A Non-Anxious Presence Quotes

“As a network is swamped by chronic anxiety, it is marked by reactivity. Those within the system no longer act rationally, but rather, high emotion becomes the dominant form of interaction. The system’s focus is directed toward the most emotionally immature and reactive members. Those who are more mature and healthy begin to adapt their behavior to appease the most irrational and unhealthy. This creates a scenario where the most emotionally unhealthy and immature members in the system become de facto leaders, shaping the emotional landscape with the focus on their negative behavior and what they see as the negative behavior of others.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“The explorer heads into the wilderness to find glory. The shepherd of God is humbled by the wilderness to be shaped by God and thus elevates Him through worship.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“It becomes nearly impossible for the healthier members of a system or its leadership to see the bigger issue and tackle systemic issues because the focus is brought back to the latest crisis and the feverish emotional responses that are swamping the network.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“We have been taught by the great strongholds of our day, whether formed with a structure of secularism or cultural Christianity (or a hybrid of both), that pressure is a bad thing. That it is possible to live life and walk through the raindrops without getting wet. So 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.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“The structures of the modern world implicitly promise that we can operate as leaders, even as Christian leaders, without thought or need for God. 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.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“The reality of constant connection ate away at the markers that formerly rooted people in place, giving them an identity.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Wealth, stability, and comfort had appeared to blunt the mission of the church. Comfortable times create comfortable Christians.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“The pandemic didn’t change the world. It was a signal of the change already happening in the world.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“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.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Alan noted that the Sunday service is the queen for the pastor, a powerful tool that we can become overly dependent on, which can, in turn, reduce our imaginations of what ministry and church can look like. With the arrival of the pandemic and the inability to meet in person came an opportunity. The queen was off the board. Some pastors fell into despair and frustration. Others held their breath until they could regather. Some imagined the moment as persecution and conspiracy. Alan, however, doesn’t think like a Taylorist and is deeply attuned to the dynamics of complex systems after years of studying networks. What Alan was doing for pastors was reframing the moment as an opportunity. A chance to let the pressure push us into adaptation, to seed creativity in a moment of challenge.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“As we move into the gray zone, it is the weak to whom the eyes of the Western church must look to learn.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“The Persians had been working with the limitation of online church long before the pandemic hit. What so many in the West saw as the limitations of not being able to meet in person was, for the Persian church, not only a limitation but also a leverage point that God had used to grow the church in Iran and in the diaspora across the world.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Thousands of Persians cannot worship freely in person; they can only meet through online worship. Yet the Persian church is exponentially growing.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Later on, the man who humbly wondered why God had chosen him to be king erected monuments to himself. His successes, his inflated sense of self, the myth that he had built up the kingdom in his own strength became strongholds that he retreated into—driving him mad with power, insecurity, and jealousy. The insecure leader can rapidly turn into an arrogant leader as they find solace, identity, and direction in the flattery of others. The voice of the crowd then drowns out the still small voice of God encountered in the wilderness.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Yet the story of Saul is a cautionary tale. It shows us that one of the worst things that can happen to a leader is for them to have success before they have been humbled, broken, and prepared by the Lord.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Without this wilderness, “we remain victims of our society and continue to be entangled in the illusions of the false self. Jesus himself entered into this furnace. There he was tempted with the three compulsions of the world: to be relevant (‘turn stones into loaves’), to be spectacular (‘throw yourself down’), and to be powerful (‘I will give you all these kingdoms’). There he affirmed God as the only source of his identity (‘You must worship the Lord your God and serve him alone’).”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“This explains the problem the contemporary self finds itself caught in. We want the freedom and autonomy of radical individualism while being dependent on the opinions and emotional climate of the crowd.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“freedom. In our disconnection from God, we rebel against responsibility, relationships, and life-giving rules. Thus, anxiety and independency live in a codependent relationship.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“We will not fully understand our problems in human relationships until we see them as the expression of the active rebellion and independency which has afflicted human nature. A vast arsenal of weapons against human fellowship grows out of this route. Fear, anger, jealousy, envy, bitterness, revenge, flattery, accusation, and many other injurious conditions develop from the sickness of a human nature estranged from God and trying unsuccessfully to defend its own “god-status” against all comers.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Any goals or programs of an institution that becomes overtaken by chronic anxiety will be replaced by the task of keeping the most dysfunctional members happy. Friedman saw this dynamic as cultlike. 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.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Yes, there are times when it appears as if the darkness is winning. When the direction of culture, the circumstances of our lives, the poverty of spiritual life among God’s people seems tilted toward difficulty, decline, and even death rather than renewal. This is particularly true during our gray zone moment. The church seems divided, the culture unraveling, and the world reeling toward chaos. Yet, at moments like ours, we must remember that God has seeded the world with His dream of renewal.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“James Meeks reflected on the lockdowns, “When you aren’t going anywhere, the danger is that you might start seeing the way things are going.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“Any goals or programs of an institution that becomes overtaken by chronic anxiety will be replaced by the task of keeping the most dysfunctional members happy.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders

“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.”
― Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders