Introduced by actress and Wayside ambassador Claudia Karvan

Graham Long's decision to retire presented a real challenge for Sydney's Wayside Chapel. How best to replace a visionary pastor who had served the city's homeless and vulnerable for 14 years?

When Graham took over as pastor in 2004, the iconic Sydney institution had gone to wrack and ruin. Under his leadership, it grew from a crumbling drop-in centre for the homeless to a vibrant community offering a range of services for those in need.

Graham always remembered a young social worker-turned-pastor he had met in Western Sydney. Jon Owen had thrown in a comfortable middle-class existence in Melbourne to move his family to Sydney's Mt Druitt and run a mini version of the Wayside from his lounge room.

Jon joined Wayside Chapel as assistant Pastor in 2016, and after a robust international search, he successfully won the role as CEO and Pastor in 2018.

Now installed as the new pastor, Jon is proving a popular choice, bringing generational change and continuing the same unconditional love that the Wayside is famous for.

From a homeless alcoholic living in the wild to academic success and a book deal, Out of the Woods tells the inspiring comeback story of forest-dweller Gregory Smith.

When he left school at 14, dogged by the crushing assessment that he was "functioning at the lower level of the dull range", Gregory Smith had already endured a violent upbringing and months in an orphanage after the break-up of his family.

At 35, struggling with a lifetime of trauma, he opted to escape into the wild with no desire to return to the society that had failed him so dismally.

Exhausted by years of living off the land and sleeping rough, Gregory emerged from the forest ready to change his life, and gained an undergraduate degree and then a PhD at Southern Cross University.

His story offers hope for the most damaged amongst us. "Gregory represents the capacity for transformation against all odds and a real triumph over adversity," says one of his students, Kerry Pritchard. "How to take the crap in life and grow beautiful things out of it."