Art Life Faith Podcast

In my first month in Japan, I was helping to lead worship on a pipe organ, when an older missionary came up and started to berate me. “You can’t play that kind of music here. It’s completely against everything we’re trying to do for the Japanese church.” I was a bit shocked, but I could see his point. As Christians, we want to see the nations of the world worship God in their heart languages…their spoken language, but also their musical language and their cultural language. The music of Messiaen, Vierne, Widor, and all the other Western composers who’ve written for the organ are not part of their heart language…so, doesn’t that mean I shouldn’t play that music while church planting in Japan? I mean, what role do I have, someone trained in distinctly Western styles of music, in bringing the gospel to the people of Japan?

In the photograph, "How Beautiful are the Feet," we see a circle showing only the feet of the dancers. On one foot, they wear a point shoe. On the other, the foot is completely bare. One foot is dressed for being on stage, beautifully presentable. The other, not so much. It shows evidence of the blood, sweat, and tears—the bruises, pain, and injury. Feet are the means by which the Minato City Ballet Company brings the good news of the gospel to people. ...

I’m excited to announce that our first official book with Community Arts Media is coming out on November 1, 2022, “Living in Full View of the God of Grace.” It will be in English and Japanese, in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook, on Amazon and wherever else you pick up your books. I encourage you to check it out. It has really encouraged me working on this project during such a difficult time, and I know it’ll encourage you as well!

“I’m sooo hungry!” I said, “I want to eat something!” “No,” my wife said. “We have to keep going. If we eat now, there won’t be enough for later.” We were in one of the most beautiful landscapes on the planet, a remote part of the High Sierras in California, and all I could think about was food. This was hunger like I’d never known it before.

Today I’d like to introduce you to Daisuke Yokoyama, an amazing Christian singer songwriter here in Japan. I had the privilege of meeting him in the relief movement shortly after that terrible earthquake of 2011. I remember one concert we played together in a high school gymnasium, not far from the broken nuclear power plants in Fukushima. When he finished singing, he walked around the room to talk with people. They were stuck in their designated areas surrounded with cardboard walls. He met with them, gave them one of his CDs, and, if appropriate, prayed for them as well. Daisuke is a master at making people feel loved.

So here they were in this position of weakness. They had an unfinished building. Their numbers were small. They were still rebuilding trust in their congregation, and they were still getting to know their neighbors. And then the earthquake struck in March 2011, and their world literally fell apart. ...

I’d like to share Kunio Nakamura-san’s message about Kintsugi Academy and the role kintsugi can play in our lives. This traditional Japanese art of mending broken pottery with gold is packed with meaning. Here Nakamura-san is answering the question, “Why bother fixing broken pottery? Why not just buy something new?”

This week I’ve been working on putting subtitles to the various talks from our “Aroma of Beauty” conference we held here in Tokyo in March. There were so amazing stories shared. Although it was all in Japanese, with subtitles soon you’ll be able to watch and hear them as well. But I want to take this time to share one of them with you now in this podcast. ...

Everyone in Japan knows the word setomono, because you find it on quite a few boxes you get in the mail. It means “fragile,” but it also literally means “product of Seto.” Seto is an art village known in Japan for its ceramics with over a 1,500 year history, longer if you count the indigenous people who lived there before that time. And today that pottery tradition is alive and well. Last week, I went to Seto ...

All forty were completely empty. I lifted each plastic gallon jug just to be sure. Hikers in the previous town promised a huge cache of water here. Whatever drops had been left quickly evaporated as the sun mercilessly beat down. The hot dry wind blew in my face, bushes and cacti too short to provide any useful kind of shade at all. My wife and I were on the Pacific Crest Trail ...