Beyond Church AU

Most of us want to make a difference close to home. We just don't always know where to start. Be Rich makes it simple.

Every year Beyond Church does something a little unusual. We ask 100% of us to give, and we give 100% of it away. It's called Be Rich, after an old piece of advice to "be rich in good deeds", and this episode is the 2026 launch.

Chris sits down with Jane Hockey, who leads Mimi's House, a warm, home-like place where Prep to Grade 5 kids get the extra support to love school again. You'll hear how Mimi's House got started, why it was built to feel like a home rather than an office or a clinic, and what would make a real difference for Mimi's House this year.

It's a conversation about kids, hope and the people who show up for them. Give Serve Love.

What you will walk away with:

• Why some kids find their feet at school when there's a place that feels like home

• What one consistent adult in a child's corner can do for the way they see school

• A simple way to make a difference: give $39.95, add zeros or take some off, and 100% goes to Mimi's House and Griffin State School chaplaincy, including help with an internal paint at Mimi's House. Giving is open until Saturday 28 November

• Two hours at Jingle Jam on Saturday 12 December, if you'd like to give your time as well. That's Be Rich Serve

  
  

  Your best next step:

  👉 Give to Be Rich: https://beyondchurch.com.au/berich

  
  

What do you hope people say about you when you're not in the room?The answer is being written right now, one decision at a time.

Most of us want to be remembered well. Fewer of us stop to think about how that actually happens. In Part 2 of Legacy, we look at a letter written by a man who knew his time was nearly up, and the five very practical decisions he urged his young friend to make.

This one gets honest about the stuff we keep trying to manage, the arguments we keep picking, and the hard seasons that make us want to give up. Whether you follow Jesus or you're still working out what you believe, this is a conversation about becoming the kind of person people are glad they knew.

What you'll walk away with:

• Why your failures are things that happened, not who you are

• When to stop managing a bad habit and simply walk away from it

• How to tell which battles are worth fighting (and which will cost you a relationship)

• Why your hardest seasons shape your story more than your easy ones

• A three-step challenge to start a better chapter this week

Speaker: Chris Podlich | Beyond Church, Griffin

You didn't choose what your family handed you. But you do get tochoose what you hand on, even if what you received was a mess.

Everyone leaves alegacy, whether they plan to or not. The real question is what kind.In this first part of Legacy, we open the last letter a man wrotefrom a prison cell to the young leader he loved like a son, andnotice who's in the story and who's missing from it.

If you grew up witha great example, this will help you build on it. If you grew up withanger, silence, chaos or absence, this episode is especially for you.Turns out there isn't a single picture-perfect family in the wholeBible, and that might be the most hopeful thing you hear this week.

What you'll walkaway with:

• A simple way to look honestly at what your family handed you, the good and the hard

• Why coming from brokenness doesn't disqualify you from leaving something better

• What it actually takes to stop an unhealthy pattern from repeating in the next generation

• Three small steps you can take this week to start shaping the legacy you'll leave

Speaker: ChrisPodlich | Beyond Church, Griffin

Two people sat down at the next table in a coffee shop and worked through every church they had tried and every reason they never went back.

Ask anyone what they want in a local church and the list comes out fast. Good music. Good coffee. Not too big, and please, nothing that runs long. Now ask someone who is exploring faith and has never really done church, and you get a completely different list. Did anyone seem glad I came? Did any of that make sense? Are my kids alright back there?

This episode sits in the gap between those two lists. It works through the moment a small group of people, a few years after the whole thing started, had to argue out who actually had to change before they could belong, and the one sentence that settled it. It also asks a question most of us would rather skip: what is this thing for, and what is it costing the people who are already comfortable in it?

Fair warning, it gets uncomfortable somewhere in the middle. That is on purpose.

What you will walk away with:

• A plain answer to a question most people have never actually asked out loud: what is a local church for?

• Why every group of people, church or not, quietly drifts towards the people already in the room

• The difference between a message that offends and a group of people who are being offensive, and why that distinction matters if you are new

• A two thousand year old argument about entry requirements that sounds uncomfortably familiar today

• One honest question to take into your week, and a specific thing to do with it

You can believe something is completely true and still not feel it. That gap shows up with God more than most people admit.

This one starts with a quick trip to the pound that was only ever meant to be a look. An hour later there was an extra dog in the back seat, the kids were thrilled, and the drive home came with the question, wait, is this actually real? It is a small story about a much bigger gap, the distance between knowing something is true and living like it is. From there it goes back to the very start of the Christian movement, when a group of fishermen, a tax collector and a man who had recently denied he even knew Jesus were told to wait before they did anything at all, because what they needed next was not more effort. Along the way it takes an honest run at who the Holy Spirit actually is, minus the hype, and what starts changing in ordinary people when God is genuinely at work.

What you will walk away with

• A plain English answer to the question, who or what is the Holy Spirit, with none of the weird

• A simple test for working out whether a nudge is God or just your own head

• Why the first followers were told to wait when they already knew exactly what to do

• A five minute practice you can do tomorrow that asks nothing of you except openness

• Language for the places you believe God is present but still live like it all depends on you

You have worked for someone who had power over you and handled it badly. You have probably also worked for the rare one who did not.

