For those who like me, who may have missed it, here’s the basic plot.

Jake Skellington is the King of Halloween Town. But he’s bored of doing the same thing every year. One day, he wanders into the forest and discovers a door that takes him into Christmas Town. Jack is amazed at what he finds. There is snow, bright lights, beautiful decorations, carolers, and snowmen. So much joy and happiness.

Jack wants to share what he found with others and takes the story of Christmas (and some stolen artefacts) back to Halloween Town and convinces all his neighbours and friends to join in the Christmas celebrations.

And they do… kind of…

They want to celebrate Christmas, but their only frame of reference is Halloween. And so, while they try to join in the spirit of Christmas, they end up distorting it. They get their celebration close, but disastrously wrong.

Instead of Santa and his sleigh, they create skeletal reindeer who pull a flying coffin. Jack dresses up as the scariest Santa Claus you’ve ever seen, the townsfolk make presents with jack-in-the-box jump scares, decorations that attack villagers, and drop-off creatures that destroy homes.

Jack was enamoured by Christmas, but because he couldn’t see past his own lens of Halloween, he ends up with a very different version of Christmas.

I got halfway through this movie recently and immediately thought, “Oh my goodness!! The Nightmare Before Christmas is Galatians!”

You can watch or listen to the rest of this sermon via the links below, or follow Soul Revival Church on your favourite podcasting app.

Fresh off his holiday to Japan, sits down with me and to share some stories and discuss what he learned. One significant takeaway was the importance of having cultural hosts when visiting unknown places and peoples.

Missiologists have used the term “persons of peace” to describe those native to a culture who are welcoming and receptive to the missionary. These people are open to friendship, as well as the Gospel, and willing to assist the missionary in connecting with others of the host culture.

This terminology of ‘cultural hosts’ and ‘persons of peace’ gives further language to describe the dynamic embedded in Stu’s metaphor of the ‘shock absorber’ and how young people in particular can aid the institutional church in adapting to cultural change.

This becomes particularly relevant with the rapidity of change in youth culture. Until recently, youth culture shifted and changed at a noticeable, but adaptable pace. New waves of music, clothing, hairstyles, or language all took time to develop and spread across the West through TV, magazines, touring bands, word of mouth, and other “traditional” media and communications.

However, in the digital age and the emergence of social media, cultural memes can arise, peak and then disappear, with incredible speed. It was only 18 months ago that Joel and I were discussing Italian Brainrot, and yet it has been months since I’ve heard any reference to this particular version of AI slop. And thank goodness that “6-7” is starting to lose its appeal. It is sooo 2025!

Part of the answer is valuing the role of young people as cultural hosts. When we listen to the voices of young people, allowing them to welcome us into their culture, we can “share with [them] not only the gospel of God but our lives as well” (1 Thess. 2:8). And as those generative intergenerational relationships grow, we, as the older members of the church, can reciprocate and be cultural hosts to our youngest brothers and sisters, helping them explore and understand the rich history of church tradition and historic theology that their own faith is founded on.

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Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

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Last week got away from me for all the best reasons, but I didn’t get a chance to publish my usual Shock Absorber podcast plug. I’ve included it below (spoiler alert: it has some ludicrous suggestions for youth games), along with a few other updates on where I’ve been and where I’m going in 2027.

Square One Kids Camp - New Creation

The main reason for being AWOL last week was that I was preparing to take our Soul Revival Kids away to Square One, a multi-church kids’ camp run by my old team at Youthworks. I’m incredibly biased, since I used to be involved in running this camp, but it is seriously the best way to run a children’s ministry weekend away.

One of Youthworks’ driving principles as a parachurch organisation is that they are not the local church; therefore, they ought not to take on the role of the local church, but to facilitate local churches to do what only local churches should be doing. In this case, it is the local church’s responsibility to disciple the children in their community. What Youthworks has the capacity to do is run a complex, multi-day, mountain-top experience for children that complements the important week-in and week-out ministry that churches have with their own children. Leaders come away with kids from their church and altogether join in the large group sessions, medium group activities, and small group discussions with other local church groups.

For small churches that do not have the resources to run a weekend away for their kids, it is a particular blessing to have the large group experience. The child who may be the only 8-year-old in her church arrives at Square One and realises that there are hundreds of other 8-year-olds who also love Jesus. What a profound blessing!

If you’re a children’s ministry leader close to Sydney, and you’re not yet involved in Square One, let me give my ringing endorsement to join in. And if you’re further away, but want to learn how to run something similar for yourself, reach out to the Youthworks Team and have a chat.

The Shock Absorber Podcast - Bait and Switch

If you grew up in the church, you probably have memories of playing a variety of youth group games. I can remember tug-of-war through jelly (Jell-O for my USA readers), wide games through the bush in the dark, “wound night”, which involved putting putty and makeup on various body parts to mimic mild to catastrophic injuries, and—the 90s youth group staple—the band night. 🎸🎶

What I don’t remember are any games or activities that could be considered cringe, or worse, humiliating. Enter Way-Out Ideas For Youth Groups by Mike Yaconelli and Wayne Rice.

Caveat #1: Yaconelli and Rice are Youth Ministry gurus, co-founded Youth Specialties and are generally respected in the history of youth ministry, especially in the United States. Caveat #2: Way-Out Ideas was first published in 1968 and is a product of its time. Caveat #3: There are some ideas in the book that still translate to today and sound similar to games that I can recall both playing and running in youth ministry.

HOWEVER, there are also some genuinely terrible ideas. Laughter and frivolity (which, from the introductory chapter, appears to be the strategy for including these activities in your youth group) often come at the expense of a young person in the group. We laugh at the youth who “falls flat on his face”, walks around all night with wet pants, or does a blind sit-up into a cream pie. Then there are the awkward attempts at boy-girl relationships, which come close—but not too close—to being sexual (rubbing lipstick between noses, passing potato chips using only your mouth, face-to-face conga lines, or giving back rubs).

In last week’s episode of The Shock Absorber, and I discuss these “games” and what they are communicating about the purpose of youth ministry. Is there a difference between having fun in an attempt to attract people to Christianity vs. having fun because you are a Christian? Is the bait-and-switch effective? And even if it is, ought youth ministries use such a strategy? Is there something inherently dishonest about the approach that undermines the truth and beauty of the gospel?

These leading questions probably give you an indication of what we conclude. But I encourage you to listen to the full conversation at the links below.

Michigan Adventures - June 2027

Finally, I will be traveling to the USA in June 2027 to attend both the Children’s Spirituality Summit and Intergenerate; two conferences I have contributed to and benefited greatly from in previous years. Both conferences are being held at Calvin University in Grand Rapids (MI) but three weeks apart.

That gives me two weeks in the middle to explore the Great Lakes area. If you’ve got any suggestions of places to visit, things to see, or adventures to be had, please let me know in the comments below. And if you have the capacity, please consider coming and joining the community at one or either of these conferences next year.

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Are you seething with anger? Or celebrating with joy? Perhaps you’re playing it cool and waiting to see more before making a final judgement.

I’m talking, of course, about the new trailer for Greta Gerwig’s debut Narnia film, The Magician’s Nephew.

We could discuss many points of controversy, from the gender-bending casting of Meryl Streep as the voice of (an apparently still male) Aslan, to the dissonant pairing of hard rock pioneers Led Zeppelin with glimpses of wartime Britain and the fantasy world of Narnia. And if I were more of a clickbait-y provocateur, perhaps I would.

Instead, this week on The Shock Absorber podcast, and I dig into the world of art, literature, and the devotional impact that C.S. Lewis's original Narnia series has had on our faith formation. We talk about the spectrum of “Christian” art, from the Catholic-informed moral world of Tolkien’s Middle-earth, to the allegorical The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (despite Lewis’ own aversion to the term “allegory”), to the more heavy-handed sermonising of modern films like God’s Not Dead.

Along the way, we ask questions about “good” Christian art, the Gospel as the true myth, and the resonances of the Christian story in Marvel, the Matrix and murder mysteries.

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Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

Lifeway Research gives me five compelling reasons why my church needs a podcast.

Brand Developer and Digital Transformation Strategist, Sharon Alfred, tells me podcasting is the “field preaching of the 21st century”.

