PODCAST · religion
The Shock Absorber
by Soul Revival Church
Thinking and doing church a little differently...
Episodes
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Are podcasts good for the church?
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...
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Not 1976, Not 1826: Faithful Discipleship for 2026
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…
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Custodians of culture: Why deep loyalty makes church better
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...
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Strength and beauty: Francis Schaeffer and the church that captivates
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…
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The sound of rebellion: Rock 'n' roll, the gospel and the movement the church needs
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...
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New wine, old wineskins: How movements change everything
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…
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From Consumer to contributor: What a third place church actually asks
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…
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Subversive spaces: Why the church needs more than a service
What if the most countercultural thing a church could do was have a lounge? Joel, Stu and Tim are into theme four of Stu's PhD - alternative Christian shared spaces that embed belonging. Stu traces the intellectual journey from new social movement theory through Melucci's subversive spaces to...
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Friendship is an ecclesial category
Jesus didn't call his disciples servants. He called them friends. And Stu thinks that matters more for how we do church than most ecclesiology conversations acknowledge. Joel, Stu and Tim are working through the emerging themes of Stu's PhD — and theme three is an ecclesiology of friendship and...
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Deeper than just community
People came to Soul Revival because of relationships. But relationships weren't enough to keep them. Something deeper had to happen. Joel, Stu and Tim continue working through the emerging themes from Stu's PhD, and this week it's theme two: Christian identity formation through conversion and...
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Enhanced Christianity
Joel, Stu and Tim open with the cultural curiosity of the Enhanced Games, and what it reveals about why manufactured greatness never quite works, before turning to something more significant: Stu's PhD is reaching its final stages, and the emerging themes from 20 qualitative interviews about the...
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What we've lost
Every technology gives you something. Every technology takes something away. The problem is we're usually so focused on what we gain that we don't notice what we've lost until it's gone. Joel and Tim open with new creation theology and the deep physicality of what Christians are actually looking...
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The thick relational ecosystem - why we need youth ministry more than ever
Seth Kaplan's article on the After Babel Substack reads like a secular argument for why youth ministry matters. Joel and Tim trace the arc from 1950s street culture to the latchkey generation to the screen-based void that smartphones were custom-built to fill, and ask what the church uniquely...
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Relational and responsive
Last episode was the intangibles. This is the tangibles. Joel, Stu and Tim open with the Met Gala, a $1 bill across Sarah Paulson's eyes, and whether millionaires protesting billionaires is tone deaf, before tracing the thread from wealth inequality all the way to how the church should function…
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Organised messiness - An element of grace beats efficiency every time
Is efficiency a godly value? And if the Good Shepherd leaves 99 sheep to find the one, what does that say about how we should be running our churches? The guys open with King Charles's surprisingly funny speech to the U.S. Congress, a masterclass in soft power, humour and resetting an agenda...
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Jesus is the synthesiser
Tony Abbott wrote a history of Australia called, wait for it, Australia. Tim has been reading it, which sent him down a rabbit hole about celebratory versus critical history, cognitive dissonance, steel-manning both sides, and why we're so terrified of changing our minds. Joel and Tim work…
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School, church and the home: Who's actually responsible for your kids' faith?
Every Christian parent has felt the tension. Do you send your kids to a Christian school? They're plugged into kids church right? The faith formation is happening right? But is it? And whose job is it really? Joel, Stu and Tim are joined by David Stonestreet — Principal of Shire Christian School...
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Is it all a laugh?
Is banter just harmless fun — or is something deeper going on beneath the surface? Joel, Stu and Tim open with Easter reflections, including JoelChristian humour, banter and friendship, male friendship theology, tall poppy syndrome Australia, hegemony church, belonging and identity, Andrew…
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Stop making church more like the world. Build this instead...
Most churches have spent the last sixty years trying to lower the cultural barriers to Christianity. Clean car parks. Professional music. Seeker-sensitive services. The logic made sense at the time. But has making church more like the world actually worked and is it still the right strategy? Joel...
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Is boring people with the Bible a sin?
Jim Rayburn, the father of modern youth ministry, said it was a sin to bore a kid with the gospel. Joel, Tim and Stu work through a sharp distinction from a new book on kids theology: distilling versus simplifying. Distillation keeps the essentials and removes the unnecessary. Simplification...
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Don't let them hate Jesus because of you
Half of kids surveyed say their parents should be worried about their screen time. Jonathan Haidt thinks he missed something big in his own book. And Meta allegedly knew about the damage it was doing to children for years — and said nothing. Joel and Tim work through a raft of confronting data...
