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Aaron Kelly and Ben Nicholson press play on the Reels, TikTok's & Shorts you sent in. It starts with our studio warm-up ritual, and a sermon that says to marinate in his majesty. It's a childhood encounter with a truly terrifying picture of Jesus, a theory about Judas wearing a bold lip, and a confession about a sermon illustration that involved breaking a man's nose. Along the way, it turns into something else: a reminder that church trauma brings a lot of us together, and that laughing about it can be part of getting better.

Aaron is an ex-pastor and Ben is an ex-church leader, both out and proud in Melbourne. This one is just the two of them, laughing and crying in equal measure.

"Love is the medicine, but laughter is great, too."

Heads up: this episode includes sexual humour and a few clips touching on hell and religious homophobia.

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Most conversion therapy doesn't look like therapy. Professor Tim Jones spent ten years proving it.

Tim worked out he was gay in a university library, went looking for help, and spent a couple of years trying to be straight. Then he spent a decade researching what had happened to him and to thousands of other LGBTQIA+ Australians. His team's work found that the ordinary, everyday practices, the prayer meeting and the pastoral care chat and the pressure to marry someone of the opposite sex, did more damage than the extreme cases everyone pictures. All three of us at the table had been through a version of it. None of us had a name for it at the time.

Professor Timothy Jones is a historian at La Trobe University and President of the Australian Queer Archives. He led the research behind Improving Spiritual Health Care for LGBTQA+ Australians: Beyond Conversion Practices.

"You'll know a good church by its queer fruity people."

Heads up: this episode talks about conversion practices, religious trauma and suicidality. Look after yourself.

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Aaron studied this man's textbook at Bible college. Twenty years later, Rev Dr David P. Gushee is on the podcast telling us about the dinner that changed everything.

A man he had never met took him out, quoted Gushee's own book back at him, and told him he was being a bystander when it came to LGBTQ people. Gushee did not argue. He said the man was right. What came next was Changing Our Mind, the book that cost one of America's most widely read evangelical ethicists his place in the evangelical world.

We talk about the harm he watched up close, why sexuality became the hill the church chose to die on, and where he is actually seeing things change. It ends with three answers we did not expect: what he would say to a young queer person sitting scared in an evangelical church, what he would say to that church's pastor, and what he would say to the pastor who already agrees but is too frightened to say so.

"You don't have to do anything to be a bystander. You just keep standing by."

Rev Dr David P. Gushee is Distinguished University Professor of Christian Ethics at Mercer University. His new book, Job in Exile: A Guide for Spiritual Refugees, is out this week with Orbis. Find him at davidpgushee.com.

Content warning: this episode discusses suicide and religious trauma.

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He got death threats for a joke. He left the synagogue two days after his bar mitzvah. And he might be the warmest person to ever tell you religion is a control system.

Aaron and Ben sit down with Reuben Kaye, cabaret superstar, comedian and drag artist, for the most provocation-forward conversation of the season. Reuben is unapologetically anti-institution, but underneath the edge is something that sounds a lot like this show: systems, not people. The ones caught inside are victims too.

We get into the joke that broke the internet, the night he talked a man out of setting him on fire, and the difference between personal faith and the institutions built on top of it.

As Reuben puts it: "be a good human. everything else is dressing on the salad."

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You can leave church and still lose the community that came with it. This episode is about what comes after.

In the final part of the ReMade series, Aaron and Ben talk about the very real grief of losing church community, and the equally real work of building something better in its place. They get into the difference between community and control, why you only really need about five good friends, and the four words (borrowed from Simon Sinek) that might change one of your friendships: do you have eight minutes?

This is a hosts-only episode, no guest, just Aaron and Ben closing out the ReMade series (Rediscover, ReWilded, RePlanted).

“it was never community we were scared of. it was control.”

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He trained for ten years to be a minister and thought he'd do it for life. Then Matt Glover backed marriage equality, and it cost him his church.

Aaron and Ben sit down with Matt, a former Baptist minister who supported same-sex marriage years before the plebiscite and lost his role, his career, and a community for it. He'll correct you on one thing though: he wasn't fired, he resigned and walked away. And he says he'd go back to that room today and say thank you.

It's a conversation about allyship that never felt like a stand, the difference between a job and a calling, and the friend named Finn who gently detonated everything Matt thought he knew. Matt is now a counsellor, and he shares what he sees most in his room today: spiritual abuse and deconstruction.

As Matt puts it: "It's okay to not know things and just be kind."

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what happens to your faith when you stop believing in a god of fear?

reverend brandan robertson, the tiktok pastor and author of queer and christian, joins aaron and ben for one of the most hopeful conversations we've had. brandan grew up in maryland fundamentalism, got saved at 12, went through conversion therapy at moody bible institute, and was named in time magazine in 2015 before the evangelical world turned on him. he came out of it not bitter but freer.

we talk about queering christianity, the stories nobody preached us growing up, and why the queer community is far more spiritual than the world assumes. as brandan puts it: "you walk into a queer club, reach your arm out, and you'll touch somebody with religious trauma."

brandan is a pastor, author and phd candidate in new testament who now leads a small church in queens and helps thousands reclaim a faith built on love instead of punishment.

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Gaz and Jesse Dutlow used to lead worship together on a megachurch stage. Now they're leading standing ovations in musical theatre, with credits including the Sydney Opera House and Melbourne's professional theatre scene.

This week, the sibling duo joins Aaron and Ben for a conversation about the overlap between worship performance and theatre, the institutional exclusion that pushed them both out of church leadership, and the quiet, separate ways they each found language for their non-binary identities, without telling each other until they compared notes.

Gaz and Jesse Dutlow are siblings, former worship leaders, and professional musical theatre performers who've worked on stages from community theatre to the Sydney Opera House.

“If you're going to resist anything, resist shame.” - Jesse Dutlow

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What happens to your faith when you leave the fence behind? In Part 2 of the ReMade Series, Aaron and Ben get into the messy, non-linear journey of spiritual life after the church. Not the tidy version. The real one.

They talk through the fear of losing certainty, Dr. Lynn Moresi's poem on what to keep and what to let go, breath work, tarot cards, Lady Gaga as a Hillsong conference, and the one question Aaron uses as a compass through all of it: 'does this expand love in my life?'

"The biggest fence is the one that we put around God." Aaron Kelly

This is Part 2 of the ReMade Series. If you haven't listened to Part 1 (Rediscover Your Identity, Episode 5), go back and start there.

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The AFL and the church. Two completely different worlds. The same closet.

Mitch Brown became the first openly bisexual player in AFL history in August 2025. In this conversation we talk about what the AFL and the church have in common. The same unwritten rules, the same rewards for performing straightness, the same “get back in your box” the moment you start speaking up.

He also talks about the anger he's still managing, letting go of his partner Lou's hand in queer spaces to prove he belongs, and what he'd say to the 10-year-old version of himself who was hiding everything.

“There are people that will accept you even if this community will drop you. It's not always this little world that you're in. There's others out there.” — Mitch Brown

Mitch Brown is a former AFL player and advocate for queer inclusion in sport.

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