Read The Room 🇦🇺

Q&A v1.0 

Producer James sits down with Mike & Katie to chat about their ministry backgrounds and what they see across the Australian church.

Katie & Mike talk about their respective journeys towards faith and ministry (10:45 for Katie, 20:45 for Mike), their big takeaways from season 1 of Read The Room - including evangelism and deconstructionism in the contemporary church (29:30), if there is a 'best type' of model for the future church (38:30) and their thoughts on revival and hunger in the Australian church (54:45).

Check out more about Encounter Church here: www.encounteradelaide.com.au 

Follow Katie on Instagram: @_katieiles_

Mike Guglielmucci is the co-founder of Lighthouse City Mission in Port Adelaide. But more than likely you know him from his astonishing fall from grace in 2008, a fall involving a faked cancer diagnosis, a porn addiction and a desperate desire to earn God's love.

The team sit down to hear Mike's story (7:30), the highs and lows, to find out what really happened and where God was in the midst of it. In this wide ranging and deeply moving conversation, the three of them (and producer James) discuss the choice to move from a mega-church in the suburbs to start a charity in Port Adelaide (11:00), Mike's personal response to Carl Lentz's fall from grace (24:00), how shame threatened to destroy him (40:00), his wife Amanda's incredible grace (49:30) and how moral failure and redemption plays out in the era of social media (57:30).

Have the tissues handy for this one.

Check out more about Lighthouse City Mission here: lighthousecitymission.org

Ps Josh Greenwood is the Lead Pastor at Influencers Australia, part of Influencers Church Global, one of South Australia's most important churches and a leadership factory within the ACC movement for many years.

Katie & Mike sit down for a cozy chat with Josh about defeating tall poppy syndrome (9:00), leading change in a complex organisational structure (13:45), scaling multi-site churches (24:00), fighting the allure of the platform (33:30) and the strengths and weaknesses they see in the upcoming generation of leaders.

Check out more about Influencers here: https://influencers.church/ 

Follow Josh on Instagram: @joshgreenwood

Let's dance with some Baptists 🕺🏾

Dale & Edi Stephenson are some of the great contemporary leaders in the Australian church, leading Crossway Baptist Church and pioneering the Building A Discipling Culture movement among many other things.

In this episode, Katie and Mike take a deep dive into the wealth of experience around discipleship that Dale & Edi bring. From their early days in ministry and leading Crossway (8:30), to the Discovery Bible Method (26:30), what stats are actually worth measuring in the church (38:00), resilience in ministry (45:00) and the hope they see in the contemporary Aussie church (55:00), this is an episode to bookmark and listen to on repeat.

Hands across Australia. 🙌

Michael Hands is the Lead Pastor of Newlife Church, a large evangelical church with campuses across Queensland and the largest church in the Uniting Church movement, where he grew from Youth Pastor, to Associate, to Church Planter/Pastor and back to the Lead position, all by 30.

Mike & Katie grill their dear friend Michael about the unique tensions and pains of leaving the church you planted to lead a megachurch (3:30), how to hear the call of God clearly in a busy world (17:00), unique trends in Australian young adults (30:00) and learnings in the first few months of senior leadership.

Check out more about Newlife here: https://church.nu/ 

RICE, RICE baby.

In an open and hilarious convo. Steve joins Katie & Mike to talk about uniquely Asian-Australian issues and the birth and success of RICE (12:30), what successful evangelism looks like in a culture that needs to be 'unmuted' (22:00) and being an evangelical Christian presence on a reality TV show (38:30).

Who better to kick off this podcast with than the Gospel Ninja?

Melinda Dwight is one of Australia's great pastors, leaders and communicators. She is the National Director of Alpha Australia and previously served as the Senior Pastor of the Imagine network of churches for 15 years.

She joins Mike & Katie to discuss digital evangelism into the future (14:00), transitioning in leadership (21:00), being a woman pioneering in the church (31:00), the key to overcoming discouragement in 2021 (45:00).

And of course, Alpha.

As the Australian church heads into a wild new decade, it needs to hear from Australian voices willing to call a spade a spade in the service of the gospel.

Read the Room is a series of unflinchingly honest conversations from the trenches of Australian ministry. We talk with active, high-calibre pastors and leaders building the church in Australia’s unique cultural reality in the midst of a global pandemic, post-Christianity, hyper secularism and a severely interrupted AFL season. 

The one podcast championing the hope of the gospel without using the words ‘pivot’ or ‘unprecedented’: Read The Room.