Centre for Christian Living podcast

Tim Challies is known throughout the Christian world as a prolific and insightful blogger and author. More recently, he has turned his hand to documentary film-making, with a new project in the works looking at the history of Christianity through significant objects. While in Sydney to look at some of our Christian treasures (like the Fleet Bible), Tim dropped into the CCL studio for a wide-ranging and fascinating chat about history, technology, evangelism, Billy Graham, Western culture and more. Visit http://ccl.moore.edu.au/listen/podcast/ for shownotes and a full transcript of this episode.

Everybody travels these days. The question is, most often, not whether we will travel overseas, but where we are thinking of travelling to next.  It’s hard for us to recognise just how historically novel this experience is. And it can be hard for Christians to realise that, like every other aspect of our lives, our travel plans need to come under the lordship of Jesus Christ.  In this episode of the podcast, we hear the very useful insights of Stephen Liggins, author of a new book on Christians and travel—in fact, the only book on Christians and travel that, to the best of our knowledge, exists!  Find shownotes on our website at http://ccl.moore.edu.au.

There was a time not so long ago when the question of how the Holy Spirit worked in the life of the Christian was a source of high controversy. Arguments over the “baptism in the Spirit” and the “gifts of the Spirit” dominated Christian conversation. These days, those arguments seem to have died down, and that may be a good thing—or then again, not. If we’ve stopped thinking and talking so much about the Spirit because we’ve sorted out the controversies and have a very clear idea of what the Bible says about the Holy Spirit, that would be a good thing. But if we’ve just swept the subject under the carpet, or moved on to something else more interesting, that's not so good. We do need a clear, biblical understanding of the person and work of the Holy Spirit—especially in relation to our daily Christian lives. That’s what we tackle in this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast, with Tony Payne talking to Phillip Jensen.

It’s been a year of “Reformation”—of remembering, celebrating and learning afresh from Reformers like Luther, Calvin, Cranmer and Tyndale. But among the lesser known Reformers was Matthew Zell, an admirable, courageous and extraordinary man who was one of the leading Reformation pastors in Strasbourg. However, this episode of the CCL podcast is not about Matthew Zell and what we might learn from him about the Christian life; it’s about the equally admirable, courageous and extraordinary woman who was married to him. In episode 11 of the CCL podcast, Jane Tooher introduces us to the extraordinary Katherine Zell.

Of the many insults and accusations that were flung at Martin Luther and the other Reformers, one of the most common (and stinging) was that their “gospel of grace” de-motivated people from actually living a godly life. If heaven came free without works, what was the point of trying to be good? And it wasn’t just in the Reformation: Dietrich Bonhoeffer famously wrote in the early 20th century about the deadly effect of “cheap grace”—the idea that someone could accept the grace and forgiveness of Christ as a cheap gift requiring no response from us. Does the Reformation gospel—the one that evangelicals still believe—cut off repentance and living a new life from the good news of Christ? Just what is the relationship between the gospel and the good life? That’s the subject we’ll be discussing in Episode 10 with our guest, theologian and church historian Marty Foord.

Dan Wu grew up with one foot in an Asian “honour/shame culture” and the other foot in a Western “guilt culture”. So he was more than a little interested when he read that the Bible was supposedly a “shame culture” book and that we Westerners misread it from our “guilt culture” perspective. The result was a fascinating journey of scholarship into the meaning of honour, shame and guilt in the Bible. In this episode of the CCL podcast, we talk to Dan about “honour”, “shame” and “guilt”, and how a fresh understanding of these three closely related ideas helps us understand not only the whole story of the Bible, but whole story of our Christian lives—whichever culture we happen to be from.

What do you feel when you hear the claim that one in four Australian women have experienced domestic violence? Are you shocked (or even sceptical) that it could that many? Do you feel anger, abhorrence, or a sickening lurch of recognition? Whatever we feel, it cannot be indifference. As painful and as difficult as the subject is, domestic violence (DV) is a reality that we must understand and respond to. That’s what we’re aiming to at least begin to do within the brief confines of this episode of the CCL podcast. Our guest is Kara Hartley, a member of the Sydney Anglican Domestic Violence Taskforce, and our conversation ranges over the nature of domestic violence, how widespread it is, how we can understand its causes, and how we can respond as Christians.

The Reformation was a revolution in the lives of ordinary everyday people. It changed family life and work life. It radically altered daily spiritual devotion and the weekly experience of going to church. Tony Payne speaks to Carl Trueman about this "everyday Reformation".

Tony Payne talks with Andrew Shead about how the extraordinary collection of poems we call ‘Psalms’ can shape and form our Christian lives.

There are two Bible verses that capture the tension this episode explores: on the one hand, there is Ecclesiastes 2:24: “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil. This also, I saw, is from the hand of God …”. On the other, there is a verse like Luke 14:26: "If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” So which is to be? Love the good life that God has given you and enjoy it to the full? Or hate your life, pick up your cross and follow Christ? Mikey Lynch is intrigued by this tension, and is writing a book about it. He dropped into the plush CCL studios here at Moore College (i.e. a table in a corner of the morning tea area) to talk about it.