Episodios
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Most people experience church the way they experience a concert. Someone produces the event. You turn up, participate passively, evaluate the quality, go home. French sociologist Henri Lefebvre has a word for that kind of space: dominated. And it explains more about why people struggle to belong at church.
Joel and Tim close out the third place conversation, by working through the consumer vs contributor tension, Lefebvre's dominated vs appropriated space framework, and what it actually takes to shift someone's perception of church from event to community. Plus two practical measures of whether it's working, time spent and meaningful service, and why there's a difference between grudgingly turning sausages at the soccer club canteen and genuinely co-creating the culture of your church.
Also: Germany qualifying for the knockout rounds, a 10-year-old girl shaping the kids ministry program at Miranda, and why Stu spends a significant amount of his time as a senior pastor convincing Christians to go to church.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome — Our House, Germany through to the knockouts and a short episode before kickoff
03:00 The unresolved tension from last week — consumer vs contributor in a third place
04:00 Why we want irregulars to become regulars — the theology underneath
07:00 Regulars as culture generators — what the sociology says
09:00 Is the tension caused by the homogeneous unit principle hangover?
10:00 Lefebvre's framework — dominated spaces vs appropriated spaces
13:00 Why church gatherings fit the dominated space model
15:00 The theological tension — scripture still has authority, leadership still matters
18:00 How the seeker sensitive model seeped into the broader evangelical imagination
21:00 What to measure — bums on seats and money on the plate vs co-contribution
23:00 Two better measures — time spent and meaningful service
24:00 The sausage-turning distinction — roster obligation vs joyful co-contribution
27:00 How do you help people make the shift? Lefebvre's tension named
31:00 Inviting people to shape the culture — the 10-year-old at Miranda
35:00 Institutionalising friendship — the theological framework underneath
37:00 Wrapping up — and why Stu spends time convincing Christians to go to churchDiscussed on this episode
Henri Lefebvre - dominated vs appropriated spaces
Joseph Hellerman - When the Church Was a Family: Recapturing Jesus' Vision for Authentic Christian Community
Tim Beilharz - Understanding How Faith Grows
Ray Oldenburg - The Great Good Place
Saddleback concentric circles model
Willow Creek seeker sensitive model
Donald McGavran's Homogeneous unit principleSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to [email protected]
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What if the most countercultural thing a church could do was have a lounge?
Joel, Stu and Tim are into theme four of Stu's PhD - alternative Christian shared spaces that embed belonging. Stu traces the intellectual journey from new social movement theory through Melucci's subversive spaces to Oldenburg's third place theory, and explains why a barber shop in New York where a Mercedes driver and a homeless person sit together laughing about the Knicks was exactly the image he needed for what Soul Revival was trying to build.
The conversation covers why Christian third places are harder to create than secular ones, why food slows everything down in the right way, why architecture says more about what you expect people to do than any welcome strategy, and why the biggest challenge isn't creating a third place, it's convincing people that church can be one.
Also: Mary the Tasmanian devil's 14-day escape from a Gold Coast wildlife park, Sproul Hall at Berkeley, the feminist movement that started because someone asked the women to make coffee, and why Stu's original garage felt like Sproul Hall.
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Jesus didn't call his disciples servants. He called them friends. And Stu thinks that matters more for how we do church than most ecclesiology conversations acknowledge.
Joel, Stu and Tim are working through the emerging themes of Stu's PhD — and theme three is an ecclesiology of friendship and intergenerational family. Why friendship is a legitimate theological category, not just a social preference. Why industrialised schooling has trained us to only be friends with people our age, and what we lose when church reproduces that model. Why young people being listened to isn't a nicety but a theological conviction. And why a community built on friendship with Jesus produces friendships that wouldn't otherwise exist.
Plus: the Luddites, a 1958 newspaper article about surfers at Cronulla, e-bikes doing monos, and Jesus beads in the 90s.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome: Sky Guide and the World Cup
06:00 PhD recap: themes one and two
07:30 Theme three: ecclesiology of friendship and intergenerational family
11:00 The peer group balance: too large and you never grow beyond it, too small and there's loneliness
13:30 Friendship as an ecclesial category
15:00 The metaphors of church: body, family, royal priesthood, and friends
17:30 Why friendship was a powerful category in the 90s: Friends, Seinfeld and Cheers
20:00 The Good Samaritan and who my neighbour is: church as one big friendship group
22:00 The intergenerational revolution: what if Jesus is the basis of friendship, not special interests?
26:00 Industrialised schooling and why friendship defaults to same-age
32:00 Why young people being listened to was disorienting and powerful
38:00 The youth council, the moderating voice and the shock absorber in practice
44:00 E-bikes, surfboards and seeing youth culture with curiosity rather than fear
48:00 Jesus beads, organic evangelism and what happens when young people have voice
51:00 Preview of theme four and the limitation of the Shock Absorber when it institutionalisesDiscussed on this episode
Mark Senter III: When God Shows Up
Mark Senter III: Four Views of Youth MinistryLev Vygotsky: Zone of proximal development
John Creswell: Qualitative research methodology
James Jasper: Emotional dimensions of social movements
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People came to Soul Revival because of relationships. But relationships weren't enough to keep them. Something deeper had to happen.
Joel, Stu and Tim continue working through the emerging themes from Stu's PhD, and this week it's theme two: Christian identity formation through conversion and biblical discipleship. The research keeps showing that people came through the relational front door, felt a real sense of belonging, and then encountered something they weren't expecting. The gospel was preached, clearly and consistently, every single week. And that's what changed people.
The conversation covers belonging before believing, cheap grace versus costly discipleship, the difference between a consumer and a participant, why the commitments group was the key to the culture, and what it looks like when your social life and your Christian life aren't two different things.
Also: Tim's Value Pack Sunday Christian memory, soggy spaghetti bolognese and the hip hop night that happened the night before the Cronulla riots.
Timestamps
00:00 Warm beanies, Square One godgles and a man who caught a shark
06:30 Theme two: Christian identity formation through conversion and biblical discipleship
08:30 How people came in and what they found: relational front door, explicit Christianity
12:00 The production line vs the shared life: Paul in 1 Thessalonians
15:00 The commitments group and the culture it created
18:30 The hip hop night before the Cronulla riots
23:00 Tim's reflections from the interviews: authentic whole-of-life faith
27:00 Two kinds of belonging: sociological and spiritual
33:00 Come and see: Philip, Nathaniel and the Samaritan woman
36:30 Service culture: spaghetti bolognese, Romans 12 and costly discipleship
46:00 The difference between a community and an event
48:00 Preview of theme three: ecclesiology of friendship and intergenerational familyDiscussed on this episode:
Dietrich Bonhoeffer — The Cost of Discipleship
Value PacSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to [email protected]
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Joel, Stu and Tim open with the cultural curiosity of the Enhanced Games, and what it reveals about why manufactured greatness never quite works, before turning to something more significant: Stu's PhD is reaching its final stages, and the emerging themes from 20 qualitative interviews about the Soul Revival Youth community.
Six themes. Thirty years of ministry. And a finding that keeps surfacing: relationships were the front door. Not the events, not the programs, not the music. The relationships. And when people encountered authentic Christian community — something they couldn't find anywhere else — it created the conditions for hearing the gospel and responding to it.
The guys unpack what the research is actually showing about how counter-cultural community, spiritual formation and intergenerational friendship work together.
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Every technology gives you something. Every technology takes something away. The problem is we're usually so focused on what we gain that we don't notice what we've lost until it's gone.
Joel and Tim open with new creation theology and the deep physicality of what Christians are actually looking forward to — then trace that thread through rally driving, unwrapping CDs, the washing machine, the microwave, the self-driving car and Zoom meetings that left everyone exhausted for reasons nobody could explain.
