Seize the Day podcasts

'Seize the Day' podcast #18 - August 2010: John Ayrton talks to Andy Dipper of Release International, about learning from the persecuted Church (14 mins) - last in series.

'Whether you're a Sunday School teacher in a prison in Indonesia – who could have quite happily just sat in a corner of a cell and served her two year term and waited till she got out again, and then gone back to church, or quietly got on with being a medical doctor – or Dr. Rebekka Zakaria in Indonesia: she started a church within the prison. She came out and she then went back into full time pastoral ministry. Now she is spending her whole life talking about God's faithfulness in spite of being in prison. God's name has been honoured and glorified, time after time after time, because of the persecution she went through.'

In this podcast, John Ayrton is talking to Andy Dipper, CEO of Release International, about what we can learn from the persecuted Church. Last in series.

'Seize the Day' podcast #17 - July 2010: John Ayrton talks to Linda Harding about the Kairos missions mobilising course for local churches. (10 mins 7 sec)

'People just fall in love with Jesus. They catch God's heart for the world, and they realise that they have a part to play in being a blessing to the nations - that they're not just blessed to be blessed, but they're blessed to be a blessing. They outwork that in many different ways: many people begin to pray more - one of the things we do on Kairos, every single session we pray for a few minutes for different nations, for different people groups - not just the other side of the world, but in their neighbourhood.'

In this podcast, John Ayrton is talking to Linda Harding about the Kairos missions mobilising course for local churches.

'Seize the Day' podcast #16 - June 2010: John Ayrton talks to Mark North from Bolsover Methodist Church, about how they succeeded in reaching one in three of the people in their local community. (9 mins 36 sec)

'I think we worked out that out of a town of ten thousand people, we met with three thousand of them. The Sunday service - we are quite a small church, we have about seventy active people - we had two hundred people in the service. All of those people, virtually, were from outside our church community. We'd never seen them before.'

In this podcast, John Ayrton is talking to Mark North, from Bolsover Methodist Church, about how they succeeded in reaching one in three of the people in their community.

'Seize the Day' podcast #15 - May 2010: David Couchman and John Ayrton talk about 'God: new evidence' - the new apologetics resources from Focus. (11 mins)

The fine-tuning argument, the intelligibility of the universe, the awe-inspiring nature, the elegance of the physical laws - all of these things are pointers which raise questions for me, but my knowledge and experience of God comes from the fact that I believe that God is a revealing God, and that revelation comes in Jesus.

In this podcast, we're talking about 'God: new evidence' - the new apologetics resource from Focus, featuring John Polkinghorne, David Wilkinson, Rodney Holder, Peter Williams and Graham Swinerd talking about the cosmic fine-tuning that points towards a creator.

'Seize the Day' podcast #14 - April 2010: Peter Lowman from Wycliffe Baptist Church talks about their constructive engagement with their local Muslim community. (20 mins)

All round the room you could see Muslims and Christians talking to each other good-naturedly. We had food: they provided food - Halal food - we provided food. So there were refreshments, there was literature, and dialogue was going on until ten o'clock. We started at 6.30, and and at ten o'clock you could still see people at the doorway here talking good-naturedly about the Trinity. And it was good-natured. And everybody was saying, 'we have to do this again.'

In this podcast, we're talking to Peter Lowman from Wycliffe Baptist Church, about his church's experience of engaging constructively with their local Muslim community.

Also in this programme: David Couchman talks to Tony Whittaker about Internet Evangelism Day 2010.

'Seize the Day' podcast #13 - March 2010: Elaine Storkey, President of Tearfund, talks about what the church in the west can learn from the church in developing countries. (11 mins)

They got all this money which they'd been tithing and saving for the roof, but they were surrounded by HIV-Aids orphans and HIV-Aids widows who'd got no livelihood or anything, and he just felt that God was saying, 'put that money in their direction, not on the church roof.' He took it to the church meeting, and they weren't at all keen on this. He said 'I'll abide by the church's decision, but give it a week to think about.' The whole church prayed for a week, and at the end of the week they said, 'we won't put a roof on our church. We'll actually put this money into the community, to bless these Aids orphans.'

In this podcast, we're talking to Elaine Storkey, President of Tearfund, about what the church in the west can learn from the church in developing countries.