, and how she thinks it’s the end. She thinks she’s in despair, that there is no hope, and then this violin maker comes in and gives her new life and new hope. It’s just helping kids know how to respond to disaster and really dark times, and despair, and to see it through the eyes of this little girl who’s a violin, I think, would be a powerful story if we can bring it to completion at some point.

Yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I think it will be… It is a very difficult concept and feeling to explain in words, and especially to children. And I think art, like the drawings in the book and music, can help to… Even if children don’t fully understand, I think it is one way of connecting with them and helping them resolve some of these feelings.

Yeah, definitely. I guess that’s all the time we have. We really need to practice a little before this event tonight for all these concerts. So thank you so much for sitting down and talking with me on the podcast.

Of course. Thank you so much for having me. I think maybe I can mention my SNS.

Sure. Okay.

Because we’ll be traveling with the violin, and I’ll be updating my social media with all the information and what we’re doing with the tsunami violin and everything. The best place to find it would be on my Instagram, which is @hellotsu. For my other work, you can find it on my website, which is tsu-music.com.

Great. I’ll list those on the program notes, the show notes for this podcast, so people can find it on the website as well.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

Thank you, Roger.

You can read the show notes for this episode at my website, www.rogerwlowther.com. Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, ”Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”

A little update about the situation in Ishikawa since that magnitude 7.6 earthquake on January 1, 2024. What a way to start the year! I talked to some people on the ground today and got the latest news. It’s still a very hard situation. The whole peninsula of Noto, that northern part of Ishikawa, only has a few roads, but they’re still broken. So, it’s making travel really difficult. In order to get from the southern end of the peninsula to where the need is most, it takes at least three hours. And I even heard a report that one trip took nine hours, one way, to get where they were going. Now, this is a real problem because supplies are collecting down in the major hub areas.

The main Christian relief effort is called Noto Help, and it’s being based out of a good-sized church there called Uchinada Church in Kanazawa. They’re making many trips almost daily, but because of the length of the travel time, all they can really do is drop the supplies off and then come straight back. It’s been really hard for them to develop relationships like the churches were able to do after the 2011 earthquake. And so they’re saying that really the biggest need right now is for young Christian workers to be able to relocate into those hardest hit areas for long periods of time. Then they can not only assess the needs and distribute goods, but they can build relationships with people there and become part of the community.

It’s not an easy thing to ask, though. I mean, without electricity, first of all, it’s really cold. And without running water? Means there’s no toilets and no showers. Noto Help did mention that they’ve been thinking about bringing in some portable showers in order to create a base in the northern part of the peninsula, and also to make it available to people in the shelters. But the thing is, it costs like $30,000 US dollars per shower, and they really are only needed for a couple of months or so. They’re really hoping that by that point the water will be running again. However, the showers could be used in future disasters like this. Japan has many disasters, so there is a need for it. So this is one of the conversations that’s being had.

Anyway, they’re hoping that in two months, once roads are easily passable again, there’ll be a big influx of Christian volunteers and longer-term relationship building. Our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, is considering various ways it can help. In fact, we’re planning to take a youth team of junior high and high school students this weekend. A cabin has been offered where the 15 of us are going to stay. Actually, our family went last week to that cabin in order to get it ready. It needed firewood in order to keep the place warm for all of us. And so we found out where the firewood could be bought and carried it in and spent a whole day doing that. After this trip next weekend, I’ll be able to share a lot more about what’s happening in Ishikawa.

This episode, I want to share some stories from Christmas concerts in Fukushima. Yes, that Fukushima, the second-only-to-Chernobyl-nuclear-meltdown-disaster-of-epic-proportions Fukushima. We were invited to that area to give some Christmas concerts. I went with Tsumugu Misugi, who’s a composer and a violinist. Actually, I have an interview with him in the next podcast episode, so you can stay tuned for that. But first, before I tell you about these Christmas concerts, I need to tell you about the tsunami violin that Tsumugu was playing. I actually have a whole episode on it, Episode #31, which if you’re interested you can find on my website.

The tsunami violin is a special violin. It was made specifically from debris from the tsunami in 2011. And the soul of the violin, the sound post which enables the violin to vibrate and make music, came from the Kiseki no Ippon Matsu, the very famous here in Japan “Miracle Pine Tree,” which was the sole survivor of 70,000 trees which lined the coast until they were knocked down by the tsunami. And then it, too, died later from salt left behind by the tsunami. The violin maker, Nakazawa Sensei, made this violin to bring hope to all of Japan. And his aim is for a thousand performers to eventually play this violin. Tsumugu was the 833rd performer. So we were able to take this violin which had so much symbolism to various locations.

First, we were able to go to the top of the Shioyasaki Lighthouse near Iwaki to play some music. I have a picture of Tsumugu playing at the top of it in the show notes for this episode. It’s a very famous landmark in that area. It was really badly damaged in the earthquake, repaired, and now, once again, it’s a source of light in the darkness. And it’s within sight of a town called Usuiso that was completely destroyed in the tsunami. Now, listen to this. Over 20% of the population was lost in the tsunami, the highest percentage of any town in Japan. When you look at how the town was built, you can kind of see why. The main road goes along the beach, and all the homes and stores are right there on the other side of the road. You actually have to go down the road quite far to the north or to the south in order to leave the beach area and go up into the hills. And next to it, there’s these cliffs, so steep that it doesn’t look like there’s any way to really climb up them. And so I’m told that some people just stood there by the side of the road and watched that tsunami come, facing it head-on, knowing that they didn’t have time to get away, that there was nowhere to go in time. I can’t imagine. Here it is 13 years later, and they’re still continuing to build that area, but it’s mostly just vacant lots.

That next day, we took the violin and my portable digital organ to give a concert to hundreds of people in an event called Iwaki Christmas. 30 churches from across the city of Iwaki came together for this event to bring unity across the city. After the nuclear power plant disaster, tens of thousands of refugees had to flee the area very quickly and moved into the city of Iwaki. And this huge influx of people really caused a lot of tension in the city. Roads were crowded, lots of traffic jams, and many were not happy about the money that was being given to these refugees who had to flee their homes due to the radiation. There were often news reports on how people would wake up in the morning and find their cars or places where they’re staying spray-painted with the message, “Go Home,” which is especially terrible since that’s the very thing that they could not do. So, 30 churches hosted this Christmas celebration in a huge wedding complex, and it was also televised for national broadcast later.

At this event, I played the organ and Tsumugu played the violin. Actually, there was another musical instrument as well. I was asked to play the “Kiseki no Piano,” the “Miracle Piano,” which was carried from the nearby 3.11 Memorial Museum. And this piano has a story of its own. It was inundated, completely destroyed in the town of Usuiso, that town I mentioned earlier. And water is not very good for pianos, and so it was dumped out in the street along with all the other trash. But a local piano tuner saw it, rescued it, and spent years fixing it, hoping to make it play again. And he deliberately left in the body damage from the disaster—chipped wood and paint, gouges and scratches. And despite all this damage on the body and the outside, it sounds really good. And it was just a wonderful opportunity for all of us to be reminded of the miracle of Christmas, in a place where so many lives were lost, and yet there is hope. There is hope of resurrection. And we really rejoiced in that new life together through the new life of this piano. There’s a picture of me playing this piano in the show notes as well.

