Mid-faith Crisis

We discuss guilt and confession. Is guilt ever good? Can confession be therapeutic? If so, to whom do we confess? Also, we explore how we should react when God doesn’t show up, there's some welcome birdsong from Australia, and Nick is worried about creeping vegetarianism. Midfaith Crisis Facebook community The Journey, read by Mary Oliver Jane Austen at the publishers Mid-faith Crisis - The Big Co...

Along with some important, moving and actually quite hilarious emails, we talk a bit more about demons, Satan, and the lies which dominate both our personal and public lives. Joe finds the metaphor of demons quite helpful, and Nick decides that the Beatles were right. Mid-faith Crisis - The Big Conversation Saturday 14th March 2020 10.00am to 4.00pm An event to explore faith and conversation. Why...

This week we’re thinking about involvement with the world. Should we just do the things that we’re passionate about? And if so, how do we make sure that we’re passionate about the right things? Should we ever put demands on people? Has Nick really felt the call to just lie on the sofa and drink? Does everything great happen in Worthing on a Thursday night? So many questions. David Benner Mary Oliv...

We’ve reached three figures! In this episode we chat about why we started the podcast, what’s the best (and worst) thing about it, and where we go from here. Expect a bit of dodgy audio. We recorded part of this while walking round the ramparts of an Iron Age hill fort. Like you do. Thanks for sticking with us everyone and for making this podcast what it is.* *We’ll leave you to decide what it is,...

It’s a mega-feedback episode. We explore whether silent retreats are really good for extroverts, what we think of demons and the demonic and pick up on how our themes are going. All this, and a stunning lack of planning for the imminent 100th episode. Mid-faith Crisis – The Big Conversation Saturday 14th March 2020 10.00am to 4.00pm An event to explore faith and conversation. Why do we need...

Happy New Year! We’re back with a discussion of how to reflect on last year using the examen approach. And we talk about setting themes for the new year, rather than new year’s resolutions. Mid-faith Crisis - The Big Conversation Saturday 14th March 2020 10.00am to 4.00pm An event to explore faith and conversation. Why do we need to talk about faith? How do we do it? Why does it matter? Paying Att...

In a strange reversal, Joe is quite grumpy, and Nick is quite upbeat. It’s the shortest day of the year, but there is light in the darkness, folks. We talk about naming our hopes and fears, dealing with the overload of drama, being aware of God's presence and what Christmas really means to us. Happy Christmas everyone! Coming Soon Mid-faith Crisis - The Big Conversation Saturday 14th March 2020 10...

Joe has been putting his coffee cup on the altar. Which is not a euphemism for some kind of spiritual discipline, but a real event, which leads us into lots of chatty rambling about winter, fasting, how stripping things back reveals the underlying structure of our lives, and how even though it looks like nothing is happening, God is always happening. Meanwhile, Nick, as usual, delves into obscure...

We reflect on the profound effects that something as simple as kindness and hospitality can have. It’s all about being the Kingdom of God and how we need each other to live it out. Meanwhile, Nick’s had a review, Joe gets bored of history (again) and there’s the Mid-faith Crisis Christmas Appeal. Coming Soon Mid-faith Crisis - The Big Conversation Saturday 14th March 2020 10.00am to 4.00pm An even...

It’s Advent - which is really the start of the liturgical year. It’s supposed to be a period of fasting and waiting and paying attention to the coming of Christ. It’s all about hope, people. Nick gets obscurely historical, Joe gets needlessly wiffly and Ethel rebukes us both. And it’s the return of Martin Buber’s Christmas album. The Two Ronnies: Four Candles Martin Buber, I and Thou Coming Soon H...

More fantastic feedback. More hope in the darkness. Some tough, poignant and sacred stories this week. But we also talk about science, human growth, not looking down on others and the amazing ability of humans to look for patterns and imagine the future. BBC: The Secret History of Science and Religion Journal through Grief - Nick’s blog about his son Josh How to Survive the Mid-Faith Crisis: Lee A...

An interview with Lacy Finn Borgo, friend, teacher, author of famous emails, spiritual director and founder of Good Dirt ministries. Joe and Lacy pick up on recent discussions about death and sorrow, as well as talking about the crucial value of seasons of silence, and the importance of helping your children to wonder. Also, we share the perils of man-flu, and Nick discovers that he has another go...

