The Church Needs Non-Anxious Leaders

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Collin Hansen
Pandemic, cultural change, political polarization, technological disruption, will no wonder I always open this gospel bound podcast about searching for resolute hope in an anxious age. And all that was true even before Russia invaded Ukraine.

Collin Hansen
Mark Sayers doesn’t mince words about these challenges in his new book, a non anxious presence how a changing and complex world will create a remnant of renewed Christian leaders, published by Modi, but he sees them as a prelude to revival. He writes, we feel the gap between the vision of the church we encounter in Scripture and the reality on the ground. This gives rise to a deep desire for God’s Church to be refreshed, empowered, and renewed. Revival is no quick fix. However, it’s not a way to avoid hardship, and effort.

Collin Hansen
Spiritually renewed leaders need stamina, pain, tolerance, and emotional discipline. early success is one of the worst things that can happen to them. Leaders in an ever changing anxious environment must learn to rely on God and not on their own abilities. No one alone is sufficient to the task of Christian leadership in an internet age, when we’re everywhere and nowhere at once. This is our reality, whether we like it or not. Sarah’s writes this in the networked world, even the most committed believer will consume only a fraction of the information in input from their church compared to what they consume via podcasts, YouTube, and Netflix.

Collin Hansen
The digital network is now our primary formational environment, it shapes our opinions, values, and worldview. Today, the average churchgoer will Google a problem before they approach their pastor. The digital network is the primary shaper of their theological, political and cultural worldview. The congregation may be physically present within their church, but their primary influence comes from the digital networks to which they are connected. And quote, Sarah serves as senior leader of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia. And he’s my first repeat guest on gospel boundaries. He was featured in episode three, I look forward to talking with him again, about tribalism, anxious systems, maturity, hardship, and more. Mark. Thanks for coming back on gospel bound.

Mark Sayers
Oh, absolute pleasure.

Collin Hansen
Let’s just start with some basics here, Mark, I don’t expect everybody would be familiar with the concepts that you’re introducing to a lot of us in this book. So just start by explaining what is non anxious presence?

Mark Sayers
Yeah, non anxious presence is a term that came from Edwin Friedman, who is started as a rabbi. But it’s also a family therapist and sort of bone family systems therapy. And, you know, he came up with this idea that actually human systems, so relational networks, that anxiety can move through them, say the way a virus moves through the population. We’re all now pretty ofay, with you know, pandemics and infectiousness, and all that sort of stuff. And he sort of argument was that actually, the same thing happens when humans get fearful it can go through a crowd.

Mark Sayers
You know, I’ve been in the crowd once when, you know, there was like fear going through it. And it was quite amazing to see how people change very quickly enact very non rationally, that can happen if there’s a fire in a movie theater, that can happen when there’s a natural disaster, but also it can just happen at this sort of much more lower level in a church, you know, and, you know, Freeman talks about triangulation, you know, like a new pastor comes into a church and a little bit unsure. And you know, conversations begin when someone says, you know, what do you think of this guy? I know what do you think I did he say that. And it’s almost like a gross like a molt, and can spread really quickly.

Mark Sayers
And Friedman’s sort of answer to this sort of fear and anxiety that moves through through people and human systems is to be a leader with a very kind of different posture that often is argued that leaders need often leaders are described because of their physical capability, they’re very tall or they have a commanding voice and they’re striking or charismatic. You know, Freeman actually argued that, you know, much of our leadership comes from us being non anxious when everyone else is anxious. One example I give in the book is you know, just say you go and you’re hearing something the local town hall and all the say the mayors and the city leaders are giving the talks at the front of the room, and then just say someone screams fire, and all of a sudden the mayors and the leaders of the front of the room are We’re all sort of crying and huddling and shaking and corners.

Mark Sayers
But then someone at the back says, Okay, everyone, this is where, you know, we’re prepared for this. That’s the exit, everyone just quietly head towards that job, we’re going to get through this, that person up the back of the beginning of that meeting may have had no leadership gravitas. But in that moment, because they’re the most calm and clear, they in a sense, then become the leader. So it’s a really helpful way I think, particularly always in any human sort of relational network. But I think at this time, you know, when anxiety is everywhere, and often amplified because of our social networks, now a part of a digital network, I think it’s a really helpful tool.

Collin Hansen
When did you first encounter Friedman’s work? Or when and how did you first encounter it?

Mark Sayers
Yeah. So my mentor, Terry Walling, is part of leadership breakthrough. He just mentioned the book and said, I should read it and read it. And yeah, I found it really, really interesting. Yeah, it’s a, he wrote it before he died. So he wrote it as at the end of his life, he died actually as sort of a compilation of his friends and family pulling together the book.

Collin Hansen
Yes. Interesting. One of the reasons why I was so interested in doing this interview with you is because I began to see a lot about and from or a lot about Friedman, from Christian leaders across the theological spectrum. I have a feeling it has to do a lot with the last couple years, which, oddly enough, you and I would have talked before the pandemic last. It’s amazing to think of what’s transpired in those two years. I think you’ve alluded to this, but why don’t you go a little bit deeper on this? Why do you emphasize anxiety as a systemic issue?