Well, then the next day was Sunday. So on Sunday morning, we gave a concert at the new building for the Fukushima Baptist Church in the city of Iwaki. And I also gave a sermon on the Christmas message. And this church, I have a long relationship with. It actually was the very first church I worked with, with relief work after 2011. And so after that morning concert, we traveled together while eating lunch in the car to their original worship location, which is the very closest church building to the nuclear power plants, if you can believe it, less than three miles away from the broken power plants. And I have to tell you, I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was completely totally otherworldly going to this church. It was like entering a movie set or something. It felt like we were entering some other planet that suffered a terrible disaster centuries before.

It’s hard for me to paint a picture for you, but every structure and road was completely overgrown with plants. The homes were still destroyed from the earthquake because no one has been back there to be able to fix them yet. And when we stopped at one of the buildings to take pictures, I was struck by the complete absence of human noise. It felt like we were the only people on the planet. Not a car in sight. Not a single person moving anywhere. It was really spooky. It’s a wasteland that’s been stopped in time.

Last year, electricity finally came back on in the area. So this is 12 years after the disaster, right? And people have been given permission to move back into the area, even though radiation levels might still be high. We’re not quite sure. Many of the church staff had gone back before then with HAZMAT suits to gather some of their things, and they found the organ, the digital organ they had, fallen over. Well, they set it back up, but had no idea whether it worked or not because there was no electricity to turn it on. And so last year, when they were able to turn it back on, they’re like, “Okay, we have to give a Christmas concert!”

They wanted to gather folks from all the regions in order to have this concert and have this reunion. So they spread the word, and all the folks that had relocated, like from Sendai and Minami Soma to the north, Aizu Wakamatsu to the west. Others came from the south, from Iwaki, like us. And I met one older woman who came all the way up from Tokyo just for this concert. And I remember how there were tears streaming down her cheeks as she shook my hand and shared how she had not been able to celebrate Christmas in that area since December 2010, just before the disaster, 13 years ago. And she had grown up in this area. It was her home. She told me other memories she had of being a little girl in that area and just how sad it was to see what had become of it, this ghost town.

So, I played the concert on this fallen organ. They told me the organ could make a sound, but I really was worried about whether it could actually make music. They were talking about this old digital organ that hasn’t been used in a long time. I wasn’t sure if I give a concert on it. And so I had them bring up my portable organ just in case. And in the concert, the pastor stood up and laughed as he told everyone that he was going to make me play that “fallen organ,” whether it worked or not, simply for the symbolism of seeing it rise again. So thankfully, I was able to give the concert on that organ. And man, it was so powerful. I wish you all could have been there. The strong sense of community and love and unity we experienced really was overwhelming. And just to imagine the whole time that we’re just less than three miles from the nuclear power plants just over the hill—we could see their lights when it got dark…it wasn’t far away at all—in this wasteland, giving a concert, bringing new life, and worshiping God.

On our way back to Iwaki, we were shown some of the other church sites. There were actually four sites that the church worshiped in before the disaster. And they also show me some of the homes of members who can no longer live there. In 13 years, it’s amazing how overgrown all the buildings were. Some were barely visible at all through all the greenery. Driveways weren’t passable. Windows were broken. Roofs had big holes in them where rain could pour in.

And you know the saddest part? Right across the street, on top of what used to be rice fields, right in the middle of these neighborhoods, there are huge collections of big black trash bags. The government is trying to clean the area by taking six centimeters of radioactive dirt and anything/everything that shows radioactivity, and they’re collecting them into these bags, and putting them into these radioactive trash dumps. And the hope is, I was told, that within 30 years, they can then move this radioactive debris to other parts of Japan and rebuild the area. But everyone is scratching their heads, doubtful about who’s actually going to be willing to accept this radioactive debris into their area at any time in the near future. And just having these radioactive trash dumps right there next to these homes completely destroys any hope of being able to rebuild the neighborhoods. I’ll put a picture in the show notes of one of these trash dumps.

I couldn’t believe how we were able to drive right up to it. It was eerie, and we’re like, “Is this safe?” We’re right next to what was probably many square miles of radioactive debris collected in trash bags and put in one pile, and we were standing next to it taking pictures. And there was no one sending us away. And there was nothing blocking the road to keep us out of there. It’s just crazy. I felt bad, though, thinking about the workers who are collecting it all. I mean, that’s their job, day after day, collecting this debris and bringing it to these dumps.

I don’t know. The experience was sad, and it was happy. There were so many things to celebrate about this community, being able to worship together. And yet there’s so much destruction there and so many memories. There’s so much sadness that they won’t be able to rebuild anytime soon. It was a powerful trip that I’ll never forget—playing concerts with that “tsunami violin” and that “fallen organ” and the “miracle piano” and sharing that time with people who’ve lost so much. It really was one of the most meaningful Christmases I’ve ever had. Spending that time together and celebrating that story of Christmas, we could rejoice together that light has come into the darkness and that in our brokenness, there is hope of new life.

You can read the show notes for this episode at my website, www.rogerwlowther.com. Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, ”Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”

Many of you have been writing me about this earthquake that hit Japan just a couple of weeks ago on January 1st. Wow, what a way to begin the new year, right? As you know, it was a pretty big one. In Tokyo, it wasn’t that big, definitely felt, but mostly just a lot of big swaying. But actually, I wasn’t in Tokyo at the time when the earthquake hit. I was in Nagano, not far from the epicenter of the earthquake. We were up in the mountains of Japan on a ski vacation with the family. And let me tell you, where we were, it was big! It definitely brought back memories of 2011. The ground was jolting so hard that it was impossible to walk.

We were staying in a cabin with foundations that were nothing more than a bunch of stones piled on top of each other, not a very solid foundation at all, so we were really worried the whole thing was going to topple over and collapse on to the ground. And it’s built on the side of a cliff, so there was this worry that it would slide down the mountain in a landslide like happened in so many places in Ishikawa. Fortunately, neither of those things happened. But the aftershocks, they just kept hitting, one after the other, and not little ones either, so we took shelter outside for a little while and built a snowman.

The aftershocks were at first, like every 15 minutes or so, and then about every 30 minutes, then every 45 minutes, then every hour. And by the end of those first few days, we had, I don’t know, like 30 earthquakes, maybe more…a lot of earthquakes! I wasn’t keeping count. But they were definitely felt and memorable.

Inside the cabin, we had this big kerosene heater to keep the cabin warm. But it also dries out the air, so on top of it we had this huge pot of water, and let me tell you that didn’t fair so well in the earthquake. All that water was just swishing around and went over the side and went down to the floor, and so we had a very wet floor for a couple of days there. And of course, everything else in the cabin fell down as well. There was a quite a mess that we had to clean up, but there really wasn’t any damage where I was.

But, of course, as you know, it’s a much different story in Ishikawa. You’ve probably seen the news reports. A lot of homes fell down. A lot of roads are impassable. Through the church network, we heard about the needs in the area, and my friends in Nagoya, Japan, were able to take a number of large vans full of supplies right after the earthquake, and then my friends from Chiba did that as well. I haven’t been there yet, but we are in conversation with contacts about what the needs are and what we can do. They’re telling us not to come right now because there’s a bottleneck of supplies at the base of the peninsula, and they’re simply not able to get the supplies where they need to go because of damage to the roads and they’re so narrow going through the roads there. But the current plan is to take a team next month with artists to give concerts in shelters, so I’ll definitely keep you posted about that.

Well, today I’m excited to introduce you to Sarah Hinlicky Wilson. She is a phenomenal person and a phenomenal writer here in Tokyo, and good friends of our family along with her husband and son, who is in the same class as my son. We recorded this podcast just before an Art, Life, Faith event that was being held that evening on writing in Japan along with another writer as well. Anyway, without further ado, here is Sarah Hinlicky Wilson.

