Featuring jazz improvisation, an address, and a robust theological panel, our opening keynote will kick off a weekend of surprising encounters.
A Surprising Welcome
Thursday, Sept. 4, 7:30 PM
An experience of texture and surprise, the opening keynote will combine all the elements of the full conference in one place: music, improvisation, and dialogue—and all between speakers whom might not otherwise meet despite their training, talent, and excellence. The event will feature music and improvisation by jazz artists Nnenna Freelon and Julian Davis Reid, a talk by James K. A. Smith, and conclude in a panel on the theology of surprising encounters with all three speakers chaired by DITA Director Jeremy Begbie. Join us for this rare experience of an evening!
This keynote is only available to conference registrants. Register now to get your spot!
Meet the Speakers
Julian Davis Reid (M.Div., Candler School of Theology) is a Black artist-theologian from Chicago who seeks collective transformation as the new world unfolds. Julian is the founder of the ministry Notes of Rest®, which invites the weary to listen for God’s transforming rest practiced in the Bible and Black music. Julian steadily releases and performs music under his own name and with his jazz-electronic fusion group The JuJu Exchange.
Nnenna Freelon is a multi-award winning musician, performer, and artist. A seven-time GRAMMY® Award nominee, Freelon has seen major events in 2025, beginning with an appearance in the PBS-NC series Shaped By Sound, followed by the release of a collection of original solos “Beneath the Skin.” And her debut book Beneath the Skin of Sorrow, will release in Fall 2025 with Duke University Press. She will also appear in two television shows in 2025. Freelon was inducted into the NC Music Hall of Fame in 2022.
James K. A. Smith is Professor of Philosophy at Calvin University where he holds the Gary & Henrietta Byker Chair. Smith has embraced the vocation of being a “translator” of philosophy for wider audiences. As a cultural critic and commentator, he explores the tensions of modern life, inviting readers and audiences to more intentional practices of faith and flourishing. He is the award-winning author of a number of influential books including You Are What You Love: The Spiritual Power of Habit (2016).
A Conversation in Word and Song
Music’s Patient
“The Holy Spirit can use Black music to convict us should we listen for it. Black music can bring us forward into new life in God wherein corruption and oppression can be transmuted into healing.”
“This is what we call life, I guess. It’s tough, but it’s good, too. There’s no soft-pedaling it or pretending everything’s cool because it’s not what I asked for. But it has come with some gifts, too. Art has saved me—singing, writing, reflecting.”
Author of You Are What You Love
“Why am I Christian? … I would say it’s this: this incredible testimony of a God who created the entire wonders of the cosmos becoming one of the most vulnerable of humans.”
—James K. A. Smith, The Veritas Forum