The Shock Absorber

What does it look like when youth ministry uses fun as a hook to get kids to sit through the Jesus bit, and is there a better way?

Joel and Tim dig into a vintage 1971 youth ministry games book, laugh at some genuinely cringe-worthy activities, and land on a question worth asking: is the “bait and switch” approach to ministry actually working against you?

Discussed on this episode
Mike Yaconelli
Way Out Ideas for Youth Groups - Mike Yaconelli and Wayne Rice
Hurt 2.0 - Chap Clark

Timestamps
00:00 — Intro and hair-dyeing confessions
04:20 — Introducing the 1971 games book: Way Out Ideas for Youth Groups
05:50 — Mike Yaconelli and the history of Youth Specialties
06:45 — Rating the cringe
13:00 — Were these games just of their time, or is something more wrong?
16:55 — The strategic logic: why humour as an icebreaker isn’t neutral
20:00 — The Narnia connection: last week’s episode and this one
20:50 — The bait and switch explained: fun as the hook, Jesus as the medicine
23:15 — The Mary Poppins problem: a spoonful of sugar
24:40 — The funnel vs beat approaches in 90s Sydney youth ministry
28:50 — What Soul Revival does differently
31:05 — Both sugar: Nerf guns and Jesus are both genuinely good
32:00 — The subtle language problem: “let’s just get through this”
35:15 — Theology → strategy → practice: where the difference lives
37:50 — Santa, deception, and whether kids are in on the game
44:10 — The key question: do the kids know why they’re really here?
46:50 — Being transparent from the start: “We love Jesus. We love Mario Kart.”
50:25 — Paul to the Thessalonians: sharing not just the gospel but our lives
51:20 — Outro, call for best/worst youth games, and banana farewell

The trailer for Greta Gerwig’s Magician’s Nephew just dropped. They dig into what C.S. Lewis was really doing in Narnia, why Tolkien’s “true myth” argument was the thing that convinced Lewis to become a Christian, and what Aslan reveals about the character of God that straight theology sometimes can’t.

They also get into why great art carries gospel resonance without preaching it, and what it means for ordinary Christians to engage more meaningfully with what they’re watching and reading.

Timestamps
00:00 – Introduction & Magician’s Nephew trailer reaction
02:06 – Why Narnia works devotionally
05:20 – “He’s not safe, but he’s good” — Mrs Beaver’s line
06:59 – Jill and the stream in The Silver Chair
08:14 – The Horse and His Boy and providence
10:37 – Was Lewis writing allegory or something else?
11:47 – Tolkien, the true myth argument, and Lewis’s conversion
17:00 – The danger of agenda overpowering art
22:00 – Avengers Endgame and the sacrifice that resonates
26:00 – The Matrix, Nightmare Before Christmas, and murder mysteries
32:00 – Cal Newport’s deep hobbies and engaging art seriously
36:00 – Practical takeaway: what layer is underneath what you’re watching?

Discussed on this episode

We make a podcast. Are podcasts actually good for the church?

Joel and Tim are joined by Ryan, a theology student whose college project has taken him and his peers inside Christian podcasts to ask exactly that. What they land on is a distinction that changes the whole conversation: there’s a difference between formation and discipleship. Podcasts can form you. They cannot disciple you. And if you’re not asking who you’re discipling, not just who’s forming you, you’re missing something essential about what it means to be a Christian.

Plus: the Reformation and the printing press, why Matt Chandler kept telling his online audience to go find a local church, parasocial relationships and the algorithms that cultivate them, and why Joel started talking like a Sopranos character during uni exam season.

