Julian Newman, pastor at Tribes Church, and founder of Culture Creative, sits down and talks about his journey from vocational ministry to creative ministry and the ways that he is intertwining the two.  We talk about his upcoming movie, the role that the arts play in our understanding of faith, and the importance of embracing the complexity of all parts of life.

Plus...we talk about diversity and inclusion, what it means to empower each other to step into difficult conversations about race, immigration, and the marginalized, and the one conversation that we should be engaging in that we continue to shy away from.

Find Julian Here:

Facebook

Culture Creative

Tribes Church

Grand Rapids Civic Theater

What he Recommends:

That'll Never Work by Mark Randolf

Rings of Fire by Leonard Sweet

Biased by Jennifer Eberhardt

The Future is Faster than You Think by Peter Diamandis

Imagineers

What he Says:

"We all have a heroic reality or calling or purpose, but not enough of us unleash our inner hero in order to be able to transform the world."

"I think that every writer writes a version of themselves in their stories."

"In the Bible, we have poetry, we have a romance story and an adventure story, we've got a dude that grew up poor and kills a giant and becomes king, we've got a Robin Hood story in there...I think if we take off our lens and begin to look at the Bible as a storybook instead of a textbook, it stirs up our imagination."

"We need to stop removing the complexity of our human condition from our faith, and from our art."

"We have to stop demonizing each other and find a measure of commonality so that we can build a better world for ourselves and for the generation coming up behind us."

"We have divorced ourselves from intellectualism and having meaningful conversations about how we express the idea of being a good neighbor in the world that we're in right now."

"Just because something is our version of idolotry, doesn't mean it's right."

"We have to understand that the Kingdom of God transcends the polarization of our political views.  And the Jesus that I read about cares for the unborn just as much as he cares what happens after they're born."

"It [his upcoming book] is a conversation about how we as believers can be vessels of hope: poets, dreamers, inventors, and people that bring beauty to the world, because that's what we are all longing for."

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