Mark Sayers
I think we’ve thought about anxiety under the guise of mental health, and it is. But often, I think how mental health has been treated in the West, is it seen because we’re individualistic, it’s seen as individualistic ailment. In a sense, what our society says is, um, you know, if you feel like you’re not functioning, if you feel like something’s wrong, you know, often, you know, that will be said, Are you feeling anxious about that? And so it’s like, often, you know, I think there’s a genuine anxiety disorder diagnosis out there. But I feel that actually what’s happening in our society is that we’re using this term anxiety of always saying, oh, that’s because all these people are anxious.

Mark Sayers
We don’t then say, well, hang on, is this something happening in the culture and society which is making us anxious Chang Wen Yi, in her book, looks at iPhones, you know, and the charts she’s got in the book, when iPhones come in, the anxiety of young people just just absolutely skyrockets. There’s clear social and cultural elements to anxiety. You know, that’s what I found. Yeah. So for example, the moment you know, just before we go on air here, we’re talking about the another war in Russia, you have Russia and Ukraine, you read it, it is a perfectly human response to read about the potential of escalatory nuclear strikes and feel anxious, that’s actually your, your body doing the right thing and fight or flight mechanism. But I think we’ve there’s also an ideology attached to anxiety sometimes, that you should be feeling good all the time, you know, without any connection to any greater meaning. So I think that, that it’s been a way that SSID is used to talk about a reaction that’s happening in people that’s genuine and needs to be addressed. Because speaking of something bigger going on in the culture,

Collin Hansen
it’s helpful mark, explain a gray zone. And how you describe that in this book.

Mark Sayers
What I’m arguing in the book is that we’re actually entering into an into not necessarily a new era, like I mean, I love eras. You know, you read about this particular year there are nice on so the Reformation church history or whatever, and you go, okay, cool. I can, I’ve got a container in my head to work out what the feel and and, and values and heroes and villains of that era was. And what I realized is it doesn’t feel like that now, like, it’s really hard. And to understand what exactly what is this era, it’s very confusing, it’s disorientating all the words that people use. So I began to think that actually that eras don’t just begin and end the renascence didn’t end on a Tuesday. And, you know, the next year began on a Monday or you know, like, whatever, you know, like, there’s actually these in between bits that are sort of like portals or, you know, corridors in between eras.

Mark Sayers
And often they overlap. And I had a chance in this book to write about a movie as an example of, of the gray zone, which is the Orson Welles movie. The third man now when I was a kid I grew up watching in Australia often have on Saturdays lots of old World War two movies, black and white ones, and, you know, movies like The Battle of the Bulge and all this and growing up as a kid, it was really clear who the bad guys were who the good guys were, you know, if it was the Brits, or the Americans were the good guys and the bad guys were guys, you know, the German uniforms, the gray. So the third man, the first time I saw it, I was young, and I was I don’t get this like, it’s confusing. It’s after the war. It’s in Austria. And there’s a scene at the very end where the villain Harry Lime played by Orson Welles has been chased in the underground of Vienna, but the actual guys chasing him at the Austrian army.

Mark Sayers
And so they’re wearing German uniforms and the German hats, and you want them to catch the bad guy and as a kid offended so disorientating, because like everything in me said, no, they’re bad. But the movies this weird in between space, the cold war hasn’t begun, World War Two has ended, but not really. And that’s my argument. We’re in this era where elements of the old era still present, we see little bits of the new era beginning. And we’re in this transitory in between space. And I think that’s worth recognizing. Because you have to understand that in gray zones, and gray zones is that is I mean, this is even more relevant.

Mark Sayers
Now. I took that from studies around asymmetric warfare, Dirty Wars, there was an article I think, was written by Mark Galeotti. In foreign policy I read about six years ago, where they talked about so gray zone warfare, where it’s like, it’s not full on warfare, it’s cyber warfare, it’s information warfare, the incursion into Crimea in 2014 was an example of this. Like, it was like, Are we at war? I don’t know, this guy’s without markings on the uniforms, and now around government buildings in Crimea, what, what is this? So that concept I’ve taken from war, and now sort of put it over cocksure.

Collin Hansen
I tell people often mark that we are in the early stages of an information revolution, on the same level as the printing press. And a lot of the times these things are only obvious to our great great, great, great, great, great grandchildren, the historians who are writing about it. History doesn’t tend to work in clear eras, they do tend to overlap, it doesn’t usually work with a decade, the 50s versus the 60s versus the 70s. Just doesn’t change doesn’t come in that in those ways that that we might often want to describe. And so it seems if I’m under, if I might, might suggest this, it seems that more than anything else, it’s the internet that is introduced this gray zone, where there’s enough of the pre internet world still with us.

Collin Hansen
Many people like me and you who didn’t grow up necessarily our whole lives with the Internet. And so, which is different from younger generations. And so you still have that? I don’t think we’ve seen the full effects and the pandemic itself, has contributed to dramatic change in people’s approaches toward the internet, I guess, in this gray zone of the internet. How do you navigate the trade offs of the internet as a unique opportunity to share the gospel? Be able to do things like this interview from Birmingham, Alabama, to Melbourne, Australia, at the same time? It is this anxiety, super spreader. How do you balance those trade offs?

