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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Mark Sayers
Read between
May 10 - May 27, 2022
When reframed, the phase that feels like destruction, mayhem, and death is the moment just before rebirth.
We are moving into our in-between moment, in which the usual rules do not apply. The markers and measurements that we use to find a sense of place and direction do not operate in this phase. This creates anxiety.
Gray zones are filled with pressure and chaos, yet they are where God does something exceptional inside His people, calling leaders to Himself in a new and more profound way.
Gray zones exist in the overlap between the passing era and the era to come.
The gray zone will be the context in which you will live and lead. We must understand it and learn to flourish within it.
Krakatoa reminds us that what may look like decline, loss, or even obliteration can be revival’s launching pad. For such renewal to occur, all it takes is a single seed.
God has seeded the world with renewal. God uses leaders to seed His plans in the world.
Life was returned to Krakatoa in the form of seeds carried to Krakatoa via ocean currents, gusts of wind, and birds. In the same way, God distributes the seeds of renewal via leaders who carry the seed of renewal.
just as the modern world brings technological breakthroughs, advancements in science, and greater individual freedoms, it also creates anxiety.
Moments of structural change create a sense of cultural anxiety, which every leader must understand.
Wealth, stability, and comfort had appeared to blunt the mission of the church. Comfortable times create comfortable Christians.
Friedman’s central argument was that modern American society was awash in worry. He warned that “the anxiety is so deep within the emotional processes of our nation that it is almost as though neurosis has become nationalized.”
For Evan Hopkins, his moment from anxiety to activation occurred at a small Christian meeting in Mayfair, London. Hopkins was struck, along with others in the room, by the truth found in 2 Corinthians 9:8 that “God is able to bless you abundantly, so that in all things at all times, having all that you need, you will abound in every good work.”
A powerful testimony
When viewed through kingdom lenses, comfortable, prosperous, and stable times do not always equate to good soil. Comfort can insulate us from renewal.
Instead of our foundation being in Christ and His kingdom’s way of influence, we rest on the cultural foundation set by the modern world of what it is to lead. We measure leadership with earthly definitions of success and power. A secular autopilot version of Christian leadership takes hold, where we lead like practical atheists, with God as an afterthought.
A human exposed to the chaos and danger of nature is reminded that they are not a god. Our vulnerability and mortality is exposed.
When we are anxious, we seek out strongholds. When we cannot find a stronghold, we build one. We seek to centralize control and power in a stronghold.
The critical point to grasp is that the first years of the American century were the height of the centralized institutions.
Despite the calls for greater collectivism and community spirit on the left, and the right’s desire to return to the traditional values of family, faith, and national service, the fruit of their twin efforts produced the same result—decentralization, a shift from central institutions to a network of loosely connected individuals.
Decentralization occurs when power and influence are dispersed throughout a network. Decentralization is ultimately about control.
Eras can come to an end when a centralized power begins to lose its dominance and its ability to project power.
Leadership was once seen as the art of building consensus. However, now it can feel like the act of desperately avoiding conflict—a change that is creating anxiety in many leaders.
The goal of cancel culture is not to throw someone into jail but rather to exclude them from the network. Cancel culture is less a top-down affair as it is a horizontal tactic of networked informational war.
a decentralized world, organizations, institutions, and churches can find themselves entangled in cultural battles as groups within their ranks create new feedback loops of discontent.
In the networked world, even the most committed believer will consume only a fraction of the information and input from their church compared to what they consume via podcasts, YouTube, and Netflix. The digital network is now our primary formational environment. It shapes our opinions, values, and worldview.
In an anxious, crisis-driven environment, the leadership leverage comes from a non-anxious presence.
“Leaders function as the immune systems of the institutions they lead—not because they ward off enemies but because they supply the ingredients for the system’s integrity,”8 Friedman counsels.
Yet as we will find in the economy of God, challenge carries a different value. It becomes a precious resource. The presence of God transforms challenge into spiritual growth.
