The Lydia Project

Episode 36: Kristie Anyabwile

 

From miscarriage to mentorship: Kristie shares how losing her first child in miscarriage led her and her husband to the foot of the cross. Kristie's work in church ministry, alongside her husband, Thabiti, has equipped her with life experience and biblical knowledge that has her passionate about the Bible and passionate about mentoring. She is particularly encouraged when women mentor other women in a way that leads them to a deeper relationship with God and a better understanding of His word. This passion has also led her to publish a devotional on Psalm 119 written solely by women of colour. Listen here as Kristie shares her journey.

 

EPISODE NOTES:

Kristie Anyabwile remembers saying evening prayers every night by her bedside with her grandma. Her grandma was her first Christian influence, but it was only years later, as a newly-married woman suffering the trauma of a recent miscarriage, that Kristie came to truly understand who Jesus was. From the time she and her husband were first rocked by the gospel message they heard on television until this day, Kristie continues to live in the light of that same gospel. Three kids and a few moves later, Kristie’s ministry in the Lord revolves around her family; Anacostia River Church in southeast Washington where she disciples and teaches women in her church, and joyfully supports her husband of 28 years, Thabiti, as he pastors the church; and the work of the Charles Simeon Trust – an organisation that seeks to equip lay folk with Bible reading and teaching skills.  Close to her heart is the practice of women mentoring other women. In this interview, Kristie speaks about what that can look like.

Kristie also shares about the recently released devotional she was privileged to see through from conception to reality.  “His Testimonies, My Heritage: Women of Color on the Word of God is a collection of devotions by a diverse group of women of colour—African-Americans, Hispanic, Caribbean, and Asian women. Contributors include Kristie Anyabwile, Jackie Hill-Perry, Trillia Newbell, Elicia Horton, Christina Edmondson, Blair Linne, and more. It is a faithful exposition of Psalm 119 and incorporates each contributor’s cultural expression both within the teaching and as they bring the word of God to bear on their lives. Readers will be thrilled and encouraged by hearing God speak through his word as it is expounded by these faithful women teachers, and they will long for more.”*

ENDORSEMENTS:

His Testimonies, My Heritage: Women of Color on the Word of God

“A rich collection of wise, talented voices. My soul has been refreshed by this timely reminder of God’s kind and gracious provision for his people through his word. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book that so emphasized the sufficiency and relevancy of Scripture for today’s problems. – KATE MOTAUNG, Author, A Place to Land: A Story of Longing and Belonging; Co-Author, Influence

“His Testimonies My Heritage is an edifying book. What the essayists in this collection have in common are two things: they are all women of color, and they all write out of deep and moving experience of joyfully coming under the authority of holy Scripture.” – D.A. CARSON, President, The Gospel Coalition

“This book is like entering a type of class reunion, where the various shades of skin are beautifully enveloped in the exact same grace blanket. I feel comfortable and in very good company. Our Father doesn’t ignore our context or race-linked struggles when speaking to us about his testimonies, and he soothes us through each other. I invite you to join my sisters and be encouraged and uplifted by looking at his eternal truth through these eyes.” – AIXA DE LOPEZ, Author; Speaker; Board Member, Christian Alliance for Orphans

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• The Revenge of Conscience, by J. Budziszewski
• Anacostia River Church in Washington DC
• Charles Simeon Trust 
• His Testimonies, My Heritage: Women of Color on the Word of God, edited by Kristie Anyabwile

SHOW SNIPPETS:

"I guess part of it is just hoping that we would open our eyes a little bit more in our local context and see who God has placed right in front of us, and that we would take the steps and the initiative to learn from one another."

"I didn’t notice that there is so much that I learn from older women in my life by them just talking to me and telling me about their life."

"She was the kind of person who, just in normal conversation, was pouring out wisdom that she did not even recognise."

"All of us, in the body of Christ, can only (but) benefit when we learn from someone outside of our own culture."

 

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Episode 35: Jen Logan

 

Why should Christians care about art? Does God care about art? How can art be used to express Christian truth to today's post-Christian Western society? Join Tori Walker in conversation with Jen Logan to hear her fascinating answers to these questions.

 

EPISODE NOTES:

Jen Logan came to Christ in her early 20s. She trained and worked in the area of social work in Australia before moving to England. There she studied at the London School of Theology and King’s College London. One of Jen’s main focuses this year is as director and conceptual and visual lead for Fer, an initiative that produces creative, theologically inspired projects that communicate explicitly or implicitly the Christian narrative and worldview through art and apply it deeply to the whole of life today. Jen lives in a hyper-local Christian community in the heart of London with her husband, David, and their two children: daughter, Aoife, and son, Tate.