Hey, Sarah. I am so thankful to have you on the show today.

I am delighted to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this for a while.

Tonight, you’re going to be sharing with a group of people in our living room here about writing. Over the past, we’ve had musicians come, we’ve had painters, dancers, filmmakers. But it’s been a while since we’ve had a writer come, so I’m really looking forward to this.

Cool. I’m excited to be a part of it. I’m just excited to talk about writing because that’s… I mean, wow, filmmakers and dancers, that blows my mind. I feel like writing is the easy thing because all you have to do is type.

I don’t know about that. It’s a tough process, that’s for sure, and it feels like it’s never done. Well, let me ask you. This morning, I finished your book of short stories called Pearly Gates, and I found it to be a really moving collection of stories. Can you tell us a little bit about this book?

Sure. It’s a strange little collection, honestly, of 30 very short stories, and the premise—is that each one features a person, a human being, never named, man or woman, usually adults, sometimes children, sometimes more than one person or even a crowd—and they come to the Pearly Gates of Heaven. We most often hear about Pearly Gates in connection with either jokes or New Yorker cartoons featuring Saint Peter standing guard, but the imagery is drawn from the Book of Revelation so there’s a lot of Revelation imagery scattered throughout this book. And the idea is basically when you get to the Pearly Gates, you are at the final zone of no BS, no more lying or pretending. There is something about that place that repels anything but truthfulness. It’s a story of how a bunch of different people in a bunch of different ways and for their own different reasons, either pass through the gates, some happily, some pass through even unhappily, but they still pass through. There are others who do not like what they find there and turn and walk around the other way.

Yeah, I really appreciated the vivid imagery of these stories. I mean, I could easily imagine myself right there listening to the story, even animating it in my head visually. Just so many different things connected to life on earth here.

The truth is, even though this is “afterlife fiction,” it really is about our life now. Like all spiritual speculation about the life to come, it’s reflecting back to us where we are now. But the nice thing about the Pearly Gates is you can’t lie anymore. You’re confronted with truth in a way that we can always dodge it in this life. Right.

Right. There’s a sense, I think a lot of people think of heaven in this abstract manner that it’s a place where God is, but it’s somewhere other. It’s not here at all, but there’s an earthiness to the way that you’ve written these stories.

Yeah. Well, as I wrote more and more, I realized that to make them actually meaningful, something you can connect to, they had to be anchored in vivid reality. Because, I mean, they’re very short and there are no names. I’m not developing a plot, so it has to happen right then. What came to me is that we believe in the resurrection of the body. And so, a great deal of the emotional and spiritual drama is bodily enacted through the people’s own bodies. What happens to them. What they do with them. How they interact with objects that they might bring there with them. I’m glad that spoke to you that concreteness because it was really meant to be testimony to the resurrection of the body and the centrality to spirituality.

I could really feel that the heaviness or the lightness of the burdens. I remember, especially there was that one scene where the woman is scratching her skin, and then she’s like, “Oh, I’m so clean now.” You can feel that cleanness. You can feel the physicality of this encounter they’re having with heaven.

Yeah. One of my favorites is when the man is furious at finding out that the Lord is the Lord. He had spent his whole life dedicated to denouncing the name of the Lord. Finally, in rage, he just attacks him and plunges through his heart and pops out on the other side covered in the blood of Jesus. But the blood is what brought him in. It brings everybody in. But the experience, even at that final moment of going through the blood of Jesus, is what changes him as well. They’re not all quite that gory. That’s an exceptionally…

No, it was… I could imagine there being an animated series of these stories because they were just so visual. For you listening, I can recommend these. They’re just perfect bedtime reading because it’s maybe two pages or six pages for a story, it’s easy to pick up and read one or a lot of them in one sitting.

Yeah, great. Oh, I’m just thrilled to hear this. I’ve gotten probably more meaningful feedback from people for this book than anything else I’ve written. It seems to have…which is funny because it started out as a bizarre experiment. I would not have expected this to touch as many people as it has.

Yeah, I was inspired. Let me move on to another book that you’ve written. A Tumblin’ Down is one that I read six months ago, and I have trouble ever forgetting that book because it hit me so strongly because of the things that I was going through in my own life. How would you introduce this book to a listening audience?

Right. Well, less inspirational than Pearly Gates. This one is much more anchored on earth. A Tumblin’ Down is a novel about a Lutheran pastor’s family in upstate New York in the late 1980s. I grew up in a Lutheran pastor’s family in upstate New York in the late 1980s, but other than that, it’s drawn from our experience and location, but it’s not our family story. It’s not autobiographical in that respect. But basically, parents in their late 30s trying to struggle on with career and vocation. They have an oldest daughter getting close to adolescence. Two little boys born within a year of each other who are very close. It has all the usual growing up, growing older challenges, a lot of time developing what the life of a congregation feels like. I have never read a book that really I felt satisfied me either on what it’s really like to be a pastor in a church with a family or what it’s like to be in a congregation. So that’s one thing I wanted to capture. But that by itself was a little bit too vaguely literary for me. I wanted some action. And so, about a quarter of the way into the book, a really horrific tragedy befalls the family. And so, the rest of the book is about the aftermath of the tragedy and then, unfortunately, how it leads to a faction in the congregation, turning on the pastor’s family, exploiting the tragedy, trying to drive him out, and then the aftermath of that.

Yeah. Again, it impacted me so deeply because it so reflected what we were going through in our own church with a family tragedy with the pastor, and then division in the church. And I was like, “Is this a true story?” I even asked you, “Is this a true story?” It’s the most true fiction story I have ever read, I swear.

Yeah, I’m related to tons of pastors. I have tons of pastor friends. I am a pastor myself, fortunately in a very happy congregation now. Not like this at all. But I have just seen…Well, here this is another thing that may be a little slight polemical subtext here, but in popular American depictions of pastors and pastor’s families, you either have the totally sanitized, happy, unchallenged, the Lord is good and life is good and everything’s fine and isn’t it all sweet and all wrapped up. Or you have the pastor is a villain, and he’s having an affair, and he’s embezzling money, and he’s lost his faith, and it’s all dark and horrible. Just neither of those felt true to life to me. And those things…well, the second thing happens, I’m not sure about the first. But one thing I had never really seen depicted either, besides just really what it feels like to be in a congregation, is that a congregational faction turning on a pastor. In news reports, too, it’s always the pastor’s fault. I don’t doubt there are a lot of times it’s the pastor’s fault, but it’s not only the pastor’s fault. That story needed to be told about what it’s like for these… It can be a very small number of people who just decide to take down the pastor. Then how do you live with that?

A very vocal minority.

Yeah, exactly. The way that well-meaning nice church folks are unequipped to deal with that, and they can get sucked into the system without even realizing it’s happening.

Yeah. Because it was such a painful book for me to read, I’m like, Should I recommend this book to others or not? Because it was so painful, but it was so true and so helpful. I do recommend it to as many people as I can because it was just… There was wisdom in there that I think we all need to hear through the pain how God is still… How God is working and how he can redeem such situations. That’s really something you can do in literature, in a novel, that’s harder to do in real life, right? Because you’re like, “Oh, I can’t mention that person…” You’ll get in trouble, right?

I think actually it’s a hopeful book in the real sense of hope. It’s not naïve, and it’s not optimistic. But where the characters end at the end is a willingness to carry on based on reality. Having come through the pain, which was awful and they never would have chosen to go through it, but having gone through it, it gives them a fresh start in its own way. I also think there’s a lot of funny in it. I mean, it’s leavened with some comedy. I have had many pastors tell me that my scenes depicting the annual church conference is the most hilariously scathing satire they have ever come across of those church events. If you just need a takedown of a ridiculous, ineffective bishop, this book is for you.