John Piper cautions me that podcasts can lead to factionalism and deprioritising the BIble.

and equivocate between podcasts being a blessing, problematic and insufficient.

Closer to home, Aussie pastor warns Christians not to substitute church for podcasts and, most frank of all, author/academic tells pastors they shouldn’t have podcasts.

So… is the explosion of Christian podcasts and audio content good for Christians and/or good for the church?

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This week, and I are joined on the couch by special guest Ryan Betbeder1. Ryan, along with fellow Moore Theological College students Jimmy Knight and Jonny Hann, set themselves the challenge of answering this curly Christian podcast question. After conducting interviews with some of the leading podcasters in the Sydney evangelical scene, Ryan and co. reflect on the relevant advantages and cautions around churches creating additional digital content outside of the main worship gathering on the weekend.

Is this wise discipleship: equipping the flock with tools for spiritual formation outside of formal church structures?

Is it an unwise (potentially even unethical) use of a pastor’s time: building an audience while neglecting their charge?

Are we using the wealth of resources to foster spiritual health? Or are we just adding to the noise?2

And—what caught my imagination towards the end of our time together—is there a meaningful difference between formation and discipleship that would help pastors discern how to use their time, and advise their congregants of the same?

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

As I explain on this week’s episode of The Shock Absorber podcast, it was Stott’s refusal to conform to the ‘Gospel vs. Social Gospel’ divide that was most compelling. I was not yet cognisant of the larger cultural context of 1980-1990s evangelicalism that had shaped my early church experience. The Fundamentalist–modernist controversy of the early 20th Century had morphed into a conservative-progressive divide, with the former prioritising Gospel proclamation, repentance and personal faith, and the latter emphasising the social needs of the poor, downcast and destitute.

Growing up in the conservative Christianity of Sydney Anglicanism, I had imbibed the notion that “real” Christians care about people’s salvation, and the derisive term “social gospel” was used for those progressives who didn’t hold a high view of Scripture, Jesus and the atonement.

[[Of course the truth is far more complex. There are certainly examples of Christian organisations that lost their way by emphasising social needs at the expense of explicit Christian distinctives (e.g. the YMCA, Young Men’s Christian Association). However, even within my own conservative church context, there were and continue to be diocesan-level programs like Anglicare and Anglican Aid that engage in explicit practical needs ministry to vulnerable people locally and globally.]]

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John Stott was revered in the Sydney evangelical world. A regular visitor to our shores, his expositional approach to preaching, alongside his clarity and warmth, and his editorial oversight of—and significant contributor to—The Bible Speaks Today commentary series made him the closest we had to a living saint (at least the closest that evangelical Protestants are allowed to have).

That this same John Stott had written a book about ‘social issues’ spanned the unbridgeable chasm in my evangelical imagination between those who took the Bible seriously and those who took societal concerns seriously. Stott never loses his commitment to conservative, evangelical hermeneutics, and yet insightfully applies the Scriptures to modern-day concerns that were (I believed) the domain of “social gospel” types like nuclear war and industrial relations, as well as those social issues that evangelicals were allowed to talk about, such as sexuality and abortion.

Through Stott, I was brought back to an earlier world of evangelicalism; one that could hold the authority of Scripture alongside the genuine care for people, systems, and creation. This was the evangelical world that fostered Sunday Schools as education and moral formation, the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, child labour laws, and the RSPCA.

The issues of 2026 are not those of Stott’s 1980’s, much less those of the Clapham Sect, Hannah More or Robert Raikes. But these evangelicals provide a model for engagement with social concerns that refuses to compromise on biblical authority. In fact, it is the authority of Scripture that drove these evangelicals to care for vulnerable people, species and creation.

Catch the full conversation in the links below, where the conversation between , and I also covers:

• The Jesus Revolution of the 60-70s

• How charismatic preacher Winkie Pratney prompted Stu to leave his PhD program

• Why Shaun the Sheep and incarnate church community are the answers that an AI-slop-world is looking for

On the NSW Teacher’s Strike - From the Archives

Back in 2022, teachers in NSW went on strike around issues of workload and pay structures. As a proud husband of a public school teacher, I wrote this piece in support of the strike, riffing off Stott’s chapter on industrial relations.

John Stott, the late English author/preacher/theologian quotes Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple in his chapter on industrial relations in ‘Issues Facing Christians Today’:

“The worst horrors of the early factories have been abolished, but the wage earners are not yet fully recognised as persons, for… the “workers” usually have no voice in the control of the industry whose requirements determine so large a part of their lives… Every citizen should have a voice in the conduct of the business or industry which is carried on by means of his labour.”

I know first hand the labour of public school teachers. I see the 55+ hours per week and all of the preparation, planning, marking, and administration that happens outside of the 6 hours per day of upfront teaching and playground duties (with only an allowance for a 30min break in a 6.5 hour school day).

I see the passion for shaping the lives of young children and hear the joy in the stories of concepts grasped, skills acquired, friendships forged and the delight of learning. I sit with the exhaustion and the frustration of administrative overload and unreasonable parental expectations and the wondering if it really is worth it after all.

I see the cost of resources that are purchased out of teacher’s own pockets because schools are underfunded but they want to give their students the most engaging learning. I feel the anger of another thoughtless comment of “teachers only work 40 weeks a year” or that “they’ve just had 5 months off, what more do they want”; comments made, not having seen that in the last 5 months those 55+ hours per week crept up to 65-70+ as teachers who are experts at incarnate, in-class learning, had to adjust once again to online delivery and digital tools whilst attempting to serve their students as best as they were able.

Stott consolidates Temple’s argument by saying:

“Christians will agree that at the very least there should be a procedure of consultation, and, more important, that this should not be a piece of window-dressing but a genuine discussion early in the planning process which is reflected in the final decision.”

Our teachers have been consulted (cf. Gallop report) and they have consistently reported that they are overworked, overburdened with administration, under-resourced, underpaid in comparison with other 4-year-degree professions, and at high risk of burnout and leaving the profession that they love.

Yes, I am selfishly invested. Many of those closest to me are teachers who I care for deeply. But I am also invested in good public schooling (and health, transport, etc.) for the good that it brings to all children and households in our State.

This is not THE definitive political position, far less a definitive Christian position. There will be other good positions one can take. But for what it’s worth, this is why #Istandwithteachers and believe they deserve #MoreThanThanks.

What’s the difference between a casual football fan and a season ticket holder? One significant difference is their level of commitment, both in terms of finances and time, that being a regular attendee at the games requires. You might think of these as external, or input, factors.

However, there will also be internal, or output, differences. The season ticket holder will likely have a greater understanding of the game, of the dynamics of play, of the players on the field, of the dynamics of the stadium (where to buy the best hot chips and which toilets have the shortest queues) and of the appropriate behaviour during various moments of play.

This was all very obvious to me as a (less than) casual football fan, accompanying my son and his godfather to a Sydney FC match for the first time. As a complete novice to the stadium, the team and the game, I had very little idea of what was going on on the pitch and in the stadium.

There was one group of fans that immediately caught my attention. These were the “super fans” congregating behind the goal and creating the most energy, excitement and noise throughout the match. I am led to believe that this group is common across football teams and countries, but in Sydney, they are called The Cove1.

Members of The Cove are not casual football fans. But neither are they “merely” season ticket holders. They play an important role in the club as the unofficial custodians of Sydney FC culture. They are the fans who know the history of the club, who know the songs and chants to sing, whose core identity is caught up and expressed as a Sydney FC supporter.

I put “merely” in scare quotes above because, as you’ll hear in the podcast episode, I’m struggling with language. How do you communicate the level of commitment and identity within the cultural custodians, without disparaging those who do not have, or have not chosen to have, that level of commitment.

This is the struggle that we are currently wrestling with at Soul Revival Church. Commitment has been a key articulated value of our community—both in the years as a youth and young adult community at Gymea Anglican Church, and as a stand-alone church plant since 2012. We actively encourage people to be committed to Jesus and committed to his church. But not just “the church” universal, but to a particular local gathering of God’s people.

