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"I knew when to stand up and sit down... I knew my Bible." Fiona Hall walked into an Alpha course in a tiny New Zealand church convinced she had all the answers. Then came a session on receiving the Holy Spirit - and she encountered Jesus in a way she had never imagined possible. In this episode of Insight, Karl Faase speaks with Fiona about a life full of unexpected turns: falling pregnant at 15, a cancer diagnosis at 19, a wild season in the London music industry, and a leap to the bottom of New Zealand with four kids and no plan. She shares what it means to hold on to God's promises when circumstances don't cooperate, why she has a lasting burden for India, and why diverse voices - including women's - make Christian organisations stronger. About Fiona Hall Born in Edinburgh and raised across the UK, Fiona trained as an auditor at Arthur Young (now EY) before life took her and her husband Toby - together for 40 years - to New Zealand and then Melbourne. A mother of five and now a grandmother, she has led Alpha at Crossway, worked with Alpha in India, led Crossway Life Care, and now oversees ministry staff and campus pastors as a senior leader at Crossway. She also sits on the board of Christian Women in Governance and has served as a rugby chaplain - at the time, the only female chaplain in men's elite sport in Australia. Key Moments & Highlights A Vespa "gone to Vespa heaven", a love of Royal Enfields picked up in India, and why inner-city Fitzroy feels more like a village than the suburbs ever did Growing up between a devout Catholic mum and a Methodist dad whose massive heart attack quietly changed his life - though he never talked about it Falling pregnant at 15, telling her parents, and why abortion was never on the table Going back to school with a baby, marrying Toby when Ben was 18 months old, and then a Hodgkin's diagnosis at 19 - picked up in a London ER Being "horrified" when a woman from her in-laws' church asked to pray for her Five kids (including identical twins), a merchandising business selling t-shirts for bands like Take That and Oasis, and a music industry that became "not a nice place to be" Throwing rune stones to decide whether to move to New Zealand - and getting all the kids christened for the sake of a school uniform Following Toby to church in Balclutha mostly so she wouldn't be left home with four kids, and finding a vicar she now calls her spiritual dad Thinking she had all the answers at Alpha - until a session on receiving the Holy Spirit A shared hunch about Melbourne, a World Vision job, and a first year so lonely - with the Boxing Day tsunami keeping Toby at work A young Christian woman in India whose village burned her house while she knelt and worshipped, and why Indian church leaders say "don't pray against the persecution" How Christian Women in Governance has trained 250 women for board roles - and why the Royal Commission recommended more women on boards Leading Crossway's staff as it grows from four campuses to ten, being a rugby chaplain, and looking back on the 16-year-old mum she once was   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

It was four o'clock on a Sunday afternoon when Richard Grellman sat down to tell his wife, Suellen, that she'd be moving into aged care the next day. He had researched the conversation, written it out and memorised it - and got one sentence in before he broke down. It was Suellen, living with early-onset Alzheimer's, who comforted him: "Don't worry, sweetie, it'll be all right. You're doing the right thing." In this episode, Karl Faase speaks with Richard about a life lived on both sides of success. He reflects on three decades at KPMG, and decades of chairing boards from AMP to Mission Australia. But the heart of this conversation is the nine years Suellen spent in care, the prayer Richard realised he had been getting wrong, and why he now faces his own cancer diagnosis convinced he "can't really lose." It's a conversation about leadership, service, grief, perseverance and the quiet strength to walk beside someone you love all the way to the end. About Richard Grellman: Richard Grellman joined a nine-partner accounting firm at 17 and became a partner at what became KPMG just before turning 30. He spent most of his 32 years there in corporate recovery and turnaround work, rising to the firm's national management committee before retiring on his 50th birthday. He went straight onto the AMP board as a non-executive director for 12 years, served 25 years on the board of Sydney City Mission (which became Mission Australia), including 10 as chairman and spent 11 years chairing professional surfing's world body (now the World Surf League). Richard and his late wife Suellen have three children and seven grandchildren. He has since remarried and is currently facing a recurrence of Hodgkin lymphoma. Key Moments & Highlights Failing maths "with a big capital F" - then joining a nine-partner accounting firm at 17 and becoming a partner at what became KPMG before he turned 30 Thrown from a car at 15, praying mid-air - then opening his Scripture Union notes that night to a prayer about remembering "the vows I made on the night of my peril" Going forward at a Billy Graham crusade at 19, and telling KPMG's managing partner up front that he was a Christian before accepting the partnership Being frog-marched off the LJ Hooker assignment at 39 by a consortium of 72 banks - and the hard lesson in delegation that shaped everything after A $120 million settlement cheque in his name, a phone call from the Reserve Bank governor, and a call from "Paul Keating from Castle