Discussed on this episode
Lifeway — Five Reasons Your Church May Need a Podcast
The Holy Post
Rebuilders
Two Ways News
The Pastor’s Heart
Cross Formed Kidmin

Timestamps
00:00 Welcome. Ryan’s podcast history and the Ethical Leaders Club
04:00 How Ryan got onto this project and why street preaching didn’t work out
07:00 Ryan’s story of becoming a Christian
13:00 What led Ryan to Bible college
16:00 Podcast habits: Tim’s two dozen, Ryan’s lost headphones, Joel’s mostly football
21:00 Are podcasts good for the church? Ryan’s first observation (it’s costly)
24:00 Tim’s case for podcasting: more bites of the cherry, formation beyond the sermon
26:00 Ryan on universal literacy and the historical parallel
28:00 The Reformation and the printing press: not a coincidence
30:00 The two extremes: only one hour of church vs no need for incarnate community
33:00 Para-social relationships and the algorithms that cultivate them
36:00 Ryan’s two questions: who’s discipling you, and who are you discipling?
38:00 1 Timothy 4:16. Watching your life and your doctrine
41:00 Formation vs discipleship
43:00 Mark 3: to be with him and to send them
47:00 Unpacking Stu’s dishwasher: what life alongside life actually looks like
51:00 So are podcasts good for the church?

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The books on the podcast studio shelf sparked a wide-ranging conversations on the Shock Absorber this week. John Stott's Issues Facing Christians Today (the 1984 edition, the same one Tim read as a teenager) and Winky Prattney's Revival set the scene for the discussion on revolution.

Joel, Stu and Tim work through why John Stott mattered so much to a generation of evangelicals who'd been told they had to choose between preaching the gospel and caring about social issues. Why Stu gave up his first PhD at a Winky Prattney rally. What Billy Graham sitting on a rock has to do with everything. And what it looks like to be a faithful disciple in 2026 when the issues facing Christians are AI avatars, digital isolation and a world where your clone can attend a meeting for you.

Plus: the top ten movies of 1984, Shaun the Sheep as a response to AI slop, and why the analog premium makes the church more valuable, not less.

Discussed on this episode
John Stott - Issues Facing Christians Today
Winky Prattney - Revival
Billy Graham - The Jesus Generation
George Marsden - Fundamentalism and American Culture
Graham Stanton
The Clapham Sect
Scopes Monkey Trial
YMCA history

Timestamps
00:00 Stu writing till 2am, Ethan’s bookshelf upgrade and the smell of wisdom
04:00 John Stott’s Issues Facing Christians Today 
05:00 Why Stott mattered — refusing the gospel vs social action divide
08:00 British vs American evangelicalism — the Clapham Sect and the heritage of social conscience
11:00 Stu on John Stott’s influence in Sydney — and meeting him at a traffic light in Amsterdam
13:00 Winky Prattney’s Revival — the Jesus movement speaker who came to Sydney in the early 90s
15:00 Stu gives up his first PhD at a Winky Prattney rally
19:00 Why Stu didn’t want to build on someone else’s foundation
21:00 Billy Graham on a rock — the moment that shaped 20th century evangelicalism
24:00 The Scopes Monkey Trial and the fundamentalist movement
26:00 YMCA as a cautionary tale — from thoroughly Christian to completely secular
29:00 The social environment of 2026 — AI, not nuclear war or industrial relations
32:00 AI avatars, digital clones and the coming premium on analog experience
36:00 Shaun the Sheep, handcrafted art and what the church offers for free
40:00 Can revolution be found in the church? Graham Stanton on the conservative centre and the fringe
42:00 Holistic gospel proclamation and the fallibility of the church as God’s plan A

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What's the difference between someone who turns up to church and someone who is genuinely committed to it? And how do you build a community where the deeply committed set the culture without making everyone else feel like they're on the outside?

Joel and Tim dig into the commitments culture that has shaped Soul Revival for over 35 years. The Sydney FC Cove, the Spirit of Shankly, Real Madrid's member-owned election, the Manchester United social psychology experiment, and why Soul Revival chose Saturday night because it was harder, not because it was easier.