It was coming to mind, too, about the organist in this story.

As an organist, that probably was painful for you.

Yeah, because I’m an organist, I’m like, Oh, my goodness. I hope I haven’t been like that. Or the organist is like, “I’m going to save this church.” It’s like, that’s not really your job. But okay…

Yeah, the church family that has deep historical roots, lots of money and never, ever attends, but still thinks they own the place. If you guys know that part of church life, you’ll find that here too.

Yeah. Gosh, there are so many characters that so stood out, likable or not likable, depending upon the person. Tell me, this idea, you’ve written many books, and this idea of writing books. There are issues you can bring up. By writing this novel, you were able to talk about things that you couldn’t really in any other way, not in this way for certain. Tell me a little bit about that. Why do you write? What is your… What do you want people to really get out of your books?

Wow, deep questions. Well, the first answer is I write because I can’t not. I think a lot of writers are like that. But I got my… Well, I was always writing stories from the time I was small, but when I was old enough to actually try to do it in a more professional way, I actually got my start in non-fiction. It just was where the audience and the money was. Then I went on academically, so I’m a trained theologically. I’ve written lots of academic articles and books, as well as taking that and putting it in more popular form and zillions of sermons as well. But I think that as much as I really enjoy the discipline of theology, and I know theology gets a bad rap with lots of people, but it’s just loving God with your mind. It’s devoting the best of your intellectual capacities. It is not…I mean, theology, like everything else, has good and bad in it and better and worse. I don’t need to defend the bad stuff. But there are things it can’t do. One thing I realized at some point is that almost all theology is written in the key of Romans, which is fabulous of course. I’m a Lutheran. Of course, I love Romans, but it is a very particular form or genre of communication. And theologians never write in the key of the gospels, for example, or Esther, or Nehemiah, which is a memoir, and rarely in the form of poetry, which is a hugely important biblical genre. Which is not to say you can only write in biblical genres, but I think the fact that there are so many genres in Scripture as well as in subsequent church tradition shows that not all truth is accessed the same way or expressed the same way.

As an artist, I definitely agree with that.

Of course, right. Music tells us things that the written word cannot, and visual arts tells us things that dance cannot. All these things. If you’re actually really passionately committed to truth, as I aspire to be, then you have to look at all the avenues towards truth and not artificially cut them off. So I think for me, something like this novel, A Tumblin’ Down, was a way to relate the experience of being a believer and a member, a part of a church community that I actually couldn’t write in a non-fiction format. It would always be abstracted, and it would always attempt at being universal. But in fact, one key thing you learn as a fiction writer is the more specific you are, the more universal the message becomes. Everybody writes out trying to write the story that is for everybody and about everybody, and no one is interested in that story. But people who have no connection to Lutheran pastors’ families can read this and feel intimately what it is like to be these people and draw something very human and personal out of it, even if they can’t draw the faith lesson out of it. But I wanted to give more the texture of what it’s like to believe and wrestle emotionally with all the things you wrestle with in life.

Yeah, Pearly Gates had that as well, right? The physicality, the humanity of heaven. Here you are doing it with A Tumblin’ Down and through this story.

Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen schemas of the steps of salvation. Like first this, and then that, and then you have to go through this. It might be only two steps, or it might be, I’ve seen more like 18-20, and they have to unfold in the right order. I just think, if there are more fiction writers who were involved in theology, no one would come up with anything this stupid because every life is different, everyone’s experience is different. Of course, you find commonalities and similarities because we’re human, but we actually get the commonalities by looking at the specific cases and not the other way around.

Right. Yeah, definitely. Recently, I’ve been talking a lot about that. How when you go and visit different countries around the world, you enter different cultures. We are so much a product of our surroundings and environments and the stories that we are entrenched in. You can’t separate our humanity from that and certainly our theology as well.

Yeah, right. You don’t go to a restaurant and say, I don’t need the menu, just bring me good food. Or you don’t say, play some good music. There’s lots of things that’s good music. That doesn’t specify it enough. Bach’s good music is not The Beatle’s good music.

Yeah. Before we started recording, you were telling me a little bit about your thoughts about wonder. Tell me a little more about that.

Yeah, maybe this is where I am very much as a 21st century person and someone who’s done academic training in theology and just tried to live in our very weird hyper-modern, hyper-novel worlds. I guess there’s two things on either side I’m trying to navigate between. One is the response of people of faith who are really deeply frightened and alarmed by the world and by discoveries that might call the faith into question. Whether that’s like, challenges to the origins of the biblical documents with historic criticism or archeology or scientific findings. There’s a need to just bracket out all of that or maybe more perniciously pine for a different century. If only I’d lived then, if I wasn’t stuck. I was born in the 20th century. Now I live in the 21st. It’s so awful now. If this is God’s creation, then now and everything we have unleashed, looking out your windows at downtown Tokyo and the high rises, this is still part of God’s project. God doesn’t love absolutely everything we’ve done, of course, but this is ultimately all within the realm of what God made good. So either bracketing out stuff or just wishing not to be here seems deeply unfaithful to me.

But on the other hand, there are, of course, tons of voices, we often call them secular or rationalistic or materialistic, that want everything or assume and infer everything is reductionistically explained, mechanistic, deterministic. Everything happens just as a matter of course, there is no freedom. There is no God, of course. I find that those people live in the same level of denial as the believers who are frightened by reality because they can’t allow the emotions they feel towards their beloved or their children or their parents to be real. They can’t allow their reactions to art or music to be real. They have to somehow tamp down any suspicion of wonder that cannot be analyzed and controlled by this engineering approach to reality. I think probably finding both of those wrong, and I’m stumbling because I’m trying to figure out how to articulate it. I think what I’m trying to do in all my writing is to figure out a way to talk about what it’s like to be really real, these bodies in this time, but that God is really real, but not in an easily accessible way, obviously, or there would be no question of doubt or pain.

But at the same time, every time I try to run the thought experiments of this is all just religion as a projection of the brain that was evolutionarily helpful. I can talk myself into that. At the end of the day, it still doesn’t change my mind about thinking God is real. I think for me, this concept of wonder, which I’m sure was very much formed by writers like George McDonald and Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, all those greats, there’s something that’s really true about wonder, but doing it in a way that’s not fakely miraculous or just strip down the bad titling of Shusaku Endo’s book, Silence. He didn’t want it to be called Silence because Jesus does speak to him at the end, but only at the end. To me, that is closer, I think, in spirit to what I’m trying to get at. God is real, but he so often hides himself. Just trying to… Yeah, that’s what I think. If I try to analyze what I’m doing both theologically and artistically, it’s mapping out the real experience of wonder, not overblown, but not reduced to the atoms moving in my brain.

Yeah, I see that in your books as I think through them, this sense of… As we live through our lives, we end up having a narrow perspective of the situation that we’re in. But the idea of wonder, as you’re describing, it gives us a renewing sense of where we are rather than some other mystery thing. It’s like, no, actually just wonder in the situation that we’re in, being able to see it in a new way, a new perspective. It’s really exciting, actually, and necessary. Life can get… Well, life is hard. Life is hard, and we can get so caught up and busy. What’s the next thing? What’s the next thing? It’s like we’re missing the journey. Your writing really helps us see the journey of where we are, not just where we’re going, but where we are right now.