Mike Dicker's framework for thinking about technological trade-offs is the practical anchor. Alan Noble's theology of presence is the theological one. And the question underneath all of it: are we trading away what makes us human?
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome, rambunctious toddlers and Square One talks on new creation
02:00 What the age to come actually looks like
09:00 Rallying, sights, smells and what we miss when it's taken away
12:00 Not all technology is progress
14:00 Mike Dicker's framework — enhancement, obsolescence, retrieval and reversal
20:00 The Spotify trade-off
23:00 Theology of creation and physicality
27:00 Alan Noble on presence
33:00 Yann Martel's bad stories
36:00 The microwave and the family dinner table
38:00 The car, the 20-minute circle and the loss of geographic embeddedness
42:00 Zoom fatigue, pheromones and what we didn't know we were processing in person
45:00 AI and the wisdom of refusing the easy answer
47:00 Navigating technology with wisdomDiscussed on this episode
Mike Dicker — Navigating Technology
Alan Noble — Presence in an Age of AI ReproductionAndy Crouch — The Tech-Wise Family
Andy Crouch — Culture Making
John Dyer — From the Garden to the City
Yann Martel on the How I Write Podcast
Alan Noble — Disruptive WitnessSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to [email protected]
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Seth Kaplan's article on the After Babel Substack reads like a secular argument for why youth ministry matters.
Joel and Tim trace the arc from 1950s street culture to the latchkey generation to the screen-based void that smartphones were custom-built to fill, and ask what the church uniquely offers in response. The answer, according to both secular sociology and Christian theology, is the same thing: thick, embedded, multi-generational communities where kids are known, challenged, given genuine responsibility and can't just opt out when conflict arises.
Tim also pushes back on one of Kaplan's conclusions, and the pushback is worth hearing.
00:00 Welcome, studio upgrades, the Soul Revival car door and half marathon training
05:50 We Took Away the Phones. Now What? Seth Kaplan's After Babel article
10:00 How we lost the street, from 1950s community to suburban isolation
13:30 Overprotection, the latchkey generation and the void screens filled
18:00 What kids actually lose when they stop playing outside
22:00 Organised activities as a poor substitute for free play
27:00 Board games, conflict resolution and what teachers are being asked to fix
32:00 Scouts, third places and the church as embedded community
36:00 The 30-year generational arc: Miranda campus now vs Kirrawee in the 90s
43:00 The cognitive shift: from "my parents' church" to "my church"
48:00 Sport vs church: what non-negotiables reveal about priorities
54:00 Tim's pushback on Kaplan: why experiences AND instruction both matter
1:00:00 Church attendance as covenant, not option. Plus Tim's takeawaySubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to [email protected]
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Last episode was the intangibles. This is the tangibles.
Joel, Stu and Tim open with the Met Gala, a $1 bill across Sarah Paulson's eyes, and whether millionaires protesting billionaires is tone deaf, before tracing the thread from wealth inequality all the way to how the church should function as a genuine leveller. Then they get practical.
What systems does Soul Revival actually use? How do you say no to a good idea without crushing the person who brought it? What is ministry slide and why does grace need to be structurally built into your teams? And what does teams not tasks actually mean, and why does it protect against utilitarianism in a way that pure efficiency thinking never can?Plus: why prayer nights in the 90s drew the biggest crowds, what happened when the bands Soul Revival raised started pulling people to pub gigs on Saturday nights, and Stu's memory of a meeting 25 years ago where they cancelled all the plans and just prayed — and why he still remembers it.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome — excursions, the Met and peanut butter sandwiches on a school bus
03:00 The Met Gala, Sarah Paulson and tone-deaf protest art
07:00 Francis Schaeffer — how philosophy flows through artists into culture
12:00 Wealth inequality, housing and the church as a leveller
19:00 Galatians 3 — no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free
24:00 Practical levelling — $7 meals, camp subsidies and families taking home leftovers
29:00 Church systems — ChurchSuite, communication across generations and the pigeon budget
35:00 How to say no to a good idea — the shock absorber in practice
42:00 Prayer in the service — building a bridge to a new reality
48:00 Teams not tasks — why friendship protects against utilitarianism
57:00 God gives different personalities — honouring everyone in the team
1:02:00 Ministry slide revisited and wrapping upDiscussed on this episode
Francis Schaeffer — The Great Evangelical Disaster
Andy Crouch — Culture Making
Robert Greene — The 48 Laws of PowerChurchSuite — churchsuite.com
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Is efficiency a godly value? And if the Good Shepherd leaves 99 sheep to find the one, what does that say about how we should be running our churches?