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Fer – “a collaborative project following the tradition of art used as a theological medium; as an instinctive mode for communicating the faith.”
• Anglican Deaconess Ministries – Jen received funding through ADM to further the work of the gospel through Fer. See this link for her interview with ADM.

SHOW SNIPPETS:

(Regarding the problem of evil) "… everything else did not feel like the solution was as weighty as the problem. Whatever the solution was, it seemed to me that it did need to come from outside of ourselves. I could not be the source of my own enlightenment."

 

"The beauty and wonder of the person of Christ is pretty hard to go past for anyone who has given him serious attention."

 

"If you go through the deep history of Christianity, art has always been such a key player in the communication and expression of the Christian Faith and theology."

 

"Even beyond the text of the Bible we see so much art involved. Beginning with creation … even in the description of the way God created is art in itself. It’s a poem of the act of creation."

 

"Ritual is an art form … the routine, the daily obedience of breaking bread … sometimes feels boring … but I find those things are more transformational for me than the big wow inspirational moment."

 

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Episode 34: Kerry Newill

 

Trauma, Counselling and Youth Ministry - Kerry explores how all three of these topics, centred around God's Word, have shaped her understanding of God and how we live our lives in response to Him. In this way, Kerry has found herself better equipped to teach the Bible, to counsel others and to serve in a youth ministry that builds deep relationships and teaches teens exegetic skills in reading and understanding the Bible.

 

EPISODE NOTES:

Kerry was born in Cape Town, South Africa to her parents, Rog and Les Palmer. They served in uni ministry at the University of Cape Town during her formative years. Kerry studied at George Whitefield Theological College in Cape Town during her first few years of marriage. After completing her studies, she worked in uni ministry while also serving alongside her husband, Craig, in his role as a pastor at St James, Kenilworth. Their focus was on youth and young adult ministry, with a particular emphasis on training others in Bible reading and teaching skills. Today, Kerry, Craig and their three children find themselves celebrating their 10th year at Westminster Presbyterian Church Bull Creek, in Perth, where Craig serves as lead pastor.

 

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• No Guts, No Glory, by Ken Moser, Ed Vaughan and Al Stewart
• Inside Out, by Larry Crabb
• Healing the Wounded Heart, by Dan Allender

 

SHOW SNIPPETS:

"Terrorists came to our church that night with their AK47s and their bombs … By the time they left, there were 11 people dead and 50 people injured. That was a point where I thought I really needed to make sure that Christianity is true.  I didn’t understand. If God loves me and my church family, why he would let this happen? I started questioning if there even was a God."

 

"He asked us, “If you believe that God’s word is truly powerful, why are you entertaining teenagers? Why don’t you just let the lion out of its cage? Let the Bible do its work!”"

 

 

"Our youth ministry started to turn around when we started teaching teenagers the Bible – it was a remarkable thing to have Bible teaching front and centre."

 

"I’ve spoken to people over the years about the very real and awful things that have happened to them. But when I talk to them about their stories and I hit something particularly traumatic, I end up seeing something that happens over and over again. Their response to this deeply traumatic event is to minimise it in some way. “Yeah well, you know, other people have had worse things happen.” It is something quite jarring given what they’ve just told me."

 

"Human beings do not want to feel helpless in the face of radical evil. They want to be able to save themselves. If evil truly is as terrifying as what they’ve just experienced, they will feel helpless and vulnerable. They don’t want to feel like that because if they’re helpless and vulnerable they won’t be able to save themselves. I think our default setting is that we don’t want a Saviour. We want to save ourselves. So we tell ourselves a lie; a parallel story. We tell ourselves a different version of the events that took place so that we don’t have to be afraid or we don’t have to face how radically evil our experience is."

 

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Episode 33: Taryn Hayes

Immigration guilt, homeschooling, a difficult diagnosis, writing a novel - these are some of the things that Taryn Hayes shares with Tori Walker, host of The Lydia Project: Conversations with Christian Women. Join Tori as she welcomes Taryn to her dining room table to chat about living in the light of the gospel. Keep listening to hear the easter egg at the end!

 

EPISODE NOTES:

 

Taryn and her family moved to Brisbane, Australia from Cape Town, South Africa in 2017, due to her husband's job transfer. Taryn's day job consists of homeschooling their four kids and ferrying them to sports and activities, however she also makes time for small group church ministry, writing, reading, and connecting with people in various ways.

