Pastoral Calling and Cultural Understanding: A Conversation with Mark Sayers – Part 3
Mark Sayers, Senior Leader of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia, is passionate about spiritual renewal and the future of the church. He is also a respected cultural commentator whose perceptive insights into faith and contemporary culture help Christian leaders faithfully carry out their calling to pastor and disciple others. Mark is the author of seven books, with his eighth due for release in May 2022. What follows is part 2 of 3 adapted from a transcript of Mark’s recent conversation with Covenant Seminary’s Dr. Mark Ryan. See part 1 here and part 2 here.
Mark Ryan (MR): Beyond names we have noted, who else would you direct us toward for growing in discernment as to our current moment?
Mark Sayers (MS): It’s a chunky one, and it’s very old, but it remains fascinating: City of God.[1] Augustine, writing at the end of the Roman empire, speaks to Christians in that weird moment where they were looking at empire falling but also realizing the complexity of things. An empire filled with idolatry and false gods, but also providing some key structures of support (there are roads, and infrastructure, etc.). It’s quite an amazing book that I’d encourage you to look at. I do think we are in a moment like Augustine’s. We are looking at the West and seeing how secular and problematic it is. But we also see that it has provided us with some sense of freedom of worship, with all manner of infrastructure, and him just noting that point, I think, is really an interesting one.
Another classic that I think is fascinating is C. S. Lewis’s The Screwtape Letters,[2] which is set during wartime England and revolves around deception and lies and keeping self-knowledge and true understanding at bay. I likely wouldn’t have listed this book 10 years ago, but as I’ve revisited that book, I’ve found it really fascinating. He seems to be talking into an emerging individualism that is going to come in the wake of the war. I now think that’s helpful.
Mike Goheen is also someone I recommend. He’s not a new author but he has written a new book on Lesslie Newbigin,[3]who is someone else I often recommend. So that’s a double. Newbigin is really helpful, and for newcomers to Newbigin, Goheen’s book is a great starting point. Also, Mike’s book Living at the Crossroads is also helpful.[4] So here are a few good ones to start with.
MR: What about somebody like Charles Taylor? It seems everyone is reading A Secular Age.[5] Has he been helpful to you? What has he done for us in our current moment?
MS: Yeah, I think he has been helpful. In a sense he’s changed the conversation. Of course, it’s an immense work—it’s huge—and it took me months to grasp everything. But his sense of social imagery is helpful. And then there are other people who have bounced off it in various ways. As one example, there’s interestingly a book now called Hitler’s Monsters,[6] which is written about the supernatural and occult stuff the Third Reich was into. It’s an academic book, with the author bouncing off Charles Taylor. This is just one way that authors have been influenced by Taylor. I find it interesting, by the way, that what was happening before the Third Reich in the Weimar Republic is like what’s happening now with conspiracy theories, and with science getting sort of turned over in all different ways. So, Taylor’s work is immense and, again, Jamie Smith’s introduction to him is great and brings some good nuances to some of the faults of Taylor.
MR: You’ve been super-generous with your time, and I know we must land the plane soon, but I have two final questions. First, I want to quote you quoting someone else and then let you simply riff off that. As you have pointed out, around 1900, James Burns said that “faith is like a tide that goes in and out, and just as it appears to have gone out it comes back with force.”[7] As you evaluate the tide, both at home in Australia and more broadly around the Western world, where is the tide now? What should we be preparing for? Will it go out further? Is it coming back with force?
MS: This has been one of the big questions. One of the things I looked at was the dynamic that there were these moments of crisis that came often before these revivals and renewals when the rush of faith came back. And one of my throwaway lines that I’ve used a lot to get at what I’ve learned is: crisis precedes renewal. A friend of mine—Pete Grigg, who is in the UK and who runs a 24/7 prayer network—and I were driving in the UK after an event, and we were just talking about just this. My theory, back in 2019, was that maybe the personal crises that people are going through are going to be what drives them to faith. It was more of an individualized thing. But Pete, who has studied revival history, said, “No, it’s more corporate.” For him, there’s always something that happens, something like a natural disaster or war. And then when COVID hit, my phone just lit up with people asking, “Is this the crisis?” I’m not totally sure, but as I’m reading what’s happening now, I think that this is more of an axial point and as we’ve moved to this networked world, so crises bump into each other. Everything’s connected. And so, for example, Niall Ferguson, the British historian, has said that COVID is going to begin as a health story and then become an economic story.[8]
Israel, like the rest of the world, is battling COVID, yet it’s still facing conflict with Palestine. The US has suffered a ransomware attack on a pipeline; this is huge. (I don’t think they realized that hackers could take down part of the infrastructure). Australia has cut itself off from the world and apparently 75% of us are willing to do this longer and even to go without holidays to escape Corona. So, I have this sense that we’re going to move into more of a disruptive age. Why? Because the more you connect to the world, the more the world’s problems come to you. Is COVID that crisis? I don’t know.
I feel like we’re moving into this strange season where so much is upside down. I don’t quite feel like the rushing of the wave of faith has come yet, but I do suspect we’re moving to a period where the foundations of the secular world are being shaken. In a sense, we’ve all realized this has been going on, the secular world has long sought to deliver people life without God, but I think it’s really being shaken now. And while there is a lot going on, a lot of COVID vaccination happening, I don’t think that the world is going to return to 2019.