The guys open with King Charles's surprisingly funny speech to the U.S. Congress, a masterclass in soft power, humour and resetting an agenda without throwing a punch, before getting into the real conversation: how do you manage a church well without accidentally turning it into a business?
Stu unpacks Soul Revival's approach to project management — organised messiness, ministry slide, double-up meetings and why grace has to be baked into the structure from the start. Tim brings in Andy Crouch's cultural postures and Marshall McLuhan's medium-is-the-message warning about what happens when corporate metaphors quietly reshape how you think about ministry.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome — fake arrogance, King Charles and the Churchill bath story
08:30 Soft power, constitutional monarchy and why Charles reset the agenda without throwing a punch
17:30 Church project management — theology, strategy and practice
21:00 The African church vs the Sydney church — context shapes everything
25:00 Metrics, growth and the danger of deterministic ministry thinking
31:00 Andy Crouch, Marshall McLuhan and why corporate metaphors aren't value-neutral
37:00 Organised messiness — Stu's philosophy of church management
43:00 The Good Shepherd, the 99% and why efficiency isn't a godly value
47:00 Isaac Gordon's late arrival and what it taught Soul Revival about grace
54:00 Ministry slide — a practical framework for holding people and mission togetherDiscussed on this episode:
King Charles III addresses US Congress
Andy Crouch - Culture Making
Marshall McLuhan - The Medium is the Message
Colin Marshall and Tony Payne - Trellis and VineSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]
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Tony Abbott wrote a history of Australia called, wait for it, Australia. Tim has been reading it, which sent him down a rabbit hole about celebratory versus critical history, cognitive dissonance, steel-manning both sides, and why we're so terrified of changing our minds.
Joel and Tim work through black armband versus three cheers versions of Australian identity, and what Christian Smith's critical realist personalism has to do with welcoming newcomers at church. Then they land somewhere that ties it all together: Jesus is the synthesiser. Not a middle ground between two political tribes, not a careful hedge, but the total truth above and beyond all of it, which is exactly what a generation exhausted by polarisation is starving for.Plus: two Michael Jensen articles on how not to be weird to newcomers, the difference between a hobby and a practice, and Tim's takeaway on being genuinely curious about other people.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome — adventures, new creation and Tim's AI-generated book cover
05:00 Tony Abbott's history of Australia and the history wars
09:30 Black armband vs celebratory history, why we can't hold both at once
16:30 Steel-manning both sides with Claude and the danger of always complexifying
22:00 Christian Smith's critical realist personalism: objective truth, subjective engagement
28:00 Michael Jensen on how not to be weird to newcomers at church
34:00 The regulars and irregulars problem: when community becomes a closed circle
43:00 Hobby vs practice: Brad Stulberg on getting 1% better at welcoming
51:00 God's sovereignty and our practice: the both/and of sanctification
56:30 Tim's takeaway: be genuinely curious about othersDiscussed on this episode
Tony Abbott - Australia: A History
Christian Smith - What is a Person?
Sean Nolan - The Way He Walked
Michael Jensen - How Not to Be Weird to Newcomers at Church
Michael Jensen - How to Be Normal to Newcomers at Church
Brad Stulberg
Cal Newport - How To Build Discipline in a Distracted World
The Antilibrary: The Hidden Value of Unread Books
Join the Shock Absorber Network: shockabsorber.com.auSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]
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Every Christian parent has felt the tension. Do you send your kids to a Christian school? They're plugged into kids church right? The faith formation is happening right? But is it? And whose job is it really?
