Spiritual Misfits Podcast

Chelsea Kim Long grew up inside a world that had an answer for everything — until her body didn't cooperate with the script. A traumatic birth, postpartum depression, infertility, and eventually an impossible decision during a quadruplet pregnancy each cracked open a theology that had no room for what she was actually experiencing. In her new book Faithfully Dissident Daughters: Reclaiming Christian Womanhood Beyond Patriarchy, and in this conversation, she traces how patriarchy in the church has limited our understandings, and points towards a more expansive approach to faith and community.
Connect with Chelsea's work here: https://www.chelseakimlong.com/

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Paul Banks spent his early childhood living in an intentional Christian community — it wasn't perfect, but it 'spoiled' him for church spaces that never quite replicated the taste of an integrated communal life in the same way. 
Paul has moved in, out and back in to communities of faith across his journey. In a sense, he has never stopped pursuing spaces where art, story and community come together in meaningful and transcendent ways. 
Paul and his wife are the founders and hosts of Simba Sessions, a monthly night of poetry, storytelling and music in Kyneton, Victoria.

The next Simba Sessions is taking place on September 11. More info and tickets are here: https://events.humanitix.com/simba-sessions-fundraiser-timothy-coghill-will-small-kavisha-mazzella-and-special-guests

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.
The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

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https://spiritualmisfits.com.au/

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View all episodes at: https://spiritualmisfits.buzzsprout.com

Will and Caro discuss some surprising findings from the recent Spiritual Misfits listener survey and then continue their series looking back at excerpts from Future Church Conference keynotes — this time, Simon Buckingham Shum's exploration of AI and the Church. His talk pushes past the "AI will save us / AI will doom us" binary and asks a much better question: not is AI good or bad, but what is the quality of each interaction, and who is it being trained to serve?
Watch Simon's full talk from Future Church Conference here:
https://youtu.be/Q5zLFaK-pDw?si=JH6Pq3hwzW-pYR4y

Check out the Center for Humane Technology's podcast, mentioned in this episode: Your Undivided Attention
https://www.humanetech.com/podcast

Slides from Simon's talk can be viewed here:
https://simon.buckinghamshum.net/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/Simon_FCC26.pdf

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.
The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

Sign up to our mailing list:
https://spiritualmisfits.com.au/

Join our online Facebook community:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/spiritualmisfitspodcast

Support the pod:
https://spiritualmisfits.com.au/support-us/

View all episodes at: https://spiritualmisfits.buzzsprout.com

Fr. Joash P. Thomas comes from a long line of misfits — literally: a St. Thomas Indian Christian whose people had followed Jesus since the earliest days of the church, but were labelled heretics by colonial missionaries who showed up fifteen centuries later.
In this conversation, Fr. Joash makes the case that justice isn't a side quest for the church, it's the main mission. We talk about the moment he realised he'd "sold his soul to Empire," what it means to decolonise the Great Commission, why deconstruction without decolonisation is pointless, and what ancient Celtic and Indian Christianity can teach a Western church that's forgotten how to hold doubt and diversity together. It's a conversation full of provocation, hospitality, and a lot of flavour!

Connect with Fr. Joash P. Thomas
Read his book: The Justice of Jesus
Subscribe to his newsletter: Masala Chai Theology Substack
Follow him on insta: https://www.instagram.com/joashpthomas

Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.
The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

Sign up to our mailing list:
https://spiritualmisfits.com.au/

Join our online Facebook community:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/spiritualmisfitspodcast

Support the pod:
https://spiritualmisfits.com.au/support-us/

View all episodes at: https://spiritualmisfits.buzzsprout.com

Adam Gowen is a Wiradjuri man with deep cultural ties to Ngunnawal and Yuin country, a husband, father of three, not-for-profit board director, and campus manager at the University of Wollongong. In this conversation with Carolyn Meers, Adam traces his path from a childhood where his family's Aboriginality was known but rarely spoken of, through the education journey that gave him language for his identity, to recent years of actively stepping into cultural practice.
The conversation centres on what Adam calls "the displaced middle": the experience of belonging fully to neither one world nor another, and finding that this in-betweenness can be a privilege rather than a deficit. 

SPIRITUAL MISFITS LISTENER SURVEY — We want to hear from you! Take 5 minutes to fill out our listener survey here and shape the future of Spiritual Misfits:
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Want to reach out and let us know your thoughts or suggestions for the show? Send us a message here; we’d love to hear from you.
The Spiritual Misfits Survival Guide (FREE): https://www.spiritualmisfits.com.au/survivalguide

Sign up to our mailing list:
https://spiritualmisfits.com.au/

Join our online Facebook community:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/spiritualmisfitspodcast

Support the pod:
https://spiritualmisfits.com.au/support-us/

View all episodes at: https://spiritualmisfits.buzzsprout.com