More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Mark Sayers
Read between
June 1 - June 27, 2022
With God, every moment is seeded with the possibility of rebirth. Gray zones offer a blank canvas for God to paint a new story.
We must see it not as a disaster but as an opportunity for rebirth, renewal, and revival. In the Scriptures, the wilderness—that challenging and chaotic place—is transformed into an arena of spiritual growth where leaders encounter the presence of God and become non-anxious presences in an anxious world.
Gray zones exist in the overlap of two eras. They contain the influence of both the passing and forming era; this makes gray zones confusing and contradictory.
The problems of the era were intensifying at the precise moment that the era was passing.
The pandemic didn’t change the world. It was a signal of the change already happening in the world.
The devastation created a blank page upon which a new story could be told. The gray zone became the seedbed of renewal. 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.
When viewed through a biblical lens, gray zones are moments that often precede renewal and rebirth.
God has seeded the world with renewal. God uses leaders to seed His plans in the world.
When viewed through a biblical lens, gray zones often precede renewal and rebirth. God has seeded the world with renewal. God uses leaders to seed His plans in the world. God seeds leaders with His dream of renewal.
Wealth, stability, and comfort had appeared to blunt the mission of the church. Comfortable times create comfortable Christians.
Seeds contain the imprint of the trees that they will eventually become. However, for seeds to grow, they must sprout past what is called the coat. That is the protective outer casing of the seed. At first the coat protects, then it restricts. A seed that is unable to move past this barrier is unable to grow. It remains paralyzed, stuck in the ground. The coat, created to protect the seed initially, can prevent it from developing into what it was designed to be. As we will discover, the structures that we build to soothe our anxiety, to protect us, can prevent the activation of the seeds that
...more
How do you remake the world when it seems like it is falling apart? How do you keep the growing threat of chaos at bay?
Our understanding of leadership rests on a set of cultural assumptions. These cultural assumptions are shifting as the world moves into a gray zone phase.
The modern world promises progress and perfection without God. Leaders formed by the contemporary world can therefore presume that dependency on God is optional.
More than a change in our thinking or simply the introduction of new ideas, we are living through a profound and far-reaching change to the very structure of our world. This structural change has enormous implications for how we lead and live.
Strongholds form when humans seek out or build a protective structure to find security, safety, and prosperity in a threatening, chaotic, and unpredictable environment.
An era is a period in which a stronghold in the form of a state, kingdom, corporation, or organization maintains dominance over a system, projecting its power and control outward.
The American century is the unexamined cultural foundation upon which much of our leadership frameworks, strategic assumptions, and measurements of success rest.
The world is a system—a complex, connected network.
The fundamental structure in the world is no longer central institutions but networks.
Power and influence are never stationary within a network.
In a network, power is fluid. It moves around the network, creating new sources of power and undermining old power centers.
The once-dominant stronghold may still be powerful; however, the structural reality has changed.
The United States has been the dominant hub of the worldwide network it built. However, as Fareed Zakaria argues, while the United States remains the world’s most powerful political and military state, “In all other dimensions—industrial, financial, educational, social, cultural—the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance.… we are moving into a post-American world.”
The future is a decentralized world.
The world is a system—a complex, connected network. The fundamental structure in the world is no longer central institutions but networks. In a network, power is fluid. It moves around the network, creating new sources of power, and undermining old power centers.
A more connected world is a more conflicted and therefore anxious world.
The digital network is the primary shaper of their theological, political, and cultural worldview.
Friedman noted that “chronic anxiety is systemic; it is deeper and more embracing than community nervousness. Rather than something that resides within the psyche of each one, it is something that can envelop, if not actually connect, people.”4 This means that despite how much we try and rationally think through issues, we will find ourselves enveloped within a system of chronic anxiety.
Anxiety flows virally through social networks, enveloping institutions in unhealthy emotions.
In anxious environments, leaders leverage influence through being a non-anxious presence.
The roots of Friedman’s solution of the non-anxious presence can be found in his understanding of systems thinking.
A more connected world is a more conflicted and therefore anxious world. Anxiety flows virally through social networks, enveloping institutions in unhealthy emotions. In anxious environments, leaders leverage influence through being a non-anxious presence.
Anxiety prevents the activation of the seeds of renewal. However, challenge activates spiritual growth.
Instead of educating us in the process of growth, strongholds create entitlement in us. We expect fruit without the work that produces growth.
Societies of scarcity shape us differently than societies of abundance, which assume survival. Inglehart argues that the values held by individuals in societies of abundance trend toward self-expression rather than group identity, rights rather than responsibilities, and secular rather than religious frameworks.
Our personal strongholds, which seek autonomy, depend on the social strongholds that give us security.
Leaders move people toward growth. Comfort zones insulate us from development.
Churches and Christian organizations that have been overtaken by chronic anxiety will resist growth.
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.
God uses the wilderness to win many back when they stray. With God, streams of living water appear in the desert.
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.
Hard places are good soil for kingdom seeds.
While we may pine for more stable and predictable times, from a kingdom perspective, this time in history may be the kind of environment that activates a whole cohort of leaders hidden and waiting for activation, for God’s presence turns our gray zone into a growth zone.
We have moved from a complicated world to a complex world.
Complicated environments require efficiency. Complex environments require adaptability.
Limitation drives adaptation. Let the ground grow you.
We have moved from a complicated world to a complex world. Complicated environments require efficiency. Complex environments require adaptability. Limitation drives adaptation. Let the ground grow you.
The root of our anxiety is our disconnection from God; this means we cannot be a non-anxious presence without God’s presence.
The model of a non-anxious leadership is essential in our time of viral anxiety and networked life.