Joel, Stu and Tim are joined by David Stonestreet — Principal of Shire Christian School and Soul Revival member number 009, to work through the history of Christian schooling in Australia, what sets a covenantal Christian school apart, why church attendance in the Sutherland Shire has dropped from 11% to around 1% in a generation, and why the school-church-home partnership is more urgent now than it's ever been.
They also end up somewhere unexpected: a conversation about transcendence, immanence, why young people are flocking to ancient liturgical churches, and what the seeker-sensitive movement got wrong about a generation that hates its own life.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcoming Dave and some old Soul Revival stories
06:30 Francis Schaeffer, L'Abri and why Christianity doesn't require intellectual suicide
13:30 What sets a Christian school apart, David unpacks the covenantal model
20:30 Tim's school choice story, pro and con lists, a billboard and vanilla Christianity
28:30 The offload problem: why sending kids to Christian school isn't enough
34:00 Church decline in the Sutherland Shire: the statistics that should concern every church leader
44:00 Schools and churches working together: the partnership model
54:00 Has state school become more hostile to Christianity?
1:07:30 Transcendence and immanence: why young people are flocking to ancient churchesDiscussed on this episode
Shire Christian SchoolAbraham Kuyper's sphere of sovereignty
Francis Schaeffer and L'Abri
Francis Schaeffer's The Great Evangelical Disaster
NCLS Research: How Religious Are Australians?
NCLS Research: What draws newcomers to church?
Kendra Creasy Dean's Practicing PassionJoin the Shock Absorber Network: shockabsorber.com.au
Soul Revival Church: soulrevivalchurch.com
Subscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]
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Is banter just harmless fun — or is something deeper going on beneath the surface?
Joel, Stu and Tim open with Easter reflections, including JoelChristian humour, banter and friendship, male friendship theology, tall poppy syndrome Australia, hegemony church, belonging and identity, Andrew Huberman friendship, banter church community, shock absorber podcast, soul revival church, church leadership podcast, intergenerational ministry, Christian culture Australia, microaggression, theology of joy, fruit of the spirit joy, church and culture, adolescent belonging, Easter baptism, Christian banter baptising his own son at the river service, before diving into a clip from Andrew Huberman's podcast about male friendship and the role of humour in building trust and loyalty.
What starts as a straightforward conversation quickly gets complicated: tall poppy syndrome, hegemony, the Cronulla riots, a bucks party gone wrong, a proverb about flaming arrows, and the question of whether Jesus ever actually made a joke.
This is one of the most honest and wide-ranging conversations the Shock Absorber has had. If you've ever wondered how to think Christianly about humour, banter and belonging, especially with young people, this is worth your time.
Timestamps
00:00 Welcome and Easter reflections
09:30 Andrew Huberman on male friendship — does banter build trust and loyalty?
13:00 Tim's cautions: power imbalances, adolescent vulnerability and passive aggression
17:00 Stu's story: family of origin, words of affirmation and learning banter as a foreign language
20:30 NT Feather, tall poppy syndrome and the Australian pressure to cut people down
27:00 The bucks party: stocks, a hacksaw and being expelled from the group
40:00 Hegemony, racism and the Cronulla riots — the darker thread in Australian banter culture
48:00 Does Jesus ever make a joke? What does God's laughter mean?
54:00 Tim's takeaway — joyfulness, the fruit of the Spirit and what redeemed humour looks likeDiscussed on this episode
Cultivating Awe & Emotional Connection in Daily Life | Dr. Dacher Keltner and Andrew HubermanNT Feather on tall poppy syndrome
Miroslav Volf's Exclusion and Embrace
Chester Pierce on microaggressions
Gramsci's concept of hegemonySubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]
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Most churches have spent the last sixty years trying to lower the cultural barriers to Christianity. Clean car parks. Professional music. Seeker-sensitive services. The logic made sense at the time. But has making church more like the world actually worked and is it still the right strategy?
