Art Life Faith Podcast

Roger W. Lowther
  • 4.9 (15)
  • CHRISTIANITY

Listen in as we discuss art, life, and the Christian faith

  1. JAN 28

    71. Art and Community with Jerrod Partridge

    Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. And I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Well, Happy New Year everyone! It’s good to be with you in 2026. I hope you’ve had a good year so far. Two of my boys are in college now but were able to be back with us over the winter break, and we got to have some fun in the snowy mountains of Japan, including an overnight snowshoe camping trip up one of the tallest mountains in Japan. It was beautiful, but it was also very, very cold. So cold, in fact, that the water in our water bottles froze almost immediately. And my fingers stuck to any kind of metal I touched. But so many good memories. Anyway, I want to thank you so much for your support of our newest children’s book, The Tsunami Violin, which was released late last year. Many of you have been writing me notes of encouragement, telling me who you’ve gifted the book to or your own experiences with the story. I want to share one of them with you. One woman read the book to her granddaughter’s elementary school class. In her note to me, she wrote, “Every child was wide-eyed and engaged. Students were able to identify how the characters were happy at the beginning, how they were changed by the tsunami, and how at the end of the story they were happy again because they were able to bring others hope through their story and their music. I will always cherish this special time with the students and that it was possible because of your book.” So of course I’m encouraged to receive notes like this and pray that this book will continue to have an ongoing impact in people’s lives. In our last episode, we shared a little bit about the making of The Tsunami Violin and the people involved. I thought you may also like to hear a little bit more about the background of what went into the making of the book. We consciously followed the traditional sonata-allegro form that is so common in much of classical music. In the beginning, we have the exposition, when the main theme is introduced. The main character is introduced as a tree, living in a literal garden of paradise, a forest that was planted 400 years ago and was designated as one of the most beautiful sites in all of Japan. Then everything falls apart. The tsunami comes and physically breaks the tree, tearing her up by the roots. This is the beginning of the development section, when the melodic theme is broken into fragments. Also, the development is usually in the minor key to express sadness. Then in the story the craftsman shows up, has the tree cut into smaller pieces, takes them to Tokyo, and begins to build a violin out of them. So this is the part where the development continues, where melodic fragments are taken through different keys and different ways: backwards, forwards, and upside down. Sometimes they find new relationships with a secondary theme. In other words, the fragments are put back together in new ways. And then the story ends with the main character finding hope and new life as a violin, surrounded by community through her music. And this, of course, is the recapitulation, the opening musical theme but as a new creation. Somehow that theme is deeper and more beautiful for having gone through the trauma of the development, through the breaking, through the minor key, and we hear the melody with new ears. I pray that as you read this book, you will be filled with new wonder as to how God brings hope into broken lives. Okay, today I want to share with you a conversation I had with Jerrod Partridge, a phenomenal artist working in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. He and his wife Jessie play a central role in the life of the community there, running a studio right on the main strip, and also in the lives of so many artists including, recently, a Japanese intern who came from our community here in Tokyo to spend the summer with that family. I so appreciate them and am happy just to be able to share this conversation with you so that you can get to know them as well. Jerrod Hello Roger. Roger Thank you so much for being on the show. Jerrod Yeah, I’m thrilled to be here. Roger Yeah, I really wanted people to know you, not just because you’re a phenomenal artist, but also because of your story. Jerrod Well, I mean, you’re very integrated into that story. So, it seems appropriate that we’re sitting here talking. Roger Yeah. So let me just try to share with listeners what happened. You came to Japan on a 10-day trip, two weekends with a week in between. And during that time, you did a number of events. For example, there was a church that was just starting in a new location called Double O Cross, and they wanted to introduce their space to the community. And so, in order to do that, they hosted, for the first time, an event. I think it was the first event they ever had in that space. They hosted an art show of your work. It was an amazing event. We had a live musician playing a traditional Japanese instrument, and we had wine and cheese. It was sophisticated. A lot of people came in for the first time, and the pastor was so happy. Jerrod That was a really incredible experience for me to get to experience the church in Japan, to get to experience the culture, meet so many wonderful, gracious people. It was really, honestly, a life-altering experience for me. Roger Also, there’s more about the story of this church. They wanted to plant a second location to have another service, but everyone wanted to be in that one space where the art gallery was because, somehow, I think through events like that, that we were able to do afterwards, people were really drawn into that space. It felt like a place of home. The community really liked being there. It was a space that was a gift to the neighborhood. To introduce that space to the neighborhood through the arts really was a powerful message. Jerrod It was very welcoming. The artwork, how it was displayed, and then having the musician play. I did a drawing while she was playing. So that was a neat collaboration. Then, even one of the guys from the church made some refreshments and snacks that related to the work. Because I do a lot of drawings with walnut ink, he had snacks that were made with walnuts and things. And I thought that connection and relationship was so thoughtful and really made the whole thing have depth and meaning beyond just pictures on the wall. Roger Right, and you should know, too, that some of the relationships made for the first time in that event have continued through that church and through our artist community. I still am talking to those people. Jerrod Yeah, that’s amazing. And likewise, relationships that I’ve made have continued. Roger So cool. Well, then the next day, I think it was, or a day later, we had an event at our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, where we hosted a talk and luncheon before worship and sold some of your works. You were able to talk about it over a sushi lunch, and we also had a Q&A time. Jerrod Yeah, that was really fascinating. It was eye-opening for me, some of the questions that came out, because there are things that we just don’t think about necessarily. We don’t consider how a different culture is going to see your processes and interpretations. One thing that I specifically remember I do a lot of work on handmade paper, and the paper is intentionally really textured. I leave openings and holes. It’s real rough. But I know the Japanese people are used to paper making in such a high form. The paper that they make is so gorgeous and perfectly done. So there was a little confusion of why would you make paper that’s so rough and imperfect. But when I explained the process, there was a really neat connection of understanding why I would choose to do it in that form. So that was a really wonderful memory. Then also the question of why I might have been painting some of the things I was painting. Roger Yeah, I remember that. My church sponsored the event, and we made it clear you were a Christian. It was not necessarily a Christian event, but it was hosted and sponsored by Christians. One of the people asked, “Why do you, as a Christian, why are you painting Shinto Shrines? Why are you painting Buddhist temples?” Jerrod Yeah, that was fascinating. It was an eye-opening question for me because as a foreigner, everything was new and different and visually exciting. I didn’t think too much about why, as a Christian, I might be drawn to these things visually. Roger Do you remember what your answer was to their question? Jerrod Only vaguely. Because I was a little bit surprised by the question. So, you tell me what you remember. Roger I remember you saying, “Because it’s beautiful. I wanted to paint it because it’s beautiful.” But they were a little bit surprised by that because I think there’s a pretty strong message to, especially Christians in Japan, that you should not go to shrines, you should not go to temples, that it is contrary to what the God of the Bible desires. And they try to avoid that side of Japanese culture, which is such a huge part of Japanese culture. It’s a real struggle in the Japanese church, I think. Jerrod Yeah, and I could see that struggle and was glad to be aware of the sensitivity of that. But at the same time, I did feel like the message of the fact that a Christian can see the beauty of what is created by non-Christians, but also the beauty of the fact that everybody are children of God, that whatever understanding we may have of religions, of culture, that there is beauty all around us in God’s creation, but also in man’s creation. And that can be celebrated. That can be celebrated through our approach as Christians without having to limit ourselves to the person making the creations. They have to believe what I believe for me to appreciate what they’re doing. And I just think that that limitation is unnecessary and not helpful. Rog

