Bleeding Daylight

Dr David Pendergrass is a pastor, biblical scholar and pastoral counsellor with a PhD in historical theology, and in this episode he talks with Rodney Olsen with striking honesty about the doubt that has shaped nearly 30 years of ministry. David shares the story of his dramatic call to ministry as a teenager, then walks through the two seasons in his life when he walked away from faith intellectually, driven by a deep fear of being...

Brett Knight has spent his career standing in the space between justice and grace. A former criminal defence attorney who later became an ordained pastor and author, Brett has watched the drug epidemic up close from both sides of the courtroom. In this conversation with Rodney Olsen, he traces his own faith journey from head knowledge to a genuine relationship with Christ, and shares the pivotal moment as a prosecutor when he asked...

Michelle Konson built what looked like a picture-perfect life: a career as a corporate attorney in South Africa, a loving marriage, and four children. But underneath the surface, she was quietly unravelling, using survival strategies she'd developed as a child to try to control a world that no longer responded to control. In this honest conversation, Michelle traces her path from unrecognised childhood patterns to a genuine reckoni...

Garvin Antoine grew up in Trinidad in a home marked by poverty, an alcoholic father and very little guidance about what life ahead would demand of him. It wasn't until he was much older that he learned his father had been thrust onto the streets at just ten years of age, a discovery that dissolved years of bitterness in a single conversation. Around the same time, Garvin discovered he had twin brothers he'd never known existed, a r...

Jodi Cowles has lived more than half her adult life outside her homeland, working across seven countries and three continents as an author, publisher and entrepreneur. In this episode of Bleeding Daylight, she talks candidly about growing up with what she calls a "flannel graph" version of Jesus, a one-dimensional God who couldn't hold up against grief, doubt and real life questions. Jodi shares how the death of her young brother, ...

Moriah Hagel is an author, speaker and co-founder of the Seasons Young Adults Conference. Her journey into writing began not with a plan of her own but with a Bible study on a college campus where she felt anything but settled. In this episode, she traces the path from that first unplanned teaching moment through to her three books, First and Forever: Singleness in Ephesians, Alignment: God's Will or Mine, and her latest release, T...

Matthew Wingo left a high-flying corporate career to pour his life into helping men find freedom from the patterns that once controlled him. In this episode, he takes us through the shattering of two marriages, the "hidden orchard" of secrets he tended in the dark, and the moment a 12-step recovery programme helped him finally connect the dots of his own story. With honesty and humour, Matthew talks about shame, obedience, and the ...

David Small's life reads like a movie script. He grew up dreaming of coaching ice hockey, worked as director of hockey operations for Team Canada West, and scouted for the Los Angeles Kings, before spending over a decade with the Free Burma Rangers in one of the world's most forgotten wars. He's walked through minefields, been bombed and mortared, and written a bestselling book, Nameless Faceless People: Ten Years with the Free Bur...

In 2008, host Rodney Olsen travelled to Haiti with a group of Australian radio presenters, including Az Hamilton, on a trip organised through Compassion Australia to witness their work releasing children from poverty. What began as an eye-opening visit to local projects quickly turned into a fight for survival as food riots erupted across Port-au-Prince, trapping the group between barricades, armed mobs and gunfire-like explosions ...

Sheila Krygsheld has spent years helping everyday Christians move from simply believing to truly understanding why they believe. A former college religion professor, wife, mum and grandmother of six, Sheila is the author of What Makes You Say That? How to Study What You Believe So You Can Share It with Others. Her journey into apologetics began not in a classroom, but in crisis, when her daughter's traumatic brain injury forced her...

Jim Burgoon is a speaker, author, certified leadership coach, military veteran, former pastor and host of the Unshakeable Life podcast. Behind those titles is a man who has lived through childhood trauma, complex PTSD, chronic illness and devastating loss, including the deaths of his mother and sister within six months of each other and his wife's suicide attempt soon after. In this conversation, Jim shares how he moved from believ...

Robert Ruesch has been putting words to paper since the mid-1960s, but nothing prepared him for the story he'd one day write with his daughter. Growing up at the world's largest YMCA resort in the Colorado Rockies, surrounded by college professors, world travellers and breathtaking mountain views, Robert's love of storytelling took root early, sparked by a school bully and a creative writing class years later. He went on to become ...

We live in the most connected era in human history, yet loneliness has become a defining crisis of our time. In this episode, Rodney sits down with Keith Spurgin, international speaker, church planter, and author of Unknown: Finding Connection in a Disconnected World, to get to the heart of why genuine community is so hard to find and even harder to build. Keith traces his own story from a childhood encounter with Jesus on a farm, ...

Gary Janzen grew up in a construction family with an expected future mapped out for him, but God had very different plans. From managing a sporting goods store to pastoring youth, taking teenagers to Mexico for eleven summers, and eventually ministering in Rwandan orphanages still raw from the wounds of genocide, Gary's journey is marked by a willingness to say yes to God at every turn. He shares how a young Rwandan man named Jacks...

Dr Mike Ayers grew up without a present or affirming father, but instead of repeating that cycle, he dedicated decades of his life to understanding what intentional fatherhood actually looks like. Drawing on his background as a researcher, a pastor of 25 years, and a dad of three, Mike shares the framework behind his upcoming book Father Friend,  a research-backed guide built around seven core competencies to help dads show up...

Bill Nienhuis, President of Childcare Worldwide, joins Rodney Olsen for a conversation about what it really means to make disciples, not just decisions. Drawing on his own formation as a young believer shaped by Sunday school teachers, choir directors, and a Bible-reading grandmother, Bill reflects on how God used decades of seemingly unrelated experience, including 25 years in the Bible software industry, to prepare him for his tr...

Wesley Farnsworth grew up in a pastor's home with a deep faith, a desire to fit in, and a set of expectations he placed entirely on himself. A chance online search as a teenager opened a door to addiction that he would quietly battle for the next 20 years, all while building an impressive career as a US Air Force photographer, capturing everything from war zones to presidential inaugurations. In this honest and moving conversation,...

In this episode of Bleeding Daylight, Rodney Olsen sits down with Doug Moore, a man whose 30 years across three wildly different worlds, wilderness trail guiding, youth ministry, and nursing as a registered sexual assault nurse examiner, have uniquely equipped him to speak into one of the most urgent crises facing families today. Doug is the author of The Vanguard Project: Equipping Fathers to Fight for Their Sons, a practical fiel...

After more than two decades as a pastor, Timothy Stobbe stepped away from Waypoint Church without a clear plan for what would come next, just a deep sense that the time had arrived for something new. In this warm and searching conversation, Timothy shares the journey that brought him to that moment, from a childhood faith sparked in a truck on a rainy Wednesday evening, to a campfire calling at sixteen, to the slow-burn discernment...