Hill" The slow, uncertain years before Suellen's early onset Alzheimer's diagnosis, and the bucket list they completed together before she couldn't The Sunday afternoon conversation about moving Suellen into care - and how she ended up comforting him A first-time preacher's sermon on perseverance that changed Richard's prayer from "take her" to "give me strength to walk beside her" Restoring order to a chaotic world surfing board, leading the merger behind Mission Australia, and uniting the state Bible Societies into one Facing Hodgkin lymphoma with the attitude that "Christians have an unfair advantage" - and the gift of remarrying a wife who says "we have cancer" Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Sometimes in medicine, it's not just considering what you could do for a patient - it's also about what you should do. For renal physician Professor Mark Brown, this is how he looks at the decision of putting a patient on dialysis. It's not for everyone, he insists.  In this conversation with Karl Faase, Mark traces the road from a working-class Sydney home, shaped by a sister with profound disabilities, to the forefront of kidney medicine. He talks candidly about a lonely year in a freezing Nottingham garage, a first marriage he wasn't ready for, a chance seat on a plane that led him to his wife Wendy, and the Sunday nights at a church car park that brought him back to faith. It's a conversation about life and death, and what it means to care for the whole person. About Professor Mark Brown Professor Mark Brown is a renal physician (kidney specialist) who has spent his whole consultant career at St George Hospital in Sydney. He is an international authority on pre-eclampsia, has published around 350 peer-reviewed papers, and was recently made an honorary member of the Royal College of Obstetricians in the UK. With his wife Wendy, who has a nursing background, he also started a medical clinic for homeless men at the Mission Australia Centre in Surry Hills, which has since become St George's Homeless Health Department.  Key Moments & Highlights Facing West Indies fast bowler Andy Roberts in the nets  Why a mind trained in maths, and a sister with profound disabilities, may have led him into medicine One sentence from a respected professor – "I think you would make a really good physician" – that turned a future surgeon into a kidney specialist Growing up with Jenny, and what her years in psychiatric institutions taught him about disability A winter in Nottingham: a building marked for demolition, a converted garage and a heater that ran on fifty-pence coins Mark is honest about a first marriage he wasn't mature enough for, and how a lonely year abroad finally made him reflect Picking up his stepson from church on Sunday nights, and the preacher who connected the Bible to real life Why people of faith tend to face dying with more peace, and the patients who survive when medically they shouldn't Building renal supportive care with Frank Brennan: from being told he could be "accused of murder" to winning over the same room years later What he discovered treating homeless men in Surry Hills: "the reason for homelessness is not the absence of a roof over your head. It's your childhood." His three foundations for life: good relationships, doing things for others, and spirituality Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Wendy Simpson was running a school for troubled teens, earning $36,000 a year and fielding the occasional death threat, when she flew to Connecticut and stayed in the homes of millionaire business leaders. She came home, looked at her husband Jeff and said, “I reckon if I really wanted to, I could have a go at that.” His reply: “Well, why don't you?” In this episode of Insight, Wendy traces an unlikely path from a humble Baptist church in Melbourne's northern suburbs to the corporate boardrooms of Australia and the negotiating tables of Shanghai. Along the way she talks about community living shaped by liberation theology, fostering 13 teenagers, pioneering Australia's first small business awards, and the day she was told she couldn't be a “Young Lion” because she was a woman. She also speaks openly about three cancer diagnoses, a first-in-human clinical trial, and the words she believes God spoke to her at her lowest point: “You can live in fear or you can live in faith.” This is a conversation about calling, courage, and seeing God's image in everyone, whether that's in a boardroom or among the homeless people at her local church. About Wendy Simpson Wendy Simpson is a Member of the Order of Australia, has been nominated to the Australian Businesswoman Hall of Fame, and was named one of the Australian Financial Review's 100 Women of Influence. The daughter of a low-paid railway worker, she studied at RMIT and Melbourne University, taught at what was then considered Australia's most disadvantaged school, and ran a school for juvenile delinquents before moving into policy roles with the Victorian government under Premier Joan Kirner. Her corporate career took her through QBE Insurance, TNT and Alcatel, including seven years based in Shanghai leading work across 17 Asian countries. With her husband Jeff she bought and ran an engineering business and now works in commercial property development. She serves on boards, sits on the Sydney Prayer Breakfast Committee, and is helping start Redemptive Ventures Australia. Key Moments & Highlights Growing up in Melbourne's northern suburbs with op-shop clothes, no car and no phone, and a dad on one of the lowest wages in the Victorian railways Earning as much at 15 in the fruit-and-veg section at Coles as her father did, and