Forefront 360

Interview: Eva Ting

Rich and Nate interview Eva Ting. Eva is the Director of Events and Programming at W83 Ministry Center, the home of Redeemer West Side Church that also serves as a community and cultural center on the Upper West Side of New York City. Her interests lie in cultivating spaces for community engagement and designing art experiences and events that invite the public to participate in thoughtful conversations as well as thoughtful action. Prior to her work at W83, Eva was the Public Programs Coordinator at Times Square Alliance, executing public art installations and events in one of the world’s most iconic urban places. Eva lived in Shanghai, China for several years and directed twocities, a gallery that specialized in contemporary craft and hosted music and cultural events, including a well-loved jazz performance series. Eva is a member of Christians in the Visual Arts and served as a board member. 

In the episode we also mention Eva's new nonprofit, Here to Honor, and the video Nate produced for Goldenwood that features Eva.

Interview: Ryan Diaz

Rich and Cody interview poet Ryan Diaz.

Ryan Diaz is a writer, poet, and theologian from Queens, NY. He holds a BA in History from St. Johns University and is completing a MA in Biblical Studies. His writing has appeared in publications like Transcendentals, Dappled Things, Ekstasis, and Premier Christianity. His first poetry book, For Those Wandering Along the Way, debuted in 2021.

Ryan’s poetic work seeks to find the divine in the ordinary, the thin place where the transcendent and the mundane meet. His academic interests include the literature of J.R.R. Tolkien and the Inklings, the Christian Mystical tradition, and the relationship between Art and Faith. He currently lives in Queens, NY with his wife Janiece.

Interview: BibleProject feat. Mike McDonald

Forefront Chairman Rich Christman talks to Mike McDonald from BibleProject about the use of animation to help people understand Scripture.

Mike McDonald works on cultivating awareness and creating strategic relationships with churches, organizations and other non-profits that are looking to use BibleProject Videos in their context. He also leads their Global Focus team which is working on localizing their videos into different languages. He previously spent 11 years leading a global development organization as well as serving on several boards for international organizations with compassion and justice missions. In a previous life, he owned and operated restaurants in Canada and the US, and still loves enjoying a great meal in new cities with his wife, Melissa.

Interview: Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson

In this special episode, Forefront director Nate Mancini talks to professor, author and speaker Dr. Jessica Hooten Wilson. This episode was recorded with a live studio audience at the Imagination Redeemed conference in Colorado Springs. In the first half we discuss which of today’s authors give Jessica hope for the future of fiction literature, how artists should read books differently from others, how to build an online presence without losing your soul, and of course, how our faith drives us to excellence in the arts. The second half features virtual audience questions from authors such as Dr. Russell Moore, Dr. Karen Swallow Prior, Dr. Benjamin Myers, and Dr. Ralph C. Wood.

Jessica Hooten Wilson is the Louise Cowan Scholar in Residence at the University of Dallas. She is the author of Giving the Devil his Due: Flannery O’Connor and The Brothers Karamazov, which received a 2018 Christianity Today Book of the Year Award in the Culture & the Arts; as well as two books on Walker Percy: The Search for Influence: Walker Percy and Fyodor Dostoevsky (Ohio State University Press, 2017) and Reading Walker Percy’s Novels (Louisiana State University Press, 2018); most recently she co-edited Solzhenitsyn and American Culture: The Russian Soul in the West(University of Notre Dame Press, 2020). She has received numerous fellowships, grants, and awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship to the Czech Republic, an NEH grant to study Dante in Florence in 2014, and the Biola Center for Christian Thought sabbatical fellowship.  In 2018 she received the Emerging Public Intellectual Award given by a coalition of North American think tanks in collaboration with the Centre for Christian Scholarship at Redeemer University College, and in 2019 she received the Hiett Prize in Humanities from The Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture.

Jessica has two books releasing in 2022, which you can preorder today: The Scandal of Holiness: Renewing Your Imagination in the Company of Literary Saints and Learning the Good Life: Wisdom from the Great Hearts and Minds that Came Before.

