Community Groups are back for Term 2 as we delve into the Old Testament with Nahum and Habakkuk…

Church attendance in the Sutherland Shire has dropped from 11% to around 1% in a generation. Newcomers to churches have more than halved since 2001. And a generation of young people is quietly assuming someone else is handling the faith formation of their kids. Joel, Stu and Tim sit down with the principal of Shire Christian School to ask the question every Christian parent is avoiding.

Driving home from dinner with Billy Graham's crusade directors, Sean Nolan thought: "Their God is a different God than my God. Their God is powerful." Then he realised:same God, two very different ways of walking.

What if God wants to take you somewhere new this year?

When men pay each other out, are they building friendship or enforcing conformity? Joel, Stu and Tim open with Easter baptisms at the river and end up deep in NT Feather's tall poppy syndrome, Gramsci's hegemony, a proverb about flaming arrows and the question of whether Jesus ever made a joke. Honest, wide-ranging and worth your time.

Easter Saturday feels like filler between Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but this is where three world-changing truths emerge:

Jesus really died, the tomb really was empty, and faith begins before full understanding in the quiet moments that change history.

The attractional church model told us to make church more like the world so more people would come. Donald McGavran called it the homogeneous unit principle. Willow Creek made it famous.

But sixty years on, Joel and Stu are asking whether it's actually worked, and explaining the countercultural Yellow Submarine alternative they've been building for thirty years instead.

Simplification strips out complexity — and sometimes the truth along with it. Distillation keeps the essentials and removes the unnecessary. It's a small distinction with enormous consequences for how we pass on faith to the next generation.

Joel, Tim and Stu dig into the history of youth ministry, Lee Strobel's drift into atheism, and what it actually looks like to be a non-anxious adult presence for teenagers who are pushing hard against everything.

Don't make people hate Jesus because of you — let them hate you because of Jesus. That's the order, and getting it right changes everything about how you show up as a disciple.

Joel and Tim work through screen time data, shrinking family networks and John 15 in one of their best conversations yet.

"If the world hates you, keep in mind that it hated me first."

Jesus isn't talking about casual annoyance, He's describing spiritual disgust, eternal rejection, and why following Him means being hated by the world (and why that's a far lighter burden than knowing people you love face eternal destruction).

Everyone seems to be rediscovering the value of Christianity right now: except they mostly want the fruit without the vine. Joel and Tim trace a line from Bluey through the culture wars to Skye Jethani's brilliant framework, and ask the question every church leader should be sitting with: are the people in your church pursuing Jesus, or just the benefits of proximity to him?