learning the logistics lessons that shaped her career Reading The Female Eunuch alongside the Bible, discovering the Christian women who fought for the vote, and leading 100 students in a lunchtime Bible study after John Smith's God Squad came to her school Why liberation theology led her, in her mid-20s, to teach at a school for juvenile delinquents, where she received death threats Helping launch Australia's first community-funded youth homelessness program, and she and Jeff fostering 13 teenagers so they could stay at their local schools Friends warning that a Rotary business exchange to Connecticut was “going to the dark side,” and the wrestle to follow what she believed was God's call anyway Prayer, a sense that small business owners felt unappreciated, and pitching the first small business awards to Premier Joan Kirner, then pulling off the night with Kirner and Jeff Kennett both on stage mid-election Being told she couldn't join QBE's “Young Lions” because she was a woman, and bringing the CEO to Telstra to start championing women instead A three-week trip to fix a telephone factory in Shanghai that became 18 months of internet negotiations at the table with China's top three leaders Losing 70% of their new business's staff in one morning when immigration officers arrived, after a con artist had taken the workers' money for visas Three cancer diagnoses since 2010, a first-in-human clinical trial, and the moment she heard God say: “You can live in fear or you can live in faith” Her hope for redemptive entrepreneurship   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Tom Price was as far from Christianity as he could get - trying to cope with life by self-medicating and intentionally distancing himself from the religion of his parents. That was until a choking uncle and some late-night advice sent him down a path that led, eventually, to lecturing at the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics. In this conversation, Tom talks with Karl Faase about why he thinks the New Atheists were never a serious intellectual movement, what's really behind Richard Dawkins' talk of being a “cultural Christian,” and the uncomfortable questions apologetics now has to answer in the wake of high-profile church scandals - including the one that engulfed his own organisation's history. He also charts his personal journey of finding faith after adding Philosophy to his university study. About Tom Price   Tom Price is an author, lecturer, and speaker with the Oxford Centre for Christian Apologetics (OCCA). His PhD examines how popular film shapes the ideas people carry into everyday life, and his work takes him into schools, universities, workplaces and churches, helping people think through faith questions. Tom became a Christian while studying computer science and philosophy at university, after years estranged from his own churchgoing parents. Key Moments & Highlights Tom argues the New Atheists were never a serious academic force - just "angry atheism" that helped people justify their hurt with the church Why Richard Dawkins calling himself a "cultural Christian" is about more than nostalgia for carols and candles Inside the ARC conference: a packed, mostly non-Christian room warming to the idea that the West needs to “recapture” Christian values The real founding story of OCCA at Wycliffe Hall, and why the organisation is now completely independent of Ravi Zacharias Betrayal trauma theory: psychology borrowed from research on domestic abuse survivors that explains why churches almost always get their first response to scandal wrong Tom's own admission that he took a paycheck, stayed quiet, and regrets not resigning during the crisis at OCCA Growing up hyperactive and disconnected, dropping out of school at sixteen, and performing the Heimlich manoeuvre on his choking uncle at Christmas lunch A drunken piece of late-night advice from that same uncle sends Tom into a philosophy degree — and, eventually, toward Jesus The prayer he prayed alone in his room, with no "churchy" language, that he still describes as the start of being "reconciled" to God every day since Years of estrangement from his parents, and the slow, mutual forgiveness that followed   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

At just fifteen, Noah Brierley watched a video he'd made - a lighthearted challenge asking baristas for 10% off, just to practise getting over the fear of rejection - get reposted by a huge Instagram meme page. The comments were filled with mockery. He messaged them, begging them to take it down. They didn't. Years later, that same account messaged him again: “congrats on the growth, man.” It's a small window into the ride Noah has been on since he started posting on TikTok during COVID lockdown as a schoolboy with a side hustle and no plan - a ride that took him to 1.8 million followers by 17, a business managing accounts with a combined reach of around 4 million, and a decision to turn down Oxford University altogether. About Noah Brierley: Noah Brierley started building an audience on TikTok as a UK schoolboy during COVID lockdown, documenting side hustles like car washing and reselling on eBay rather than chasing dance trends. By 17 he'd reached 1.8 million followers, and he has since turned that following into a business managing content for clients, with accounts under his company reaching a combined audience of around 4 million. Rather than follow his parents - both Oxford and Cambridge graduates - to university, Noah left college to go all-in on social media full time.  