    28 min

  2. 11/22/2025

    70. The Tsunami Violin – Book Launch

    Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Today, I’m excited to share with you a project that our team has been working on for quite some time now. Our new children’s book, The Tsunami Violin, comes out on November 24, 2025. Back in 2020, I wrote my first children’s book called “Pippy the Piano and the Very Big Wave”. Based on a true story, it tells how a church finds their beloved piano upside down and covered in mud and debris. But rather than throw it out, they decide to spend the enormous amounts of time and money necessary to fix it, and they give the piano new life. And even today, the church continues to tell this story through the many concerts they host there. Now we are releasing our second children’s book, which this time tells the story about a violin. A young tree protects her town from the cold and harsh ocean winds. But when the tsunami comes, everything is washed away: family, friends, town. She’s lost everything, but then a master craftsman comes, a violin maker from Tokyo, and transforms her into something beautiful. Through her music and through her story, she brings encouragement and healing to all who hear it, a story of hope out of despair, life out of death, and new beginnings. Like Pippy the Piano, this book too is based on a true story. I’m fortunate to know Nakazawa-sensei, the violin maker, and also to have had the privilege of being involved in quite a few concerts with that violin. It’s such a powerful story of redemption that I had to get it out there. This is a story worth telling. In this episode, I have a conversation with some of the members of our team who made this book possible, the beginnings of the book and the process along the way, and especially with the very talented Holly Rose Wallace, whose images and illustrations so powerfully tell this story. So anyway, I know you’re going to love the book, and I hope this conversation into some of the background will help you enjoy it even more. Roger Well, today we are excited to share with all of you about this project we’ve been working on for quite some time now called The Tsunami Violin. And we have a number of us who are key players in getting this project together with us on the podcast. Can you all introduce yourselves one by one? Maybe Diane, you served as the project manager for this. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? Diane Yes, I’m Diane Bakelaar, and I live in Nagoya, Japan. My husband and I run an arts ministry through an art gallery and meet people through the art gallery. I served as the project manager for this book. Roger Awesome. Now, most importantly, Holly Rose Wallace as the illustrator. Can you introduce yourself? Holly I don’t know about most important, but I’m Holly. I’m from Cleveland, Ohio. I did about a two-year internship in Nagoya, Japan, working with Diane and Peter Bakelaar, and then working on this project with Roger and others. This is my first illustration project, so it was really exciting to get to add this to my resume and work with the team on this project. But I’m a self-taught illustrator, and I’ve always loved the arts, so this is an exciting project for me. Roger Awesome. And, Verity, you’re on this call. Can you tell us your role in this project? Verity Hi, I’m Verity. I’m a London-based illustrator and designer specializing in book design. And I’m also preparing to move to Tokyo next year to work with Community Arts Tokyo as an arts missionary. Roger Very cool. Last but not least, we also have Tsumugu Misugi on the call. Can you introduce yourself? Tsumugu Yeah. Hello. My name is Tsumugu. I’m a violinist and a composer living in Japan. I write music and record for Japanese animation and Korean dramas and things like that. I was happy and so privileged to be able to play on the tsunami violin with Roger a couple of years ago. Roger Now, in the introduction to this episode, I’ve given a little summary of what this book is about. But really to capture the essence of it, I wanted all of us here together because I think there’s something really special about this project, in how it all came together. There were many pieces. It wasn’t like I wrote this story and then passed it on to Holly to illustrate and then published it, but there were so many moving parts. And as each part came in, it made the book all that much more special. So why don’t we just start right at the beginning? So, Tsumugu, why don’t you tell us a little bit about how you were first introduced to the tsunami violin? Tsumugu I served as a volunteer in Ishinomaki from 2012 and went back every summer until 2016. And so I had first-hand experience helping with relief work. And then I went to the States for college, and then I decided to move to Japan after college to pursue my work. And that was when I reconnected with Roger. And within the first, I think, maybe three months of me moving back to Japan, Roger was like, “Hey, there’s this project where we want to give about 10 concerts in Japan, and it would be awesome if you could play on this tsunami violin.” And that was the first time I had heard of the violin, but it’s very famous here in Japan, and I was very honored to be asked to play on the violin. Roger Yeah, I had gotten to know it at previous concerts, and then there was this church, a group of churches actually, up in Iwaki, who asked us to come and give concerts on the violin. And it really wasn’t until that time that it came together. I was like, “this is an amazing story to be told.” I mean, everywhere the violin goes, it doesn’t just give a concert, but its story is an essential part of that concert. Just bringing that hope, bringing that idea that there’s life out of death, that all things can be redeemed, even when you’re in the pit of despair. And to continually bring that violin into any crowd of people, really, it spoke, it said something. And I was like, “How can we tell this to more people, not just those at the concerts. What would that look like?” And that was when the idea came forth about making a children’s book. Now, of course, I am not a visual artist. I don’t have the means to do that, but it just so happened that God provided Holly at just the right time to begin having this conversation. Holly, what do you remember about those early conversations about this book? Holly I remember the first time that I met you, I was showing you some of my work, and you looked really excited. You’re like, I have an idea for my next children’s book, and I’ve been looking for an illustrator. And you asked if I do that. I was like, “Well, I haven’t, but it’s always been a dream of mine.” And so it was this perfect partnership of you needed an illustrator, and I wanted to illustrate. It all came together from there. Roger It started first with the two of us working on this project, but then I think things really got special when we brought in Anna, who isn’t on this call, and Diane to be part of the process as well. Actually, Diane, just before we started recording, you said something about that, just the idea of having more people involved in the project somehow made it better. Diane Yes, I’ve always been fascinated with the idea, the wisdom of the group, and how it’s statistically shown that when people as a group, when they’re working together well, they can make better decisions than an individual, even if that individual is an expert in the area. I certainly saw that with this project. Everybody was bringing their strengths to the table, and everyone in the group was able to listen and not hold on to their parts so tightly that they weren’t able to hear suggestions and improvements. That was really impressive to me how everyone was very humble and very willing to work together, and it just made the project so much better. Roger Yeah, I really enjoyed our times together. Once every two weeks or so, we all had our roles. Mine was officially words. Holly was images. Verity was, I think, everything artistic. Verity Not at first… Roger At first, what was your role? Verity At first, I was thinking when I came in that I’d be taking on a design role of doing stuff with how the text looked and how the cover looked. Then my input grew from there, for sure. Roger Yeah, it sure did. It was fun to see this project be born out of our time together. The idea was, how do we tell this story in the best possible way? What words do we use? What images? Are there things we can do with the text? Maybe we should add a frame here or take one out here. To be talking about that creatively as a group was some of the magic of this project, I think. Verity Yeah, definitely. I think the first ever meeting we had about this project, Diane was there on Zoom, we were sitting on the floor in this apartment which had no furniture, which is why we were sitting on the floor. But we were going through some of the sketches that Holly had done and some of the writing and stuff. For a while, I’d been working in the creative industries. In the creative industries, I definitely feel like your role gets isolated from the rest of the creative process, particularly as a designer, where you do your thing that you’re told to do, but you don’t have any input in how the rest of a creative project, a book, for example, looks like. I was coming from that into this project where we were all like, you were asking my opinion on the text and stuff, and I was a little bit worried about stepping on your toes. That was a really special moment for me. It was, I think, maybe my first week or two in Japan. I was like, Oh, this is something different here. What the team is doing here is different. It was a good moment. Roger Yeah, it was. Anna said you can’t publish a book without a cat in it. And that was just so much better. So we had this cat, and there’s this yellow bird tha