Every one of us ends up with power at some point. A promotion, a platform, a paycheque, a spot on a team, a house full of kids who do what you say. This episode is about what happens next, because what you do with power says more about you than how you got it. It works through one strange scene: a leader at the height of his influence, on the last night of his life, quietly picking up a towel and washing the feet of everyone at his table, including the man he knew was about to sell him out.

What you will walk away with:

• A simple way to name the currency your own power actually runs on: money, position, time or platform

• Why the person with the most to lose in the room chose the lowest job in the house

• The difference between using a belief system and actually following it, and an honest way to tell which one you are doing

• A five minute exercise called a power audit that turns all of this into one specific thing you can do this week

• A picture of what happens to a community when a small group of people decide to serve it before they serve themselves

  
  

Most people think God gets angry when we wander off. Jesus said the opposite: God throws a party when we come home.

This message kicks off a brand new series with a question that's hard to shake: if this church disappeared tomorrow, would our community even notice? Jason Perkins opens the series by digging into an old story about a runaway son, a resentful brother, and a father who does the most undignified thing imaginable: he runs. It's a look at why the very people religion tends to push out are exactly the people Jesus went looking for.

What you'll walk away with:

• Why the idea that "church is a search party, not a social club" changes how you see God

• The real difference between believing something is true and actually living like it's real

• Why a runaway son and a resentful, dutiful brother might both be more like you than you'd think

• One simple, non-weird way to help someone you know take a step toward faith

You can be connected to more people than ever and still feel completely alone.

We live in the most connected moment in human history, and loneliness is at epidemic levels, and the two are far more related than we’d like to think. This message unpacks how the convenience that now runs our lives, from dinner to friendship, can easily trade real relationships for a feed that only ever takes from us.

Drawing on a letter written to a group of exhausted, isolated people almost two thousand years ago, and on the research into how many people any of us can genuinely know, it lands on a claim that cuts against everything the algorithm sells. That what your soul is really looking for isn’t more connection, it’s being deeply known by a few.

👉 Plan A Visit: https://beyondchurch.com.au/new

👉 Discover more about Beyond: https://beyondchurch.com.au/

👉 Explore more resources: https://www.beyondchurch.com.au/starvethealgorithm

👉 Support the mission: https://beyondchurch.com.au/give

Your feed is full of voices telling you what’s true but the algorithm amplifies the loudest ones, not the truest ones.

We’re more informed than any generation in history and somehow less sure of what’s actually real. This message looks at why the things that feel true online the post with a million views, the take you’ve seen repeated until it sticks, the confident voice with the slick production, so often aren’t, and what it really takes to tell the difference.

Drawing on an old story about a shepherd whose sheep could pick his voice out of a crowded, noisy pen, it makes a surprising case: the way through the noise isn’t sharper fact-checking or a better filter. It’s learning to recognise one voice you can actually trust.

What you’ll walk away with:

• A simple filter for the four things we all quietly mistake for truth online — popularity, repetition, confidence and raw emotion.

• Why the people close enough to see your flaws are a faster route to the truth than any expert you’ll never actually meet.

• What it looks like to find your footing when you can’t sit across the table from whoever’s on your screen.

• A practical challenge for the week: naming the two voices quietly shaping how you see yourself — and how to turn the volume up on a better one.

Speaker: Chris Podlich | Beyond Church, Griffin.

Your best next step:

👉 Plan A Visit: https://beyondchurch.com.au/new

👉 Discover more about Beyond: https://beyondchurch.com.au/

👉 Explore more resources: https://beyondchurch.com.au/starvethealgorithm

👉 Support the mission: https://beyondchurch.com.au/give

You don't think of yourself as an angry person. So why does ten minutes of scrolling leave you fuming at strangers you'll never meet?

Anger is the number one emotion the apps use to keep you hooked, because outrage is what keeps you scrolling. This message digs into why being angry online can feel so good, like clarity, like energy, like finally being on the right side, and why that same feeling quietly makes us less honest with ourselves. It also opens up some of the most direct and practical words Jesus ever said about how to treat the people who get under your skin, described here as more like medicine than comfort food. If your feed leaves you wound up more often than you'd like, this one offers a different way to carry all that frustration.

What you'll walk away with

• A quick, practical crash course on five ways to actually retrain your feed so it stops serving you the stuff that winds you up

• Why anger online feels like clarity, energy, and being right, and the trap hiding underneath all three

• The difference between reacting to a 45-second clip and forming a real, considered response

• A simple, honest habit for the next time something on your feed makes your blood boil

• Why treating the person on the other side of the screen as an actual human being changes more than you'd think

Speaker: Chris Podlich | Beyond Church, Griffin.

Your best next step:

👉 Plan A Visit: https://beyondchurch.com.au/new

👉 Discover more about Beyond: https://beyondchurch.com.au/

👉 Explore more resources: https://beyondchurch.com.au/starvethealgorithm

👉 Support the mission: https://beyondchurch.com.au/give

Part of the Starve the Algorithm series at Beyond Church, a church for people who don't go to church.