Plus the three dangers of a commitments culture, why holding loose to practice while holding firm to theology is the key, and what it means to be a custodian of culture; the person who knows why the church does what it does and can pass that on to whoever walks in the door.

Timestamps
00:00 Welcome back — the long-lost episode and the Commitments culture
02:00 The Shock Absorber model and why commitments matter
04:00 Sydney FC and the different levels of fandom — novices, fans, season ticket holders, the Cove
06:00 Custodians of culture — who holds the stories of a community
08:00 The open door and the definable boundary — wrestling with what a commitment is
11:00 The three levels — irregular, regular, committed
13:00 The shadows — three dangers of a commitments culture
19:00 The Manchester United social psychology experiment
23:00 Keeping Jesus the main thing — not the local expression
25:00 Saturday night was harder, not easier — the counter-cultural choice
29:00 Spirit of Shankly, Real Madrid elections and member-owned clubs
33:00 Cultural memory — why the Kop doesn't wear the kit
37:00 What commitments meetings look like now — and what they don't
42:00 Listening to those unlike yourself
46:00 The one who thought Week Away was mandatory
49:00 Why charcoal Charlie's catering would be a category error
53:00 Holding loose to practice, holding firm to theology
57:00 When to lovingly say — that's not what we do here

Discussed on this episode
Spirit of Shankly
Manchester United / Liverpool social psychology experiment
Cultural memory and custodians of culture

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Francis Schaeffer hoped the church would be a thing of strength and beauty. Stu isn't sure his friends would have used those words to describe the churches they grew up in. That gap, between what the church is and what it could be, is what drove everything Soul Revival tried to build.

They open up Schaeffer's 1968 The God Who Is There that turned up on the podcast studio bookshelf. Schaeffer's ministry at L'Abri. The Trinity as the foundation of love. Jesus's words to the Samaritan woman at the well. The Great Evangelical Disaster and why Schaeffer feared the West was hollowing out the gospel. And what it looks like to be a custodian of a community shaped by that gospel rather than by the culture surrounding it.

Timestamps
00:00 Welcome — Stu's 10th year as Cronulla Sharks chaplain and the finals
02:00 A first edition Schaeffer on the podcast studio shelf
03:30 Francis Schaeffer and L'Abri — a shelter for questions in Switzerland
06:00 How Schaeffer shaped Stu's ministry — truth demonstrated as well as debated
08:30 The God Who Is There — why God exists even when culture turns its back
10:00 Is God Dead? — the 1964 Time magazine cover
11:30 The adequate universal for love — Schaeffer's argument from the Trinity
14:00 Love between the persons of the Trinity before creation
16:00 Jesus as the only way back into that relationship
18:00 The church as strength and beauty — and whether our friends would agree
20:00 The church is where the action is — not the pub, the sporting club or the concert
22:00 The Great Evangelical Disaster — Schaeffer's fear for the West
25:00 Three principles for evangelicalism — doctrine, practice and corporate exhibition
28:00 The commitments culture as custodians of the gospel
31:00 Galatians and keeping the main thing the main thing
32:30 Larry Norman, one way and the Jesus movement
34:00 Preview — the lost episode on commitments culture returns next week

Discussed on this episode
Francis Schaeffer - The God Who Is There
Francis Schaeffer - The Great Evangelical Disaster

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Rock and roll didn't come from nowhere. It came from the blues, which came from the gospel songs sung in the fields during slavery. It crossed the Atlantic, bounced off post-war England, came back to America even bigger, and kept evolving and Led Zeppelin turned it into something visceral and enormous and still traceable back to its roots.

Joel, Stu and Tim are continuing the movements conversation. This week the thread runs from the Blitz to the Beatles to the Sex Pistols to the question every church leader needs to sit with: when does contextualising the gospel become syncretising it? And how does the church remain a movement without losing the gospel?