Anxiety prevents the activation of the seeds of renewal. However, challenge activates spiritual growth.
In his study of the development of urban life, Lewis Mumford commented that as a city grew in size, the forms of village life, the sense of neighborliness and group identity, are diminished by the city’s growth. “The ‘We’ becomes a buzzing swarm of ‘I’s.’”2 The stronghold of the modern city births the stronghold of self—the contemporary individual.
This drive to find a place of ease and good feelings is known as a comfort zone. We create a kind of stronghold based on feeling comfortable, at ease, and unchallenged by external distractions, disruptions, and intrusions. Success is maintaining the emotional balance of the comfort zone. However, this approach to life is built on a religious assumption that the stronghold can deliver a type of environment that facilitates a life that feasts on the fruit of comfort.
Leaders move people toward growth. Comfort zones insulate us from development.
Leaders are seed carriers. The first seeds of renewal are activated in their lives. As my friend Terry Walling says, “Personal renewal leads to corporate change.”
We know that leading is often painful and challenging. Yet we also live in the age of Instagram influencer pastors, some of whom use social media to advance ministry and unintentionally spread a myth: that we can lead while staying within a comfort zone. This can lead us into the error of believing that success in ministry is leading well and feeling good all the time.
Friedman argued that anxious leaders could turn to quick-fix solutions, which offer a pain-free and rapid exit from that which ails us in anxious environments. This is an important insight. The leader who applies quick-fix solutions, even when they fail to address the root issues we genuinely face and fail to lead us toward growth, will be championed.
Furnished with fantasies, the contemporary comfort zone has become a different kind of stronghold, built not just to keep out anxiety but also to protect us from reality. Why? Because reality makes us anxious.
Comfort zones furnished with fantasy develop fragile individuals, leaders, and organizations, as their fantasies are continually shattered by reality. A lack of connection with reality creates a lack of resilience.
The in-between gray zone of the wilderness is a recurring theme within the Bible. Without God, wildernesses, both literal and figurative, are terrible places. With God, they become tools in our Savior’s hands. Schools of spiritual growth.
the testing, the difficulty and the challenge of the wilderness, and our contemporary challenging gray zone moment is where we encounter God’s love for us.
When leaders hear this Word, understand it, and through faith live it, renewal and kingdom life is released into the world.
Personal renewal in the lives of leaders brings about corporate change. Leaders are conduits of renewal, embodying the kingdom transformation to come. They live the next season that God will bring. Leaders live the hope to come, becoming hinges to God’s future.
To grow, and lead others into growth, you must abandon the myth that leading will always feel good. Comfort zones insulate us against growth; gray zones activate us into spiritual growth when we say yes to God’s invitation to grow with Him.
Christian culture can offer us models of leading from the comfort zone, which can look successful from earthly metrics but fail to lead people into spiritual growth.
The machinery of the current century is a collection of interconnected complex, rather than smooth-running, systems. Gradual and linear change no longer happens. Instead, ‘progress’ moves in bursts—fits-and-starts marked by waves of unimaginable flashes, sparks, booms, bubbles, shocks, extremes, bombs, and leaps.”
Margaret Heffernan offers further definition: “Complicated environments are linear, follow rules, and are predictable; like an assembly line, they can be planned, managed, repeated, and controlled. They’re maximized by routine and efficiency.
In a complicated world, events may interrupt our processes and projects. In a complex world, events envelop us in their processes. We must adapt to meet their challenge.
Taylor’s influence has been immense, particularly within the contemporary church and many other Christian ministries. The prime tool for ministry, mission, and discipleship in most contemporary Western churches is programming.
All of this is classic Taylorism. I have even heard some Christian leaders argue that you don’t need a pastor or a spiritual leader in charge of a large church, but a competent manager from the business world who can manage the processes and programs of churches.
Complicated environments require efficiency. Complex environments require adaptability.
Limitation drives adaptation. Let the ground grow you.