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Here’s where our concept of The Commitments comes into play. We want to be a church which is open to non-Christians and irregulars. We want people to explore Christianity, discover who Jesus is, and investigate Christians in their natural habitat. We also want to be a church full of “season ticket holders”. The once-a-month definition of regular that is used in sociological studies is abysmal for those who say they are disciples of Jesus Christ. We want regular members to make church a priority on their weekend and choose the local gathering of God’s people over all the other events and activities that compete for our attention in busy 21st-Century suburbia.

And then there are The Commitments. Yes, they are regular in their attendance. But there’s something else, something (I say very hesitantly…) more. They are committed to Jesus, committed to this local church, AND they are the custodians of Soul Revival culture. They know the stories, they have a deep sense of our mission, vision and values. They can guide others in the particularities of our theology, strategy and practice.

Importantly, like The Cove (I think…), The Commitments is an open group. There’s no exclusivity of membership, no test you have to pass, no time or attendance requirements, no secret onboarding rituals, and no special honour within the congregation. What there is, is a self-understanding that this is my church, this is my community, and unless/until Jesus leads me somewhere else, I’m all in.

How do we communicate this well? I don’t know. But if you want to hear me stumble along and think out loud, you can listen along to the full conversation with on this week’s episode of The Shock Absorber.

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app, and if you have comments or questions, please let me know below.

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What is the difference — pastorally speaking — between the three soils that don’t produce a flourishing crop and the shepherd who pursues the lost sheep?

The farmer sows the seed, and while the seed on the path does not take hold, seed in the rocky and thorny soil takes initial root before withering or being choked out. The word fails to flourish into faith. Meanwhile, the good shepherd leaves the ninety-nine strong flock to pursue the one who has wandered off.

As under-shepherds (1 Pet. 5:2-4) doing the work of sowing the seed and pastorally caring for the sheep in our flock, what is our responsibility towards those who walk away from faith and leave our ministry? Are they “lost sheep” whom we ought to pursue and bring back to the fold? Or are they non-flourishing soil who, despite our faithful efforts, have been choked out by the concerns of the world?

This was one of my questions coming away from the presentation by Dr Ruth Lukabyo at the most recent Theology Think Tank event. In this article, I want to summarise Lukabyo’s presentation and ponder some the implications for those in youth and young adult ministry.

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When Young People Leave The Church

The Theology Think Tank is a twice-annual event hosted by Youthworks College that seeks to bring cutting-edge research in children’s and youth ministry to an audience of ministry practitioners. At the June event, Dr Ruth Lukabyo (Dean of Women and lecturer in Church History and Ethics) presented her most recent research on the perennial question of youth and young adult drop-off rates from church and faith. Titled ‘When Young People Leave the Church: Understanding Disaffiliation and Rebuilding Pathways of Faith’, Lukabyo summarised data from several large-scale Australian and international studies before presenting original qualitative and quantitative results from her and her colleagues’ ‘Australian Community Survey’.

Anyone engaged in children or youth ministry is aware of the extent of the problem. Yet the stark reality is worth repeating.

• 72% of those attending regularly at 11 no longer attended by the age of 18-291

• 72% of Australian 18-35 year olds who grew up Christian are no longer Christian or identify as Christian but don’t attend church2

• 44% of the children of church-going parents are no longer attending a church by the age of 303

• 36% of 15-24 year olds moved from identifying as ‘Christian’ to ‘no religion’ between 2016 and 2021 Australian Census4

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Lukabyo’s contribution is unearthing the reasons for disaffiliation, based on 2,500 participant survey responses (45 respondents providing additional comments) and 6 long-form interviews.

Among the stated reasons for disaffiliation, the following themes emerged:

• The process of growing up/making my own decisions (48% youth & 42% YA leavers); “I just grew out of goin (sic) to church”

• Loss of faith/no longer believed (19% youth leavers); “I didn’t believe with what they were preaching”

• Other interests became more important (13% youth & 21% YA leavers); “it did not take precedence in my life”

• Moved to another area (19% YA leavers)5

A Reason To Stay?

Of course, as those ministering to children, youth and young adults, this research cannot spark mere curiosity. These are not numbers of a PowerPoint, but names and faces that we have spent hours, weeks, sometimes years investing in.

For six years, I co-led a group of teenage boys at Youth Group from Year 7 to their graduating year. At times, we had up to 30 boys in this group on Friday nights and Sunday evening church. Only a small handful of these young men are still following Jesus, and only one is still connected to my local church. I can see their faces, recall their names, and hear their voices in Lukabyo’s data.

What are the implications of this research? Are there practices that youth ministry teams can put into place that may mitigate against the disaffiliation of teens and young adults in their ministry? Here are three suggestions that came out of the presentation and discussions at the Theology Think Tank event.

1. Plan for transition points
   There continues to be a strong correlation between church dropout rates and moments of social transition between primary and high school, high school and university/TAFE, and entry into the vocational workforce. Churches need to consider the structural and social scaffolds that may mitigate the loss of connection to church and ministry during these changes in life stage.

2. Don’t skip searching faith
   Questions need not be the end of faith. In fact, as Westerhoff has shown, the exploration of faith is an essential pathway into an authentically owned faith.6 Parents and leaders of youth and young adults need not despair when their young ones question, doubt and explore alternatives to the Christian faith. Adults do not need to have all the answers, but do need to be willing to engage in good-faith conversations, willing to walk alongside the young person in their explanation, and continue to offer a positive and coherent picture of what mature faith looks like.

3. Model and teach authentic faith
   Several of the reasons stated for disaffiliating came down to the lack of relevance of faith; because of life stage (matured out of faith), or from a seeming disconnect between Christianity and the respondent’s ethical, intellectual or existential concerns. Leaders and parents are not merely trying to prevent departure, but to offer a Christianity that is meaningful, credible, honest and relationally safe. In other words, a faith worth owning for oneself.

Still Pondering…

Lukabyo’s research provides important Australian data to the questions surrounding church drop-off, disaffiliation, and faith retention. However, I still have several questions, from the mildly curious to the more substantial.

1. What difference — if any — does birth order make to disaffiliation? My hypothesis would be that those who have older siblings who have left the faith are more likely to also leave the faith and to do so earlier, following in their siblings’ footsteps.

2. What difference — if any — does parents’ affiliation make to disaffiliation? Previous U.S. research has shown the strong connection between parent and child faith.7 Can we map the converse, that parents’ lack of faith and personal disaffiliation impacts the disaffiliation of their children?

3. How do churches and youth ministries create spaces of conviction and exploration? What do the weekly and annual rhythms of a church look like where faith can be confidently owned by the leaders while allowing for, and guiding through, teenagers’ own exploration of searching faith?8

4. Most importantly, does answering the questions and concerns of young people “fix” the problem of disaffiliation? The undercurrent of Lukabyo’s presentation was that doing the opposite of what has caused the young person to leave is sufficient to cause them to stay. If every question had been answered, if there had been no hypocrisy in the leadership, if the ethical positioning of the church was represented convincingly and convictionally, would they have stayed?

   I’m not so sure…

   What Lukabyo’s research doesn’t account for are the reasons that youth and young adults give for why they stay. I don’t fault Lukabyo for this — it’s an entirely different research topic. However, I am curious to know whether the reasons people stay are simply the opposite reasons given for why people leave. What are we missing in our structures and systems of ministry that helps foster faith that may be hidden from this particular set of research questions?

I Always Pray With Joy

At the end of the day, each person will give an account as to why they received or rejected the invitation to join the wedding feast of the King (Matt. 22:1-14). As those tasked with the leadership of youth and young adults, let us pray earnestly for the ongoing faith of our young people.

Perhaps Paul’s words to the Philippians may shape your prayers for your church’s young people today.

In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus… God can testify how I long for all of you with the affection of Christ Jesus.

And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless for the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ – to the glory and praise of God.

Philippians 1:3-11

You can hear Ruth talk about her research on The Pastor’s Heart podcast, and read her own write-up at Youthworks.net.

This throwback-Thursday-on-a-Tuesday article was originally published at GrowingFaith.com.au on 1st September 2022. © Youthworks 2022.

Tips for celebrating milestones.