    30 min

  3. 10/16/2025

    69. Beauty from Brokenness and Death with Vince Black

    Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast. I’m your host, Roger Lowther. I have an exciting announcement to make. Our next book, “The Tsunami Violin,” comes out next month, November 2025. We’ve been working on this project for some time now, and we are so excited to finally be able to share it with all of you. This book is based on real-life events that happened after a tsunami hit the northeast of Japan in 2011 and tells a story about a tree that is completely destroyed, along with a forest she lives in and her town. And then a master craftsman, a woodworker, comes along and redeems her and forms her into a beautiful violin, which now currently travels around Japan and around the world, giving concerts and telling people her story. We’ll have more information about that in our next podcast. For now and along this same theme, I want to share a conversation I had with Vince Black. He is a woodworker and pastor from Fort Collins, Colorado. Every month, we invite an artist to come and share their art with us after a meal and then lead a discussion. “What does their art have to do with our lives? What does that have to do with the Christian faith?” Art, life, faith. When this artist can speak English, I ask them to record one of these podcasts so that we can share the story with you as well. Vince looks for downed trees in the forest, which are badly damaged. Either they’re badly burned or beetle-eaten or something else happened to it. It just looks like trash laying on the ground. And then he redeems them and carves beautiful objects out of them: flower vases, bowls, cups. His whole message is about finding beauty and hope in this world coming from brokenness and death. In the very beginning of the event, Vince shared a little bit about one of his projects sculpting people without any limbs, which led to a fascinating discussion in perfectionist Japan. He talked about Da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man,” which seeks to show the perfect proportions of the male body. And the question was what happens when a body does not meet those proportions? Does that mean it’s no longer ideal? Does it mean it’s broken? Does it mean it’s not beautiful? The Bible tells us that in heaven our bodies are perfect. Does that mean that everyone has all their limbs in heaven? These are just some of the things that we talked about. Vince also shared about the death of his 18-year-old son. Then my wife, Abi, shared a little about her 18-year-old niece, Lydia, who had a genetic mitochondrial disease. At that time, all the organs of her body were slowly shutting down. She was suffering and in a lot of pain, and there was nothing the doctors could do to heal her. When Vince spoke, it was earlier this year in January, and Lydia died that very next month. Abi went to the funeral and brought one of Vince’s flower vases and gave it to Lydia’s mom and told her the story. This flower vase was particularly damaged by a forest fire and showed its suffering. And yet, it was beautiful. It was the perfect gift for that time of grieving, and to show the incredible beauty we can find in brokenness, and to share that we’re not alone in our grieving, and that God is always present with us, and that suffering is not the end. His art gives just a little peek into what God is doing in this world and the beauty that he will one day bring out of all suffering. There was another person we also gave Vince’s bowl to that was going through a very difficult time. We always keep one of his flower vases in a place of honor in our living room where everyone can see it and be continually reminded of his message. If you ever come to Japan and visit us, you can see it sitting there in the living room. Vince’s time with us was really meaningful, and I’m so glad that I now get to share it with all of you. Roger Vince Black. Thank you so much for being here. Vince It’s good to be here. Thanks for having me. Roger Yeah, I’m really intrigued by you and your art. We’ve talked a little bit before we started recording. Why don’t you introduce yourself? Vince Sure, I am Vince Black. I have a history in art. I’ve always wanted to be involved in art. It’s something I grew up desiring to be in. I went to a small school and studied sculpture, so I have the very useful degree of sculpture that will get you a job in a coffee shop or something like that. I studied classically under one artist. We had a lot of fun and worked on the human form for four years. It was a beautiful time. From that point on, I moved toward ministry, toward being a pastor. People have brought up the corny joke that I am now sculpting hearts instead of sculpting other materials. Roger Oh, nice. Vince But I’ve been a pastor for about 20 years and have always been interested, still interested in art, and have been in art circles, talked to artists, had artist groups at our church, but have just recently, over the last couple of years, gotten back into art again. Physical, tangible, sculpting art. Roger Now, you’ve brought some of these pieces with you. I have them right here on the table, and I’ve been noticing some are heavy, some are light. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about what we have seen in front of us? Vince Yeah. About two years ago, I started turning wood on a lathe. I was given a lathe, an old lathe from a friend. A lathe, if you don’t know what it is, it’s a tool that will turn wood very quickly toward you. It’s spinning at 2,000 RPMs towards you. Roger That’s dangerous. Vince Yeah, so it can be dangerous. This old lathe that was given to me, I had no idea what I was doing, took a spin on it, and threw the wood across the room that I was in. I knew that that was a dangerous thing but was intrigued enough by it. This is something that could really be interesting. Got a newer lathe and started turning wood, and we can talk through all of that. But I’ve got here four pieces that I brought with me to give a sense of what I’m doing. The whole thrust behind the work that I’m doing is taking something, a piece of wood, that has been either gone through fire or death through beetle kill or some other insect that has been downed. That would typically be either thrown in a fire or brush pile or just lay to rot. I’ve taken those pieces and turned them into what I think is a beautiful piece of work. I have a bowl here that’s about 6 inches in diameter. It’s aspen. Aspen you see all over Colorado, but this one has burn marks on it from a fire that it has gone through in a canyon that’s near our house. That’s one piece. You can see the beautiful white or yellow tones of the wood with some scarring on it from the fire. I have another smaller vase that was pine. And pine in Colorado goes through a couple of different destructive things. One is beetle kill. Beetles will infest a pine tree and then begin to go from pine tree to pine tree, and just take out entire forests through the kill. And what happens is it leaves them, leaves the sticks or the stumps of these trees there dry, which makes them very susceptible to fire. So many trees will be killed by beetle kill and then taken out by forest fire. So you can see on the edge of this one, the charred bark around the side of it that’s been taken out by fire, but probably before that beetle kill. Roger Yeah, it’s gnarly, like how it sticks out like that. I really like it. Vince So what I’ve been trying to do over the past couple of months is bring some smooth, beautiful edges out of the harsh, as you said, gnarly pieces of wood to show both the beautiful and the destroyed in one piece. Roger It’s a nice color contrast, too. It has the black against the white with the brown texture of the wood. What about that one? Vince So this one is ash, and you can see the visible marks of the beetles that trace all the way through it, eating away the wood and eventually killing it. So that’s what took this tree out. And again, leaving some of the bark edges on the side of it, trying to pull up some of the beautiful smooth insides of it, but still leaving the remnants of the beetle killer. And then this one is a small juniper vase, probably three or four inches tall. And the juniper, it’s also called redwood. It’s got the red inside of it coming out of some of the white flesh here and then leaving some of the bark that’s been taken down as well. That’s been my desire recently from these turnings is to have some of the remains of what we see in the death of the tree, but from that, carve out some or turn some of the beautiful softer edges of it to show both, to show the contrast, which I think, and my whole desire this is to show the beauty that comes from the brokenness that has been left. So we see the discarded, the destruction that’s there, and the redemption that can come from some of those harshly treated pieces. Roger Why would you want to do that? I think we’re often taught to try to look away from brokenness and from pain, from suffering. For you, too, when people make things, they try to make it usually as perfect as possible, to have no blemish. You’re embracing the brokenness. Why? Tell me more about that. Vince Yeah. There’s a story behind a story, and part of this goes back to two years ago. We have five boys. Two years ago, we lost a son to cancer, 18 years old, fought for a year and a half. Even in the hospital, he began sketching out. He would draw and sketch some things. He began sketching out this image of a skull that had been turned upside down, and he drew flowers coming out of it, even in the hospital, as he was thinking through this. As we talked to him, he said, “One day, there will be some beautiful things that come from death.” This was before he knew his end was near. That really has struck me. From that, my wife and I began talking after we lost our son, Ezra, we began talking about just some healing for