Key Moments & Highlights: - Turning “no” into fuel: the door-to-door car-washing mindset that taught Noah to treat every rejection as one step closer to a “yes” - Taking a £20 loan from his younger sister to buy car-washing supplies — and feeling he had to make it back - Deliberately skipping TikTok's dancing trend to build an educational, “document the journey” niche instead - Hitting 80,000 followers at 15 and getting invited to a cinema's opening night — the moment it first “felt real” - Getting mocked by a major Instagram meme page at 15, getting emotional about it, and years later receiving a congratulations message from the same account - The friction at home and school when Noah told his parents and his old teacher he wouldn't be going to university - Helping his dad grow a TikTok account to 100,000 followers within weeks, while Noah was still in school - Learning not to tie his happiness to view counts: “as long as I'd posted a video that day, I was happy” - Marrying Phoebe, his partner since age 11, at 20 and designing their business around the life and family they want - A wild prediction for AI and content creation: kids asking an app to generate a custom animated show on the spot   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Katy Faust’s own childhood - her parents’ divorce, split households, and years of quietly people-pleasing the new partners - sits behind the things she now advocates for in public.  In this wide-ranging conversation, she traces that story through her conversion to Christianity, the rage that turned her into an accidental activist against gay marriage and the step to start an anonymous blog that attracted a lot of hate.  Eventually, her identity was revealed and her greatest fears came true - they went after her family and her church. This is when the elders decided that she should “go big” rather than stop. This was the beginning of her public advocacy - standing against some of the big culture war issues of our day: gay marriage, divorce, abortion, and reproductive technologies on behalf of children. She is the founder of Them Before Us - an organisation that fights for children’s right to their mother and father in courts, culture and legislatures. In this interview, Katy shares her hard-won thoughts on marriage, motherhood, and the cost of telling the truth. About Katy Faust Katy Faust didn’t set out to become an activist. She was a pastor’s wife and stay-at-home mother when cultural conversations around marriage and family began to shift dramatically. As debates intensified, one question kept surfacing. Who is speaking for the children? That question led Katy to launch an anonymous blog defending the rights of children in marriage and family policy. What began as a small online voice quickly gained traction. Within a few years she was writing for national publications, speaking around the world, and eventually founding the global children’s rights movement Them Before Us. Today, Katy is a leading voice in the conversation about marriage, family, and child-centred policy. Key Moments & Highlights - Katy shares her “three staples of a child’s social-emotional diet” - mother’s love, father’s love and stability - The honest admission that as a child she learned to “people please” the new partners entering her parents’ lives, just to keep them close - Why it took her four years after becoming a Christian to "love God with all my mind," especially on sexuality and morality - "I don’t have mums. I have a mother and a father like everybody else" — Katy on why she distinguishes her mother’s partner from her mother - The moment the gay marriage debate made her angry enough to start writing — and why she published anonymously out of fear for her family - Being doxxed by a rival blogger who traced her IP address to her husband’s church, flooding it with fake reviews and SEO attacks - Her church elders’ choice to "go big" rather than ask her to stop, and the trip to Australia — meeting MPs and Millie Fontana — that followed - Walking onto Lateline with Tony Jones on no sleep, after reading a verse from Deuteronomy, in what became the most-watched clip in ABC history - Why she started Them Before Us in 2018 to give children formal representation in courts and legislatures, and the "change hearts, change laws" strategy behind it - Inside This Is a Child, the documentary built from her ARC speech and filmed partly in Australia   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

How do you learn to let go of a dream - one that you have prayed for, hoped for and worked towards for more than a decade? Sheridan Voysey's story is marked by dreams - some that came to pass, and others that he had to let go of. As he shares his story with Karl, he speaks of his childhood in Queensland, how he started in radio broadcasting and the life he and his wife Merryn built. He then explores the infertility journey they endured, and what it took for them to walk away from a dream and a future they both so desperately longed for. He shares some of the highlights of his career, the low points of his personal life and how God has used both him and Merryn since their move to Oxford (literally, in life-saving ways)! About Sheridan Voysey Sheridan Voysey is the author of nine books, a presenter on BBC Radio 2's Pause for Thought, and the founder of the Friendship Lab, a charity tackling adult loneliness. Born in Brisbane to English parents, he spent the 1990s and 2000s building a career in Australian Christian radio, eventually hosting the nationally syndicated Open House on Hope 103.2 Sydney to audiences of around 100,000 listeners a week.   