Interview: Zac Tiessen

Rich talks to composer Zac Tiessen about his surprising start in the music world, his inspiration, and his latest project Streams in the Wasteland.

 

Zac Tiessen is an international award-winning musician, composer and audio engineer based near Toronto, Canada. His innovative techniques and cinematic progressive music have been featured numerous times in the media and press (Guitar World Magazine, Toronto Star). Tiessen has been awarded multiple FACTOR Canada music grants for his original compositions as a solo artist. In addition to his two solo EPs and debut full-length original soundtrack album "Streams In The Wasteland," his composing credits include music for Netflix and Ubisoft (Playstation/Xbox). Endorsed by six guitar companies, including Canton Custom Instruments, Tiessen co-designed and released his signature eight string Canton electric guitar. He studied music theory, guitar performance, production (mixing/mastering) and film scoring through UCLA and Berklee College of Music, where he was awarded a Celebrity Scholarship from Grammy-winning producer Don Was. Working out of ZT Music Studio, Tiessen has engineered thousands of songs for other bands and artists from over 45 countries, including Billboard charting albums, with millions of views and streams online.

Debate: Star Wars vs. Harry Potter vs. LOTR

In this lively episode, Cody, Rich and Nate explicate the Gospel themes (whether intentionally present or not) in Star Wars, Harry Potter, and The Lord of the Rings — and debate which tale best evokes the beauty of the Great Story.

Interview: Adam Bannister

Rich and Dan talk to Adam Bannister, the founder of the band Songs for Revival and a full time missionary with Inca Link. He is currently serving in Honduras to raise worship leaders and assist youth programs until August 2021. Afterwards, he will be moving to the mountains of Guatemala to serve as a worship leader.

Songs for Revival was born in January 2020 during a trip to Guatemala. Adam was unsure of his next steps after college, but he had recently begun writing music for the first time. He was inspired by the words of the Gospel of Luke, and by January 2020, he'd written 17 of the 20 songs of what would become the first album, It Is Finished.

Songs for Revival consists of six members: Adam Bannister, Brooke Bannister, Katie Shaw Ficker, Giovanna Johnson, Mollie Landman, and Peter Stauffer. Over the past year they have continued to write and share their music and see the Lord bring healing, joy, and revival through the singing of His Word. They will be releasing an album telling the story of Moses later this fall.

Learn more about the band at: songsforrevival.com

Interview: Josh Tiessen

Forefront chairman Rich Christman talks to artist Josh Tiessen.

Born in 1995 in Moscow, Russia, Josh Tiessen is an international award-winning artist based near Toronto, Ontario, Canada, He was listed as one of the world’s top ten prodigy artists (Huffington Post) and recognized as the only known male art prodigy in North America (Dr. J. Ruthsatz, international child prodigy expert). His hyperreal shaped oil paintings, which take up to 1700 hours to complete, reflect the interaction between the natural world and human-made structures, drawing upon his studies in philosophy, theology and intercultural aesthetics.

Click here to learn about or preorder Josh's new book, Streams in the Wasteland.

Special: Identity with Andrew Nemr

At a recent Forefront virtual event, we screened the short film "Identity" featuring internationally known tap dance artist Andrew Nemr. The film joins Andrew as he navigates being the only son of immigrants, a trusted keeper of the oral tradition of tap dance, and a follower of Jesus Christ. Through many challenges we see Andrew as he literally dances his way through questions about family, ethnicity, race, art, community, and where one’s identity really comes from.

In this special podcast episode, listen to the conversation that Forefront director Nate Mancini had with Andrew about what it means to find our identity.

Discussion: The Bible as Literature feat. Peter Englert

Forefront Podcast Director Cody Schweickert talks to Peter Englert, the Adult Ministries Director at Browncroft Community Church. Peter co-hosts the Why God Why Podcast, which explores the questions that matter most in people lives — often the questions people do not feel safe to ask in church. 

In this episode, Cody and Peter discuss what it means to look at the Bible as literature instead of as a purely descriptive or scientific text. If the Bible is art, how does that change how we read it, and how will it change our relationship with God?