    22 min

  4. 08/31/2025

    68. The Purpose of Beauty

    Hello and welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast. I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Every year, we have interns come work alongside us in what God is doing here in Japan through the arts. This summer, one of our interns was a phenomenal dancer named Anna Gardner Herren, with a huge heart for missions around the world. This was her third summer with us here in Japan, and she also made trips to Taiwan and Korea. Last August, I interviewed her in this podcast—”#61 Summer Internships” if you’d like to have a listen—so I thought it would only be fair to give her a chance to interview me this year. She has her own wonderful podcast called The Purpose of Beauty, where she explores the role of beauty in our lives talking with various artists from around the world. In this episode that I’m about to share with you, we discuss some things that I’ve never talked about before on this podcast, especially about the music of Bach and its impact in Japan, so I think you’ll enjoy it. You can find other episodes of her podcast by searching for The Purpose of Beauty or by going to our show notes. Here is our conversation: Anna Gardner Hello and welcome to the “Purpose of Beauty” podcast. I’m here with Roger W. Lowther, founder and director of Community Arts Tokyo and worship director at Grace City Church Tokyo. He also just happens to be my boss as the Mission to the World team leader in Japan. So let’s welcome Roger. Roger Thank you. Great to be here. Looking forward to talking with you about this. Anna Gardner I’m so excited to talk to you because you have so many books written about beauty, so I really wanted to hear some things that you had to say. Roger Sure. Well, where do we start? Anna Gardner Where do we start? Well, one of the things that I really enjoyed hearing you talk about is Bach, and especially Bach in Japan. So for those of you just tuning in, he is a really amazing organ player, has played all over Japan and America and probably other places as well. And he was telling me more about how Bach is so influential and important in Japan, possibly more so than America. Roger Yeah, I would say so. Anna Gardner But how did you first encounter Bach? Roger Oh, interesting question. I’ve actually never been asked that before. Anna Gardner Really? Well, I would love to know. Roger I was about to switch teachers between elementary school and junior high, and the teacher wanted to test me, audition me to see if he would take me on as a student. And so he gave me a lesson and said, “I want you to learn this piece.” It was from the Liturgical Year, the little pieces that Bach wrote, each one’s like a page long, so it’s not too hard. And I passed the audition. He said, “Wow, I’ve never had someone learn this so quickly.” I had nothing to compare it to so I didn’t know. I practiced really hard. Anna Gardner So Bach is one of your origin stories of playing the organ? Roger Yeah, I mean, it was a very stressful situation, so I didn’t actually enjoy playing the piece very much. But that was my first interaction. Yeah, and then it’s grown from there. Anna Gardner Wow. Did you ever think you would be playing it here in Japan? Roger No, Japan was not on my radar at that point. But actually after that, my audition to Juilliard, to college, was through a piece. They make you memorize and play a prelude and fugue of Bach, which are much longer as organ works than piano. It’s about 15 minutes, something like that. And so that was my first piece on the audition, and I will never forget any of the notes in that piece ever, because I had four other auditions before that one, and I recorded it, and it is permanently etched into my head. So yeah, right now I’m actually going through a whole project to record all of Bach’s sacred organ works. Anna Gardner Why his sacred organ works? Roger Because people really haven’t focused on that. They’re not technically as showy and interesting for people in concert situations. They’re like, “That’s a little too slow” or “a little too long.” And yet in worship, it’s “a little bit too long.” They don’t really want them in worship either. So people don’t really play most of the pieces in that collection. I thought, “Okay, well, the only way it’s going to be heard, is if I record it, maybe do a whole set.” I’m thinking of doing a whole marathon of it. It’ll be many, many hours to play them all in a row. Anna Gardner You’re going to play them all in a row? Roger At some point. This is a long-term project. Either next year or the year after that I’m getting ready for it. Anna Gardner That’s crazy. Well, best wishes for that. I also am curious, since coming to Japan and playing Bach, do you have any stories about your interactions with Bach here in Japan? Roger Oh, yeah. It really shocked me. I’m used to playing Bach in America, and you’ll probably have smaller audiences if you do an all-Bach concert with the organ. I think in America, we like having lots of color and orchestration and loud/soft dynamic changes and things like that. The organ is so good at changing colors. But Bach tends to be a more similar sound for longer periods of time. And yet it’s been amazing the reactions I’ve gotten from Japanese people. So a story: Just my first year here, I was meeting with a language partner to help me learn how to speak Japanese. We’d meet once a week and have conversations together. And one of the things I wanted to do was just practice speaking about Christianity in Japanese. Anna Gardner Oh, that’s actually so scary. Roger I knew it was needed. I needed to learn how to do it, but she didn’t want to talk about religion at all. She’s like, “No, no, no, let’s stick to politics and art and culture.” Anna Gardner You mean politics was easier than religion? Oh, my goodness. Roger Yeah, so we had a great friendship, but that topic was off limits. We’re not talking about religion. And I’m like, okay, well, I guess I’ll have to learn it some other way. Then Easter, that first year, I gave a concert at a local church and invited her. She wanted to support her language student, so she came. And at the end of the concert, she was in tears. And I was thinking to myself, What’s wrong? Maybe she got bad news. A family member is sick or something like that. And she said, “I can’t talk right now. We’ll talk next week.” I’m like, Okay. I hope she’s okay. And so then the next week, we got together for our usual scheduled language conversation. And she said, “I’ve never thought about hope that way. And the way you talked about it through the music of Bach and from the Bible. I’ve never heard that message before.” And that was the beginning of something. We were able to talk about religion quite frequently after that. Anna Gardner Because of Bach? Roger Because of Bach. It opened this doorway in her heart to something that was off limits before and to a little bit of herself. I still talk to her now. This is, I don’t know, 20 years ago. I’ve been here 20 years. So it opened doors to deeper relationships. And I have so many stories like that. Anna Gardner Do you have maybe one more that you want to share with us? Because I love that story. Roger Well, we’re looking out the window of my living room here, and at that building way over there, I gave a concert in the lobby of that business building. It’s a huge space, and I brought my organ and a battery, and I was playing music by Bach, and this guy came by. He’s like, “Oh, Roger. It’s so good to see you again.” He was a conductor who had hired me a number of years before to play the St. Matthew Passion. Anna Gardner Oh, beautiful. Roger Playing the organ continuo part. So those of you know the St. Matthew Passion, it requires quite a few singers. There’re multiple choirs and two orchestras. There’s a lot of echoing going back and forth, calling to each other. There’s a lot of people. First of all, I was the only non-Japanese in the room, but also I was the only Christian in the room. Anna Gardner Wait, you’re playing St. Matthew Passion? And you’re the only Christian? Roger Yeah. Anna Gardner That’s crazy. Roger And there’s one point in the rehearsal, the director knew that I was a missionary, and he stops. He was trying to explain like, “well, this is the point where, let’s just let Roger explain it because he’s a missionary. Roger, would you stand up and explain to everyone?” And I’m like, okay, first of all, I knew everyone in that room spoke Japanese better than me, and I’m like, That’s quite a lot of pressure for not making mistakes. But anyway, I did my best. And it was just through these rehearsals, people would ask me questions after like, “What does this mean?” And I remember during the concert itself, the conductor broke down in tears, and the orchestra members were looking at each other like, “What’s wrong with him?” Anna Gardner Like, while you all are performing? Roger While we were performing. Anna Gardner Oh, my goodness. Roger The musicians were like, “Is he having a heart attack? Should we stop and help him?” Because he’s faltering. This isn’t a professional orchestra. It’s a volunteer orchestra. And afterwards, I talked with him. He said, “I want to be a Christian. Never before has the message hit me so deeply.” That was a fall concert, October, and he was baptized that following Christmas worship. Anna Gardner Okay, that’s crazy. Roger Yeah. There were others as well in the orchestra who were reading through the text and trying to figure out why this was so powerful and what was going on. Where else would Japanese people who have never seen a Bible before…here they were reading scripture in this context because of the music of Bach. It’s just amazing how God has provided this doorway. Anna Gardner It’