Father’s Day is a significant moment in Australia’s cultural calendar. School children spend class time making cards and many schools have Father’s Day stalls where students can buy a small gift for dad while raising money for the local P&C. Every shop and business you can imagine has a Father’s Day special just right for that dad who wants the new Ryobi 6-in-1 hedging tool, the latest V6 motorcycle spark plug filter, the recently released biography about Australia’s 1983 Commonwealth Games polo bronze medallist or two hours of solitude at the sauna and massage wellness centre.

Honouring God’s good design

As Christians, we rightly celebrate and honour our fathers, not only as recipients of our material or experiential gifts, but because of the important role that dads have in God’s good design for the family, and because of the way that they image the perfect fatherhood of God ‘from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name’ (Ephesians 3:15).

For some, Father’s Day is a day of celebration and joy, as we participate in the warmth of relationships with good fathers, whose actions, words and attitudes more closely image the fatherhood of God. For others, Father’s Day is a day of mourning, loss or anguish: for those who have lost a father, for the father who has lost a child, or for those suffering through the pain of absent, abusive or distant fathers or children who failed to live up to God’s good design for family.

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From the account of creation in Genesis 1–2 we see that God has a high view of family, and family language saturates God’s own self-description throughout the Scriptures as father, mother, husband and of course, Jesus the Son. All the more reason why the pain of broken and failed family relationships is felt so deeply by fallen and fallible people like you and me.

Whether it be through joy or sorrow, Father’s Day is an annual event through which we can remember and properly honour the fathers in our families, churches and communities.

Making the most of milestones

Debbie Streicher of Milestone Ministries writes about the five stages of celebrating milestones in an individual’s life: name it, equip it, bless it, gift it, and reinforce it.1 How might we apply these five stages to celebrating Father’s Day?

Name It relates simply to acknowledging the event and recognising its significance for the person. Even though Father’s Day has a regular spot on the calendar, it still requires an intentionality from the family, the church and the community. In a culture that does not always affirm Christian views of family relationships, we ought to embrace the opportunity to acknowledge the importance of fatherhood (despite how commercialised the day has become).

Equip It means to include ‘some caring conversation … and a related Bible passage’ that grounds the acknowledgement of this day in Scripture. For Father’s Day, this may be a passage that reminds earthly fathers about their familial responsibility (for example, Ephesians 6:4; Proverbs 22:6) or a passage about the fatherhood of God, which is good news for every believer, regardless of how our own fathers succeeded or fell short of this ideal. For example, you could read from Psalm 103:

8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious,
slow to anger, abounding in love.
9 He will not always accuse,
nor will he harbor his anger forever;
10 he does not treat us as our sins deserve
or repay us according to our iniquities.
11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. (Psalm 103:8–13)

Bless It refers specifically to praying a blessing over the person whose milestone you are celebrating. In this instance, praying for the father in your home, the fathers in your church, and even extending out to the fathers in your community. You could use the Scriptures above to inform your prayers, or be more specific, given the particular needs of the fathers in your context. This would also be a space in which you could lead a lament for those for whom Father’s Day has the sting of loss and hurt.

Gift It may seem an obvious connection, and in our consumeristic age, it almost goes without saying that we’ll give a gift at a milestone celebration. There is certainly an opportunity for those of us in the affluent West to actively disengage from the seeming necessity to couple purchasing with celebration. However, there can be great value in creating a tangible connection to the celebration of Father’s Day. This does not need to be a purchased item—it may be something handmade, or something natural, like a rock painted with a significant icon. As a general rule, a long-term, durable item is going to be more significant than a consumable. A Christian book could also make a gift that has ongoing significance.

Reinforce It is the final stage of milestone celebrations. This entails the regular reminder of the significance of the milestone and continued prayer and conversations. That’s where having a durable gift can help, as it will be something that the father can continue to come back to. The annual nature of Father’s Day means that there is a built-in rhythm of reinforcement each year, but it may be that your family or church community can also reflect on fathers and fatherhood at other times in the year.

Streicher writes:

‘Identifying milestones and taking intentional steps to make them opportunities for families to grow together in their faith become a way to encourage faith talk both within and outside the church walls. The home and community can be places where change and growing in one’s faith become the norm’.

How might you be more intentional about your celebration of Father’s Day this year to grow your family’s faith?

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Aaaaaaand…. we’re back!

, and I have had a lovely month off—hanging out with our church at Week Away, taking some annual leave, and for Stu, working on his PhD.

Feeling rested (and weirdly tired all at the same time), we hit record so we can continue the journey through the themes of Stu’s project and find out—in real time!—what he is discovering about the Soul Revival story and what makes the Shock Absorber model of church tick.

This week is all about social movements and the impact that large global and cultural forces can have on smaller communities caught up in disruption. Joel kicks us off (pun intended) with the story of how mid-century political upheavals in the Netherlands led to the development of Total Football (a particular approach to playing the world game).

Jumping off this theme, Stu gives us the history of the West, from pre-industrialised Christendom to post-modern Cronulla, explaining that when Christianity is conceived of as a movement, it can expand beyond institutionalised forms and find creative ways to adapt to a changing culture.

How have you seen Christianity adapt to cultural changes?
What was gained? What was lost?

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Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

Title: GIRLS®: Gen Z and the Commodification of Everything
Author: Freya India
Published: Swift Press, 2026

It is, by now, generally accepted that there is a crisis amongst our young people. Mental health is tanking while loneliness is an “epidemic”. It is also generally accepted that digital technology bears much of the blame. Jonathon Haidt’s The Anxious Generation has (helpfully in my opinion) dominated much of the discussion and continues to shape, not only the cultural conversation about the influence of a screen-mediated childhood, but also public opinion and, increasingly, governmental action curtailing access to some of the harms of social media and algorithmic content.

Freya India’s debut book, GIRLS®, deepens the investigation into the deforming effects of social media with a focus (quite obviously from the title) on girls and young women. It’s been a couple of years since I first came across India’s GIRLS Substack. As a male of the Xennial micro-generation1, I have greatly appreciated reading her female, Gen Z perspective.

Typically, I wouldn’t spend time reviewing a book that wasn’t explicitly about children’s ministry or faith formation. However, GIRLS® is most definitely a book about childhood formation and the more I read, the more I felt the glaring absence of the faith-formative answer to the questions India was raising. For those invested in raising young women—in your family or in your church—we need to wrestle with the online culture which they inhabit. While not written from a Christian perspective2, GIRLS® is a detailed account of this culture and a worthwhile read for young women and the adults who care about them.

The Big Idea

Here’s one key quote that summarises the heart of the book:

“GIRLS® is not just another book about social media. It is about a vast, interconnected web of industries, each profiting from our experiences and anxieties. It is about how these industries influence everything from how we look to how we feel, from how we love to how we treat other people. It is about an entire commercial ecosystem that uses our emotions as raw material… Our despair and disempowerment are worth billions.” (p.10-11)

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Key Arguments

The six main chapters each highlight one aspect of coopted girlhood and how the “commercial ecosystem” of the online world has been weaponised against young women.

• ‘Filtered’ focuses on the beauty industry and the tension between self-love and insecurity fostered by selfies, face tuning and filters.

• ‘Diagnosed’ explores therapy culture and how the rise in mental ill-health and ADHD/ASD diagnoses are themselves marketable attributes of one’s authentic self.

• ‘Documented’ exposes the harms that come from lives that have been lived online, from the earliest photos and experiences of childhood (us millennial parents are not off the hook here), through to relational highs and lows being curated for content.

• ‘Disconnected’ shines light on the digitisation of friendship and the loneliness that results from simulated community.

• ‘Detached’ enters the world of mediated romantic and sexual relationships, from online flirting to the destructive impact of porn for shaping the sexual imagination of girls as well as the boys they date.

• ‘Empowered’ challenges the excesses of third-wave feminism in a world that promotes vocational success in reference to hustle culture, material consumption and the delaying of marriage and family.

Through it all, India weaves autobiography and social research. Her footnotes are extensive and provide a comprehensive documentation of each of the issues she addresses, while her lived experience of growing up as a young woman, immersed in the online world she critiques, humanises what might otherwise be a mere catalogue of the worst of online culture.