Thanks for that reflection. That’s great. I just want to point out, it’s so interesting, when I talk to other believers in the same space about this novel, they never bring up the non-realistic elements in it, I think, because it doesn’t seem unrealistic to them. In the book, the pastor, dad, Donald, he regularly has conversations with his dead grandfather. What that even means is never explained. I never try to give an account. I just knew Donald talks to his grandfather. His grandfather talks back. Carmichael, his wife, has alternate versions of herself, different lives she could have had come up and confront and annoy her. Kitty, the daughter, has her council, which she obviously got from her dad’s church council, but it’s all populated with characters from her beloved books. I’ll leave the ones for the little boys for the reader to discover. But this is just… It’s unfolded narratively as completely realistic, even though clearly it doesn’t… What? Clearly? I don’t know. It doesn’t not happen in that way? I’ve had a lot of people say, This seems actually what life is like to me. This is what it actually feels like.

Yeah. No, it’s very effective. We’re almost out of time. But before we end, is there any other… Would you like to talk, introduce any of your other books to our listeners?

Can I tell about an upcoming one?

Sure.

Okay, so right now I am writing a book about the transfiguration of Jesus because as a preacher, it comes up in my cycle of readings every year. After three or four years, I was like, I don’t have anything left to say about this, but surely there’s more to it than I’ve thought up. I started reading and became completely obsessed and fascinated with the transfiguration of Jesus, and probably because it is this wondrous moment in the life of Jesus. Obviously, Jesus does cool things like miracles. But other than the resurrection, this is the big one in the middle of Jesus, earthly life. I just started going into it and I was like, I bet there are more preachers who need help preaching on this every year. I found out Catholics and Anglicans have to preach on it twice a year. That’s a whole other story. But also for anyone, any believer who’s come across this and like, I have no idea what to do with this story. Anyway, so I’m working on it right now. I’m going to have a Kickstarter for it in January 2024, if anyone wants to be involved in this.

It’s actually called Seven Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration, because even for this very short story, there is so much happening, and it’s drawing in so many aspects of scripture and spiritual life and devotion. But to me, it’s given me a new way to look at and think about Christ and what he’s doing. I hope some of that excitement will be communicated.

Yeah, I can’t wait. I’ll definitely include a link in the show notes so people can get involved with the Kickstarter. How can people listen to you? I know you have a podcast. There are other things they can follow.

Sure. Actually, I have two podcasts. If you want the more non-fiction traditional theology stream, it’s called Queen of the Sciences: Conversations Between a Theologian and Her Dad. And guess what? My co-host is my dad, Paul Hinlicky, a theologian as well. He probably has better claim to it than I do. We are just about to wrap up our fifth year together, and next year we’ll be starting our sixth. But also this year, I realized that I was ready to be more out there and official with my passion for combining good fiction and good theology at the same time. I’ve just started a second podcast with the very boring but accurate title, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories. In fact, the first season is all the 30 stories of Pearly Gates, each with a little introduction from me. You can find either of those on your podcast app or wherever you are listening to this one.

Awesome. Okay, I’ll include links for that as well. Anything else you want to share before we sign off?

I think we’ve more than adequately supplied listeners with things to follow up on. But thank you, Roger, for this conversation.

Yeah, and we’re looking forward to tonight. We’re planning to have quite a few people come to dinner, and it’s going to be a really good night. Thank you so much for doing this.

Oh, you’re welcome. Thank you for the invitation to be here.

That was perfect timing.

So, that really was perfect timing, right? I had to leave that last part in because I thought it was just so funny. I was watching the clock as we were talking and thinking, “Oh, people are going to start ringing that doorbell.” And sure enough, that’s what happened. So, now you know what a Japanese doorbell sounds like!

The event was so cool. A lot of people came, and we had another author speak as well, Ellen McGinty about her book, The Water Child, where she tells the story of a teenage girl who is trying to find healing in her family when the 2011 earthquake and tsunami strike. I read this book when it first came out in 2021 and was really struck not only by the power of the storytelling but the accuracy of the events, the way she is able to vividly describe the scene surrounding the disaster, because Ellen herself, the author, was involved in the relief movement after the earthquake and so was able to write from personal experience and the experiences of people she worked with. So, anyway, I highly recommend her book as well and will include a link in the show notes to this podcast.

We also had two people share who attended a writer’s conference in Nagoya, Japan, a city about two hours south of us here in Tokyo. They shared some of the things they learned, especially interesting were some of the trends going on right now about what audiences are looking for, and especially what publishers are looking for. And there were a lot of writers in attendance, and so we had a really good discussion time together.

We do Art Life Faith events like this once a month, and I started this podcast during COVID in order to be able to share some of this content with all of you, the conversations we’re having and the people we’re talking with. Most of those events are in Japanese, but it’s especially great when the speakers speak English so that you all can participate in them.

So, as we sign off, Sarah Hinlicky Wilson has her Kickstarter campaign she mentioned happening right now through January 31, and I encourage y’all to check it out and back her project. And I’m going to include the links to that in the show notes for this podcast.

Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”

Links:

Queen of the Sciences Podcast
Sarah Hinlicky Wilson Stories Podcast
“7 Ways of Looking at the Transfiguration” Kickstarter Campaign
Thornbush Press

Welcome back to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host Roger Lowther. This really has been fun for me, sharing conversations in the past two episodes recorded at the GCAMM Conference, the Global Consultation on Arts and Music in Missions, as it helps me remember what I learned and also the people I befriended there. In this third and last episode, let’s do this just one more time, and continue to travel from table to table during lunch time and see who else we can meet.

Hey, Roger. My name is Rob Still. I’m a worship leader based out of Nashville, Tennessee. I lead worship in the Nashville area, most Sundays somewhere. In the last 20 years, I’ve been doing a lot of short-term missions trips where I’ll go and either lead worship or I will teach on songwriting and Biblical foundations of worship. I taught for over 10 years at a school of worship in Romania, teaching basic Biblical foundations and songwriting. Next month, I’ll go to Greece. I’ll lead worship for a missions organization called SIM for their global leadership development track, and then I’ll go to Romania after that.

Awesome. What brings you to GCAMM this week?

I’m so glad you asked. I just finished my doctorate with the Robert E. Webber Institute for Worship Studies because I just wanted to become more well-informed about what I was learning and speaking about in terms of Biblical foundations of worship and that kind of thing. Some friends told me about GCAMM, and I feel like I’ve found my tribe. I didn’t even know this kind of thing existed. From a distance, I knew something about maybe ethnodoxology or ethnomusicology, but not at this level. It’s amazing. It’s inspiring to be here.

Awesome. It’s great to meet you.

Okay.

Who are you?

Hi, my name is Mike. Originally, I’m from South Korea. I’ve been involved in ministry for Afghanistan for last 20 years.

Wow. What do you do now?

Me and my wife, we produce Afghan worship TV content for the Afghan Church. Afghan Church is a real thing. It exists and keeps evolving, especially in their refugee settings. They have freedom of religion, like in Turkey or other places. So, the Afghan Church is growing right now. As an ethnodoxologist, we support those churches in our capacity.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

And who are you?

I am Hoiling Poon from Hong Kong.

And what do you do there?

I teach in a Bible seminary in Intercultural Studies, and I’m an ethnodoxologist.

Okay, and so what does that mean?

That means I’m a catalyst and encourager to encourage people and churches, Christians, to discover creativity in their life, and also encourage them to use their heart languages to know God and worship him.

And are you an artist yourself?

I’m a singer, and I’m a worship artist. I’m open to all kinds of arts.

Oh, great. Thank you.

And so who are you?

My name is Janice.

And where do you live? What do you do?

I live in Thailand as a missionary, and I’m doing arts ministry in Thailand.