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A new movement: Re-launching The Shock Absorber network
Joel, Stu and Tim are relaunching the Shock Absorber Network, and this episode explains what it is, why it matters and how you can be part of it. Ministry was never meant to be done alone. But for a lot of church leaders, that's exactly what it feels like, isolated in your local context, carrying...
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With or against the grain of God's design
Everyone's chasing the algorithm. More clicks, better thumbnails, optimised titles, short-form funnels. So what does a Christian do with all of that? Joel and Tim start with football, Real Madrid vs Barcelona, identity, rivalry and what success actually means, and end up somewhere and end up with…
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Life and loyalty with Jesus
Richard Dawkins likes Christmas carols. Tom Holland calls himself a Christian. Robert Greene thinks religion is great for transcending the banality of social media. Joel and Tim trace a thread from Bluey, through the culture war trap of coding everything left or right, into Skye Jethani's four...
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Have we forgotten about friendship?
Most churches have got the small group and the Sunday service figured out. But there's a whole layer of community that's gone missing, and it might be why people keep saying "I don't feel like I belong here." Joel, Stu and Tim dig into Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology of friendship as an ecclesial...
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He has the right to tell me how to live
Tim and Joel are back for 2026 with a conversation about authority, hierarchy, and authentic relationship with Jesus. It starts with parenting, authoritarian (high control, low love) versus authoritative (high control, high love). But the real question: how does the parent-child relationship…
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Peace guards our hearts
Recorded five days after the Bondi terrorist attack, Tim reflects on the strange providence of preaching about peace the morning before the attack. His sermon from Philippians 4 explored why we struggle to find peace in a world online world where research shows rising depression, anxiety, and...
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Movements always happen and Christians are always in the middle of them
With Stu traveling and Tim unwell, Joel brings in the super-subs, Ethan and Brayden, to tackle the 6-7 meme and what it tells us about internet culture, and how Christians should respond. They start with a primer on the 6-7 meme, following a breakdown by aidanetcetera on Instagram that claims…
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God is not a God of efficiency
Joel reclaims the hosting chair from Tim (who did a great job, but still...). They start off by debating favourite movies, why Tim can't finish The Godfather, and the comfort of rewatching The Bourne Identity, but quickly pivot into questions of efficiency, productivity and whether we should be…
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What we want to be
In this Joel-free episode (don't worry, he's just away), Tim, Stu, and Ethan dive deep into what makes Soul Revival's approach to church distinctive—and why it matters. The conversation starts with preaching in hostile environments (including the story of Stu getting hit with an orange at a...
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Jesus frees us to experiment in ministry
If you woke up in a third-world jail cell with one phone call, who would you ring to get you out? That person has high agency—the ability to get things done even in impossible situations. Stu, Tim, and Joel explore what high agency means for Christian leadership and ministry, building on last...
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Are churches giving tacit approval to be exclusive?
Are our churches unintentionally approving exclusivity? Stu, Tim and Joel dive deep into the research behind Stu's PhD on the Shock Absorber, youth ministry and generative intergenerational ministry—and why most churches experience cultural lag that makes them irrelevant. Motivated to understand...
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Infringing on our individuality is good for us
Our culture tells us that independence is everything — but what if true flourishing happens when we give some of it up? Joel and Tim explore how commitment to a local church is not just a spiritual act, but something deeply human. They unpack how technology, hyper-individualism, and cultural…
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We’re not struggling with over-commitment to church
Joel and Tim explore what it means to live and raise children as elect exiles in a world with different values. They reflect on social media, culture, and the ways Christians can tell the alternate story of Jesus — distinctive, thoughtful, and rooted in grace. The discussion covers family and...
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Preparing for God to grow us, and be ready if He does
Joel and Tim explore Soul Revival Church’s 2025 Planning Day — and how the church can prepare for God to grow them, being ready if He chooses to do that. They begin by talking about writing, storytelling, and collective memory — how churches pass down faith through shared stories that shape who...
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Are we still exiles?
Joel and Tim return from a short break to wrestle with a timeless question — are Christians today still exiles? Drawing from 1 Peter, they explore what it means to live faithfully in a world that doesn’t always share our values. With both Joel and Tim preaching on 1 Peter they delve into the...