And so, my real question is, will we pivot? Can the church pivot into this moment and see the evangelistic opportunities that will open up? Part of what I’m seeing too, is that cultural Christianity is burning up. I’m hearing this from numbers of people and part of me is wondering if this is what’s happened and if it will allow more of us to see things as they really are. (I’ve heard stories for years of people who were in the Christian entertainment megaplex industry, whose faith wasn’t truly there because they happened to live in parts of the country where this was a viable career path even without mature faith). Maybe there’s an opportunity before us. Maybe the church is going to be smaller and stronger. If this is so, then we are in a stage of preparation. For people reading this and who may be studying now, God has you preparing—God is forming you for the next phase to come. I think he’s creating a robust church. I’m praying God will lead us into that moment when he in his sovereignty pauses from sifting us and the tide of faith comes back again. So, I think we’re in a preparation moment.
MR: As a final question, and given that by my count there’s typically a Mark Sayers volume approximately every two years, what are you working on now? What should we expect next?
MS: Yes, I have a new book which will come out in a few months.[9] I am writing now and I’m again attempting to interpret what’s going on, whereas my previous work was trying to describe the changes that had happened in the 2010s—everything from populism to the rise of progressivism, and all these sorts of things. And whereas I began to speak out about churches that could go into a progressive environment, yet remain orthodox and preach the Bible, be culturally relevant, and stay resilient, what I’ve seen in the last 12 months, even among friends’ churches, and my own church, is that even these churches have been disrupted in this last season. And so now I’m asking the question, what’s the next cultural cycle we’re in? I think it’s changed quickly. It may have been 30-year cycles and now it’s 10 and we’re into a new one, so I want to describe the changes that are happening for people.
Like in the movie The Third Man,[10] we’re moving in a gray zone. It’s not a new era, it’s the space in between the eras. The elements of the old era are still here; the new era is not formed. We’re in this weird in-between space and yet there’s a business book written in the nineties by Judith Bardwick[11] that has alerted me to a danger. Bardwick talks about the comfort zone, and I realized that the danger—part of what’s going to be next—is that people have realized the world’s a bit scary, so a danger to the church is going to be to retreat. That’s going to happen institutionally, but it’s also going to happen individually.
And so, I want to encourage people, particularly the up-and-coming generation who have been misled by the world (and possibly by the church as well), that life is not going to be comfortable. And that when you look at Scripture, God creates humans in Genesis to be the stewards of the world, to deal with the chaos of the world, and to bring God’s order and life to bear. I want to point out that Jesus walks toward difficulty, toward the cross and suffering, and gives his life for humanity, and then transforms the world. His is a narrow path.
I feel this explains what’s happening, but that I am also encouraging a new cohort of leaders. Yeah, maybe all your mates have left. Maybe your church is an uncomfortable place now. Maybe the culture no longer gives you any social credence for being a pastor. But these are the sort of moments when God actually does something new. So, walk toward uncomfortability, walk toward awkwardness, walk toward maybe even suffering with God. But know that’s exactly the point where God transforms. That’s the way of the cross. And then the other side of that is resurrection. So that’s essentially what I feel like the key message is going forward.
MR: Well, we look forward to that. That’s a message we need to hear and take into our hearts. Mark Sayers, thank you so much for your time and for this conversation.
MS: My absolute pleasure.
For more from Mark Sayers, See:
The Trouble With Paris: Following Jesus in a World of Plastic Promises (Thomas Nelson, 2008)
The Vertical Self: How Biblical Faith Can Help Us Discover Who We Are in An Age of Self Obsession (Thomas Nelson, 2010)
Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm(Moody, 2014)
Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience(Moody, 2016)
Strange Days: Life in the Spirit in a Time of Upheaval(Moody, 2017)
Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal in the Rise of Our Post-Christian Culture(Moody, 2019)
A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders(Moody, 2022)
See part 1 of this conversation here and part 2 here.
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Dr. Mark Ryan is Director of the Francis Schaeffer Institute and Adjunct Professor of Religion and Culture at Covenant Theological Seminary.
Notes:
[1] St. Augustine, City of God, rev. ed. (Penguin Classics, 2004). Or see: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45304/45304-h/45304-h.htm.
[2] C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, reprint ed. (HarperOne, 2015); or see: https://gutenberg.ca/ebooks/lewiscs-screwtapeletters/lewiscs-screwtapeletters-00-h.html.
[3] Michael W. Goheen, The Church and Its Vocation: Lesslie Newbigin's Missionary Ecclesiology (Baker Academic, 2018).
[4] Michael W. Goheen and Craig G. Bartholomew, Living at the Crossroads: An Introduction to Christian Worldview(Baker Academic, 2008).
[5] Charles Taylor, A Secular Age (Belknap Press, 2007).
[6] Erik Kurlander, Hitler's Monsters: A Supernatural History of the Third Reich (Yale University Press, 2017).
[7] Mark Sayers, Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal in the Rise of Our Post-Christian Culture (Moody, 2019), 25, 49.
[8] Niall Ferguson, Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe (Penguin Press, 2021), with chapters 9–11 being most pertinent.
[9] Mark Sayers, A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders (Moody Publishers, forthcoming in 2022).
[10] The Third Man (1949) was directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene et.al., and starred, most notably, Orson Welles. The film was shot on location in postwar Austria.
[11] Judith Bardwick, Danger in the Comfort Zone: From Boardroom to Mailroom—How to Break the Entitlement Habit That's Killing American Business, 2nd ed. (AMACOM, 1995).