What kind of arts ministry?

Normally, I will teach the kids art. And also, I will host some art workshops in the church, like art meditation workshops for the church members.

Are you an artist yourself?

Before that, no.

Okay. Yeah, that’s great.

I don’t have artist background, but during the COVID time God gave me to see that I have that kinds of talents and can use it to my ministry.

That’s great. It’s great to meet you.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

So please tell me what you do.

I am a world arts advocate, ethnodoxologist. Currently, I’m in a PhD program in world arts.

Awesome. Can you tell me where you were working before?

I have worked in North Africa. And then also in the Middle East.

Awesome. Thank you.

So, tell me about yourself.

My name is Chris Gasler. I’m an ethnodoxologist and used to work in Cameroon with SIL. Now I’m covering all of Africa area and doing that from the United States, which makes no sense.

Wow. What did you do in Cameroon?

I did a lot of songwriting workshops and various arts advocacy things, but songwriting workshops is the biggest thing that I did, the most common thing.

Awesome. Are you a singer yourself?

I am not a singer. I have a strange musical background. I used to be a trombonist.

Okay, so you are a musician.

I am a musician.

Great to meet you. Thank you.

Thanks.

And how would you introduce yourself?

My name is Mary Hendershott, and I’m here in the Dallas area as well at Dallas International University and with SIL.

And where were you before doing what?

I worked in Burkina Faso for about 26 years in surrounding countries.

Okay. And what did you do there?

I was there as an ethnomusicologist and an ethnodoxologist.

Which means what? You were helping people get worship music in their own language?

In their own language, using scripture as a base, and did songwriting workshops, and also did seminars for different arts.

Great. Thank you.

Hello. So it’s very good to meet you. What is your name and where are you from?

My name is Mani.

I’m from Hong Kong.

And what do you do in Hong Kong?

I’m a worship pastor in a church and in a university, and I have a ministry about emotion, mental wellness care.

Okay. And why are you here at GCAMM?

I want to explore more about arts and music in mission.

Awesome. Well, this is definitely the place for that.

Yeah.

Good to meet you.

I love that.

Hello.

Hello. How are you?

So what is your name?

My name is Stanley Amukwa.

And what do you do?

I’m a pastor with an organization known as Christ is the Answer Ministries, CITAM, way back in Nairobi, Kenya.

So you came all the way from Kenya for this event?

Yes, I came all the way from the way Kenya.

Why would you come all this way for GCAMM?

In 2018, GCAMM was held in Kenya at Brackenhurst, and I was able to participate. And in participating, I was greatly blessed and also enriched. And so with that in mind, I had no choice but to come again for the same.

And so what is your involvement in the arts?

I’m a pastor, as I’ve said, I’m a pastor of a congregation of about 2,000 people. And one of the things that I believe in is that in the service, there are two things that people come for. People come for a worship, WOW worship, and a WOW word. So the two go hand-in-hand, worship and the ministry of the word. And when I attended GCAMM in 2018, Ron Man’s lecture really impacted me. I actually borrowed the lecture notes, and I’ve been using them to train my worship team, my worship leaders. And so with that in mind, that’s how I’m involved. I’m not a worship pastor yet, but I’m the senior pastor and being the senior pastor, I oversee the ministry. And of course, with the preaching schedule, I preach every Sunday, I need the worship team to complement what I do in the pulpit ministry.

That’s amazing. For you to have that commitment as a senior pastor, a huge church with all these responsibilities, and you come all the way here to learn more about how to encourage the artists in your church. I love it. Thank you.

Thanks.

Well, I think we’d better stop there. There’s so many more cool people to talk to, but I can’t get over that last conversation. Isn’t that amazing? A pastor of a large church, with so many responsibilities, was willing to fly halfway around the world, literally, to care for the artists in his church. I’d love to see more and more pastors attend events like these.

Well, there’s two people that I had a longer conversation with that I would love to share with you. First, I would like to introduce you to Jill Ford.

Well, I’m sitting down here with Jill Ford, who is working with All Nations Christian College in the UK. Thank you so much for sitting down with me.

Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Yes. So, I have heard through GCAMM conferences over the past, many times, people talk about All Nations, and this glow comes in their eyes like, “Oh, All Nations.” Can you tell our listeners what is All Nations?

Oh, I’m glad there’s a glow. Yes, so All Nations is a cross-cultural mission training college based in the UK. We train and equip men and women for effective participation in God’s mission to his multicultural world. And we love to train people for all areas of mission, particularly in the area of integral mission, helping people to be rounded and grounded as they move into missions in whatever sphere that might be.

Awesome. Now, where exactly are you located in the UK?

Yeah, we’re actually located in the county of Hartfordshire, but we say to people, North London, because we are actually only 45 minutes from central London.

That’s easy to get to.

Yeah, and close to three airports. Heathrow, Luton, and Stanstead in particular, so very easy to get to.

Okay. And do students at the college come from England only or are they broader?

We’re international, inter-denominational, and intercultural. We have people coming from all over and from different cultures and different denominations, which is really exciting. Our current student body is probably more predominantly UK and Europe-focused due to the many challenges of Brexit and international visas and those kinds of things. But we do have quite a proportion of capacity for international students, and we do always encourage those as well. But there are more and more challenges coming about for some of our international students to actually come in person to all nations. But we do have opportunities now online for people to access our curriculum.

Well, I know that you are turning out a lot of missionaries because some of them are coming through Japan. I mean, just recently there was a couple that came through, and they were thinking about missions, and they were not from the UK. So, I know it’s international. Tell me more about what you mean by this holistic approach. Why would an artist want to come to All Nations and be trained in missions?

Okay. Yeah. What All Nations is really good at training people in is a head, heart, and hands approach. Our curriculum is really focused on making sure that you have the head knowledge of theology, you have the heart of engaging with personal and spiritual formation, and then you have opportunities in practice-based ministry, whether that’s with local church, community projects, or personal research projects that you may want to have a practice focus. So, there are opportunities throughout our curriculum that enable that roundedness for every person who attends All Nations. However, there is also opportunity to develop areas of interest. So whether that’s an area of interest in the world like Japan, or whether you have a certain skill set that you come to All Nations with. So you may come as a doctor, a nurse, a community development worker, and then you can carry that learning on within the particular context of mission. So you can do leadership, you can do development, community transformation. And of course, if you’re creatively minded, then we have a range of arts modules, and so people can begin to engage a number of different arts disciplines. If they come with some skill already, they can grow in that further. If they come with some skill that’s untapped, one of the things that we love at All Nations is we’re opening up opportunities for people through the curriculum. And we have found a number of students who have actually found their creative voice once they’ve come to All Nations. And seeing then, again, as an opportunity to go, I’ve always thought I was an artist. Let me have a go. I always thought I was a playwright. I always thought I was a musician. Now I can see how that gifting that has been dormant or untapped can be used in the context of mission.

Yeah. What I think I’ve heard from a lot of people is there’s this image too that, okay, if you’re going to be an artist and a missionary, that means, like in a concert, that you have to play really well and then give your testimony. Or you have to paint pictures of a cross or something like that. But when people talk about All Nations like, no, no, no, no, no…there’s so many ways we can work creatively, artistically to share the gospel. And that holistic approach that you’re talking about is, I think a lot of people need training in that.