Mark Sayers
Yeah, it’s it’s, it’s part of a bigger dynamic that’s happening in the world, is what I began to realize that a lot of what is happening with the internet is this process of decentralization. And there’s good elements to that. And there’s bad elements to that. Let’s again, you mentioned, you know, the printing press and the Reformation. The Reformation is deeply linked to that information revolution that happened at that time, the printing press enabled the Bible to get into the hands of so many people. And so many people encounter the scriptures and the good news of Jesus in this new way. At the same time, it also was filled with occult tracks and political pamphlets which cause war across Europe.

Mark Sayers
And so it was a time of renewal, but also revolution. I don’t think there’s a technique in the midst of that. I actually think that comes from a closeness to Jesus and a continual viewing this all through a biblical worldview. And, you know, when you’re constantly holding everything, I think, I think if you look at how did people in that time, you know, what cut through and brought the sort of renewal to the church during the Reformation was actually the Bible. And, and, you know, engagement with Scripture. And, you know, I feel at this time, you know, we need that cultural discernment, but also need the biblical framework and the biblical worldview. And I feel like, what’s what’s happening as power drains away from all the authorities in institutions of culture, like it’s almost culture wide, that’s frightening for a lot of people. And it also makes us examine our idols of what we’ve put in our hoping outside of Jesus.

Mark Sayers
So I think my answer to that is not necessarily been methodological, it’s theological, that you know, I see this as an opportunity, this man who disorientation as to push deeper and yes, you’re getting people who are going down the rabbit hole with YouTube videos have deconstructed their faith or gotten into conspiracy theories or whatever, but also know people who have grown in their faith through choosing the right resources. And I think that’s probably very similar to what’s happened. As you said, we can talk like this, like I can access some of the best theologians and teachers in the world in ways I couldn’t before For the incident. And so, you know, I think that that is creates a remnant in the midst of all this.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. And if we could go back and get rid of it, we wouldn’t. I mean that that’s just the fact of how we live forward is we take for granted the benefits, and we sort of fixate on the problems of some of those new technologies. But I would not go back to a time when I couldn’t have a conversation with you, and when I couldn’t learn from you, but all these different ways, and yet I recognize the real dangers for my, for my kids with that. And so it just seems that that’s part of the challenge of navigating anything in our culture, and maybe especially at a time when, when generations are being so disconnected from each other.

Collin Hansen
And one of the things that I see in this gray zone as well, that’s pretty confusing. And you describe it in the book, you talk about how the left, Florida political left wants collectivism and community spirit, and the right wants traditional values of faith, family and national service. So if that’s true, why do we just get a lot more loosely connected individuals as a result of that?

Mark Sayers
Well, I think I think I think one thing that the church has rightly looked at at times, and particularly in apologetics, and people looking at worldviews is the power of ideas and ideas absolutely matter. But also the structure of society also mediates how we then act. You know, you can have someone who you know, or believes in in, you know, an equitable distribution of wealth, and that people, this shouldn’t be economic inequality, but then themselves lives in this particular way, which is the opposite of that. And I think, you know, that principle is what’s happening in society that what I find so fascinating is the move towards atomization happening in the world that is on both the left and the right.

Mark Sayers
You know, there was times on say, the left that early nascent left, where people were getting into utopian communities, and there were socialist, you know, utopian communities that it was, you know, it was an island, you know, who’s trying to build these things instead of early British socialism? You don’t see that as a widespread movement today, that actually really what I think the underlying structure of the society of the world’s, you know, particularly, you know, you look at, you know, probably from the 1980s onwards, and you know, neoliberalism economically, the digital decentralization.

Mark Sayers
So what’s actually happening is the movement of culture, regardless of our ideas, is moving us towards in this decentralized moment, is moving us towards increased atomization. You know, I’ve been I’ve said before that if you took the intern, say, from MSNBC, and Fox News, and you actually looked at the head of they spend their time, like, they might have different things that are close they might wear or different bumper stickers, but actually think if you actually looked at their lifestyles, how they spent their money, their relational sexual lives, it would not be that different. And so you know, that’s what I’m trying to say there’s something bigger going on that just underneath this polarization is that there’s much bigger sort of geopolitical structural issues happening.

Collin Hansen
Well, I couldn’t agree more. And Mark, which is why I’ve had you back on the podcast and why I learned so much from you is because it seems as though the things that we imagine are the cultural changes are on the surface, that are much bigger, the things that we share in common, right or left, United States and Australia are actually much bigger and more important, but it seems like a lot of church leaders don’t talk about those changes that we take for granted the ones that we’re all a part of. And so I think about in this transitional period, where there’s overlapping concepts, you write this, we want the freedom and autonomy of radical individualism, while being dependent on the opinions and emotional climate of the crowd.

Collin Hansen
It’s not consistent. It does not make a lot of sense. But that’s, that’s what it is. That’s how it’s working out. You mentioned optimization. I was gonna jump there next, but I wanted you to connect it to how, okay, we can all acknowledge, yes, we atomized, decentralized deinstitutionalized. And yet what it’s led to is tribalism ation, explain how atomization leads to tribalism.

Mark Sayers
I mean, sure, wrote a book called Tribes. And she has a fantastic illustration at the beginning, which is, you know, the United States and its allies, including my country, went to Iraq, to build this sort of new democracy. And what they didn’t realize is the incredible intricate tribal structure of Iraq. I remember probably Americans didn’t notice it at the beginning. I remember because Australia played Iraqi, I think was the was maybe the 2006 Asian football championships because Australia got beat by Iraq. I remember that but Iraq one, and it was this big heralded as mo like Iraq is this country which has gone through the war and here they win the Asian Asian forum. or champions, something fascinating happened when they handed the trophy across, which was they handed it.