GIRLS® is about the female experience, but more than that, it is another solid addition to the growing field of 21st-century techno-criticism. Growing up has always been challenging. But it is the distinctiveness of the screen-based childhood and adolescence that magnifies and distorts the perennial aspects of maturation.

“Today we are not merely sold commodities like previous generations were. We are the commodity. We market and sell ourselves all the time. Girls and young women are packaging up their personal lives for Instagram, advertising themselves like products on dating apps and transforming themselves into professional brands to be monitored and managed. Since the rise of social media, girls have grown up seeing themselves as nothing but objects in a marketplace. Our happiness and self-worth now depend on how sellable we are.” (p.11)

Nit-Picky

India is brilliant at describing the experience of young women growing up online. I found myself, at various times, saddened by the scripts that girls were learning to live by, and angered at those who were perpetuating such destructive myths. The cynicism and hypocrisy in the messaging of mental health influencers in the ‘Diagnosed’ chapter was particularly egregious.

However, throughout the book, I was also sensing in myself a frustration with the account that GIRLS® was presenting. India’s argument is built on a foundation of data and statistics. As I’ve already mentioned, the book is thoroughly researched. Each chapter relies on cumulative documentation to make its case. But it is as if the avalanche of data is itself the argument. What is largely absent is any analysis of said data.

To borrow from a Practical Theology framework3, GIRLS® is exceptional at describing “What” is going on, but left me wanting more analysis on “Why” it is going on, and almost completely absent on “What Ought” to be going on instead. In her concluding chapter, India hints at solutions, but without providing depth to the alternative story that girls ought to be raised in.

“When real connection felt too risky, too inconvenient, too human, we were encouraged to replace it, simulate it. But none of the substitutes my generation was sold could ever satisfy. Facetune is no substitute for confidence. Better Help is no substitute for friendship. Instagram is no substitute for community. Pornhub is no substitute for intimacy. Replika is no substitute for a human. And a life built around hustling, consuming and serving ourselves is nothing compared to a life spent serving those we love, trying to become better people.” (p.234)

I heartily agree!

India’s plea at the end of the book is to “remind our daughters, granddaughters and future generations of girls what real beauty, real friendship, real love, real community, real confidence, real life is, and help them remember what it means to be human.” And yet GIRLS® offers no argument for why incarnate experiences and community are more real or more human, nor where to find and foster such places.

The Better Story

This brings me back to the reason why I would spend time reviewing this book on a blog about Christian faith formation. GIRLS® presents a problem, aching for a solution. And (no surprises here), I believe that the church provides this answer.

Young women in our children’s and youth ministry are living in the world that India describes: the destructive “commercial ecosystem” of social media, being sold the narrative that their self-worth comes, not only from consuming products, but from marketing themselves as products for others’ consumption. What we can do in our ministries and in our families is to communicate the destructiveness of this online narrative in contrast to the better story of the Gospel.

We know by now that social media apps and algorithmic content curation is not a neutral medium. Part of our discipling of young people will be in encouraging the restriction of access to these apps and the encouragement to disengage from the online world. In their place, let’s continue to make our homes and our churches places where real community and IRL friendships can flourish. Establishing our churches as Third Places, where human community can flourish, will help to offset the emotional pull of the online world.

One time, John the Baptist’s disciples asked Jesus, “How is it that we and the Pharisees fast often, but your disciples do not fast?” Jesus replied, “‘How can the guests of the bridegroom mourn while he is with them?” (Matt. 9:14-15) The presence of Jesus in their lives freed up the disciples from conforming to the practices of the world. Fasting was good, but they had something better. They didn’t need other religious practices to commune with God; they had God the Son IRL.

Perhaps a sign of spiritual health in our churches will be the questions, “Why don’t your disciples view social media, spend time on TikTok, or have Instagram accounts?” To which the answer may be, “Because the bridegroom is here.” While we await the return of the King, Christians have the indwelling Spirit in their personal lives and in the life of the church. India exhorts women not “to retreat from relationships” but “to take them more seriously” (p.246). I am convinced that incarnate faith communities, centred around the life-giving Christ, encourage the truest form of non-mediated experiences, and therefore are the spaces our girls need where such serious relationships can take place.

Thanks for reading this instalment of Growing Disciples: Book by Book. If you have suggestions for future books worth reviewing, please leave a comment below.

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Hey friends, thank you for reading along with me as I think and write about children’s ministry, faith formation, and the intersection of theology, sociology and ministry practice. I pray that the articles written, books reviewed, and conversations had on Shock Absorber and Crossformed KidMin podcasts are a blessing to your ministry.

This week, I am getting ready for Soul Revival Church’s ‘Week Away’, our church holiday where members from each of our congregations come along to spend a week(ish) hearing from God’s word, living in community, and sharing life. After that, I am taking a couple of weeks’ leave and intend to disconnect from the digital world.

(Having just finished Paul Kingsnorth’s excellent Against the Machine, I’m tempted to disconnect from the digital world entirely and join an Amish commune, but that is a far less realistic goal!)

While I’m off-grid, I thought I’d leave us both with some holiday reading and some articles that I anticipate coming back with in a few weeks.

Upcoming Articles and Reviews

LEAVING THE CHURCH: Ruth Lukabyo from Youthworks College recently presented her research on ‘When Young People Leave the Church: Understanding Disaffiliation and Rebuilding Pathways of Faith’. There were several fascinating insights into the faith lives of young adults and their experiences of church. However, I have some lingering questions which I hope to explore in a longer post.

GIRLS®: As well as Kingsnorth’s book, I also recently finished Freya India’s Girls®: Gen Z And The Commodification of Everything. While this is not typical of the books I read to review, it was a compelling case against the digital lives that our young girls face and the damage that is being wrought. So, while not directly related to faith formation in children’s ministry, the deformation that comes from the online world needs to be taken seriously, and the church (when done right) plays a significant role in providing a captivating community of counter-formation.

Holiday Reading List For Me

Here’s the current pile of books that sits under my computer monitor, distracting me from what I am currently doing with the anticipation of what I still have to discover. Amongst the holiday reads, future review projects, and ‘caught-my-eye’ finds, I may even read some of these titles during my time off. (Since taking the photo, I’ve also added the 600 page beast by Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary!)

Is there something else I should add to my holiday reading list?
Let me know in the comments below.

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Holiday Reading List For You

Finally, I’ll leave you with a few articles by other voices on Substack that I enjoy. If you like what you read, give the authors some love by liking and sharing their posts.

• After Babel | We Took Away the Phones — Now What?

• School of the Unconformed | The Sacred Triad: Where (and why) to draw the AI-mish line

• Freya India | The Commodification of Christianity

• Kyle Strobel | Stop Trying to Be Passionate...it is killing your faith

• Kaitlyn Schiess | Drafted Into the Church’s Gender War

Whether you’re on summer vacation up north, or shivering through the winter break like I am down under, that should be plenty to keep us all going. See you on the other side.

One of my favourite concepts from the child developmental theologian John Westerhoff III is his quirky phrase for Christians: “other faithing selves”. Westerhoff’s faith formation framework emphasises the essential nature of community for health faith development. In Will Our Children Have Faith?, Westerhoff writes:

“Faith is an action which includes thinking, feeling and willing and it is transmitted, sustained and expanded through our interactions with other faithing selves in a community of faith.” (p.91)

This corporate nature of authentic Christian faith is central to the discussion that and I have as we continue to explore the intersection of theology and sociology of church community in this week’s episode of The Shock Absorber podcast. In ’s absence, we pick up a couple of open threads from last week’s episode and dig deeper into the question of whether church is an event or a community.

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Along the way, we wax lyrical about:

• Henri Lefebvre’s dominated vs. appropriated spaces

• Leadership vs. contribution

• Measures of successful churching

• Why to invite 10-year-olds into your planning meetings

• All in the service of discussing the theme of church as a “third place community”

• Plus a little bit of World Cup banter (recorded before Germany’s brutal ousting on Tuesday)

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

“Why do bad things happen to good people?”

It’s a classic question asked by the Hebrew and Christian scriptures, ancient Greek philosophers, authors, poets and artists of all stripes. In fact, every religion or philosophy must, at some point, wrestle with this question.

