Introducing Credible Witness

Join host Nikki Toyama-Szeto in the premiere season of Credible Witness, a new podcast diving into the faithful lives of Christians. Each Monday, hear stories from diverse voices in the Christian community as they discuss the challenges and beauty of living out Christian faith in today’s world. The podcast aims to address the church's struggle with assimilation and cultural imitation, presenting an authentic, radically loving vision of Christianity. With guests ranging from pastors to everyday believers, each episode offers a unique perspective on faithfulness and the courage to listen.

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Subscribe now for a new podcast that listens closely to the faithful lives of Christians, asking hard questions about what it means to be a credible church today. The complicated questions, the painful questions, the profound yet beautiful questions. The questions we're sometimes afraid to even ask, let alone answer.

I'm Nikki Toyama-Szeto, and this is Credible Witness.

In this inaugural season, every Monday will feature stories, perspectives, and wisdom from people wrestling with. Bearing witness to the credibility of Christian life in the United States.

Throughout its history, the church has faced a near constant temptation to assimilate, to imitate, and to capitalize on the dominant powers of the world.

This is no less true today as implausible versions of Christianity grow. Often it's the church that most undermines faith by copying culture rather than following Jesus. This diminishes the credibility of the gospel and reveals a failure of Christian moral imagination in action.

Jesus came to redefine reality marked by a shockingly radical love, an act of justice for the vulnerable, a communal imagination that offers hope, joy, justice, and common flourishing.

The church is meant to be a credible witness to this living reality.

Each episode of the podcast is an invitation to journey with one person as they share their story of Christian faithfulness in their own words from their own context in light of all that their life includes. We hear from pastors, leaders, scholars, and everyday believers from different Christian denominations, social locations, gender, geography, ethnicity, and political views. Some stories emerge from joy and enduring hope. Others are shaped by deep pain, hurt, and struggle. All of them bear credible witness to Christ in ways both ordinary and extraordinary.

Each voice reminds us that the church is not a fixed institution. It's a living relational body, still becoming still beloved, not through just one cultural lens, but through many. Together an alternative to the echo chambers that divide us. Each guest challenges us to listen bravely and recognize our own blind spots, especially those that divert the church from showing itself as God's new humanity by the power of the Holy Spirit this is credible witness. finding stories of faithfulness and the courage to listen.

Episodes Drop Mondays starting July 28th. Subscribe now wherever you listen to podcasts.

Credible Witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative. For more information, visit crediblewitness.us.

Credible Witness is brought to you by the Rethinking Church Initiative. Produced and edited by Mark Labberton, Sarey Martin Concepcion and Evan Rosa. Hosted by Nikki Toyama-Szeto.

Special thanks to Fuller Theological Seminary, Christians for Social Action, and to Brenda Salter McNeill, whose book inspired the title of the show.

For more information, visit CredibleWitness.us.