Mark Sayers
And then there was sort of this fight, not a major fight, but they’re all arguing with each other. Because you know, there were Turkoman there, there was Shia Sunni. And there was all these different tribal and ethnic groups. And so, you know, like Amy Schumer says, you know, America went to the war and realize that there, they will be thwarted in building a democracy, because of the tribal nature of Iraq, but then came back to their own country and realize that America is just as tribal. And I think this has been something that the West has missed that there’s something innate in humans that looks for meaning and looks for group identity. And there is a deeply tribal element within culture. I think, you know, the conversations around race, and Cs part of that, in that, but it’s bigger than race, its class, its region, its ethnicity, its thought patterns. Humans are deeply tribal.

Mark Sayers
And I think that, you know, like, Augustine said, our hearts are restless until they find harmony, God, there is something wired in us to find a bigger meaning. And I think that tribalism is something that West doesn’t want to talk about, because so much of the project of modernity was undoing traumatization. But again, you know, we talked about we’re here as Russia has invaded Ukraine. And part of the reason I think so many handlers were like, he’s not going to do it is because we didn’t understand what the the lure of that tribal dynamic of, you know, blood and soil, you know, we thought we’d gotten past that.

Mark Sayers
But you’re back here, you know, and you’re seeing now sort of liberal democratic Europe all of a sudden having to go hang on away a tribe, in contrast to them. And so, you know, I think that’s a key thing that we’ve missed that I think that you must get to this point where atomization eventually turns to tribalism ation. Now, there’s part of this gray zone moment when, you know, that previous era was marked by atomization, that people who are atomized, you know, turn into, I think, increasingly tribal lights, they go back to old patterns from the past, you’re seeing that, you know, with with Putin trying to resurrect rousse, you know, this great Russian homeland, but then you’re seeing people create on the internet, new kinds of things like furries now, you know, like, like these, these subcultures that unthinkable. Humans are built on, you know, humans are built for a relationship. And and that can return tribal very quickly.

Collin Hansen
And Mark In, in my last few questions, a lot of this is going to be connected, especially to Friedman. And why Friedman’s work has been so helpful for me personally, as a Christian in my personal life, in my work as well. And I think it’s very applicable to church leaders. That’s what they’ve been through. And I think, no doubt, that’s a lot of your motivation, in this book, describe the shift in leadership from building consensus, to desperately avoiding conflict.

Mark Sayers
Well, I think if you think about the sort of post war world that grew up, it was it was a culture where America was the great superpower in the world, there was ideologically a moment of unity, if you think about what media looks like, and a lot of it, you know, the second half of the 20th century was mass media, radio, Hollywood TV, only a small group of network channels, some big newspapers, you know. And so in a sense, you could you could, you know, the powers that be could could basically put forward a message and then try and gain consensus and very much written into that was the idea of, you know, the public that out there there is this public, and they all think one thing, like a sort of monolithic creature, and we brought that into the church. So the idea was, there was also a greater language of compromise, and negotiations, that political processes were still there.

Mark Sayers
And those political processes were also built on courtesies. And there were sort of structures to how you spoke to people and what you spoke about, and so on. And a lot of that was in reaction to how bad the politics went early. I mean, there’s stories Elian, Julian, stories in US politics of you know, people pulling out guns and having jaws of dawn and all this sort of stuff. So they created this this architecture. How do you how do you talk? How do you have disagreement, but then also this time of very much sort of mass opinion. So it brought that into the church. And the idea was, you know, you can have a vision, you sort of communicate it to the mass, and everyone agrees with that. And then you move towards your goal.

Mark Sayers
We’re now in a retrial. So in essence, that was that was how you do consensus in a single tribe. But now, the decentralization that’s a unified authority, which is respected and communicates downwards. Now in a decentralized moment of technology, distributing power. There’s all this power in the church, and all of a sudden, the pastor becomes like a referee, trying to like hold together all these disparate groups who are being formed, not by the social relational network of that church, but actually all these disparate groups that they’re part of which could be political, which could be you know, ethnic, which could be social. And that means that pastors find themselves in In the midst of a battle, so they’re almost mediating a battle. But then also what happens is the anxiousness turns on them. And they find themselves almost, you know, they’re sort of sacrificial lambs, if you like for this anxious war.

Collin Hansen
I don’t know if Mark, I somehow learned all these things from you, and it just passed in my system or a few. And I’ve just been teaching the exact same things unknowingly, for the last couple years. Because these are all the messages that I’ve been trying to conveyed it to pastors who, the way I describe it is that if it’s happening to you, and you alone, this leadership transition, then maybe you should look in the mirror, if it’s only happening to everybody in your country, or in your theological tradition, maybe you guys should have a talk about about that. If it’s happening to everybody. It’s a revolution. And I think that’s exactly what we’re seeing right here for the reasons that you’re discussing. Now, Mark, not that I would have any experience with this. But should institutions be less worried about negative feedback?

