In this episode we chart a fresh and deep course for worship (on a Sunday) in post-Christian communities: worship in polyrhythms. There is so much potential for fresh, deep, and biblical creativity in corporate worship. Yet worship leaders often lack a rich understanding of what they are doing. Our guest is professional percussionist Jillana Nickel. Jillana and I play Cuban music, and she teaches me to play the cowbell.

In this episode we trade jazz piano for graffiti. We ask: “What if we reframed the witness of your church as receiving Jesus’ healing, and extending Jesus’ healing, in your neighbourhood?” In this episode, Mark walks the streets of Canada’s poorest postal-code with philosopher and pastor, Dr Jamie Hellewell. Jamie has been a resident of Vancouver’s Downtown East Side for twenty years.

Our kinship with the creation is crucial for the life and witness of the churches in post-Christian neighborhoods. Our guest is leading horticulturalist, Sage Kosa. Hosted from the grand piano, alongside a potted sword fern.

Mark’s guest, Dr Drew Hart, is an author, scholar and activist. Mark asks Dr Hart what he expects of him, as a White jazz musician who plays Black American Music. Sitting at the piano, Mark shows why the blues sounds like it does. Mark and Drew discuss the origins of the blues and the way the blues is the foundation of almost all contemporary Western music. Can music be a pathway for finding our way home, as a culture in crisis?

The great tenor saxophonist John Coltrane said: “I Practice Scales to Become a Saint.” Artists and Christ followers walk a similar path, as those who discern the truth about the world. The artistic gift of intuitive discernment, of expressing reality with clarity and soul, relates to the Christian gospel. Mark explores a woven kinship between artists and Christ followers while playing the grand piano.

This episode unfolds a vision for leadership in post-Christian church communities. Our guest is Wynston Minckler, a top acoustic bass player. Mark and Wynston show how jazz bands are “leader-full” communities, offering a fresh and exciting pathway for church leadership.  

The Blue Note Theology podcast offers a fresh vision for the church in post-Christian neighbourhoods. Blue notes in jazz and blues music create tension and some of the deepest creativity is found in that space. In this trailer, meet your host, Mark Glanville, a professional jazz musician, theologian, and author, as he introduces the concept of blue notes in jazz and blues music and sets up for the first season of Blue Note Theology. The first full-length episode launches in early December. Produced, written, and edited by Mark Glanville Associate produced by Daniel Melvill Jones