Key Moments & Highlights Growing up the only child of English parents in Brisbane A secret teenage career as a graffiti artist under cover of night  His parents' ten-year, ultimately door-slamming break from the Jehovah's Witnesses, sparked by his mother's search for the true identity of Jesus across three different Bibles A cryptic two-week wait for a letter that led him, almost by accident, to discover the Bible college and the radio station he needed were right next door to each other Marrying Merryn and the ten years of "expectation, disappointment" that followed - special diets, healing prayer, IVF, and a two-year wait for a foster placement that never came The devastating Christmas Eve phone call revealing a pregnancy that never was and the decision to leave Australia's "promised land" for an unknown season in Oxford Five years of quiet grief in the UK, rebuilt around two verses in Ephesians and the realisation that his identity had to be rooted somewhere deeper than his career Merryn's key involvement with develoiping the worlds second COVID vaccine at the height of the Pandemic Founding Friendship Lab after a retreat-room conviction that loneliness needed more than another book - it needed a movement to bring the 25% of adults with no close friends down Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Two days after Glen Scrivener prayed a reckless, bravado-filled prayer — “God, if it means knowing you better, then bring on the suffering” — his girlfriend left him, his UK visa was refused, and a long-hidden family secret that would end his parents’ marriage broke into the open, all in the same week. In this vulnerable and insightful conversation, Glen tells the whole strange, funny and painful story of his life, faith, and ministry, and the times when God came and found him. From praying a Gethsemane-style prayer every day as a teenager, to a cricket career that fell just short of an Oxford Blue, to a father whose long-hidden affairs shaped Glen’s own image of God, and the years he and his wife Emma spent walking through her life-threatening battle with anorexia — Glen’s life has been marked by one recurring, helpful reminder: I am not Jesus. Listener note: this episode discusses eating disorders. Please take care while listening. About Glen Scrivener Glen Scrivener is the CEO of Speak Life, a UK-based evangelistic ministry with roots stretching back to 1952. Raised in Canberra, Glen studied Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford, where he played cricket at a high level before walking away from a faith he says he’d never really understood as a teenager. He returned to faith in his early twenties through a friend’s simple invitation to read Luke’s gospel, and went on to work at All Souls Langham Place in London and study at Oak Hill Theological College. He is the author of The Air We Breathe and lives in the UK with his wife Emma and their two children. Key Moments & Highlights His grandmother, then General Secretary of the NSW Communist Party, walked forward and gave her life to Christ at Billy Graham’s 1959 Sydney crusade  Speak Life spent 28 years as “an evangelistic organisation with no evangelist” after founder Eric Hutchings died in 1982, until a legacy left in 2010 funded Glen’s role. As a teenager, Glen prayed to give his life to Jesus “again and again,” checking a bathroom mirror for a halo that never came — a striving he now traces to misreading Gethsemane as a call to copy Jesus rather than be rescued by him. A hidden family crisis — his father’s repeated affairs, uncovered when Glen was seven — shaped a vision of God as distant and unreachable: “you can knock, knock, knock on heaven’s door, nobody’s home.” The moment everything flipped: a friend reading Gethsemane with him said, “Glen, you are not Jesus in this passage — you are Peter,” and Glen realised the gospel was Christ’s life given for him, not his life given to Christ. Two days after praying “God, bring on the suffering” from Philippians 3:10, Glen’s girlfriend left him, his UK visa was refused, and the full extent of his father’s affairs came out — all within the same week. Glen and his wife Emma walked through her life-threatening battle with anorexia in their early marriage, including twelve years of infertility, before welcoming their daughter Ruby and adopting their son JJ. Reflecting on his father’s death eighteen months ago, Glen says that despite everything, his dad “handed on to his kids a better inheritance than he had himself.” Why Glen believes even secular values like human rights and equality are “supernatural” borrowings from the Jesus story — not conclusions nature or reason could reach on their own. Resources Mentioned The Air We Breathe — Glen Scrivener A New Name — Emma Scrivener (memoir on her experience with anorexia) 321 Course — Speak Life’s online gospel course    Find Out More: Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To: Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Justin Brierley is the man who put doubt, dialogue and debate at the centre of Christian broadcasting with his groundbreaking UK radio show, ‘Unbelievable?’ Justin had the idea for this radio show while working for Premiere Christian Radio. He wanted to invite Christians into conversations that would help them in their real lives by showing good dialogue between non-Christians and believers. Little did he know that he would launch the show right as the New Athiest movement was kicking off and his show became a key place where these ideas could be discussed and a Christian alternative presented. In this conversation, Karl and Justin also discuss why he now believes he's watching something unexpected happen: a quiet, surprising return to faith among a generation raised on New Atheism. Justin Brierley grew up near Northampton in a charismatic evangelical family, and traces his own faith to a single night at a youth camp at age fifteen - a "road to Damascus" moment friends say they could see in him afterward. At Oxford University he studied politics, philosophy and economics, acted and led evangelistic drama, and met his wife Lucy, who went on to be ordained in ministry. After a graduate posting at Premier Christian Radio, Justin created and hosted 'Unbelievable?' for almost twenty years. He is the author of The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God (2023), and now runs the media company Think Faith, where he hosts a new dialogue show, Uncommon Ground. Key Moments & Highlights Justin traces his faith to a single youth-camp night at fifteen - a "road to Damascus" moment that changed how people around him saw him, even though his wife Lucy's own faith journey was a slow, gradual awakening At Oxford, a friend's crisis of faith — "how do you know this isn't just all in your mind?" — sent Justin looking, for the first time, into the intellectual case for Christianity Justin met Lucy while acting in a student production of Guys and Dolls, where she was doing his stage makeup and, to her lasting exasperation, he didn't recognise her at the cast party afterward The couple spent eight months of their honeymoon on a mission station in northern Namibia, teaching in a school and helping build a Sunday school from scratch The origin story of Unbelievable? — pitched almost as an afterthought to his radio director as a way to help Christians "have better conversations" with the non-Christians in their lives How a 2012 magazine interview with Mark Driscoll spiralled into a public Twitter storm and became the most downloaded episode Justin ever released Why Justin now argues the confident "New Atheism" of Dawkins and Hitchens has given way to a quieter reassessment of faith among public intellectuals like Jordan Peterson and Tom Holland The evidence Justin points to for a genuine, if early, shift: rising Bible sales in the UK, a wave of young men returning to church across Scandinavia, and record numbers of adult converts at France's Easter vigil What happened when the Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" survey data had to be withdrawn and why Justin still believes something real is happening despite the flawed numbers Inside Justin's new show, Uncommon Ground, where he opens every episode by asking guests - including Richard Dawkins and Rowan Williams - to "steel man" each other's position before they debate   Resources Mentioned The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God - Justin Brierley (book) https://www.amazon.com.au/Surprising-Rebirth-Belief-God-Christianity/dp/1496466772 Uncommon Ground - Justin Brierley's current show, produced by Think Faith https://justinbrierley.com/uncommon-ground-podcast/    Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Politics has a way of reducing people to headlines - the speeches, the elections, the controversies, the moments that dominated the nightly news. But behind every public leader is a private person, carrying the weight of decisions, the expectations of millions, and quiet questions about faith, family and purpose. For Scott Morrison, one of those quiet questions came into devastating focus on a February afternoon in 2020, when a mother named Layla Abdallah stood in front of a television camera - twenty-four hours after losing three of her children to a drug-affected driver - and said: "In my heart I know I forgive him." As Prime Minister, Morrison was already carrying the country through the Black Summer bushfires, and would soon face a global pandemic that tested his leadership like nothing before it. Throughout it all, his Christian faith remained central to who he was - sometimes a source of strength, sometimes drawing intense public attention. In this conversation, Scott reflects on the experiences that shaped him long before politics, the unseen cost of leadership, and what forgiveness, uncertainty and faith under pressure have taught him about an identity that's never found in a title. Scott Morrison served as Australia’s 30th Prime Minister from 2018 to 2022, leading the country through the Black Summer bushfires, the COVID-19 pandemic and many other intense and contentious issues. Before politics, he worked as a research economist and later for Bruce Baird, entering Federal Parliament in 2007. Raised in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire in a family shaped by service rather than ambition, Morrison has spoken openly throughout his career about the Christian faith that has underpinned his life and leadership, from a youth camp in Melbourne where he gave his life to the Lord, to the Tuesday-night prayer group he kept running throughout his time as Prime Minister. He is married to Jenny, with two daughters, and today works in business advisory and geopolitics while remaining closely involved with Danny and Leila Abdallah’s 'I Forgive' Foundation.   Key Moments & Highlights - The 2020 Sydney crash that killed four children and how Layla Abdallah's on-camera declaration of forgiveness “within 24 hours” stunned Morrison and the nation - Growing up as his father's unpaid “electorate secretary,” fielding constituents' phone calls before he was even a teenager - The fourteen-year fertility journey and ten failed treatments that preceded the births of daughters Abbey and Lily, including “screaming at God in the forest” in Wellington - Why he's never seen himself as belonging to a political “tribe,” and how Bruce Baird and John Anderson showed him it was possible to be a Christian, a husband and a father, and still succeed in politics. - The night he became Prime Minister through a contested leadership spill, and Malcolm Turnbull's differing account of events - Diverting the campaign plane to Tasmania on the eve of the 2019 “miracle election,” and watching both seats come in on the AEC refresh screen. - Tabling the Royal Commission report into institutional child abuse in 2018, and the moment he shut his office door afterward and wept. - Watching hospital footage from northern Italy at the start of the pandemic, and why he tuned out “ideological rubbish” about the virus being a threat to liberty   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