Mark Sayers
I think what happened as well in in, it got so good in that unified moments, that when you’ve got command of control of the means of communication, you can message your message very well. And at that height of mass media, one of the concerns that they had was, hang on, we’re just talking at people what if we’re actually not listening to that. So they created things like focus groups, polling, all this sort of stuff. Actually, the origins are polling, fascinating, because a lot of it actually went back to sort of intelligence and trying to work out what public’s thought to sort of stop revolutions. And I think like George Gallup, may have been an intelligence officer, you know, and it likes all of these guys, early on.

Collin Hansen
Joseph, Joseph gurbles, Joseph Goebbels was a great was a huge pollster. That was really I mean, even in even in a totalitarian regime, he was constantly polling the German people about their attitudes. But what was happening, read about that in a book called German war. So gurbles was absolutely like cutting edge when it came to the social sciences of propaganda, obviously, extremely negative example. But you can see that as well, before Gallup even Yeah,

Mark Sayers
wow, interesting. So like, there’s a sense where we then became finely attuned to any negative feedback, you know, and you think of house, if you’re really annoyed it, your brand of toothpaste, like you’d have to send in a letter, you know, like, it was very rare that anyone would bother to do that you had the people who wrote into the local newspaper to complain about things, and often that were the same people, you know, he goes in is so and so from that place, you just write another letter. But then what happens with social media, it gives us this instant feedback loop and a very powerful feed, like the feedback loop that’s not just like, vertical, which can speak truth back to power, but also can operate horizontally as well and create very quickly a sort of movement really quickly, at high impact, the power of the hashtag.

Mark Sayers
And so we’ve in you know, a lot of people have come out of seminary, just even coming out of leadership in the business world, going, oh, we need to hear what people are saying, We’ve got to respond to that. But very quickly, it’s almost like a guerrilla force has got more powerful weapons. And, you know, like, you look at, you know, I mean, it’s a crazy analogy, but you know, you look at when, you know, in Afghanistan, during the Soviet war, they got Stinger missiles, you know, it was like this game changer, because all of a sudden, it’s a couple of guys and horses could shoot down a Russian, you know, helicopter. And it’s almost like the internet’s given this sort of, like, very powerful weapon. And so there’s a power shift.

Mark Sayers
I don’t think people realize this, there’s a power ship, from from the sort of authority to the public, does authority still in power? Absolutely, of course, there’s still institutional power, still a thing. But increasingly, the public is empowered. And this time, this is where it’s really confusing, because there’s incredible stories where genuine injustices in an institution have been confronted by this. And it’s, and it’s a good and holy thing, and it’s wonderful. So you can have one church where you’ve had a toxic leader, you know, you could have had financial mismanagement, or just, you know, power abuse, and the people said not, and it’s been called out, and it’s been a healing thing, literally, the next church down the road, you can have a leader who’s actually trying to do the right thing who’s being undermined by different groups, this is where it’s confusing. It’s needs a lot of nuance.

Mark Sayers
So negative, you’re going to get like, straight up, you’re going to get negative feedback, like, like it’s going to happen. In this world, someone will find something wrong with something you’re saying, even if it’s the most respectful comment, you know. And so I think that, you know, it’s interesting, increasingly, you’re seeing like the Biden campaign said, this, you’re hearing this and other places, they’re saying our new way of winning office is to not listen to Twitter. You’re hearing that across the political spectrum, you’re hearing that in our election, so I think that we need to not mistake that feedback, but just realize that if you’re going to go to a particular direction, you’re going to get pushed back. So it’s not winning everyone over, it’s going to where God wants you to go.

Collin Hansen
Yeah, which which gets back to the non anxious presence. One thing to add on social media is that, for example, especially on Twitter, but this is true of other platforms as well, you can’t punch down you can only punch up. And so as an institution or as a, as a, as a leader, you can only lose influence there. It shows you that dynamic, it doesn’t work, somebody can say whatever they want about you, as long as they are posturing themselves as the outsider, as long as they’re postured as the outsider, they’re not bound by any of those rules of conduct.

Collin Hansen
But then it’s not a fair fight, because the institution or the mainstream leader has to fight by different rules. And they can’t win. The game is entirely rigged against them. And like you said, there’s a really good dynamic to some of this, because it’s taken down a lot of people who deserve to be taken down, who would not have been taken down in previous generations. But you’re exactly right. The nuance is that it doesn’t discriminate between the good leaders and the bad leaders. It’s everybody one way or another. So really, the only thing you can do is orient yourself toward Christ and what he’s called you to do and live with integrity and holiness.

Collin Hansen
You don’t really have any other options now. I’ve got got a quote here, I want to read a little bit longer. And it’s it’s it’s clear of a freedom Friedman’s influence on you in this quote, but you write this, with the system rearranging itself to cater to the most emotionally unhealthy. Those who wish to reflect gain some distance to find perspective or practice emotional health will pose a threat. For example, a leader who decides to confront the issue of toxic political polarization within those they lead, will often find others cautioning against such a remedy. Instead of recommending that leaders avoid upsetting either side and quote.

Collin Hansen
Now, Mark, we could do a whole episode just on this concept. You continue with this quote, In this scenario, appeals to unity and inclusivity are masquerades to resist growth, and any attempts at emotional renewal. Eventually, the herd instinct rooted in emotional toxicity will lead to fragmentation and falling out as dysfunctional members of the system turn on each other, and quote, now mark, the application for church leaders should be obvious. But tell us more.