Joel and Stu work through the tension between institutional and organic church structures, unpack the history of the attractional church model from Donald McGavran to Willow Creek, and explain why Soul Revival has deliberately gone the other direction — building a countercultural, intergenerational Yellow Submarine that goes beneath the surface of daily life.They also answer two great listener questions from Julie about Bonhoeffer's friendship circles: whether they include non-Christians, and how kids and youth factor into church numbers.
Timestamps
00:00 Sharks gear, Sheffield Wednesday at Wembley and tribal fan culture
05:30 The AGM and the juxtaposition of formal polity in a time of crisis
08:30 Organic vs institutional structures: what's the difference and why it matters
15:00 The attractional church model — McGavran, Willow Creek and the homogeneous unit principle
22:00 The Yellow Submarine: Soul Revival's countercultural intergenerational alternative
29:00 How Soul Revival's governance actually works
43:30 Listener questions from Julie: Bonhoeffer's friendship circles and non-Christians
51:30 At what stage do kids and youth count in your numbers?
54:00 The Blitz, the fuel crisis and the Christian response to economic pressureDiscussed on this episode
Stu Crawshaw - The Yellow Submarine
Skip Bell — What is Wrong with the Homogeneous Unit Principle?
Karina Koremsky — The Fallacy of the Homogeneous Unit Principle
Bill Hybels — Becoming a Contagious Christian
Mark Senter — The Four Views of Youth Ministry
Kendra Creasy Dean — Practicing Passion
Donald McGavran — homogeneous unit principle overview
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Jim Rayburn, the father of modern youth ministry, said it was a sin to bore a kid with the gospel.
Joel, Tim and Stu work through a sharp distinction from a new book on kids theology: distilling versus simplifying. Distillation keeps the essentials and removes the unnecessary. Simplification removes the complexity, and sometimes the truth along with it. The difference matters enormously for anyone trying to pass on a faith that lasts.
They also talk about Lee Strobel's adolescent drift into atheism, why apologetics isn't landing the way it used to, e-bikes and teenage rebellion, and what it actually looks like to be a non-anxious adult presence (a wall of a swimming pool, for a generation that's pushing hard against everything)
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Half of kids surveyed say their parents should be worried about their screen time. Jonathan Haidt thinks he missed something big in his own book. And Meta allegedly knew about the damage it was doing to children for years — and said nothing.
Joel and Tim work through a raft of confronting data about childhood today, wrestle honestly with the collective action problem of smartphone culture, and then land somewhere unexpected: a conversation about preaching John 15 that produces one of the sharpest applications you'll hear.
Don't let people hate Jesus because of you. Let them hate you because of Jesus. That's the order. And getting the order right changes everything about how you show up as a disciple.
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 Intro
02:20 Wes Huff on Diary of a CEO — communicating the gospel to a curious generation
12:00 After Babel — 30 facts about childhood today
15:30 No siblings, no cousins — and what the church can offer instead
28:00 Screen time, double standards and the collective action problem of smartphones
44:00 Preaching John 15 — preparation process and the difference between teaching and preaching
1:03:30 Don't make them hate Jesus because of you — the sharpest application of the episodeWes Huff on Diary of a CEO
Wes Huff on Joe Rogan
30 Facts About Childhood Today
Unsealed court docs allege Meta knew for years about harms to young users, even as they fueled its growth
The Great Cousin Decline
Coming of Age in a Fully Connected World
Your Marriage Has a ThirdSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]
Website: shockabsorber.com.au -
Joel, Stu and Tim are relaunching the Shock Absorber Network, and this episode explains what it is, why it matters and how you can be part of it.
Ministry was never meant to be done alone. But for a lot of church leaders, that's exactly what it feels like, isolated in your local context, carrying the weight of cultural change without anyone to process it with.