Yeah. I mean, I can give you an example of the modules that we offer, and that offer obviously that holistic approach. For instance, you can train in the area of performing arts. And so, one module you could perhaps do to understand how to devise educational theater for a range of different contexts or communities that you might be working in, and how to engage some of the more difficult issues with people through community-based drama. Another performing arts module we do is actually creating and designing workshops both in the community and the church context. And so, again, these are means of creative engagement with others, but they’re completely missional because it’s also helping people to take, for instance, scripture and scripture engagement ideas into both church and community settings, where they can explore that and expose people to the gospel for the first time just through a creative arts workshop. We also run…

Is that also tied in with the Arts for a Better Future training?

There’s some overlap, yeah. Obviously, Arts for a Better Future, which is a partnership course that we run with the Global Ethnodoxology Network. We’ve been running that since 2011, but that’s a partnership course with a…that was a designed course outside of the All Nations curriculum, but we’ve embedded it in, we’ve had it accredited as part of our curriculum now. Yes, that has its own seven-stage model and is taught quite intensively, and anyone can come and do that. That’s the other thing about our modules. You don’t have to be a full-time student at All Nations. You can come and access a lot of our curriculum as a one-off module. Some are online, some are—you have to be here in person doing it intensively.

I didn’t know that you all did that. I need to learn more about that.

Yeah. We are looking to make our training as accessible as possible for people at the moment, and really wanting to mobilize local church too. For instance, this fall I’ve got two ladies. Having seen a student run a workshop in the church that they attend, have now got interested in doing arts and community module with me this term. They’re coming in from the local church, because they see that this has engaged both their church community and the wider community in a way that has allowed for dialog, it’s allowed for creativity, it’s allowed for relationship building. It’s really exciting. And those things are all aspects of mission.

Oh, definitely. I mean, that’s the key word I would say there is a lot of artists just don’t know, How does what I make build community? How does that build relationships? They need to see that modeled for them. They need to learn about what is possible. That’s not really taught in the art schools or the conservatories.

Yes, that’s right. I know people are very focused literally on their arts discipline and perfecting their craft. But actually, yeah, this is probably, I use my words carefully, but it’s a healthy approach because you see your art form and your places and your gifting within the context of others, within the context of God’s family, within the context of the wider community and mission.

Very well said. Okay, so what are the challenges for people coming out of All Nations? What trends do you see happening now in the world today?

Well, obviously, the challenge of making our training as accessible as possible, we’re managing that with offering both residential and online. But obviously you’ll understand in terms of the arts, it’s not always so easy to be offering all aspects of the arts online, because so much is participatory, so much requires that interface and engagement. That’s one of the challenges, particularly in the arts sphere. I think another couple of challenges is the movement of people’s accessibility and affordability. So, we’re trying to make our curriculum accessible through allowing people to zoom into our global classroom. The affordable bit is still a challenge for some of our brothers and sisters in different parts of the world. And obviously, they would love to have the face-to-face training. So what we’re trying to think about is how can our nations be further on the move? How can we have our training as movable? And how can we think about partnering with others? Really also affirming and standing with people who are currently doing some great things in local context, but need some further affirmation. Maybe they need accreditation. Maybe they just need ongoing connection with a place like All Nations to encourage them in what they’re doing already. We’ve got collaboration, we’ve got partnership, we’ve got online versus residential. We’re looking at just different hybrid forms of delivery. And these are both opportunities and challenges. I think just at the moment we’re in this shift. There’s a shift going on in global mission, a shift from north to south and Northern Hemisphere to Southern Hemisphere. And then there’s this shift in terms of the center of missions. And so how do we steward our resources and steward our training as well as possible to benefit as many as possible.

For this changing landscape. But do you see a trend? Are there more artists wanting to go into missions? I mean, obviously after COVID, I’m guessing that it’s probably been harder to recruit people.

Yeah, it has and still is. I think people are tentative at the moment. And what we’re finding is that short courses lead to longer courses. So, a lot of our, for instance, our arts offerings are on the short side. You can come and do four days, or you can do a days training, and that often opens up the world of both missions and the arts to people. They go, “Oh, this is what it’s about. These people are doing it. I could do that. Okay, now I can begin to take a step.” But I think there is this tentative nervousness in a lot of people. And, of course, I think the sector, the educational sector at higher education has been impacted by COVID. So universities and colleges, particularly in my context, UK, they’re seeing a problem with recruitment at the moment and also Bible colleges as well. So this is not just…

Yeah, that’s universal.

It’s universal, and we’re all dealing with this. How do we mobilize and motivate others and bring them in? Of course, I think we’ve got a responsibility to make things accessible, but also help people to see what’s possible. Something like GCAMM, where we’re here now, is that place where people come and see and taste and go, “Okay, this is great. I want to engage.”

Awesome. Thank you so much. God bless everything that you’re doing there.

Thank you, Roger.

And I’ll keep telling people about what you’re doing.

Thank you so much. It’s been a blessing to be with you.

Thank you.

Take care.

Now there’s one more person I’d to introduce you to, Nancy Nethercott. I’ve known Nancy a really long time, since my very first year in language school. She used to live in Japan and has been a huge encouragement to me over the years. More recently, she led a worship workshop for us, which was really well attended, just over 100 people were there, and we got excellent feedback about her time with them. Now she travels all over the world as a speaker, trainer, encourager, and pastor.

Let me just tell a quick story about Nancy. I remember one time we were riding in a taxi after an event, and I was dead tired. I was not in the mood to talk to another single person, and yet in that moment, Nancy shined. She engaged the taxi driver in conversation, in her perfect Japanese, encouraging the driver and everyone else who was in the car. She just really is a natural and such a kind person. Anyway, I’m delighted to have this opportunity to share her with all of you.

Okay, I’m sitting here with Nancy Nethercott at the GCAMM Conference in Fort Worth, Texas. I want to take a little bit more time with you, Nancy, because I think you have a really interesting story to share.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me to be able to share.

So, yeah, first of all, let me ask you what your background is. Where did you serve?

Yeah. I was a missionary in Japan for almost 30 years with The Evangelical Alliance Mission, mostly involved in church planting.

Otherwise known as TEAM.

Yes, TEAM. I was involved in church planting, pretty classic church planting for the first 15 years, and then moved into working with artists and created a group called CAN, Christians in the Arts Network. I had a lot of interactions with artists. During that time, I received my Doctorate of Worship Studies from the Robert Webber Institute for Worship Studies, and was also working with pastors and worship leaders in churches.

You’re helping plant churches, you’re working in the arts, you’re loving artists. How did that lead to… Well, first of all, why are you here at GCAMM?

Yeah, I found my people in a group of artists who love to use their arts in missions, their creativity in missions. I’m here at GCAMM to learn and to grow and to network to be better at what I already do.

Well, that’s why I’m here, too. I love the community here, the people that I get to meet. This is really life-changing in so many ways.

Conversations are rich. And they help form us. We form each other by the things that we share.

Because we all get so drawn into our specific context. But to be able to see the bigger picture of what God’s doing around the globe through artists and missionaries is amazing to me.

Yeah, even this morning, I heard stories that I thought I have never heard a story told that way. We were all in awe.

Very cool. Okay, so what do you… I want to ask you specifically. I know you do many kinds of ministries. Actually, okay, tell me, what kinds of ministries are you doing now?

Yeah, so when I teach globally, I teach in the area of worship formation, worship renewal, why do we do what we do kinds of things. Then others invite me to speak in the area of spiritual formation, which I have training in. I’m a spiritual director. I’m an Anglican priest. So, what am I involved in? I’m involved in those things. I’m also the chaplain at the Webber Institute for Worship Studies. Ministry has changed a bit since leaving Japan in 2015, but I’m still very much involved in global ministries and thoroughly enjoy that.