When Stephen Driscoll's laptop started acting up, he asked an AI agent to take a look - twenty minutes later it had tracked down and fixed a problem that had been quietly running in the background for six months. It's a small, almost funny story, but Stephen uses it to make a much bigger point: AI has moved from mimicking us to genuinely acting on its own initiative, and the theological and ethical questions are moving just as fast. In this wide-ranging conversation, Karl Faase and Stephen dig into AI-directed drone strikes, the Pope's recent encyclical, transhumanism, campus culture, and Stephen's own decade-long wrestle with doubt.   About Stephen Driscoll: Stephen Driscoll is a university minister and self-described “tech realist” who tries to avoid both blind optimism and fear-driven doomism about artificial intelligence. He won the 2025 Australian Christian Book of the Year Award for his book Made in Our Image: God, Artificial Intelligence and You. Before moving into ministry, Stephen worked on a trading floor in finance, and has been fascinated by AI since his undergraduate years.   Get a copy of Stephen Driscoll's book here: Made in Our Image: God, Artificial Intelligence and You    Key Moments & Highlights Stephen's four-point framework for what modern AI actually is: brain-inspired, trained rather than designed, prediction-based, and radically general-purpose “Move 37”- the AlphaGo move against world champion Lee Sedol so unconventional it stunned commentators and convinced many that AI could be genuinely creative How reinforcement learning turns AI from a “debauched” mirror of the whole internet into a corporate “people-pleaser” with a morality borrowed from whichever company built it The Pope's AI encyclical and its warning, drawn from the Tower of Babel, about the danger of human unity turned toward evil The unsettling real-world stakes: AI-selected drone strikes, twelve-second human decision windows, and a strike on an Iranian school that killed around 100 children Why Stephen is less afraid of profit-driven AI companies than of AI controlled by authoritarian governments A working test for transhumanism: are we moving toward God's created order (like glasses or cochlear implants) or away from it (like losing our embodiment in a metaverse)? Stephen's own faith story: growing up in an Indonesian immigrant church, drifting through doubt reading the “new atheists” in his twenties, and finding his way back by actually reading the Bible Walking away from a trading floor career for full-time campus ministry and what convinced him within a week that he'd made the right call His read on why hostility to Christianity on university campuses peaked around 2022, and why he's now seeing more openness - especially among young men Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

"You can have Daniel and Lyndall for five hundred dollars." That’s the sentence Dan Lyons’ mother used when his father tried to gain custody of him and his sister - the price she put on her own children. In this raw and confronting conversation, Dan takes Karl Faase back through years of alcohol-fuelled domestic violence, a mother who turned her own pain into abuse against her son, and the homeless, drug-affected years that followed - before two schoolmates and a four-word prayer changed the course of his life. This is a story about the long, unglamorous work of healing, and what it looks like to lead, parent, and forgive when you never had a template for any of it. Dan Lyons is the Director of Missional Culture and Leadership at Carinity, the care arm of Queensland Baptists, where he leads a team of pastors and around 100–125 chaplains serving in hospitals, prisons, aged care facilities, and schools across Queensland. He has been married to his wife Anita for 28 years, they have four adult children, and he recently became a grandfather for the first time. Behind that role is a childhood marked by extreme domestic violence and abuse, teenage homelessness, and a decades-long journey of faith and healing - which he shares candidly in this episode. Listener note: this episode discusses childhood abuse, family violence and suicide. Please take care while listening. Key Moments & Highlights Dan’s current role tethering Carinity’s ~2,000 staff and 100+ chaplains back to "the person of Jesus," and what "mission drift" really means for faith-based organisations Growing up moving across Queensland with his mother and three sisters, and the Friday-night ritual of alcohol-fuelled, rage-filled domestic violence between his mum and her partners The abuse turned personal: being interrogated, beaten, burned, and stabbed with a fork by his own mother The one adult - his boss at a butcher shop - who noticed the bruises and dared to intervene The night Dan finally pushed his mother off him and ran through the rain, hand-in-hand with his sister Lyndall, to find safety with his biological father His mother’s chilling offer to give up her own children for $500 Becoming homeless at fifteen, sliding into drugs and self-loathing, and a suicide attempt interrupted at the last second The four-word prayer: "God, please help me" and how two Christian classmates befriended him days later with no idea what he’d been through A physical, overwhelming encounter with God while reading the Bible for the first time, which Dan marks as the start of thirty years of healing A prayer-counselling breakthrough years later that helped him recognise where Jesus had actually been present in his worst childhood memories — and his candid advice for anyone currently in an abusive relationship   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org   Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance Vision Christian Media