Stu's honours thesis on the social implications of strategic bombing. Tim's contextualization sessions at YouthWorks Conference. Christopher Watkins on flour in a baked cake. John Stott on hippies looking for all the right things in the wrong places. And Ecclesiastes 3:11 — God has put eternity in the hearts of men.

Discussed on this episode
Becoming Led Zeppelin
Christopher Watkins - Biblical Critical Theory
Pete Ward - Liquid Church
Adam Smith - Four Stages of Society
Chess Records

Previous episodes in this series:

New Wine, Old Wineskins
From Consumer to Contributor

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome — Led Zeppelin documentary and favourite songs
04:00 Stu's honours thesis — the Blitz and strategic bombing
07:00 How Britain baited Hitler into the Blitz
10:00 Post-war America and the roots of teenage rebellion
13:00 Blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll — the gospel root
16:00 Port cities as the internet — records crossing the Atlantic
18:00 The transatlantic bounce — Beatles, punk and amplification
20:00 Tim's bridge — contextualisation and why the gospel travels
23:00 Flour in a baked cake — Christopher Watkins
25:00 The missionary who wouldn't baptise until they learned to farm
27:00 The Scottish Enlightenment and how it corrupted the mission
29:00 Rock and roll as syncretism
31:00 The Reformation as movement
33:00 Friendship ecclesiology — contextualisation not export
35:00 Can the church preempt a movement?
38:00 Pete Ward — being with people where they are
40:00 Ecclesiastes 3:11 and John Stott on hippies

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Total Football didn't come from nowhere. It came from a culture in revolt: Dutch teenagers with nowhere to go, smoke bombs at a royal wedding, a movement that flipped one of the most conservative societies in Europe in under two years. And it has more to say about how the church adapts to cultural change than you might expect.

Joel, Stu and Tim are back after a break, and Stu is bringing the Industrial Revolution, the Sunday School movement, Robert Raikes, Mark Senter's 50-year cycles of youth ministry, the Youth Ministry Wars of the 90s, and Jesus's own wineskins metaphor to bear on a single question: what happens when institutions can't keep up with culture?

The answer, historically, is always a movement. The question is whether the church is ready to recognise one when it sees it.

This is part one of a multi-episode conversation.

Discussed in this episode
It Was What it Was podcast
Provo Movement
Mark Senter - The Coming Revolution in Youth Ministry
Mark Senter - Four Views of Youth Ministry
Ken Moser - No Guts No Glory
Jim Rayburn - Young Life history
Albert Camus - The Fall

Timestamps
00:00 Welcome back — Week Away, David Jensen's talks and Tim's total football rabbit hole
01:30 Total Football — what it is, where it came from and why it matters
05:00 The Provo movement — Dutch anarchists, smoke bombs and a cultural revolution
08:30 From pipe smokers to Amsterdam — how culture flips faster than institutions
10:00 Johan Cruyff, Pep Guardiola and the lineage of total football
13:00 The connection — what football movements have to do with church movements
14:00 The agrarian world before the Industrial Revolution — villages, stability and transmitted faith
17:00 The seismic shift — steam engines, mass migration and the collapse of the parish system
19:00 The Luddites — proto-feminism and the first movement against technology
20:30 Oliver Twist, crime, convicts and how the Industrial Revolution populated Australia
22:00 The church's failure to adapt — and Robert Raikes' accidental movement
25:00 The Sunday School spreads — Thomas Hassall in Parramatta and two peoples together
27:00 Max Weber, charismatic leaders and the sociology of movements
29:00 Jesus's wineskins metaphor as movement theory
30:00 Mark Senter's 50-year cycles — Sunday School to YMCA to Young Life to the 90s
33:00 The Youth Ministry Wars — funnel model vs discipleship model in Sydney
36:00 Soul Revival falls into something different — without knowing the war was happening
39:00 YouthWorks College and the homogenisation of the Sydney model
41:00 Preview — next episode: institutionalising relationships and the next cycle

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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 church

Discussed 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 principle

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