We have more wonderful, moving emails reflecting on last week’s episode about death. Thank you to the listeners who share such poignant, sacred things. Along the way, we explore the difference between facing your own mortality, and coming to terms with the grief of losing a loved one. And we touch on the importance of properly grieving and saying goodbye. Meanwhile, Joe quaffs from the full flagon...

We discuss death, the afterlife and all that stuff. Basically because we have two fabulous emails. Can you really make friends with death? What happens after? Will Joe really be a star? And can Jesus' injunction to ‘love our enemies’ apply to death and the other things that happen to us?

Ruth is the Global Advocacy and Influencing Director with Tearfund - a job title which makes Nick and Joe quite jealous. She talks about her work as an environmental campaigner, the Christian response to climate change and the single most important thing we can do to make a difference (hint: it involves eating fewer sausages). Ruth’s Blog L is for Lifestyle

We talk about disagreement within the church. Are the ideas we adopt in Mid-faith Crisis really new, or merely rediscovered? And in this new way of thinking, how do we respond to people who want to ‘bring us back into the fold’? Joe talks about paradigms. Nick has some surprising financial success. And to think we were trying to do a shorter podcast…

Order! Order! It’s a mid-faith crisis look at politics - or political debate and discussion to be precise. How can we disagree well with one another? How do we deal with criticism and difference? Can we resist the urge to fight fire with fire? Does Nick listen to the podcast just to hear his own opinions? Many crucial questions. But what the people really want to know is…

We’re back from our holidays with a bumper bag of feedback, including reaction to the Steve Chalke interview, questions about the Badly Behaved Bible and whether we have to go through lots of mid-faith crises, rather than just one. Also there’s an alarming amount of quotes from female pop singers. So, business as normal, then.

A wide-ranging, powerful, thought-provoking (and quite long!) interview with Steve Chalke. Steve talks about his new book, The Lost Message of Paul and how his message has been misunderstood. The result, claims Steve, is that 'although Paul has often been presented as the champion of exclusion, he was the very opposite. He was the great includer; a revolutionary who saw a new inclusive world dawni...

We're away on our holidays at the moment. But to keep you going, here's a supercut of the best moments from long-time contributor to the podcast, Ethel Sadoldperson (Mrs). May you all be greatly blessed. We're going to take a short break after this episode. See you in a couple of weeks.

In the final part of our romp through Nick’s book The Badly Behaved Bible , we look at the acts of violence in the Old Testament. How are we to understand these? Also, we explore why Jesus, Paul and Matthew would all fail preaching class and how we can read the Bible more rabbinically. What is Cricket? Guardian article on Third Ashes test BBC, In Our Time In Our Time: The Talmud Burton L. Visotzky...

Continuing through The Badly Behaved Bible, we discuss the crucial role of doubt in the development of faith and how the authority of scripture actually works out in our lives. Or, to put it in the words of Saint Edwin of Starr, 'Law (huh) what is it good for?' Also Joe gets insecure about the logo and there are some amazingly good emails. How to Survive the Mid-Faith Crisis: Lee Abbey 8-12 June 2...

Continuing through Nick’s book, The Badly Behaved Bible , we have reached some of the… er… murkier bits. We look at the rough, even rude bits of the Bible and wonder why Jesus is not allowed to mention the toilet. Then we chat about how the theology of the Bible is not a fixed thing, and the dangers of unchanging and unchallenged theology. Warning: contains bongos. (And one rude bit which is unbon...

Or, canons, colons, unicorns and other stories. Continuing our relentless march through Nick’s book, The Badly Behaved Bible, we look at the formation of the canon, the problems of translation and the perils of taking the Bible too literally. Also, a lot about why God gave us a story instead of a set of doctrinal bullet points and a DVD box set, and how stories invite us in and involve us. And the...

It’s the second in our series looking at Nick’s book, The Badly Behaved Bible. This time we’re looking at how the Bible was created and the importance of exodus and exile - not just in the creation of scripture, but also in our own lives. We all need foundation myths – stories about why we’re here, what has happened to us, and who God is. And it is in exile that we can most profoundly shape these...