Mark Sayers
Yeah, part of a deep personal thing. And I think particularly this is, and I’m not exactly sure in the US if this is exactly the same as here, but particularly for a lot of millennial leaders. I know growing up at our version of elementary school, there’s so much teaching now. But how do we all get along? How do we agree? And you know, I see a lot of millennial leaders, where it’s they find it really difficult to go against their peers, they’re almost more willing to let down an authority leader or someone from a different, you know, age cohort, but it is really hard to go against your peers in the sense that we can all agree and get along.

Mark Sayers
And again, I my sort of argument is, that’s actually very ideologically tied to that maths idea of culture, where there’s one set of rules, and that there’s an authority leader who’s going to, you know, make sure that is is ratified. So the teacher will be the one who likes it, let’s all get along. But the teachers actually they’re going to have you agree with that person, and so on. And so conflict, I think we’ve seen something that’s absolutely wrong, like the good places where everyone’s smiling, everyone’s happy, but I just don’t think that accords with human reality that looks good and stock photography, in some advertisement, but it doesn’t actually happen in life. And I think any anything in history, any endeavor, any political endeavor, any creative endeavor, there are people are going to disagree.

Mark Sayers
And I think we have not equipped people to do that. You know, and I know churches that have gone to mediation processes with disputes that have literally lasted a decade, like it’s insane. And then the message of Jesus is, you know, that plays second fiddle to work and you know, this this all out. And so, you know, I think that partially with with poorly prepared a lot of pastors, the reality of what it actually is to, to lead at this point in time, and because of this anxious environment, because we want to include everyone, which is incredibly noble, but there’s something different, but I think I think we’ve got to have, I feel like there’s these these words we throw like inclusivity or whatever, that are really important, but they need extra definition, and we can just throw them out and you think what I think what you’re saying is this and you think what I’m saying is this so for example, you know, you look Europe all of a sudden, again to use the live Russia example is all that now having to define its values having to define What it’s actually sees as its exclusive values, having to define what its borders are around what it believes how, what is it going to do to protect those values. And you’re seeing this in the space of a few days, it’s actually quite amazing, you know, the speeches given by Chancellor Olaf Schultz and Emmanuel Macron, it says, a completely different people, because all of a sudden is a challenge, and there’s a conflict.

Mark Sayers
So inclusivity is very different of, you know, we need we’ve not included people who are from these ethnic group backgrounds, or racial backgrounds, or economic backgrounds, or with marginalized that voice, that’s very different to include that person over there who actually may have nefarious or deeply dysfunctional tendencies. But I think we’ve had this far too undefined sense of these, these values, and they need greater definition. Again, on one sense, a desire to be inclusive, willing, you know, create a church, which looks more like you know, what we see, you know, in the city of Jerusalem, in the people of God of diversity. But then there’s this other extreme, where I don’t think it includes people who are acting through narcissism and toxicity to actually bring system sense. And those people exist, like, I think part of the myth of the West, which were in shock, now, Vladimir Putin is genuine evil exists, people who don’t care and are willing to blow up the system exist.

Mark Sayers
So how do we protect ourselves from them? And so in a sense, just just to add one interesting thing, so NPR put up a tweet, I think day one of the conflict, and it was basically like, very much like, it’s like, you know, if you’re watching, we’re all very tired. And our mental health’s been tested the last couple years, I’m paraphrasing poorly here, you know, and if you’re seeing lots of this Ukraine conflict imagery, prioritize your mental health step away from Twitter, you know, to recover. And it was, you know, that’s very much the tone of what you’ve just mentioned, that it was utterly destroyed. There were literally like war correspondents and Ukrainians running back like, Are you kidding me? You know, we’re in a bomb shelter. And I’m afraid my kids are going to die, a new privilege, you know, rich people in the West think that you need to protect your mental health. So I actually wonder whether that’s going to start to be deconstructed in our culture, because I think the tenability have in the culture that we’re going it’s hard to keep this this place of that.

Collin Hansen
Well, I think this I think this is connected, you can see Friedman’s influence again, on this, this quote from you. In the book, you write leaders who wish to be a non anxious presence must keep their nerve and push through the backlash, sabotage betrayal, from friends and colleagues criticism and emotional pain, and keep growing toward the higher vision in a non anxious way. It’s a bit of a softball here, Mark, because your book is so it’s so set up to be able to help help Christian leaders to experience spiritual renewal.

Collin Hansen
So my question is, how do you hold up because that sounds rough. I don’t think many millennial pastors sign up or or younger pastors, people called into ministry or any kind of leadership are thinking that’s what their life is going to be like. But it’s interesting what you said about younger generations and how they’re ill equipped for this challenge. It’s pretty interesting. Somebody that would agree with you is the famous American football coach, Nick Saban, who talked about this exact thing. He said, You can’t get people to step up as leaders, because they’re unwilling for anybody to not like them. Well, that’s, that’s a, that’s part of the very definition of leadership is being willing to do things that are going to make some people especially anxious people trying to sabotage the system for themselves.

Collin Hansen
So how do you how do you hold up? How are you able to withstand that?