Tim Kelly grew up on a dairy farm in northern NSW, learning to ride poddy calves at five years old and by his late teens he was riding saddle bronc and bulls professionally, competing at the Calgary Stampede and winning the Saddle Bronc Junior World Championship. But behind the trophies, and the hard-partying rodeo lifestyle was a persistent emptiness Tim couldn't shake.  In this episode of Insight, Tim shares his journey from rodeo arenas across Australia and Canada to a life-changing encounter at a "million dollar rodeo" in 1982, the fear that nearly ended his career, the devastating breakdown of his marriage, and how faith reshaped his identity, and continues to reshape the lives of the bull riders he now mentors through his own riding schools. About Tim Kelly Tim Kelly is a former professional bull and saddle bronc rider from Tenterfield, NSW, who competed internationally through the late 1970s and 80s, including at the Calgary Stampede and Canada's rodeo circuit, and won the Saddle Bronc Junior World Championship. After coming to faith at a major rodeo event in 1982, Tim went on to run bull riding schools for over 40 years, training riders from across Australia while sharing his testimony with the next generation of the sport. He has walked through both the highs of competitive success and the deep personal cost of a marriage breakdown, and now speaks openly about failure, forgiveness, and restoration. Tim is married to Laura and continues to mentor riders and share his story of faith found in an unlikely place.   Key Moments & Highlights - The five-year-old's dream - Growing up in the middle of seven kids - Tim represented Australia at one of the world's biggest rodeos, competing in front of 70,000 people. - After what he calls one of the best rides of his life, Tim was disqualified on a technicality at the "million dollar rodeo" - the moment he decided to find out what other Christian riders "had that he didn't." - Giving his life to Christ — A bikie's testimony at a rodeo chapel service in 1982 became the turning point that led Tim to commit his life to God. - Tim recounts the terrifying accident that later triggered crippling fear, and watching another rider suffer a near-fatal version of the same fall. - How memorising and speaking out verses on fear allowed Tim to get back on a horse and keep riding. - Marriage breakdown and restoration - 40 years of bull riding schools    Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org    Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance  Vision Christian Media

If life were a film, most of us can point to the moment everything changed. For Graham Clarke, that moment came as a phone call from a radiologist about his wife, Christy - a call that changed everything that came after. In this raw and moving conversation, Graham shares the story of walking with Christy through a terminal cancer diagnosis, parenting three young kids through unimaginable loss, and discovering that faith doesn't mean pretending everything is fine - it means bringing your honest grief to God and waiting for Him to meet you there. This is a conversation about lament, Shalom, single parenting, and the surprising, hard-won hope that things really can be okay again!! About Graham Clarke Graham Clarke spent most of his adult life in local church ministry as a senior pastor, most recently having stepped out of that role and looking toward a return to education - his first career, as a PE teacher and school chaplain. Raised in the Uniting Church in Brisbane, Graham met his wife Christy on the set of a Christian children's TV show in his late teens. They married young, had three children, and spent almost a decade leading a church in Geelong before returning to Brisbane. Key Moments & Takeaways - Early days and meeting his wife, Christy. - Christy's first breast cancer diagnosis came early and was treated as a full recovery - The phone call from the radiographer became Graham's own "sliding doors" moment - Graham and Christy independently sensed the same words in that moment: "it's gonna be okay" - a promise not about the outcome, but about the presence of God in the midst of it. - Graham unpacks the biblical idea of Shalom - Facing an eleven, ten, and seven-year-old, Graham and Christy chose honesty over shielding their kids. - A pastor's advice - "That's our job. You look after your kids" - freed Graham from having to hold the family's faith and its parenting at once. - Graham reflects candidly on "solo parenting" and the exhausting kindness of a grieving community. - He closes with the spirituality of lament - honesty with God in the middle of pain, and the hopeful expectation that mercy is renewed every morning.   Find Out More Olive Tree Media: www.olivetreemedia.com.au Watch+ Platform: www.olivetreemedia.com.au/watch Daily Nudge: www.dailynudge.org    Special Thanks To Excelsia University College Christian Finance  Vision Christian Media