    43 min

  5. 07/16/2025

    67. Christian Metal with Imari Tones

    Welcome to the Art Life Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Well, before we get this episode’s interview, I want to share a couple of updates with you. A couple of weeks ago, we launched the Japanese edition of Third Culture Kids, which is designed to help Japanese families living overseas with the challenges that come from raising kids in a foreign context. We know it’s going to be a big help to a lot of people, and so we’re excited to see that it made it to the top 10 for Christian books in Japan and the top 20 for family relationships. We are also looking forward to the launch of my next book, Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan on August 1. The book is about seeing the beauty of God that’s hidden within the art, history, and lives of people in Japan. In fact, this is a book that has grown out of our Art Life Faith gatherings. Most of the people I tell stories about in the book have been featured speakers in the past. By writing it down with them, this has been one more way to help Japanese people articulate how they see connections between their art, life, and faith. It’s been really fun to see the excitement on their faces as these stories now come out in print. I really hope that even if you’re not interested in Japanese culture at all, that through these books, you will gain a fresh perspective on how God can be worshiped in your daily life. Well, for this episode I have the privilege of talking to Takahiro Nakamine, otherwise known as Tone, who leads a Christian heavy metal band called Imari Tones, and he led our Art Life Faith discussion the evening after recording this interview. There were a lot of people there, very interested in hearing what he had to say, hear his music, and watch some of his music videos. He has quite a following here in Japan, and it really was an honor talking with him. I find discussions like this particularly fascinating, because when we consider what it means for ethnodoxology, the praise of the nations of the world, sometimes it’s not what we expect. Takahiro’s music is very Japanese, not because he plays traditional Japanese instruments, and not because he is singing in Japanese, and not even because he incorporates Japanese scales into his music. It’s because he is authentically praising God. It just flows out of his music and leads us to worship God as well. No one can say the West imposed their culture on him. Rather, he took an art form that spoke to him and made it his own. I mean, there is no other heavy metal band in the world quite like Imari Tones. He said he was born to play heavy metal, and I have to agree. Here’s just a little taste of his music. [“Passion” by Imari Tones] Roger So, Takahiro, thank you so much for sitting down with me to talk with people on this podcast. Takahiro Konichiwa! Arigato Gozaimasu! Thank you for having me. My name is Tak. I’m from Japan, and I’m in a band called Imari Tones, and we play Christian heavy metal. Roger So that I have so many questions for you, but let me first start with your name. So, Takahiro Nakamine, but you said that you’re also called Tone. Why are you called Tone? Takahiro Yeah, some of my close friends call me Tone, and basically it’s about my guitar sound. People call it Tone. And because I have a good tone, people call me Tone. Roger That’s awesome. Takahiro Also, you know, my name is Takahiro Nakamine. That’s my real name, and the first and last letter of these goes like T, O, N, E, so that’s where I got my nickname. Roger Very cool. I love it. A musical nickname. And your band is called Imari Tones. Now how did the band get that name? Takahiro It’s a long story. Imari is a name of Japanese porcelain, like dish pottery. Japanese old pottery from like the 18th century. We had very beautiful traditional pottery. And this pottery was exported to Europe and was very expensive. So, in a sense, it means Japanese beauty. So that’s one explanation. Since we are a Christian band, I can also say porcelain pottery is made from clay. It’s a jar of clay, like in the Bible. Roger That’s so cool. Well, actually, one of the most famous Christian bands in the United States is called Jars of Clay. You are Jars of Clay Japan. Takahiro Yeah, you can say that. But the real reason I named our band Imari Tones is because Imari is actually my wife’s name. We were together since we were in high school, so we’ve been together for very, very long time now. We became Christians after we got married. When we were young, we were not Christians yet. But for some reason when I started making music, I named my band after my wife Imari. Roger Beautiful. Takahiro She’s now playing bass in our band. When we were young, she was not in a band yet. She joined later, and she claimed the band because she was like, this is my band. Roger Yeah, it’s named after her. Takahiro It’s my name. Roger That’s so cool. Takahiro It’s beautiful. It’s all hers now. Roger All right, so I have so many questions about heavy metal music. The image that comes to my mind is that heavy metal is meant to be anti-establishment, in your face. On your website, you advertise as the first heavy metal Christian band. Right? Takahiro From Japan. Roger From Japan. Right, of course. Roger So what does that look like here? And what kind of response are churches giving you here? Takahiro As you know, Christianity in Japan is very small, and the church music scene is obviously very small. Everybody knows everybody. It’s a really small community. But basically we’ve been trying to be not too close and not too far. We have that kind of relationship with the Japanese church, if that makes sense. Roger Yeah, maybe most of the churches here are kind of older in age and smaller and maybe traditional in a lot of ways. At least that’s a strong image. Takahiro Yeah, I think that’s true. Roger So how do they respond to your music? Takahiro Many churches don’t allow us to play our music because it’s too loud or something like that. But most people in the Japanese Christian community simply ignore us or try to stay away. Generally speaking, that’s the most common reaction from Christian people here in Japan. But sometimes we have very passionate people who go crazy when they see us perform because we are doing something different. Roger Right. Takahiro And we are doing something really passionate, energetic, and we are very fun to watch. Yeah, that’s what people say. Roger So, yeah, I’ve seen some of your videos up on YouTube, and you have quite a following here with a lot of subscribers. It is a lot of fun to watch. Takahiro Thank you. Roger I can’t wait to get to see you guys live sometime. But I’m still trying to put this together, the idea of heavy metal and Christianity in Japan. Even before we started, we were talking and you were telling me about how you try to put even some of the Japanese scales into your music. I find that fascinating. I’d love to hear more about that. Takahiro So, you know, we’ve been playing this Christian heavy metal music in Japan. When we say we play Christian metal, Japanese audiences say, like, oh, you sing chorus hymns like in a cathedral. And heavy metal, the only Christian band they know is Stryper. That kind of reaction we always receive. When we say Christian metal, people always think of this Western European, traditional kind of church, cathedral thing. But we play something different. Like in the past five years, we have been trying to play heavy metal music based on Japanese traditional music. Roger So you play those scales on your guitar? Takahiro Yeah, now I’m playing them often. I’m playing Japanese traditional scales like the Hira Joshi, Kokin Joshi, Kumoi Joshi, and Ryukyu scales. And you know the Japanese national anthem “Kimi Ga Yo.” It sounds like old traditional music. And we turned Kimi Ga Yo into a Christian metal anthem Praising Jesus. We were kinda worried because when we play this song, it’s really obvious it’s the Japanese national anthem, but we are singing the words that praise Jesus in the Japanese language. And so with conservative kind of people in a political sense, we worried some people may get angry and we would get shot or something. Roger Oh, no. Takahiro So we were kind of worried when we decided to play that song. It is called “God Anthem” and I think it’s one of our most popular songs. And yeah, it’s called Gat Anthem instead of Japanese national anthem. It turned out people love it. Roger So is that one of the ones we can hear on YouTube? Takahiro Yeah, you can hear it. You can watch it on YouTube. Roger Okay, maybe I’ll play a little bit of that in this episode. Takahiro Yes, please. [“God Anthem” by Imari Tones] Roger You mentioned earlier that some people just go crazy over your music. They get so excited because it’s so different and unique. Do you have any stories you can share from concerts of people reacting to the music? Takahiro Yeah, people always go crazy. People always go nuts. When we play live shows, it’s always exciting, awesome. We have this amazing reaction from people and people say something like, you guys are ridiculously awesome or stupid good. Something like that, you know? So we are not just good, we are like crazy good, stupid good. Roger Awesome. I can kind of imagine it because I’ve been to quite a number of black gospel choir concerts where there ends up being this mosh pit up front with people jumping up and down and screaming, waving their arms. Yeah, that’s so cool. Takahiro It’s about happiness, joy, overflowing and … I don’t know how to put it in English, sorry. But it’s about the Holy Spirit. Yeah, I believe that. Roger So talking more about the style of heavy metal a little bit, how do you think that that style can uniquely praise Jesus? What does it mean for you to praise God through your