Mark Sayers
I was at something recently, and there was a leader, I won’t name them who I really, my wife, and I really admire, and I think it’s an incredible leader, has shown a non anxious presence. Such a godly leader. And there was a moment that was sort of like it was like a talking to this person and their wife. And, and there’s a bit where, you know, they asked this person’s wife, you know, what the journey has been like? And you could just see that little moment they held it together, but you could just see that crack in her voice and in just a change in his persona, which is normally anxious. We have got men there is this, they’re taken hits, you know, and you know, I think about my life and I feel the same.

Mark Sayers
Yeah, all of that. I just said in many ways, it’s true of my life. And I think any leader who has been in ministry for some time they experienced that. And I think partially in a consumer sort of society in a hedonistic society. The thing we’re told is if you do this, you’re going to have this payoff, you know, you this person moved jobs to have his more meaning and fulfillment job, you know, fulfill the job, but they don’t tell you is what it costs. Then I realized is that Jesus told me what it would cost. You know, Jesus said, take up the cross and follow Me.

Mark Sayers
And, you know, I read I love I think one of the most reseting in refreshing things to do is read biographies of great Christian leaders and all of the all of them, I have yet to read the great Christian leader who’s like, you know, here is Fred Smith. And he did great things for God and His life was pretty boring. And he just had a great house and everything was wonderful and went to nice parties. Everyone thought it was brilliant. Everything was everything, um, yet to read the one where it’s not unbelievably tough for these people. But that’s the part that Jesus Jesus let you know, Jesus, you know, we’re wearing, you know, leading up to lamps leading up to Easter period now. And that’s the part that Jesus walked towards the cross, we don’t have to do his work on the cross has been done for us, but we call to walk in His footsteps and take up our cross. And you know, that that’s what keeps me going.

Mark Sayers
At the end of the day, like, I’m not doing this to feel self fulfillment, do I feel meaning at times? Absolutely. I feel incredible, meaning I remember being at a party, a bunch of people who weren’t believers and, and they all went around saying how the jobs didn’t give them meaning my job is so hard at times, I’ve come so close to quitting at times. But there’s nothing I have more meaning than being the will of God. And I think we need to explain that that message to people. And particularly again, going back for millennials, one of the highest things you’re gonna have to sacrifice is the approval of your peers, and even the friendship of your peers,

Collin Hansen
including including in the church, it’s pretty tacky mark for the interview for the host, to promote his own book, interview. But I actually did a book called 12, faithful men, I edited it. And the entire purpose of that book was because of what she said, right there, which was that you have younger leaders thinking something’s gone wrong, people don’t like me. Because they’ve been trained to thinking, you’re called into ministry, because people like you when you talk about Jesus. And so they’re completely thrown off in ministry when it doesn’t materialize. And many of them quit, because they think something must have gone wrong, I must not have discerned the call correctly. So my message has been to go back to the Bible.

Collin Hansen
Look at every leader in the Bible. Of course, Jesus as the quintessential example, there. And I said, you probably had some hero in history, who helped to lead you, you know, reading biographies that helped lead you into ministry, what’s common with all of them, they were unpopular. Every single person, now they weren’t necessarily unpopular with everybody, then they probably wouldn’t be a leader. But they were deeply unpopular, they suffered tremendously. Every single one of them, that’s the norm. That’s not an exception. And your book mark identifies good feelings as the primary metric of success. In an anxious society.

Collin Hansen
I think that’s similar to what I’m talking about here with calling. But you write this the choice to prioritize comfort, ease and good feelings above growth, is the choice to embrace and accept personal spiritual and emotional immaturity. Give us a bit of a hopeful vision, what’s the prognosis? Or is it an example of somebody that you see who does this really well, that presses through the hardship toward maturity for, for the leader him or herself, and then more broadly, to the people that they’ve been called to care for?

Mark Sayers
I think what I noticed, being around lots of leaders in my life, and you get to meet people who you’ve previously read about, and so on. And I think there’s a certain kind of leader which is able through the power of their personality to exhibit, you know, energy and excitement, and you begin to realize that it’s sort of a natural ability. And, you know, through an environment through how you act through how you set that environment, you can create this hyper moment. The world does that as well. Sort of, you know, our renascence cathedrals are, you know, concerts and big sporting events where they’re engaging our feelings, but then there’s other people I’ve met, and I’ve just been so struck that sometimes I’ve met big leaders in cities and and they have that, but in a sense, it leaves you lacking because the world provides that, like high energy, great personality, and there’s been a couple times you know, actually I’ve gotten in the car with the person is going to drive me to the airport or whatever.

Mark Sayers
And, you know, having this conversation with a very ordinary person who’s not, doesn’t have this incredible, powerful person, but sometimes you encountered just like absolute gold in this very faithful person who walks with Jesus. I remember being at one talk where, you know, just being with this older guy, after service, it was the last in the room and end up talking to him and he had quite serious disability. And he really struggled to talk to sit for a long time to talk to this guy. When I came away from those kinds of people. It’s not a feelings thing. It’s a connection with someone who Christ is transformed their life and their Christ like. And I realized that you don’t get to Christ likeness through keeping your feelings at this high momentum thing. That’s not the kingdom of God. That’s not the abundant life Jesus spoke about.