I want to ask you specifically about this ministry you have of, I guess, it’s a songwriting workshop? Is that right?

Yeah. So came into that. The first one was in the Philippines and then in Japan, actually, in 2016. Well, maybe Japan was the first one. Some people that I knew, some ethnomusicologists wanted to do a songwriting retreat in Japan. And since I knew Japan and knew people, knew artists, they asked if I would bring people together and facilitate it. That was my first step into that. But since then, I’ve gone with other ethnomusicologists on trips to Kosovo and Nepal, in particular, Albania, and done songwriting and multi-arts workshops, actually.

Okay, so tell me more about that. That sounds very interesting.

Yeah, it’s really fun, actually. Started off with songwriting workshops. My role, when I work with somebody like Operation Mobilization or YWAM, the ones that I’ve done these workshops with, my role is what they call the Biblical worship trainer, which sounds really interesting. I don’t really feel like I may be a Biblical worship trainer, but what it means is that in these workshops, the local people, the on-the-ground people, they know what the needs are of their community. And so, I reach out to them ahead of time and say, What are the songs that your church needs? What are the songs that your community needs? What are the arts? As we’ve done multi-arts retreat this last spring in Kosovo. What are the arts that your people, what are the themes that need to be represented to meet the needs of your community? It’s asking what their needs are, what they want.

Right. Okay. When writing songs, usually the image that comes to mind for most people is like, Okay, yes, we need songs in other languages. That makes sense. Okay, we’ll maybe be using different instruments or slightly different styles. But you’re talking about something even deeper, like changing actual themes of what the songs are about. Maybe there are songs that don’t express what that culture wants to express in worship.

That’s right. We had one church, one group in Kosovo, and they didn’t have songs of lament. They didn’t have songs for communion. They had gathering songs. So if you think about a four-fold structure of worship, you have your gathering, you have Word, you have response and sending as the big components. And response then would be communion. And they had no songs for communion, and they didn’t have sending songs. And so, when I structured the retreat and the devotional, so I listen to what their needs are, then I sit with the Lord and with the Bible, and I say, What is it? What is it that you want to say to these people that then the Holy Spirit can use to prompt them to create songs and to create art that will express these themes? So themes of hope, themes of identity in Christ, that we’re children of God, that we’re agents of reconciliation, just all these kinds of themes that have been given to me over the last few years. And then I sit with those, then we go to the workshop, I share a short devotional. And if it’s interpreted, then I get about 20 minutes, so about a 10-minute devotional on my part, and they go off and create. And so, yes, working with an ethnomusicologist, that person then is, after I share a devotional, then they help them to create in their own styles, in their own voice, musical voice, using their own instruments. That’s not my part.

Do they sometimes have trouble knowing what themes? If you ask them that question, what is missing? What is it that you would want to worship through in song? Do you get any like, “Oh, I’ve never been asked that question before. Let me think about that.”

Kazakhstan, that was a new question for them. But they came up with hope and unity. Thinking about their culture and what do the people need to sing about. Eventually, they said, give us time. Let us think about that. But then they did. They came back with lovely things.

Yeah. I would assume that part of it, too, is just giving them permission to do that. They’re like, Our pastors have not said that we can do this, maybe, or just they’ve never heard that message before, that it’s okay for them to be writing songs. Is that true?

By the time I get an invitation, it’s like we want a songwriting retreat or a workshop. By the time I get the invitation, they’ve already worked through that.

Now, what I’ve seen in Japan is there are people writing songs here and there, but then there is no way to then spread those songs to other people. There’s no worship conferences in Japan. There’s no way to get that to disseminate these songs. Is that something that you’ve had to try to address as well?

Yeah. So the people that I worked with in Japan, they didn’t have that avenue at the time since then. So that was 2016. Since then, I have connected or people have gotten connected with another missionary and a Japanese who have a studio. And so, they’re actually recording some of the songs and getting them out to some of the local churches. But there is no great way to disseminate the songs. Kosovo and Albania was a different situation because the missionaries that I was working with, they actually had a studio, they have a brand, they have a name, and they also have some well-known, like a well-known rapper, Albanian rapper that works with them. They have somebody who has a name. When they created the songs in Albanian, both from Kosovo and from Albania, we worked in both countries. We came up with about, I don’t know, I think 19 songs total. They were able to do a basic recording on the spot and then get it back to the studio, because the missionaries on the ground had created the studio. And then they could bring in singers and perfect it, and bring in instruments, and then they put them out. It’s YouTube, basically, or their website. But the churches are singing the songs. And then they also have… They work with a youth arts camp that they do every year, and those songs are being sung there. They did another workshop I wasn’t a part of that was creating children’s songs. That was in 2019. And when I was just back there this past spring 2023, the kids I was with were singing the songs. So, they are getting them out there into the churches. Of course, it’s smaller.

But that’s awesome. I mean, 19 songs in one songwriting workshop. How long was the workshop?

Well, it was three days in Kosovo, in Pristina, or outside of Pristina and Peja. Then it was another three-day workshop in Tehrana, Albania. But because they’re both writing in Albanian, although a little dialect in Kosovo, but then they cleaned it up into Albanian. They created these songs. They had people who were musicians, and were already some of them writing songs, and then they had people who had never written a song in their life, but got really excited about this. And because I think that was where we had the path of the four-fold structure, and they were specifically writing songs for the four parts of the worship service. And then I was giving them scriptures, like lots of scriptures for gathering and then dividing them into groups. Each group had like two or three scriptures. They would read those scriptures, pray over those scriptures, and then just start talking, listening to each other, and creating these songs. They came up with amazing songs. The Sending, when we celebrated, we have a celebration time at the end. They were all dancing with the Sending songs. It was absolutely phenomenal.

That’s awesome. Yeah, I can just imagine. People who don’t write songs may not be able to imagine this, but I’ve been in situations where when you do a songwriting workshop, just the energy of bringing people together, okay, this is what we’re focusing on right now, putting everything else aside, that kind of concentration and energy and collaboration is really important with songwriting.

Yeah, and I think like a retreat then you’ve pulled away from everyday life. It’s not like, Oh, every Thursday night, we’re going to write a song or something, but you’re actually getting to know each other. Collaboration is huge. I led one songwriting retreat. It was here in the US. and had a guy come, a worship leader, and he was writing his own songs, and we forced them to collaborate and write with others. And it just blew it out of the water for him because he realized he needed other people, and his songs were better working with other people. But yeah, that time of pulling away and being present with each other and with the Lord, yeah, and working together on creating, like even arts, like this in Kosovo, this last spring, when they had this huge arts room with every kind of art you could think of, even sculpting different things they were doing down there, and anybody could go down. If you got tired of songwriting, you didn’t have to do that as your creative expression after one of my devotional, you could go down to the art room and create. And so then they were collaborating with each other. Another retreat I led was multi-arts, and we had visual arts and creative writing and then songwriting. One woman who was up writing poetry brought her poetry down to the songwriters, and they started writing songs together. It was absolutely beautiful.

Yeah, I love hearing your stories. I get your newsletters, and I’m always following along what you’re doing around the world. I’m just amazed. God bless you as you continue doing these things.

Thank you so much. I’m thankful for the Lord’s continued blessing on the things that he’s invited me into. Thanks.

In closing, I’d like to introduce you to one final song performed by Izibongo, one of the featured worship bands at the conference. You can download this song and their whole album on Amazon at the link I listed on the show notes for this episode.

[Music Plays – “Ameen Ta’ala” (“Amen, Come”)]

Thank you so much for listening. As we say in Japan, “Ja, mata ne! See you next time.”