Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with C. Kavin Rowe (George Washington Ivey Distinguished Professor of New Testament and Vice Dean for Faculty, Duke Divinity School). Drawing on Rowe's recent book, Leading Christian Communities (Eerdman's, 2023), this conversation focuses on how the New Testament enables the communities it shapes to envision a faithful and compelling vision of Christian leadership.

Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with David Gustafson (Chair of Mission and Evangelism at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School). Drawing on insight's from David's book, Gospel Witness through the Ages (Eerdman's, 2022), this conversation focuses on how Christians can learn to fulfill our charge to "do the work of an evangelist" (2 Tim. 4:5) by learning from the evangelistic strengths—and weaknesses—of the Church throughout the ages.

What is gender, how does it relate to sex, and what's love got to do with it? Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Fellipe do Vale, Assistant Professor of Biblical and Systematic Theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Drawing on do Vale's recent book, Gender as Love: A Theological Account of Human Identity, Embodied Desire, and Our Social Worlds (Baker Academic, 2023), this episode introduces listeners do a deeply theological approach to understanding gender that is both grounded in the biblical story and engaged with the fraught realities of contemporary life.

Happy Thanksgiving! On this episode, Sam chats with Abigail Hull Whitehouse (a fellow priest in the Diocese of the Carolinas) about the season of Advent that begins this Sunday. Sam and Abigail discuss the meaning of the Advent season, the apocalyptic theology it brings to the fore, and how listeners can "bring Advent home" through spiritual disciplines and practices, both individually and as families. 

In this episode, Sam Fornecker chats with Michael Rhodes (Lecturer in Old Testament at Carey Baptist College). Dipping toes into Michael's recent book, Just Discipleship: Biblical Justice in an Unjust World (IVP Academic, 2023), this conversation considers a range of questions: What is justice? Does God care about justice—and if so, why? What does God say about justice in the Bible? What is a "jubilary politics"? And what does it mean for the Church to be a moral ecology or contrast society, modeling a different way of being in the world? More information about Michael's earlier book with Robby Holt, Practicing the King's Economy (Baker, 2018) may be found here.

Would the discovery of "alien life" overturn the Christian faith? As we gain a clearer picture of the universe — it is estimated that there exist around 400 billion billion potentially habitable planets — it's important that Christians answer with a ready, "Of course not"! Join Sam Fornecker and Andrew Davison, Starbridge Professor of Theology and Natural Sciences at Cambridge University, for a chat about how the Christian tradition enables us to grapple with the theological implications of exobiology. Regardless of what may or may not be "out there," grappling with familiar themes in this way helps us to grow in our understanding of the core doctrines of the faith, here and now. (Episode cover credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ. Observ. Munich/T. Preibisch et al.; IR: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI)

If God is love (1 Jn 4:8, 16), why does the Bible make Him look like a bully? Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Dr. Paul Copan (Pledger Chair of Philosophy and Ethics at Palm Beach Atlantic University) about violence in the Bible: from criminal justice to divine smiting, from cursing psalms to holy war. This conversation draws on Paul's recent book, Is God a Vindictive Bully? (Baker Academic, 2022) to show that a careful reading of the Bible reveals a God at once more holy, more just, and more lovely than we could have imagined.

Join Sam Fornecker for a chat with Dani Treweek, founding director of the Single Minded ministry and adjunct teacher at Moore Theological College, about the Christian vision of singleness. Dani's recent book on the subject—The Meaning of Singleness: Retrieving an Eschatological Vision for the Contemporary Church (IVP Academic, 2023)—assesses the Church's frequent failure to walk well alongside single people, and argues that the full belonging of single people in the Church must begin with a renewal of the Church's eschatological vision.

Join Sam Fornecker for a conversation with Paul Louis Metzger, professor of Christian theology and theology of culture at Multnomah University and Seminary, about the role of personhood in Christian ethics. This chat focuses on Paul's remarkable book, More than Things: A Personalist Ethics for a Throwaway Culture (IVP Academic, 2023). The "reader's guide" mentioned in the episode can be found here. For a teaser of Sam and Paul's conversation, see here, timestamp 4:35.

Season 3 kicks off with Steve Tong, History Master at Sydney Grammar School in Sydney, Australia. Drawing on Steve's new book, Building the Church of England: The Book of Common Prayer and the Edwardian Reformation (Brill, 2023), this episode looks at how the English Reformers sought to give visible form to the invisible Church, through a gospel-centered ecclesiology and a Bible-based liturgy—and what these efforts can teach believers today.