Mark Sayers
But I think when you when you encounter people have spiritual authority, so I have met leaders at times and again, I really want to be careful, I don’t know that person or that person and you just get there is something different. You can’t put your finger on it from an earthly perspective. Yeah, there’s something different where you’re, you have been so marked by Christ, you’re living the gospel, you’re evidence of the kingdom to me. And you get there through making your life following Christ footsteps the closest you don’t get there through managing your good feelings and the good feelings of those around you who lead and so that sort of myth that Western radical individualist, you know, epicurean, hedonistic, whatever you want to call it therapeutic? Having good feelings all the time is the best human life.

Mark Sayers
No, it’s not. It’s actually living as Christ. Yeah. So when we, when we think it’s feelings, we then go into leadership going, well, we’ve just got to keep everyone having good feelings, you know. But if you go into a going, I want to be like, I’m being remade in Christ likeness. That’s the purpose of my life. I want to show people that different way of Jesus and live that you’re going to then create that, in that leadership environment that you create for people to follow up. You want them to follow Jesus, you don’t want them to follow your feelings.

Collin Hansen
Yeah. Oh, man. That’s good word. And one more question for Mark Sayers about a non anxious presidents how a changing and complex world will create a remnant of renewed Christian leaders published by moody, one of the things you talk about in here, Mark, of course, as we’ve been hearing here is this transition period, and the acceleration of these changes. And the key is a key to leadership of being able to adapt in an ever changing environment. And you do that though, Mark, when you’re also trying to stay not just trying, but you’re required to stay historically, and theologically rooted as a Christian.

Mark Sayers
So I actually believe that theological and historical rootedness gives you this brilliant foundation to be adaptive, and creative. And, you know, I began to realize, like, when the pandemic hit, and we couldn’t do all the stuff that we usually did. I still could be a Christian. So there was a moment and I talked about this in the book. I had a meeting in 2019, in about October, with a ministry, we’ve got a number of Persian people are in the area where we live, and a lot of them who come from a Muslim background in Iran have become believers. And we have some of that church. And so we had a meeting with a ministry that basically provides resources for the Persian church in Iran and the Persian diaspora around the world. And, you know, I was asked him, you know, how do you do this?

Mark Sayers
And they said, well, basically, we record, like worship in London, and they have a sermon in Farsi. And that’s distributed by the internet. And that goes, you know, sort of sent into Iran in different places. It goes on USPS or is downloaded from the internet place like Afghanistan, but also like now with a Persian diaspora in places like Malaysia and Scandinavia. And I really think about you so you can’t, you know, because the churches around they can’t gather, often because of the government. They have to have this sort of online church. I don’t think at the time, okay. That’s interesting. I’ll see. That’s them. Yeah. When we get to the point where in 2020, we realized like, and we weren’t in one of the world’s longest lockdowns here in Melbourne, we could not meet we barely met as a church in two years.

Mark Sayers
You know, I never thought that would happen. I never had in my plan of, okay, we were hitting at this point of growth, real growth, literally like the week but you know, we’ve been sort of growing and, you know, look to Serena as successful from, you know, a sort of earthly perspective of people coming and energy and excitement. And then once those things which I thought were just rusted on to what was the new church to meet, to be able to see my people to have in person meetings that we had or even just meet with people to even travel like I traveled to speak about, you know, God, and couldn’t do that? I did not. I’ve left Melbourne once in two years, I couldn’t go more than three miles for a lot of the last two years because of our restrictions. I just never thought that would happen.

Mark Sayers
And I remember just sitting in a park down the end of the street here in the midst of all this going go, how do I do this, and my mind went back to the Iranians. And now people listening might not realize that there’s effectively a Persian revival at this point in time more Persians have come to faith in the last sort of 10 years than in centuries. And I just felt God saying, Mark, you can be you know, like, the mission is still the same. preach the gospel, you know, live this kingdom life builds my church. So we were then able to be creative and adaptive. And I’m so proud of my team. I see my team, which is primarily millennials, the last two years has made them, I see really wonderful growing leaders who adapted the way I saw them adapt to the different strict restrictions that came into Melbourne.

Mark Sayers
I mean, there’s just one day when we did our rebuilders podcast, and ladies, the other she’s the co host. And she was literally like, 50 meters from me in a silver for Daniel’s in the middle, okay, people saw the vision, it was almost comical, because we couldn’t be in these, like, we had to be in separate rooms, but Daniel had, like, read up all of the cables, and so proud of them. And so I think that actually, when you’ve got that it’s like a kite, a kite can fly on the currents of the wind in all different directions that can dive into circles, because it’s holding to that string. So I actually think that that foundation enables you then, you know, Sunday’s get taken away, you can still do, you can still preach the gospel, you know, like, we’ve got all these things. So I think limitations are actually the father of creativity. But the foundation in Christ, and the church is actually what gives you your grounding.

Collin Hansen
There’s a great quote, I wanted to make sure to share I’ve shared many of them already. People got a good a good chunk of the book. I’ve loved it so much. But you’re right this as the cultural pressure increases against the church in our gray zone moment, and we find ourselves in a wilderness. Those who turn to God who choose not to run from the wilderness who seek His presence in the wilderness will be transformed with spiritual authority. It’s good hopeful note to end on my guest here has been Mark Zehrs, author of a non anxious presence how a changing and complex world will create a remnant of renewed Christian leaders from moody mark, it’s been great to talk to you again.

Mark Sayers
Thanks so much.