    24 min

  6. 06/10/2025

    66. Moon Creature with Verity Hayhow

    Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. Well, a lot’s been happening since our last podcast, so let me catch you up a bit. First, our church, Grace City Church Tokyo, celebrated its 15th anniversary this past Sunday on Pentecost Sunday, June 8, 2025. We started weekly worship exactly 15 years ago, and it’s been quite a journey since, which became real to all of us watching the presentation we made of pictures over the years and seeing my own children as little kids. Two of them are now in college. A lot of time has passed since this church started. And to just think about all the things that we’ve gone through over the past years. There was a lot of pain, but a lot of joy as well. And it was so exciting to celebrate that together with this community. We’re so thankful for how God has blessed over these years. Now, the most exciting part of the worship service was the space that we moved into. We have been on the move for 15 years now. Renting halls in downtown Tokyo is very expensive, and we have been turned down by many people who would not let us use their spaces. Some of the halls we were able to find have a lot of restrictions like not allowing food so we couldn’t do communion, or not allowing children (why would a hall not allow children?), or not allowing the collecting of funds, which rules out collecting tithes and offerings. Sometimes we were not able to find a place at all and we had to meet in a park at the mercy of the weather. The few times we did that, thankfully, God protected. When rain fell, we thought we would have to cancel and then it stopped just long enough for us to gather 70 people in the park, but then it started raining again right afterward and we had to go home. There has been a lot of pain but a lot of joy as well, and it was so exciting to be able to celebrate that together with this community. We’re so thankful for how God has been blessing his church. But now things have changed. An opportunity became available for us to move into a place 24/7 that we can use throughout the week. So we started something called the Tokyo Tabernacle Project to raise funds for it and moved into the space on June 1. The room was not quite finished. All the past week, the construction crew was trying to finish that up, get the rest of the wallpaper up, get some monitors up, things like that, and then for the church’s 15th anniversary this past Sunday, we were able to celebrate together and invite a lot of guests in to celebrate with us. We had some pastors come in who used to be on staff but have since gone out, sent out to plant other churches in Tokyo. We had the building committee up front to thank them for all their hard work. We had a representative from the building itself come and speak to us about the whole process and thank him for everything he did to make possible. We also had a video greeting from our founding pastor, and we were even honored to have the missions pastor and head of the missions committee from a church in the States to help support this project. It all smoothly proceeded forward under the fearless leadership of our pastor, Daisuke Kimura. The building where we’re meeting, Ochanomizu Christian Center, has a number of churches that meet for worship on Sundays. We’ve been working very hard over the past few months to develop those relationships. We were honored to have pastors from the church that meets just above us to come and bless us and pray for us, to share a meal with us during the two-hour party after worship. And they also bought us a big bouquet of flowers, which we were able to put in the entryway. It’s been so cool to see how God has pulled all this together as we look expectantly to see what he’s going to do in the future. We have other cool things to share as well. On July 1, we are launching a new book called Third Culture Kids. It was written by a missionary kid, Ulrika Ernvik, who was raised overseas. She wrote this book to help people understand the various things they need to think about when raising their children overseas in a third culture setting. There was a Japanese missionary family who went to Papua New Guinea, Yu Fukunaga, and he was so moved by this book and how helpful it was for him that he decided to undertake the task to translate it and then look for a publisher. He found us, and we agreed to work with him. This project has really been going on for a year now, and we are so proud of the results. So, this is the Japanese edition of Third Culture Kids, written from a Christian perspective. There really was nothing like this in the Japanese language before. So we’re really excited about how this is going to help families in the future. If you’re interested in learning more about this book, please contact me and check out the show notes. We pray that this book will really be a blessing to many Japanese families living around the world, whether in missions or not, even if it’s a transfer for a company. We believe this book would be really helpful for them. I’m also happy to announce that my next book will be coming out this summer called Hidden Beauty: Seeing God in Japan. It’s about the Japanese aesthetic of beauty in hiddenness, and it’s also about seeing the hidden beauty of God in Japanese art and culture. Now, this is a project that’s been on the back burner for a while. I’m so happy it’s finally coming to fruition. We plan to launch it on August 1. I submitted the audiobook version just last week, so we’re going through the process of having that approved, and I’m waiting for proofs to come from England right now so I can make sure the covers look okay. It’s been quite a process giving birth to this book, but I’m so excited to finally be able to release it to all of you. There are a lot of stories in there that have meant a lot to people in our congregation. I tell stories of five of them in there, along with a lot of other stories as well. And they were saying, Oh, you’re finally coming out with that book, so we’re celebrating together. Anyway, I can’t wait to share it all with all of you. This episode, I talk with Verity Hayhow, who has been interning with us for the past three months. She’s an illustrator and designer who worked with Harper Collins in London just after college and took a break from that to work alongside us for a little bit, and we are so grateful. She immediately dived into many of the book projects we had going on at the time, as well as writing and illustrating her own book called Moon Creature, which we’re going to talk a little bit about. I’m also happy to announce that since the recording of this podcast, Verity has asked to be part of our missionary team, and we accepted. Now she’s going through the process of being approved by a mission agency and raising support. So we can’t wait to see her again in Japan as soon as she can raise those needed funds. I’ll have more information about that at the end of the podcast if you’re interested in supporting her and helping her get here. So for now, let me invite Verity into the conversation. Verity Welcome to the Art Life Podcast, and I’m your host Verity Hayhow. Roger Nice. I love it. Thank you, Verity, for being on the program. Verity Thank you for having me. Roger So I am excited to sit down with you and share some of the stories of what God has been doing during your time here in Japan. I would love to start by interacting with you about the Art Life Faith event we had last week that you led. Thank you for doing that. It was really well-attended, and I thought the atmosphere was great. What are your feelings about it? Verity It was a good time. Yeah, I was pretty nervous running up to it, but I hope people had a good time, and I had a good time talking about my work. Roger Tell us a little bit and what you shared in that time together. Verity So the event was divided up into two parts. The first part, I just talked about myself, my favorite thing to do. And then the second part was my second favorite thing to do, which was to engage other people in something creative. I talked a bit about where I’m from, the work that I like to make, and this project that I’m working on at the moment, The Moon Creature. Roger Okay, we’ll be getting more into that in a little bit. Verity We will be. Yeah, I guess I started off by talking about why I make art and what I enjoy about it and my creative journey as well. Roger I know a big part of what we did that evening was a workshop of making bags. Can you tell us a little bit about that and why you decided on that project? Verity Everybody got a bag and everybody got to paint one and take one home with them. This was something I decided on doing that I think maybe you don’t usually do in Art Life Faith events. But I think part of my practice as an artist is getting people involved in creating art themselves rather than just creating art by myself. There’s something very spiritual about getting other people involved in making art for themselves. Because I think that when I’ve run events like this, people come along and they always start off by saying, “Well, I’m not creative” or on Friday, “Oh, I’m not a painter. I don’t make images. I’m a musician or I’m a director.” Roger It was a little scary for me, not a painter, as a musician to try to paint a bag and be like, “Oh, what if I make a mistake?” Verity Exactly. It’s this unfamiliar territory. What if I do something wrong? What if it ends up looking bad? And people always have these fears, and they always, in my experience, come away from the event feeling like they did something special, which I think then leads on to something that I believe about the process of creating art is that it responds to something deep within us. That is not necessarily about just creating something that looks nice, but also ma