However, there’s another intriguing question that acts as a counterweight to this one.

“Why don’t bad things happen to bad people?”

Why do the wicked seem to prosper? Why don’t evil men and women get what they deserve? Why does injustice flourish in our world?

These are the questions that the Old Testament prophet Habakkuk is dealing with and which I explore in this latest sermon on Habakkuk 2:2-20.

Bouncing off Jared Dodson’s Christianity Today article, I dig into God’s response to Habakkuk’s second complaint (from 1:12-2:1), the five woes promised against Babylon, and why the proper response to God’s lingering but assured justice is to sing.

You can listen to or watch the full sermon in the links below.

Growing Young — Fuller Youth Institute’s book that profiled the characteristics of churches that had healthy youth and young adult membership — suggests that “warmth” is one of these six essential strategies. But what exactly is “warmth”? How do you know if you have it, and how do you cultivate it if you don’t?

This week on The Shock Absorber podcast, shares insights into the sociological theory of “Third Place Communities”, as he continues to walk and me through the themes emerging from his PhD research into the theology, strategy, practice and history of Soul Revival Church.

Third places are community spaces where you choose to congregate, purely for the social benefits found there (as distinct from ‘first places’, where you live, and ‘second places’, where you work or study). According to the work of sociologist Ray Oldenburg, third places are characterised as:

• Open and inviting

• Comfortable and informal

• Convenient

• Unpretentious

• Having a mixture of regulars and irregulars

• Conversation as the main activity

• Light-hearted and playful mood.

As I argue in my chapter of Australian Evangelical Perspectives on Youth Ministry, this thick definition of healthy community spaces fleshes out the characteristic of “warmth” that FYI identify as essential to flourishing youth and young adult ministry.

Stuart unpacks his discovery of this sociological strategy and his experimentation with it in the early days of the Soul Revival youth community. Along the way, we discuss the challenges of making churches third places, why members resist making church a place of community, and why lounges play such an iconic role in Soul Revival semiotics.

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

Title: The Story We Tell Our Children: Gospel Formation in a World of Counterfeit Imitation
Author: Matt Markins
Published: Awana, 2025

Disclaimer: This book was sent to me at no cost by the publisher. There was no requirement to review it or to endorse it; what follows is my honest assessment.

As I consider the future of children’s ministry and childhood faith formation, I keep returning to the idea of helping the next generation become confident Christians in a post-Christian world. Regular readers or listeners to The Shock Absorber podcast will know that I’m not an anxious culture warrior. I’m not persuaded by either the “take back Christendom” or “retreat from the world” postures. (Though performing in either of those positions would likely grow my audience ten-fold!) Instead, I think about how to foster a robust, albeit non-anxious faith, in young people.1

Therefore, I was delighted to read Matt Markins’ The Story We Tell Our Children: Gospel Formation in a World of Counterfeit Imitation. I always look forward to the research that Markins and the team at Awana provide on children’s ministry, and I have previously interviewed him about the prior publication, The Faith of Our Children.

The Story We Tell Our Children provides a clear diagnosis of the challenges facing Christian families and churches in an increasingly post-Christian age, and gives a largely persuasive and mostly non-anxious antidote to the counterfeit stories of the secular West (qualifiers that I will discuss below in more detail).

The Big Idea

The big idea of the book is the importance of storying our children and the role of narrative formation.

Here’s one key quote that summarises the heart of the book:

“Stories form children at a very young age.

Childhood stories form lifelong identity (i.e. shape lifelong worldview).

If childhood stories happen to be counterfeit stories, they can form a counterfeit identity by early adolescence.” (p.4)

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Key Arguments

This book is short, coming in at under 80 pages. So instead of going chapter by chapter, I’ll highlight the two key arguments that Markins makes along the way.

The False Narratives

Markins rightly notes the increasingly post-Christian culture in the West.

“Digital capitalism, hedonism, post-Christian thinking, the sexual revolution, Moralistic Therapeutic Deism, the “scientific is the final authority” narrative — each of these movements is a powerful force at work. And these pervasive forces are telling today’s children a humanistic story using the distribution systems of the entertainment industry, social media, professional sports and academics. Kids in Christian homes, kids in non-Christian homes — to some degree, every child is swimming in the dominant, mainstream narratives, no matter how much we try to shelter and protect them.” (p.22)

While this may be startling news for some USA readers, for those of us in the non-American West, this is not a new story. Secularity has grown rapidly across Europe and the Anglosphere for decades. Data from the Australian census and NCLS survey show that Christianity is a minority religion (44%)2 and only 7-8% of the population attended church monthly3. Unless your family takes an extreme “retreat” posture, we “cannot completely protect our children from the drifting smoke of the secular, non-believing world” (p.44).

However, with the all-pervasiveness of the secular story comes the realisation that the story had failed to create a satisfying narrative to live into. There are very few brave or naïve enough to claim that young people in 2026 are flourishing. The failure of the counter-formation of the culture can be used to the wise parent and minister’s advantage.

“We need to clearly point out the cognitive dissonance of these counterfeit stories — the false gospels that capture the affections of this generation. We should age-appropriately allow children and young people to see the failures of secularism side by side with reality, which is the sufficiency and goodness of the Gospel.” (p.44)

The True Story

Unsurprisingly, it is the Gospel that Markins puts forward as the story we must enculturate our children into. However, it must be the full story, not the truncated version—you’re a sinner in need of a saviour—that populates many “gospel presentations”. This is true, but only two parts of a four-part story. As Markins writes:

“When we condense the Gospel down to only the fall (part 2 — you’re a sinner) and redemption (part 3 — only Jesus can save you), we cheapen the fullness of the Bible and God’s story to us. When we leave out the creation narrative (part 1), we omit the genesis of where a child’s true identity comes from—Christ! And when we leave out restoration (part 4), we undermine the message that God can restore, heal and transform a child who walks with Him and His disciples for a lifetime—and one day He will make all things new. How could we omit this amazing hope for the future?!” (p.67)

I appreciate Markins emphasis on the whole story of the Gospel. The Bible does not start at Genesis 3 and conclude with Jesus’ atoning death and resurrection. Beginning the story at “very good, God-image-bearing creation”, rather than “miserable sinners”, is no minor reframing. It does not undermine the depth of our sin (in fact, it highlights the height from which we have fallen), but it allows children to see that, despite sin, they are deeply loved members of God’s good creation, and there is much to notice and celebrate about who God has made (not just remade) them to be.

Nit-Picky

I mentioned above that the book is largely persuasive and mostly non-anxious. Let me offer one very minor and then one more meaningful critique.

Counterfeit Capture

Markins open the book with a lengthy description and origin of the term “Stockholm Syndrome”. The point with regard to his argument is this:

“The stories children believe about themselves and the world around them can become so captivating that they can develop a deep affection for a counterfeit captor… these counterfeit stories can sometimes hold them hostage for a lifetime.” (p.5)

The analogy fits, and yet it unsettles me. Equating the narrative formation of the secular world as Stockholm Syndrome, not only raises the anxiety levels of the reader, but makes it difficult to imagine transformation into the likeness of Christ.

Research from Barna and Awana have consistently advocated for the importance of early worldview formation. However, the power of the Gospel is capable of transforming us, through the renewing of our minds, to “be able to test and approve what God’s will is – his good, pleasing and perfect will” (Romans 12:2). There is hope for the child, young person, or adult who has—until the moment of conversion—thoroughly been formed by the counterfeit story. While a powerful metaphor and a strong motivator for taking faith formation seriously, I would caution against language that implied that a child immersed in the post-Christian world is a “hostage for a lifetime.”

Holistic Gospel Formation

I heartily agree with the necessity of re-storying our children with the Gospel message.

“When we have clarity around the Gospel narrative, and also have consistent Scripture engagement, we are giving [children] the best opportunity to form lasting faith.” (p.54)

Amen and amen!

My one critical reflection on Markins argument is that this Gospel re-storying happens, almost exclusively, through cognitive and didactic means. Consider the following:

“The child who grasps the fullness of the Gospel narrative — creation, fall, redemption and restoration — has full Biblical context … this child views the Bible as a reality superstructure which all of the Bible stories and virtues can fasten to.” (p.54)

Note the necessary cognitive development and comprehension required to fulfil this task. I believe in teaching and use catechism, memory verses, and comprehension tasks regularly in my ministry. However, virtue, character and worldview formation does not occur only through cognitive means.