Stu traces the thinking all the way back to his first PhD at UNSW, where he was studying Christian youth ministry as a social movement using new social movement theory. That research, and thirty-plus years of doing exactly this kind of relational networking through Soul Revival, is the foundation of what the Shock Absorber Network is trying to build. Not an institution, not a franchise, not a brand. A relational, non-competitive, theologically grounded space where ministry leaders can pray together, share ideas and learn from each other across churches and denominations.
Tim unpacks Archie Poulos' research on why networking is actually essential to long-term ministry health, not a nice-to-have when you've got spare time, but a genuine factor in whether you and your ministry survive and flourish over the long haul. The alternative, as Archie points out, is that isolation tips into competition, and competition is the opposite of what Jesus prays for in John 17.
Practically, it starts simply: a new website at shockabsorber.com.au, a mailing list, and a Zoom prayer meeting once a term. No money, no compulsion, no franchise. Just friends in ministry, gathered around Jesus.
Timestamps
01:45 Relaunching the Shock Absorber Network — what it is and where the idea came from
05:20 Memories of the Treehouse — what church networking has looked like at Soul Revival
09:30 Archie Poulos on why networking is essential to ministry health
17:45 Are movements dangerous? New social movement theory explained
28:00 The biblical foundation — loving your neighbour, John 15 and Matthew 22
36:00 What the network looks like practically — website, Zoom prayer meetings and how to joinDiscussed on this episode
The High-Level Skill of Ministry Networking and Collaboration, by Mikey Lynch
We need to get better at networking - Archie Poulos on The Pastors' Heart
New Social Movement Theory
Collective Identity
Collective Identity and Social MovementsJump in at shockabsorber.com.au — and send your thoughts to [email protected]
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Everyone's chasing the algorithm. More clicks, better thumbnails, optimised titles, short-form funnels. So what does a Christian do with all of that?
Joel and Tim start with football, Real Madrid vs Barcelona, identity, rivalry and what success actually means, and end up somewhere and end up with a biblical framework for thinking about metrics of success in a world that rewards inflammatory, clickbaity and often dishonest content.
Along the way they work through the cultural mandate in Genesis 1 and 2, the trifecta of good, true and beautiful, Proverbs' wisdom about living with the grain of God's design, and whether Christians should be on these platforms at all — or whether the algorithm has simply evangelised us instead.
If you're wrestling with digital content, social media, and what faithful presence online actually looks like, enjoy!
Timestamps
00:00 Intro: trains, voyages and retractable stadium pitches
05:40 Fear and Loathing in La Liga: Real Madrid, Barcelona and what success actually means
17:55 Chasing the algorithm: what ChatGPT says about podcast success
24:45 The cultural mandate: why content creation starts in Genesis
32:00 Good, true and beautiful: a biblical filter for everything you make
42:30 Should Christians be on these platforms at all? McLuhan, Haidt and the pub analogy
51:30 The quiet revival and Tim's takeawayDiscussed on this episode
Real Madrid's retractable pitch
Tottenham Hotspur's retractable pitch
Fear and Loathing in La Liga, by Sid Lowe
The Anxious Generation, by Jonathan Haidt
Indistractable, by Nir Eyal
The Sirens' Call, by Chris Hayes
Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman
The Medium is the Message, by Marshall McLuhan
Cross Formed Kidmin PodcastSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]
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Richard Dawkins likes Christmas carols. Tom Holland calls himself a Christian. Robert Greene thinks religion is great for transcending the banality of social media.
Joel and Tim trace a thread from Bluey, through the culture war trap of coding everything left or right, into Skye Jethani's four distorted postures toward God, and land on the one thing that separates Christianity from every other self-improvement and philosophical framework: Jesus himself.
Timestamps
05:47 Bluey is not a normal kids show
25:44 We can progress and conserve
39:51 Life with God
58:56 Tim's Takeaway - Seek the kingdom above all elseDiscussed on this episode
‘Bluey’ Is the Most Conservative Show on TV, by Louise Perry
Bluey Takeaway
Bud Light Boycott
Robert Greene, Religion's True Purpose
Tom Holland on UnHerd
With, by Skye Jethani
Parenting in God's Family - Volume 2
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Most churches have got the small group and the Sunday service figured out. But there's a whole layer of community that's gone missing, and it might be why people keep saying "I don't feel like I belong here."