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If you’ve got good news, you want to share it
MINI-SERIES: World — Mission Is for Everyone Mission doesn’t just belong to a few — it’s everyone’s call. Joel, Tim, and Jai continue the service team mini-series on World, unpacking why God’s plan has always been for His salvation to reach all nations and how that shapes the life of the church...
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Don't expect people to know the culture of your church
MINI-SERIES: Welcoming — Don’t Expect Them to Know Welcoming doesn't just happen on accident. ---------------- Joel, Tim, and Jai continue our mini-series on Welcoming, unpacking why we can’t assume newcomers will automatically understand the culture of our church. First impressions give people...
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The missing piece in your digital ministry | Joel's talk at VCA Conference
The Missing Piece in Digital Ministry: Churches Skip Strategy Between Theology and Practice In the final episode of our mini-series on Communications, Joel, Digital Pastor at Soul Revival Church, shares at the inaugural Virtual Church Assist Conference how Soul Revival’s digital ministry has…
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Tech is a tool drawing people into community
Incarnate church is the main thing — digital ministry is second, and it should always intentionally draw people into gathering together. In this episode of our service teams mini-series, Tim, Joel and Brayden explore the practice of Communications. Starting with a trip back to 90s culture and the...
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It's not a mistake: God made us to be incarnate beings
MINI-SERIES: Communications Service Team — Strategy Stu, Tim, and Joel discuss why church communications need strategy. Drawing on Andy Crouch and Jay Kim, they explore how technology, online community, and AI affect formation—and why embodied relationships remain central. Christians have always...
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If we were meant to fully grasp God, we wouldn't need Him
“If we were meant to fully grasp God, we wouldn’t need Him—exploring faith, wonder, and dependence.” With Stu out sick, Tim and Joel take a break from their mini-series on the Communications Service Team to chat about what’s caught their eyes and minds this week. They explore Tim’s German…
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The Gospel is controversial in a media saturated world
Stu, Tim, and Joel explore the theology of communication, from the Sydney Sweeney ad controversy to how Christians can share the gospel wisely in a media-driven world. MINI-SERIES: Theology of Communications ------------------------ The Shock Absorber continues it's mini-series on Soul Revival’s...
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Making lasting memories together
Why Soul Revival go away for a whole week as a church. Joel, Ethan and Jai share why Soul Revival Church spends five whole days away together each year at Week Away—our annual church camp. We talk about how extended time and proximity help deepen existing relationships and spark new ones, all…
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God's word simplifies things
MINI-SERIES: Part 5 on the Practice of Arts: Word ministry In this episode, Stu, Joel and Brayden why God's word remains central to everything Soul Revival does as a church. They reflect on their earliest (and often awkward!). We’re talking theology, history, practical training, and how God’s…
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BONUS: Tim's trip to Intergenerational Ministry Conference
In a short break from our Arts service team series, we hear about Tim's trip to Kentucky to present and be part of the Intergenerational Ministry Conference. This is a crossover episode from our Chip Lunch podcast.
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Servant minded tech ministry
Brayden and Joel are joined by Jamie who makes his first appearance on the podcast as they continue our mini-series on the Arts Service Team at Soul Revival Church—this time focusing on the often-unseen but essential work of tech ministry, including sound, slide presentations, and livestreaming....
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Pointing to God's word
SERVICE TEAM MINI-SERIES: Practice of Arts (Music) Brayden and Joel continue our mini-series on the Arts Service Team by diving into the practice of music ministry—particularly how preparation and intentionality help music serve the church community. They begin by sharing memories of their...
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How we serve together in Arts
SERVICE TEAM MINI-SERIES: Strategy of Arts Joel, Stu and Brayden begin with a light-hearted yet thoughtful conversation about how music listening has changed over the decades—from records and tapes to CDs and streaming. They share memories of burning CDs and crafting the perfect mixtape…
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Arts is about serving
SERVICE TEAM MINI-SERIES: Theology of Arts Stu, Joel, and guest co-host Brayden (Soul Revival’s Arts pastor) explore the significance of the Arts service the context of church ministry and how it moves beyond music to a broader theological vision. They open with reflections on why communal…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Thinking and doing church a little differently...
HOSTED BY
Soul Revival Church
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Shock Absorber have?
The Shock Absorber currently has 214 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Shock Absorber about?
Thinking and doing church a little differently...
How often does The Shock Absorber release new episodes?
The Shock Absorber publishes regularly with 214 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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You can listen to The Shock Absorber on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts The Shock Absorber?
The Shock Absorber is created and hosted by Soul Revival Church.
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