I would love to see Markins take his argument further and explore how elements such as imaginative play, craft and games, the practice of habits, religious socialisation and other holistic elements of a child’s experience of the world complement the cognitive aspect of narrative formation. Knowing the story is essential, but insufficient to fully “grasp the fullness of the Gospel narrative.”

Conclusion

A brief, but important book, The Story We Tell Our Children is a powerful argument for the narrative formation of our children according to the Gospel story. We cannot retreat from the post-Christian world, but we can intentionally engage in Christian counter-formation so that our children and young people have “the best opportunity to form lasting faith.”

Thanks for reading this instalment of Growing Disciples: Book by Book. If you have suggestions for future books worth reviewing, please leave a comment below.

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Why stick with ministry to children and teenagers? It’s messy, it’s slow, they can’t reciprocate the effort I’m putting in, and that glitter is never coming out of the church carpet.

“Our commitment comes from our theology. Not from our desire for community or our love of community. Because community is hard work.”

This is a central insight from in this week’s episode of The Shock Absorber podcast, and it explores an important tension for those of us in local church ministry. If you have experienced a healthy church community, you know how wonderful it feels to know and be known. It feels like home, a place where everyone knows your name. And yet community does not come easily. It is hard work to create the kind of community in which you can genuinely relax.

Being grounded in our theological commitment to children, youth, and the local church you are growing them into, helps with the momentum required to do the good works prepared in advance for us to do.

Kids and Youth Ministry is not easy work. But it is fruitful and fulfilling work, working in the strength that God supplies to know, love and obey King Jesus, and invite other young people into that adventure of faith as well.

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Friendship is an Ecclesial Category - The Shock Absorber

While struggles to calibrate his stargazing app, he’s having much more success in defining the themes of his PhD research into the history of Soul Revival and what led to the success of the Soulies youth community through the 1990s- 2000s.

This week we’re exploring the theme Ecclesiology of Intergenerational Friendship. Jesus calls his disciples friends in John 15:15, a concept that shaped the guiding ecclesial metaphor for the fledgling youth community that Stu was experimenting with.

If the young adults were friends with Jesus, and the teenagers either were already friends with Jesus or were being invited into that friendship by becoming Christians, why wouldn’t the young adults and teenagers be friends with each other? Why wouldn’t you extend that circle of friendship to older adults and to children as well?

At a time when teenagers were reaping the hurt of no-fault divorce and fractured home lives, friendship was the doorway into Christian belief and into the intergenerational community of God’s people in the local church.

Also in this episode:

• How the industrialisation of schooling led to the institutionalisation of homogeneous friendships

• Why churches don’t listen to anyone under 30, and how to resist that in your own ministry

• Why Joel is excited about the World Cup and whether Stu will celebrate the Cup “coming home” to England

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

Building Blocks of a Fruitful Kids Ministry - Cross Formed KidMin

What are the key building blocks of an effective Kids Ministry?

This was the question asked of Hunter Williams and I as we jumped in on a colab episode with Hannah Augustine from the Kidz Matter podcast.

Whether you are starting from scratch, or taking some balcony time to reassess how your established ministry is going, our conversation took us through the must haves and the must nots of leading children’s ministry.

This includes:

• The importance of clarity, community and curiosity

• How identity and values shape your ministry’s direction

• Creating a strategic roadmap for your ministry

• And, of course, the three spheres of a child’s faith formation in the church — Children’s Ministry, Family Ministry and Intergenerational Ministry

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

If you’ve got a question or topic about Children’s Ministry that you’d like us to cover on the Cross Formed Kidmin podcasts, send me a DM or leave a comment below.

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Relationships may be the front door of a shock absorber approach to ministry, but you need more than relational community to build an effective youth group.

In this week’s episode of The Shock Absorber podcast, takes and me through the second theme that has emerged from his PhD research into the story of Soul Revival: Christian identity formation through conversion and biblical discipleship.

A significant factor in many of the interviewees’ stories that Stu and I conducted for his research was the power of an authentic Christian witness by the leaders and other teenagers in the group. At the weekly Soul Revival youth groups, the Bible talk was an unapologetic part of the evening. Most importantly, there was no hard line demarcating the joy of the night’s frivolities from the sobriety of opening up God’s Word. Rather, sober joy reflected the entire night’s culture as well as the lives of the leaders and kids.

Likewise, Christian identity was fostered outside of the youth group. You were just as likely to find teenagers reading the Bible after a quick surf, or praying before heading into the movies, as you were to see these overt faith expressions within the walls of the church building. Being a “Sunday Christian” was something that was named and actively spoken against. Following Jesus was for every moment.

Listen in to hear about:

• the hip hop event the night before the Cronulla riots,

• people who experienced churches that minimised the Jesus bit because it was daggy,

• and why the teen girl interested in opera didn't get paid out in a community built around grunge.

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Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

Enhanced Christianity - The Shock Absorber

What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas, right? Well… when it comes to the recent Enhanced Games, I certainly hope this is the case.

, , and I kick off our discussion this week wondering about doping and the pursuit of enhanced human performance. What counts as cheating? And what does enhancement—from performance drugs to transhumanism—say about our definition of greatness?

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From there, Stu kicks off a multi-week series on the themes of his PhD. He discusses the methodology around writing an “autoethnography” and how his curiosity around social movement theory and third-place sociology helped him to experiment with Soul Revival as a youth community in the early 90’s.

Six themes are emerging from his research on what was happening in Soul Revival and what led to its success.

• Counter-Cultural Relational Community

• Christian Identity Formation Through Conversion and Biblical Discipleship

• Ecclesiology of Friendship and Intergenerational Family

• Alternative Christian Shared Spaces That Embed Belonging

• Relational Evangelism Through Gospel Proclamation and Public Witness

• Adaptive Innovation, Institutional Tension and Church Renewal

We’ll be digging into these themes over the next few weeks. This episode, we discuss whether youth ministry works better as event or community, why relationships are the front door to the Shock Absorber approach to ministry, and why an “enhanced Christianity” may be cheating your faith formation.

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

Equipping Families for Summer Discipleship - Cross Formed Kidmin

While Sydneysiders pull out their beanies and puffer jackets, over in the US, Hunter Williams and Ryan Coatney are getting geared up for their summer break. With little concern for my chattering teeth and frostbitten fingers, this week we discuss how churches can equip families for the northern hemisphere’s long summer holidays.

There are two key principles to keep in mind.

1. God doesn’t go on holidays, and neither does our faith.
   A break from school and workday routines does not mean that our discipling relationship with King Jesus takes a back seat.
   
   AND
   

2. Don’t confuse discipleship with programming.
   Faithful children’s ministry does not require you to wear yourself out for the sake of your church programs and family resourcing.

We discuss some creative ways to incorporate ongoing faithful discipleship in our churches and homes, while families play with summer routines, travel and enjoying the seasonal rhythms of the year.

Catch the full conversation in the links below or on your favourite podcast app.

If you’ve got a question or topic about Children’s Ministry that you’d like us to cover on the Cross Formed Kidmin podcasts, send me a DM or leave a comment below.

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“What would you like to play with this morning?”

I find myself saying this regularly on Sunday mornings in my children’s ministry. In our children’s ministry program, after our Bible teaching, we have a time called “Kids Chill”. The object of this time is to ‘chill’ out with kids.

During Kids Chill, kids are the hosts, and the teenage and adult leaders are the guests. Children have the autonomy to choose what they would like to do in this otherwise unstructured playtime. The leader’s role is to sit, colour, run, bounce, fold, squish, decorate, deal in, or imagine with and alongside the youngest brothers and sisters in our congregation.

Kids Chill is an essential way our church expresses its commitment to intergenerational ministry in the life of our church.

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Intergenerational Ministry is founded on several principles, including equality, mutuality and reciprocity.^[1] An intergenerational church is one in which these principles are enacted by providing each generation opportunities to meaningfully contribute to the life of the church. As a children’s minister, I am constantly looking across all aspects of our church life together and asking the kinds of questions that will provide these kinds of opportunities to children.

