What happens when the good life your culture is selling you, the success, the status, the winning, turns out to be the very thing that costs you your soul? A skeptical teenager in the western suburbs of Sydney picks up the four Gospels to close the door on Christianity for good, and meets a Person on a road instead. The first followers of Jesus were called people of "the Way," and forty years later, Graham is still walking it. In this episode, Graham explores the Jesus Way and ten movements that carry us out of self-interest and into radical discipleship through the lens of Scripture, theology, history, and cultural analysis. He walks through all ten: material success to spiritual riches, competition to compassion, power to servanthood, retribution to forgiveness, indifference to justice, conflict to peacemaking, legalism to grace, exclusion to embrace, expressive individualism to community, and frenetic activity to slow discipleship. He traces the Way through Scripture, from Isaiah's highway of holiness in the desert, to the early believers called followers of the hodos in Acts, to Jesus asking in Mark 8 what it profits a person to gain the world and forfeit the psyche, to the self-emptying kenosis of Philippians 2, to the call to abide, to menō, like branches on a vine in John 15. He engages with voices like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Dallas Willard, Eugene Peterson, and Emmanuel Katongole, alongside the research of Robert Bellah, Charles Taylor, and Tim Kasser on individualism, the self, and what a life organized around money and image does to us. And he asks how the church recovers a Way that costs something without turning discipleship into a new performance, what these ten movements look like on an ordinary Tuesday in Sydney, and why the whole thing begins and ends with grace. Book recommendations: "Ten Movements of the Jesus Way" by Graham Joseph Hill, "The Cost of Discipleship" by Dietrich Bonhoeffer, and "The Divine Conspiracy" by Dallas Willard. Email us at GrahamPodcast@icloud.com See my Substack with an article related to this episode: https://grahamjosephhill.substack.com/ Podcast links: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrahamJosephHillPodcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7aqTMTcoYPcvneL4xg4Ohv Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-graham-joseph-hill-podcast/id1890838919 Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/pw/pbblog-tsqgs-1534f12 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/271b0dd3-990d-41e6-b4ba-3fd4bcf78cef iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/329136112 Player FM: https://player.fm/series/3726148 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-graham-joseph-hill-podcast-6435212 Boomplay: https://www.boomplaymusic.com/podcasts/143800

What happens when the story that was supposed to bury God starts to run out of road? A lifelong atheist, one of the sharpest people you'll meet, turns his coffee cup in his hands and admits he's begun to wonder whether we threw out something we needed. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, once a leading atheist, announces she's now a Christian, and Richard Dawkins calls himself a cultural Christian. And a culture that spent two centuries sure it had outgrown faith keeps finding the oldest questions surfacing again.

In this episode, Graham explores the surprising rebirth of belief, and whether secularism is actually dying, through the lens of Scripture, theology, history, and cultural analysis. He traces a long thread of Scripture engaging a sceptical world, from Paul at the Areopagus in Acts 17, to "he has set eternity in the human heart" in Ecclesiastes 3, to the Word and the light the darkness has never put out in John 1, to the God of Isaiah who makes a way in the wilderness. He engages with voices like Augustine, Blaise Pascal, C.S. Lewis, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Lesslie Newbigin, alongside the research of sociologists like Peter Berger, Grace Davie, and Rodney Stark on the breakdown of the secularisation thesis. And he asks why the confident modern prediction that we would outgrow God has run into trouble, what kind of belief is being reborn and whether a Christianity valued only for its usefulness can hold, and where the church should look for hope when the decline in the West is real and the headline data is easy to get wrong.

Book recommendations: "The Surprising Rebirth of Belief in God" by Justin Brierley, "Dominion" by Tom Holland, and "A Secular Age" by Charles Taylor.

Email us at GrahamPodcast@icloud.com

See my Substack with an article related to this episode: https://grahamjosephhill.substack.com/

Podcast links: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrahamJosephHillPodcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7aqTMTcoYPcvneL4xg4Ohv Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-graham-joseph-hill-podcast/id1890838919 Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/pw/pbblog-tsqgs-1534f12 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/271b0dd3-990d-41e6-b4ba-3fd4bcf78cef iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/329136112 Player FM: https://player.fm/series/3726148 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-graham-joseph-hill-podcast-6435212 Boomplay: https://www.boomplaymusic.com/podcasts/143800

What happens when the church builds its life around marriage and the family, and treats everyone else as a guest still waiting in line? A woman, faithful for eleven years, tells her pastor she still feels like a problem nobody has worked out how to solve. A widower watches the casseroles stop two weeks after the funeral. And a church that follows a single Saviour, and learned its faith from a single apostle, keeps treating singleness as a condition to be cured.

In this episode, Graham explores singleness, loneliness, and the church's obsession with marriage through the lens of Scripture, theology, history, and cultural analysis. He traces the Bible's surprisingly high view of the single life, from "it is not good for the man to be alone" in Genesis 2, to Paul calling both marriage and singleness a gift in 1 Corinthians 7, to Isaiah's promise of a name better than sons and daughters, to the God of Psalm 68 who sets the lonely in families. He engages with voices like Stanley Hauerwas, Henri Nouwen, Augustine, Aelred of Rievaulx, and Rodney Clapp, alongside the research of Vivek Murthy, Robert Putnam, and John Cacioppo on the loneliness epidemic. And he asks why a church that follows a single Lord treats marriage as the summit of a faithful life, how we can honour marriage and singleness together without making either one the measure of the other, and what it would take for the church to become the family God always meant it to be.

Book recommendations: "7 Myths About Singleness" by Sam Allberry, "Redeeming Singleness" by Barry Danylak, and "Spiritual Friendship" by Wesley Hill.

Email us at GrahamPodcast@icloud.com

See my Substack with an article related to this episode:

https://grahamjosephhill.substack.com/

Podcast links: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GrahamJosephHillPodcast Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/7aqTMTcoYPcvneL4xg4Ohv Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-graham-joseph-hill-podcast/id1890838919 Podbean: https://www.podbean.com/pw/pbblog-tsqgs-1534f12 Amazon Music: https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/271b0dd3-990d-41e6-b4ba-3fd4bcf78cef iHeartRadio: https://iheart.com/podcast/329136112 Player FM: https://player.fm/series/3726148 Listen Notes: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-graham-joseph-hill-podcast/id1890838919 Podchaser: https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/the-graham-joseph-hill-podcast-6435212 Boomplay: https://www.boomplaymusic.com/podcasts/143800