Imagine new creation with us…
PPP is modeled after the successful HopeWords Conference that emerged from Bluefield, West Virginia. Inspired by the creative determination of this former coal community, HopeWords founder Travis Lowe envisioned a gathering that would bring world-class thinkers to Bluefield while also offering Bluefield as a model of how New Creation breaks through in the most unlikely places. The result of this partnership has been a yearly conference that benefits speakers, participants, and host city alike.
Having seen the impact a local, interdisciplinary gathering can have, PPP hopes to replicate the core values that have made HopeWords Conference so successful, namely:
· An affirmation of the creativity of all people
· The cultivation of interdisciplinary partnerships
· The discipline of Christian imagination
· A commitment to place
We believe that what differentiates PPP is the conviction that the call to create is not bound to a particular vocation, profession, or set of gifts. Nor is art a luxury for those with time, education, and wealth. Instead, the creative, imaginative impulse is an expression of our shared humanity as people made in the image of creative, imaginative God. Because of this, PPP also believes that the underlying principles of design, beauty, and wonder are relevant to every calling. Teachers, doctors, miners, pastors, homemakers, engineers, farmers, and foresters--all are invited into the work of envisioning and promoting Christ’s work of remaking the world in their own particular places, in their own particular ways.
Seeds of Renewal
The goal of PPP is to plant and cultivate the seeds of creative partnership in the broader region through the shared vision of New Creation. A successful gathering will offer a renewed vision of God’s own creative work; provide opportunities for local connection and partnership; and encourage participants in their own creative, imaginative endeavors.
Malcolm guite
Poet-Priest Malcolm Guite was Chaplain for 20 years at Girton College, Cambridge and remains Supernumerary Fellow. He is the author of several books including Mariner: A voyage with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Love Remember: 40 poems of loss, lament and hope, and David’s Crown: Sounding the Psalms. Guite earned degrees from Cambridge and Durham universities.
His research interests include the intersection of religion and the arts, and the examination of the works of J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, Owen Barfield, and British poets such as Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Malcolm has a particular interest in the imagination as a truth-bearing faculty and continues to reflect deeply on how poetry can stimulate and re-awaken our prayer life.
Beth Moore
Author and speaker Beth Moore is a dynamic Bible teacher whose conferences take her across the globe. She has written numerous best-selling books and Bible studies and recently celebrated a landmark 25 years of Living Proof Live conferences and she’s still counting. She can be seen teaching Bible studies on the television program Living Proof with Beth Moore aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and YouTube. Beth and her husband Keith reside in the country just outside of Houston, Texas where they share a gleeful love of dogs and wildlife. She has two adult daughters she calls her best friends and an armful of grandchildren.
Find more here: https://www.lproof.org/
Makoto Fujimura
Makoto Fujimura is a leading contemporary artist whose work has been featured in galleries and museums around the world, including The Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, The Huntington Library in California, the Tikotin Museum in Israel, Belvedere Museum in Vienna, C3M North Bund Art Museum in Shanghai, and Pola Museum in Japan. His process-driven, refractive “slow art” has been described by David Brooks of the New York Times as “a small rebellion against the quickening of time.”
Fujimura is the author of 4 books: Art+Faith: A Theology of Making, Silence and Beauty, Refractions, and Culture Care. He is also the recipient of numerous awards, including the 2023 Kuyper Prize for Excellence in Reformed Theology and Public Life and the American Academy of Religion’s 2014 “Religion and the Arts” award. From 2003 to 2009, he served as a Presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts. He has received notable recognition as a speaker, with one address selected by NPR as among the 200 “Best Commencement Addresses Ever” and by CNN as one of the top 16 “Greatest Commencement Speeches of All Time.” He is a recipient of four Doctor of Arts Honorary Degrees from Belhaven University, Biola University, Cairn University, and Roanoke College.
Haejin Shim Fujimura
Haejin Shim Fujimura is a lawyer and an entrepreneur. Fujimura is the Managing Partner of the law firm, Shim & Associates, which was founded on the vision of culture care and advocacy for the oppressed. She has extensive experience litigating various civil lawsuits and representing companies ranging from startups to publicly traded companies.
Fujimura is also a co-founder and the CEO of Embers International, a global NGO protecting, restoring, and empowering the victims of injustice to end intergenerational exploitation and prevent human trafficking for the vulnerable groups, including the children born into brothels. She has been involved in various anti-trafficking efforts for over 20 years, including her work at International Justice Mission.
Fujimura is also a co-founder and the President of Academy Kintsugi and the founder and curator of Estuary art gallery.
https://www.shimassociates.com/about
Miroslav Volf
Miroslav Volf is the Henry B. Wright Professor of Theology at Yale Divinity School and is the Founder and Director of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. He was educated in his native Croatia, the United States, and Germany, earning doctoral and post-doctoral degrees (with highest honors) from the University of Tübingen, Germany.
Miroslav regularly teaches and lectures in Central and Eastern Europe, Asia, and across North America. He has given over 30 prestigious lectureships at universities around the world, including the Dudleian Lecture at Harvard University; the Chavasse Lectures at Oxford University; the Waldenstroem Lectures at Stockholm School of Theology; the Gray Lectures at Duke University, the Stob Lectures at Calvin University, and the Cadbury Lectures at University of Birmingham.
He has written or edited more than 20 books, over 100 scholarly articles, and his work has been featured on The Today Show, in the Washington Post, Christianity Today, Christian Century, Sojourners, and several other outlets, including NPR's Speaking of Faith (now On Being with Krista Tippett) and Public Television’s Religion and Ethics Newsweekly.
Some of his most significant books include:
• Exclusion and Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation (1996; revised edition, 2019), translated in 9 other languages, winner of the Grawemeyer Award in Religion, and one of Christianity Today’s 100 most important religious books of the 20th century.
• Life Worth Living: A Guide to What Matters Most
YOUR HOST:
Hannah Anderson
is an author who lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her works is shaped by the rhythms of rural life and include Humble Roots: How Humility Grounds and Nourishes Your Soul and most recently Turning of Days: Lessons from Nature, Season, and Spirit and Heaven and Nature Sing. Hannah is currently a student at Duke Divinity School where her studies focus on the intersection of theology and art. You can find more about her work at sometimesalight.com.