• Where are children present or absent in our church community?

• Which spaces are children allowed or not allowed to be in?

• Which ministries are children permitted or not permitted to contribute to?

• Which calendar events are children invited to or excluded from?

• Where is the voice and opinion of children listened to or ignored?

This does not mean that it is appropriate to place a child in every situation, allow them into every space, permit them to contribute to every ministry, or invite them to every event. Young children are generally excluded from the kitchen where boiling water and sharp knives abound. Our preschoolers are not invited to mix the audio at the sound desk. And school-age children are not invited to the Thursday lunchtime craft group. There are several practical and developmental reasons why children may not have equality and mutuality in every area of the church.

Leadership vs. Contribution

Practical and developmental reasons notwithstanding, one of the arguments that I read frequently in the intergenerational and child spirituality literature is that children ought to be leaders. If we are to take the equality, mutuality and reciprocity of children seriously in the intergenerational church, then there ought not to be any spaces where the voice and opinion of children are ignored, and therefore, where they are not allowed to lead.

Joe Azzopardi, in his PhD research into intergenerational communities, found that there are five characteristics of a healthy intergenerational church: (i) positive interaction, (ii) connectedness, (iii) interdependence, (iv) accommodation, and (v) empowerment.

Under empowerment, Azzopardi writes:

“Intergenerational communities strive to empower members of every generation by granting them authority in ministry and ensuring they have a representative voice in leadership. This approach recognises that every generation is ordained as a minister of the gospel and deserves a place at the decision table.”^[2]

This approach to intergenerational leadership appears to have solid biblical backing. The New Testament emphasises the radical equality that comes to all who are in Christ. The New Testament church believed in the priesthood of all believers (1 Peter 2:9; Revelation 1:6). No ethnicity, gender or social status impacts our co-adoption into Christ’s family (Galatians 3:26-28), and the same Spirit distributes gifts to every believer (1 Corinthians 12:4-11). While Paul and the other New Testament epistle authors did not appear to have generational distinctions in mind, it is not illegitimate to include children in our definition of “believer” and “Christ’s family” (whether through covenant or confession, depending on your church tradition).

Therefore, it would appear to follow that children—with every other generation—ought to be included in our church’s leadership. Citing the Fuller Youth Institute research on Growing Young, Azzopardi writes that “keychain leadership is about sharing power and enabling young people to step into leadership positions, fostering an environment where all generations are valued and can contribute meaningfully.”

However, a correction is warranted. Azzopardi here is representative of those who, I believe, conflate leadership with contribution and thereby devalue both.

The Value of Leadership

As we have seen, the New Testament epistles have a high view of the equality of identity and belonging for all those who are in Christ. “There is no distinction,” Paul writes, “between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus” (Romans 3:22-24). This equality in the atonement is what leads to the equality in status as children, role as priests, and giftedness by the Spirit.

However, this does not translate to equality in leadership.

Paul, in Ephesians, highlights the givenness of specific leadership roles in the church:

“So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” (Ephesians 4:11-12)

A distinction is made here between these specific leadership roles and “his people”. Not everyone is included in these leadership roles, though all are included in “the body”. James warns that “not many of you should become teachers, my fellow believers, because you know that we who teach will be judged more strictly” (James 3:1). Notice that James continues to uphold equality in the church (“my fellow believers”) while maintaining a distinction in the teaching role. Paul writes to both Timothy and Titus and sets a high bar for the roles of overseers, deacons, and elders (1 Timothy 3:1-13; Titus 1:5-9).

Every Christian, from infants to adolescents, middle-aged to elders, is saved by the same gospel, adopted into the same family, and gifted and equipped by the same Spirit. But not all are qualified and called into ministry leadership. Leadership is an essential and valuable role in the church, but it is restricted in its scope. “Authority in ministry” and “leadership positions” are not granted by virtue of being a Christian and, therefore, are appropriately limited in a way that will exclude not just most children but most adult members of the church family as well.

The Value of Contribution

Does this mean that I do not believe in the principles of equality, mutuality and reciprocity? Am I a phony proponent of intergenerational ministry? Before casting your vote, let me revisit a comment I made earlier, that conflating leadership with contribution devalues both.

We are obsessed with leadership in our culture. We conduct leadership training in schools, allowing every student to learn “leadership skills”. Leadership books abound, and employees are encouraged to seek out “leadership opportunities”. We place a high value on leaders, yet paradoxically encourage everyone towards leadership. However, if the school, organisation, or church is full of leaders, who exactly are they leading? As above, not everyone ought to be a leader, but logically speaking, not everyone can be one either.

The larger problem for our purposes is that in this emphasis on leadership, we have conflated leadership with value. Why do we push leadership opportunities? Because leaders have power. Leaders have a voice. Leaders can enact change. Leaders have value.

These things are all true. What is not true, especially in the “small working model of New Creation”^[3] that exists in your local church, is that only leaders have power, voice, the ability to enact change, and therefore, value.

Jesus rebukes his disciples on multiple occasions about their desire for power, influence and authority. In Mark 10, Jesus contrasts a worldly authority with the kind of authority that his disciples must embody:

“You know that those who are regarded as rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:42-45)

A chapter earlier, in a verse precious to all in children’s ministry, Jesus interrupts another argument about greatness and places a “little child” in their midst with the words, “Whoever welcomes one of these little children in my name welcomes me” (Mark 9:37).

Notice what is happening in these two passages. The nature of authority is being upended, from “lording over” to servanthood, and little children are being honoured and set up as the model of kingdom greatness. Notice what is not happening in these passages. The disciples’ ‘leadership’ is not being relativised. They are not stripped of their leadership authority but are having their concept of authority reshaped according to Kingdom ethics. Jesus, the Son of Man, does not relinquish his proper leadership and authority in the Kingdom. But he does use his authority to serve. His disciples are to do likewise.

Similarly, the little child is honoured. But they are not given leadership roles. They are not ordained as ministers of the gospel in any formal, ecclesiastical sense. They do, however, have a contributive purpose as a model of Kingdom discipleship. This contributive purpose is valuable; in fact, it is essential to understanding the upside-down ethic of the Kingdom. But contribution—however valuable—is not the same thing as leadership.

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Intergenerational Contribution

How do we live out this distinction between leadership and contribution in an intergenerational church? If not everyone is called to be a leader, how do we ensure that the equality, mutuality and reciprocity of all generations of disciples is honoured?

I think the answer is in the definition of leadership and authority that Jesus gave his disciples in Mark’s gospel. If church leaders are serving their members, then they will be proactive in consulting with them, listening to them, and equipping them for their own “works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up.” In a church striving towards intergenerationality, this will include the children in the congregation. Why children? Generally, because children, like every other generation, are loved by Jesus, bought by the blood of Jesus, and co-adopted into Jesus’ family. And specifically, because children are models of discipleship to the entire congregation.

Children’s purposeful contribution is essential to the intergenerational church. Their presence, their voice, their spiritual gifts, their meaningful participation. These are not the same as ‘leadership’. But that does not make them less valuable. A church whose leaders are slaves to all and honouring the ones that Christ honours will continue to look for ways to increase the contribution of children.

Azzopardi’s definition of the five successful characteristics of intergenerational churches is a valuable contribution to the field of intergenerational ministry. If I were to offer a gentle rephrasing of his description of empowerment, I might write this:

Intergenerational communities strive to empower members of every generation by granting them contributive purpose in ministry and ensuring they have a representative voice to leadership.

Such a description honours the distinction between leadership and contribution, while continuing to uphold the value of every generation meaningfully participating in the life of the local church.

^[1] Holly Allen & Chris Barnett (2018), ‘Introduction: Addressing the two intergenerational questions’ in Allen HC (ed), InterGenerate, ACUP.

^[2] Joe Azzopardi (2025) ‘An Intergenerational Index: The Five Characteristics of Intergenerationality’. Chapter 6 in Wilson McCoy (ed.) Imagining All Ages: A Renewed Vision for an Intergenerational Church. p.93

^[3] N.T. Wright (2025) The Vision of Ephesians.