The Zondervan Biblical and Theological Lectures series provides a unique audio learning experience. Unlike a traditional audiobook's direct narration of a book's text, Church History in Plain Language Audio Lectures include high quality live-recordings of college-level lectures that cover the important points from each subject as well as relevant material from other sources.

This is the story of the church for today.

This series, based on Bruce Shelley's classic history of the church, brings the story of global Christianity into the twenty-first century. Taught by experts in the field of Christian history, each lesson tells a story of actual people, in a particular situation, taking action or being acted upon, and provides a window into the circumstances and historical context of a major period or theme of Christian history. Church History in Plain Language Audio Lectures takes a closer look at the rapid growth of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity in the southern hemisphere, addresses the decline in traditional mainline denominations, examines the influence of technology on the spread of the gospel, and discusses how Christianity intersects with other religions in countries all over the world. Lessons add important stories of the development of Christianity in Asia, India, and Africa, both in the early church as well as in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It also highlights the stories of women and non-Europeans who significantly influenced the development of Christianity but whose contributions are often overlooked in previous overviews of church history.

This series provides an introductory guide to church history with intellectual substance.

Session Titles and Runtimes:

0 - Introduction (5 min)

1 - Away with the King! The Jesus Movement (14 min)

2 - Wineskins Old and New: The Gospel to the Gentiles (12 min)

3 - Only "Worthless" People: Catholic Christianity (10 min)

4 - If the Tiber Floods: The Persecution of Christians (12 min)

5 - Arguing about the Event: The Rise of Orthodoxy (9 min)

6 - The Rule of Books: Formation of the Bible (12 min)

7 - School for Sinners: A Structure That Fits (12 min)

8 - Apostles to the Intellectuals: Interacting with Other Worldviews (10 min)

9 - Countries of the Sunrise: Early Christianity in Asia and Africa (11 min)

10 - Laying Her Sceptre Down: Conversion of the Empire (8 min)

11 - Splitting Important Hairs: The Doctrine of the Trinity (11 min)

12 - Emmanuel! Christ in the Creeds (12 min)

13 - Exiles from Life: Beginnings of Monasticism (11 min)

14 - The Sage of the Ages: Augustine of Hippo (13 min)

15 - Peter as "Pontifex Maximus": Beginnings of the Papacy (12 min)

16 - Somewhere between Heaven and Earth: Eastern Orthodoxy (13 min)

17 - Bending the Necks of the Victors: Mission to the Barbarians (12 min)

18 - God's Consul: Gregory the Great (12 min)

19 - The Search for Unity: Charlemagne and Christendom (13 min)

20 - Lifted in a Mystic Manner: The Papacy and the Crusader (12 min)

21 - The Nectar of Learning: Scholasticism (12 min)

22 - A Song to Lady Poverty: Francis and the Apostolic Lifestyle (12 min)

23 - Chaos and the Law of Necessity: Decline of the Papacy (13 min)

24 - Judgment in the Process of Time: Wyclif and Hus (10 min)

25 - A Wild Boar in the Vineyard: Martin Luther and Protestantism (13 min)

26 - Radical Discipleship: The Anabaptists (12 min)

27 - Thrust into the Game: John Calvin and the Reformed Rule (12 min)

28 - The Curse upon the Crown: The Church of England (10 min)

29 - "Another Man" at Manresa: The Catholic Reformation (13 min)

30 - Opening the Rock: Uttermost America and Asia (13 min)

31 - The Rule of Saints: Puritanism (14 min)

32 - Unwilling to Die for an Old Idea: Denominations (13 min)

33 - Aiming at the Foundations: The Cult of Reason (11 min)

34 - The Heart and Its Reasons: Pascal and the Pietists (11 min)

35 - A Brand from the Burning: Wesley and Methodism (10 min)

36 - A New Order of the Ages: The Great Awakening (13 min)

37 - Restoring the Fortress: Catholicism in the Age of Progress (13 min)

38 - A New Social Frontier: Nineteenth-Century England (10 min)

39 - To Earth's Remotest People: Protestant Missions (12 min)

40 - The Destiny of a Nation: A Christian America? (13 min)

41 - A Bridge for Intelligent Moderns: Protestant Liberalism (13 min)

42 - Nothing to Lose but Chains: Slums and the Social Gospel (12 min)

43 - Graffiti on a Wall of Shame: Twentieth-Century Ideologies (13 min)

44 - Rootless Immigrants in a Sick Society: American Evangelicals (15 min)

45 - New Creeds for Breakfast: The Ecumenical Movement (8 min)

46 - The Medicine of Mercy: Roman Catholicism and Vatican II (12 min)

47 - New Technologies, New Contexts: Christian Ministries in the West (12 min)

48 - More Peoples, More Tongues: Emergence of the Global South (9 min)