 

In 2019, Tori asked Taryn to join the The Lydia Project: Conversations with Christian Women podcast team. Eager to exercise her creative muscles, Taryn agreed to be involved in the background, but was soon roped into doing some interview work too. Reluctant at first, given her lack of interviewing experience or confidence, Taryn has come to love this part of the job for how it allows her to connect with others and hear, first hand, their stories of how they came to trust Jesus and how He is working in their lives. 

In her spare time, Taryn enjoys creating memorable moments for her family, writing for various online platforms including The Gospel Coalition, Australia and spending time with friends and family. She hopes to get to bigger writing projects in the future and continues to pray for opportunities to grow in her love and understanding of God's Word. 

 

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Home Church in Cape Town: St James Church, Kenilworth (Reformed Evangelical Anglican Church in South Africa)
• Home Church in Brisbane:  Mitchelton Presbyterian
• Taryn is the author of the gospel-highlighting novel, Seekers of the Lost Boy (Naledi, 2013) set in Apartheid South Africa

 

SHOW SNIPPETS:

 

"From that point onwards, I understood assurance in a growing sense."

 

"Here I am at 42, still so often on my knees saying,  “Oh,Lord, I am so glad that I don’t have to work out my salvation, and that you have saved me because I’m really bad at this obedience thing!”"

 

"We fell head over heels in love with each other, and everything that comes with, just you know, teenage romance: not thinking carefully about physical boundaries and getting embedded in that very deep, very intense relationship to the exclusion of many other relationships. So, a lot of lack of wisdom. But, God, in His incredible grace kept us, and six years after we met, we got married and we’ve been married for 20 years."

 

"Initially I thought homeschoolers were nuts! I thought they were crazy and felt so sorry for poor children who are homeschooled because I imagined that they would be stuck inside all day; they wouldn’t get to socialise; they would be socially awkward; they would grow up to be people who would have a very limited understanding of the world. Basically every stereotype many think people think about homeschoolers, I thought, with enormous amounts of judgement."

 

"My advice to new homeschoolers always is answer (critical questions) with oodles amounts of grace and admit that before we started homeschooling that these were my concerns too, but this is how we’ve solved it."

 

"It (homeschooling) does mean putting a lot of my passions on hold. I love to write. I have discovered, through having written my own book, that to do that requires enormous amounts of time because once I'm in the zone, that's all I want to do. I want to live, breathe, eat, sleep the book. I don't want to be a mum. I don't want to be a wife. I want to just write. And I know I can't repeat that until my kids are grown."

 

"The marketing is soul-sapping … you as an author have to self-promote. It’s putting yourself in a space that is not comfortable at all. I’m fearful, if I’m honest, to wade back into that world."

 

"I will never forget the look on Murray, my brother-in-law’s face when he came out to tell me… he looked ashen. I just knew that something was wrong."

 

"For a whole week we didn’t know and there was a possibility that it was cancer. Everyone was skirting around that without saying the C word. There was a lot of uncertainty and concern."

 

"It was a very very traumatic time. But it was a time where we sensed enormous amounts of peace as well. That sense of people’s prayers carrying us was felt, very supernaturally … although we did have fear and we did cry, sob, worry, undergirding that was a sense of the most enormous amounts of peace."

 

"ldquo;She on her own, as an 11-year-old, came to the conclusion, “why not me?"

 

"It’s one thing entertaining an idea, it’s another thing when it becomes something you have to make a decision about."

 

"Along with our move (to Australia) has been a lot of immigration guilt."

 

 

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Episode 32: Kylie Butler

Kylie talks with Tori about ministry in the form of pastoring and coaching. She explains the difference between coaching and counselling. Her passion is to help Christian leaders take the next step.

 

EPISODE NOTES:

Kylie has served as pastor, leader and coach with many organisations. Kylie’s passion is to help Christian leaders take the next step.  She is a Professional Certified Coach and has a Cert IV in Business Coaching, a Diploma in Christian Leadership Coaching and she has studied Business at Monash University, Theology at ACOM and her Masters (in Church Practice) through Eastern College Australia. Kylie is married to Adam and has 2 children (Toby and Lily). They live in Melbourne, Australia.

 

LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:

• Christian Coaching Institute: www.christiancoachinginstitute.com.au

 

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Episode 31: Keith and Sarah Condie

Episode 30: Tracey McHugh

Mel Kutosov talks with Tracey McHugh about her new life in Christ. Listen in to hear how God used the visiting Jehovah's Witnesses and Beach Mission visits to bring her to faith in Christ. Tracey lives in Brisbane with her husband and kids.

Episode 29: Simone Richardson

Simone Richardson, Tori Walker

Episode 28: Joni Leimgruber

Joni Leimgruber, Tori Walker

Episode 27: Natasha Moore

Natasha Moore, Tori Walker