Joel, Stu and Tim dig into Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology of friendship as an ecclesial category, and why his concentric circles of relationship, drawn straight from Jesus' own relational model, give churches a practical framework for building community that's expansive instead of cliquey.
They also pull in Robin Dunbar's research on the cognitive limits of human relationship, and land somewhere surprising: biology and theology are telling the same story.
Plus: e-bikes, convicts, the Industrial Revolution, and why teenagers might actually be ahead of the church on this one.
Timestamps
05:11 Friendship as an ecclesial category
13:14 The 3, the 12, the 72, the 120
19:24 Jesus saves us into community
24:03 Cultural differences and individualism influencing friendship
34:09 The Dunbar number and what friendship brings
43:17 Tim's takeaway - How would your relationships at church change if you saw them as friends?Discussed on this episode
The Lesser of Two Weevils - Master and Commander
When Church Was a Family, by Joesph Hellerman
Dunbar's NumberSubscribe, leave a review, and send your thoughts to Joel at [email protected]
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Tim and Joel are back for 2026 with a conversation about authority, hierarchy, and authentic relationship with Jesus.
It starts with parenting, authoritarian (high control, low love) versus authoritative (high control, high love). But the real question: how does the parent-child relationship mirror our relationship with God? For those with great fathers, God being the perfect Father is comforting. For those with absent or abusive fathers, it's healing.
This opens a bigger conversation about hierarchy and power. Postmodernism wants to deconstruct all hierarchies as inherently corrupt. But because there's an inherent power imbalance between Creator and creation, they argue there must be such a thing as good hierarchy. The difference isn't whether power exists, but how it's used, to serve others or serve yourself.
Tim shares about joining the Crossformed Kids podcast, leading into intergenerational ministry and reciprocity. A five-year-old is no more or less saved than a senior minister. Equal in God's kingdom, even while maintaining appropriate roles. They discuss Tom Holland's "Dominion", how even secular progressive concern for the vulnerable is borrowed from Christian moral tradition. Marx's vision could only emerge from a Christian worldview.
The conversation turns to math with Joel reading John Lennox and his son to discover how mathematics reveals God's beauty and order. The elegance of math points to a rational universe created by a rational God.
Finally, parasocial relationships, Cambridge Dictionary's 2025 Word of the Year. People are forming one-way relationships with celebrities and AI chatbots. Tim contrasts this with his word for the year: abiding. "I don't want a parasocial relationship with Jesus. I want to genuinely abide in Him."
The takeaway? God has the right to tell us how to live. And because He's the perfect Father, that's not oppressive, it's beautiful and relational.
https://online.hillsdale.edu/
TIMESTAMPS:
00:00 - Intro and welcome back for the new year
09:33 - Parenting, hierarchies, and power and our true Father
25:32 - Tim's hosting another podcast, the reciprocity of intergenerational relationships and ceding power to God's good hierarchy
36:20 - God is a God who cares for vulnerable people
43:20 - Science and maths explaining God's created world
54:52 - Parasocial versus abiding
1:13:06 - Tim's Takeaway: authentic relationship with JesusDISCUSSED ON THIS EPISODE:
Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI, by Yuval Noah Harari
Rivers of London series, by Ben Aaronovitch
Unruly: The Ridiculous History of England's Kings and Queens, by David Mitchell
Crossformed Kidmin Podcast
The Child in God's Church, by Tim Beilharz
Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, by Tom Holland
Anglicare Australia
The Air We Breathe: How We All Came to Believe in Freedom, Kindness, Progress, and Equality, by Glen Scrivener
Hillsdale College online courses
Can Science Explain Everything?, by John Lennox
Why This Oxford Mathematician is Confident God Exists | John Lennox
The 2025 Cambridge Dictionary Word of the Year
Death of Rob Hirst - Mostrar más