    28 min

  7. 04/06/2025

    65. Dead Sea Squirrels with Mike Nawrocki

    Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. This episode, I have the privilege of talking with Mike Nawrocki, co-creator of VeggieTales and the beloved voice of Larry the Cucumber. Mike teaches at Lipscomb University, Nashville, Tennessee, and he came over to Japan with his family, a group of students, and another teacher on a mission trip during spring break. We all had an amazing time together making a couple of films and also doing an Art, Life, Faith gathering together. In that event, we showed a short teaser trailer from one of the films made that week, talked about the experience of making the films, including with one of the actresses. We showed some of the short films the students had made in college and then ended the evening with Mike singing some of the VeggieTale songs together with the students. We had so much fun, and I accompanied them on the piano. We also heard a lot about Mike’s new children’s animated series, The Dead Sea Squirrels, which just came out in mid-February, and I can’t wait to share that conversation with you in a little bit. There were probably, I don’t know, 50-60 people at this event, and one person came up to me afterwards and said, “I don’t know who all these people are, but I want to know who all these people are.” It just shows one reason why we do these. It was a wonderful opportunity to make new friendships. And hopefully, those friendships will last for a long time to come. Before we get to my conversation with Mike, I want to share a little bit about how this film project came to be, because it’s a really good example of how the arts plays a role in ministry. At one Art, Life, Faith event, I met Kei, a fashion designer and artist. And since then, we’ve often talked about gospel themes in Japanese food. He knows a lot about Japanese food. Eventually, that led into me writing a book, A Taste of Grace, which came out just last summer, full of meditations on the gospel through Japanese food. Well, when that book was released, we did an art life faith together in a beautiful home/art studio that we rented. And in that event, the owner of the venue shared a little bit about his experiences with nukatsuke, a special kind of pickling. And for those of you who’ve read my book, you may remember there was one moment where I whacked my head so hard on a low-hanging door frame. In traditional Japanese homes, the door frames are a lot lower than you expect. You need to duck when you go through. Anyway, at that event, the owner shared this story about how nukatsuke is the haha no aji, the taste of mother, and how it’s one of the most important assets that a family has. He said he was taught that as a child, if the home ever came on fire, it was his job to grab the nukatsuke and make sure it was saved and run out of the house with it, because there’s no way to replace it. If you want to hear more about that story, you can listen to Episode #47 of this podcast. Well, I was so moved by that story that shortly after we had a church winter retreat, and I shared a little bit with the group. And during it, a young Japanese woman began to cry. After then, she came up to me and she’s like, “You made me cry.” And I said, “Yeah, I noticed that. I was curious, what moved you so much about it.” And she told me the story of how she had a really difficult time growing up with her family. There were many times that she felt isolated, alone, even bullied, and she didn’t have a lot of good memories of that time. And yet when I was sharing about nukatsuke being a way that through Japanese pickling, within a family, it’s one way that God shows his love and care for us. And as she heard that, she realized that even back then, she didn’t know God, but that God was with her, walking with her. And it seemed to redeem that memory for her. It wasn’t all bad. There was some good in her childhood. By the way, this young woman is now one of the leaders in our church in Tokyo. Her story stuck with me. Well, at another Art, Life, Faith event, I met a young actress in her early 20s, and after talking with her for a little bit, I was like, “It’d be fun to make a movie together.” She’s like, “Yeah, we should do that.” Well, not long after that, Jesus Film Project approached us and wanted to commission us to write and make a couple of films to be able to put on their website for sharing the gospel through Japanese culture. And so it wasn’t too hard for me to come up with a screenplay because I basically just wrote that young woman’s story about nukatsuke in a short film format. Then the next step, I heard about a group of college students from Lipscomb that wanted to come on a mission trip to make a film. I was like, I have a screenplay, I have an actress, I have a place to film it, I have funding, and now I have a film crew. It’s just amazing how God brought all the different elements together. It was such an amazing experience with those film students. We had such a good time that who knows, the group may come back next year and make a couple more films for us. But even on top of that, there is also some interest by a couple of the students to become summer interns and stay for longer, 2-3 months next summer. I hope that happens, but we’ll see. So I share that story just to show you how making art isn’t just about coming up with a project and then making something, and then moving on. But it’s all about relationships from beginning to end, seeing discipleship happen, and even seeing people become Christians through the experience. That’s the reason why we write and publish books. That’s the reason I give concerts and we host exhibitions. That’s the reason that I’m recording this podcast. That’s the reason we continue to invite people into our community through the different events that we do. Let me tell you just a couple more stories about this. In our church, we have a makeup artist that I was talking with about this film project, asking her to be involved in it. And she said, “Do you need an actress?” And there actually was another actress that we did need for the second film. I said, “Yes, do you know anyone?” She said, “Yeah, my good friend. I’d love to invite her.” I remember this lunch that we had together in our apartment where she wanted to know more. It was basically a get to know each other time and talk about the film. But she wanted to know more. She said, I don’t know anything about Christianity. You’ve told me this has Christian themes in it, so I want to understand that better. Can you tell me what you’re thinking? I turned to the makeup artist and asked, “Why don’t you tell her?” I’m thinking, first of all, she’s your friend, and you speak Japanese better than I do. But also, it was a great opportunity for discipleship, for her to be able to answer the question, to try to put in her own words what Christianity is in the gospel. But she gave me this look back like, “Why are you looking at me? You’re the missionary.” I’m like, “No, you can do this.” Anyway, she did, and they talk back and forth about it, and then she wanted to know more. So I said, “Well, actually, this is taken from Luke 15 in the Bible. It’s a story that Jesus told.” And she was interested in that. She has heard of Jesus but didn’t know anything that Jesus said. And so we opened up Luke 15 together and read through the parable of The Lost Sheep, then The Lost Coin, and then The Prodigal Son. And she was really engaged. She kept asking questions, and the makeup artist kept answering the questions. It was so cool to see that experience happening because we were making a film. Do you see? It wasn’t really about the film. It was about this relationship, these conversations happening, and the film was just the catalyst for these conversations to happen. Through the experience, we got to know this actress pretty well, and at the end of it, she’s like, “I’ve never worked with Christians before, but this was so much fun. Please invite me again. I’d love to do this again.” And I told her we’d love to have her again. So, who knows when the next opportunity may be next year. Maybe we’ll be able to do that again. I also gave her one of my books, The Broken Leaf, the Japanese version, saying, “You may find this interesting. Here’s the other things that I’ve been talking about, the gospel through Japanese art and culture, and how I have no right to talk about these things.” I do a whole introduction in the Japanese version that isn’t in the English about what right do I have to talk about this and in a humorous way. Anyway, so the conversation continues. The other experience I’d like to share with you is how when we were trying to plan the filming for the movie that was going to happen later that week, we also decided to plan a little bit of the Art, Life, Faith gathering that was going to happen, and it ended up turning into this media fest where the students were showing one another the work that they made and talking about it. Then we rehearsed with Larry the Cucumber, with Mike Nawrocki, with various VeggieTales songs. I’m accompanying, and he’s singing Larry, and another student’s singing Bob the Tomato, and another’s Junior Asparagas, and the rest. It was just so much fun. When I asked the students later what the highlight of their trip was, they all said it was gathering in my apartment, overlooking the city, seeing all the lights of the city, all the people out there, knowing that they’re not Christians, and here we were talking about these kingdom themes and how through the arts we’re going to bring it displayed to all these people. And they said they really enjoyed hearing from each other what they had made. It was like this great, encouraging atmosphere of sharing one another’s work with each other, to be inspired also in

    33 min

  8. 03/03/2025

    64. Lausanne Conversations 3

    Welcome to the Art, Life, Faith Podcast, and I’m your host, Roger Lowther. This is the third in a series of conversations I’ve shared with you from Lausanne Congress 4, which took place September 22–28, 2024 in Seoul, South Korea. Because it was the 50th anniversary of the Lausanne Movement, it was the largest gathering yet, with over 5,000 people in person and another 2,000 online, plus over 200 nations were represented. I had so many amazing conversations, and I’m so glad that through these three episodes, you can get just a little peek into what God is doing around the world. David My name is David. It’s nice to meet Roger, my friend again. Roger Where do you serve? David I serve in the Sahara, region of Africa that comprises 15 countries. We are targeting Unreached People groups in 15 countries from Gambia, Senegal, Niger Republic, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, Ethiopia, Djibuti, and Mali. Roger Are you a pastor? David I’m not the main pastor of the church, but I assist in pastoring, and I’m a missionary. Roger Great. Do you do something in the arts as well? David Yes, I’m a musician. I specialize in producing indigenous resources for Unreached People groups. I play the local instrument called the kora. I play the ngoni. I play the guitar. Roger I think I’ve heard you play one of those traditional instruments at a previous GCAMM conference. Is that right? David Yes, I brought my kora to GCAMM in Nairobi. I also played in GCAMM in the US. Roger I was at both of those events. It was beautiful. Thank you. And so what brought you to Korea? David I was invited to be part of the Congress. The work that I do needs more people. I need to be connected to people who are also doing the work that I’m doing. So I pray to God that I would be able to see people from Chad, people from Niger, people from Mali who are probably doing some of the things that I’m doing so I can collaborate and learn from them. Roger That’s one of the key themes of this whole congress, collaboration, isn’t it? David Yeah, collaboration is key. My ministry that I work with is Declare Global, and that’s one of the things we are doing. If you are going to really declare the gospel, it must be culturally relevant to the people you are reaching. And that’s one of the key things that I’m also learning from here. Roger Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. David Thank you for having me. Roger So I hear you have a story. Could you please share it with me? Attendee I grew up as a pastor’s kid using arts and ministry in different forms: singing and acting as a tool to reach out to people in evangelism. And then later on, I served in Cambodia in a cross-cultural setting. And I realized that using arts cross-culturally has to be different in our approach than when I was in the Philippines using arts and reaching out to people. And I learned that I should be more of a learner. I’m not going there to teach them arts but to learn their arts. So I learned to dance their dance, learn their music, and appreciate their arts. I realized that it connected us, and it was a pathway for me to build relationships with them and have meaningful conversation about life and other spiritual things that led us to talk about the master artist who is God. Some of them came to Christ, and it was a great way to reach out to people for the gospel. Arts is a pathway for the gospel to reach the unreached for Christ. Roger Definitely. You’re a missionary from the Philippines to Cambodia? Attendee But now I’m back home to mobilize Filipinos to go for missions, to be engaged in missions. Roger That’s so great. Please send some to Tokyo. Send them to my location. Attendee We have people in Japan. Roger Awesome. Attendee Actually, we don’t need to talk about Japan or mobilize for Japan. Even if we don’t talk about Japan, I think God is really doing something after praying for Japan. People will just come to us like, “I’m interested in Japan” even when we didn’t say anything about Japan. Roger Well, send them on! Attendee We have people. We actually have a long-term worker there, and there are people who are on the process of going to Japan. Roger Great. Well, thank you so much. Attendee Thank you. Matt I’m Matt Menger. I am the Global Ethnodoxology and Arts Coordinator for SIL. Roger What does that mean? Matt SIL is mostly a linguistics organization that does a lot of Bible translation and things like that. But we also have the Ethnomusicology and Arts Department. I wish we could just call ourselves the Ethnodoxology Department. But we work with all of the locally meaningful forms of artistic communication around the world, anywhere that there’s Bible translation going on, and coordinate with local musicians and artists and dancers and people telling stories and all that stuff to work with them to get scripture into more forms of communication. Roger Yeah, it’s very cool. Both of us were just in the seminar, talking about ethnodoxology and the things that are happening around the world. It’s really exciting. Is there anything you’d like to share about that? Matt Yeah, I’m just excited to see the amount of interest. I think in the session that you and I were both just in, we had over 50 people, and most of them I’d never seen before. That’s really exciting to me to see more people involved with churches and other things. It’s not just cross-cultural workers anymore. There’s more organizations that are aware of this. Several conversations I’ve had this week with music foundations and others in the Christian music world have never really thought about ethnodoxology before, and they’re starting to ask questions. That’s just really exciting to me to start to see that interest grow where it’s becoming a little more mainstream. Roger Yeah, I think so, too. Matt I feel like, and I may misquote him, but Jaewoon Kim has a term that he calls multicolor worship or things having the color of the multicultural, but they’re not truly multicultural. I feel like that’s a recurring theme here this week at Lausanne as we also try to worship together with people from over 5,000 people from over 200 countries and how many different worship traditions and different flavors of Christianity arehere. Jaewoo’s thought, I forget where I read that, and I hope I’m quoting him correctly, but the idea of so many people experiencing the color of the world. It’s a big question in the world today with urbanization and with cities. Roger The way I really see it in my context is it gives the artist permission to explore and be creative and think what is possible rather than thinking they have to adopt what they’ve been told or what traditionally has been done. Matt Yeah. Another thing I heard from artists this week that I met with was just the need for more acceptance from the church and the need to be better understood and supported by the church. Sometimes they need to do commercial things to make a living, and the church doesn’t understand why it’s not all free. But I think there’s a growing recognition. I don’t know if there’s a solution yet, but there’s more recognition that the church and artists need to have a better relationship. Roger I’m sitting here with Daniel Kim, who is a seminary professor and a pastor and an artistic director of theodrama. Thank you so for talking with us. I’m curious, since you live in Korea and Japan, and it’s only two hours away, there’s been a lot of talk at this conference, especially last night. We had a big presentation on the history of the church in Korea and the bad blood, literally, between Japan and Korea. What is your take on that? How can the Korean church reach Japan? Daniel Okay. I’m a Korean, so like any Korean, we have memories. Not that I was born in that era, but my parents have told us about this. We hear it everywhere in the churches and as a nation. It is not just Korea. Many nations have suffered under the colonialization of Japan and Japan’s imperial power and their military tyranny and so forth. Roger I’m so sorry, on behalf of Japan, my home. Daniel I don’t want to just go on and on, but I think it’s pretty much understood that we’ve been the victims of that. Roger It wasn’t that long ago. Daniel No, it wasn’t. There’re people alive now that remember it. We naturally have this trauma. Yet the Bible says that we must forgive our enemies. We must bless our enemies and pray for them. Japan is in dire need of the gospel. All the resources of the Korean churches have to be poured out into Japan. But why is that not happening? Certain churches, like Onnuri Church, on an annual basis have the Love Sonata, and they send armies of people. Roger Yeah, they’re the biggest church in Korea. Is that right? Daniel It’s one of the largest churches. It’s not the biggest. Roger 70,000 people or something? Daniel I’m not sure it’s that big, but we’re talking tens of thousands. But they have tremendous resources. They have a publishing house, and they have so many networks. It’s one of the really, I would say, good modern churches here in Korea. Yet, many Korean churches are still hesitant about Japan. Roger Why? Daniel Well, because of the history. Yet, the Lord’s word is very, very clear that we must, especially when we look over to Japan, we know that the Christian population is less than 1%. We’re sending thousands of missionaries out all over the world, and we have missionaries sent to Japan, too. Roger That’s what they said last night, that Korea is the second largest mission-sending country in the world. Daniel But we’re not that enthusiastic about Japanese evangelism yet. How can that happen? I’ve been thinking about this because it can’t just be verbally. It can’t just be because we have missionaries as agents of Christ, there’s got to be certain means that wil

    42 min
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Listen in as we discuss art, life, and the Christian faith

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  • Creator
    Roger W. Lowther
  • Years Active
    2020 - 2026
  • Episodes
    71
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2020 Roger W. Lowther
  • Show Website
    Art Life Faith Podcast