Author Interview: Reappearing Church by Mark Sayers
By: Common Faith
Tags: Secularism, Mark Sayers, Christianity, Christian Author, Christian

Jared Brock: Okay, Mark, we’re getting into questions now. My wife, Michelle, is from Finland and English is actually her second language. But, she has a totally normal Canadian accent, however when she listens to you, she says, he has an Australian accent. When we visit our family in England, or when we visit friends in Wales, we always assume that we’re the ones with the neutral accent. And that’s basically what secularism has wrongly assumed about religion. It says, we are the neutral, natural based and religion is just this unnecessary add-on. But, you suggest that secularism is an attempt at progress without presence. I love your phrase, ‘It’s a desire for the Kingdom without the king.’

Jared Brock: How do we help our friends see that secularism is actually a religion and that politics and tribalism are its denominations?

Mark Sayers: Great question. In some ways, I think, part of the impetus behind writing this book was that, for a long time I was asked that question. How do you show people this? And, spent years trying to convince people. But, I think what drove me to write this book was that I think secularism is showing that itself. So in a sense, there’s an element that, you can tell someone how to change a tire on a car, but there’s nothing like that truth moment when you’ve actually got a flat tire on the side of the road. And, I feel like that’s actually what’s happening, that, the promises that secularism has made and really the entire Western political, economic project, after a while it looked like they were achieving that.

Mark Sayers: So, in a sense it was seemingly self-evident. But, I think as the wheels are beginning to, perhaps not just fall off yet, perhaps starting to wobble, people, I think, are seeing those effects. So, in a sense, I see part of what this renewal that God wants to do, because that’s waiting that out for a while.

Mark Sayers: I think we look at the Book of Acts and see the way that the church grew in the face of the might and power of the Roman Empire. But, the wheels were falling off the Roman Empire and as the church grew, in a sense, the slow breakdown of the Roman Empire happened. Now, I’m not saying that we’re going to see a similar cataclysmic fall in the West, but I think that more the individual promises that society has put before us… I just was reading an English writer last night, Simon Reid-Henry, in his book, Empire of Democracy, and he just makes the point that, when the promises of culture and actually what is being delivered gets wider, that’s the moment when people start to protest. And, I think, we’re just starting to see that. And, I think that’s when a new conversation opens up around secularism.

Jared Brock: So let’s build on that. You suggest that we’re living in this time that you call, ‘deconstructionism’, where people are basically tearing down any institution or form of authority that they see as limiting to their individuality in any way shape or form. Whether that’s church, academia, sexuality, gender, government, you name it, it has to go. We want rights and privileges without responsibilities or consequences. So, the new definition of sin has become, anything that makes me unhappy. We come at life from the perspective, that total freedom isn’t nearly as free as a life surrendered to Christ. And, that deconstructionism is just a perfect way for corporate culture to sell us a new identity. How can Christians help our friends, or at least help ourselves, shake free from the chains of happiness and the bondage of freedom?

Mark Sayers: Well, I think in some ways I see an analogy. When I was younger, in Australia, I remember McDonald’s and fast foods, it was there, but it started to come in with power. So, my parents… I remember them first taking me to McDonald’s, and I just thought, wow, this is amazing. Why? Because, basically they’ve got-

Jared Brock: It’s sugar!

Mark Sayers: Exactly, it’s sugar and fat. And even the buns on top of the Big Mac are, I think, classified as confectionery, they’ve got so much sugar.

Jared Brock: Oh, my word.

Mark Sayers: So in a sense, that’s all I wanted to eat. I remember this stage when I first got a job and I just was eating McDonald’s. And, then all of a sudden you start to see the effects, physically. And, so for me there was a slow reposition that happened over years through some different health things I went through, where, if you said, design your perfect meal now, it’s not going to be a McDonald’s. I realized that the high sugar hit, high fat content, actually deliver an instantaneous hit but actually is very bad on longer, positive effects.

Mark Sayers: Now, I’d want to have something that tastes great, but still healthy and powers me through the day. So, in a sense, I think it’s something similar. I think that what people are starting to see is that the constant dopamine fixation of our society, whether it’s social media or the hit of consumerism, that this stuff’s actually not delivering lasting meaning. And, I think what we’re starting to see is the difference between little bursts of happiness versus ongoing meaning. And, I think we’re actually starting to crave meaning. So, that’d be one way that I would explain to people, yes, we can have this moment now, but how do you actually construct a life that has meaning. And, also longer term.

Mark Sayers: And, I think that, that longer-term question… Just today the news is filled with Greta Thunberg, who’s the child climate activist, who just addressed the United Nations. That could be a whole podcast in terms of that moment, where almost like calling the world powers to repent, which was quite an interesting moment. Someone said it was almost like a little Joan of Arc moment, that sort of shepherd- I think that Ben Judah said it’s like the Christian, European thing of the shepherd girl calling the rich people to account. But, what she’s saying is that this intensity that’s coming through, the environmental movement where people are actually concerned about the future. People are economically concerned about the future. And we worry about the coming environmental effects, we worry about coming economic threats, and I think that’s what happening, is you’ve got a generation now who are looking beyond the message, we’ll keep you happy in the moment. They’re starting to say, I want a future, I want to see something go forward. So, to have a life of meaning and to have a future of hope that then leads us into a bigger discussion around what the good life is, and I think that opens up all kinds of Kingdom discussions.

Jared Brock: So good. I would love to see the church lead on creation care and socio and bio-economic sustainability. It’s missing from pretty much every sermon I’ve heard, but, you know what I mean.

Mark Sayers: Yes, yes. And, I think on that… Honestly what we’re seeing… I was in London a few months ago and just saw some of the protests and I just thought, this is the next thing. And, in a sense, I think also the interesting thing about the environmental creation care thing as well, is that it’s a unifying message in a sense that so much of contemporary identity politics is just fragmentary and accusatory. But this is actually all human, so I think we’re just going to grow and unless the church looks at this in a rich theological… Stuff we have to work with, yeah.

Jared Brock: Yeah, that’s great. Okay, Mark, one of the concepts that I absolutely love that I probably quote on a daily basis, is the idea that Christians need to ‘zig where culture zags’ and one of the things you say in your new book, Reappearing Church, is that we need to start de-secularizing ourselves. What does that mean and what are three to five major areas do you think Jesus’ followers need to take a hard turn in this cultural movement?

Mark Sayers: I can’t remember if I quoted in the book or not, but there’s a fantastic G.K. Chesterton comment in his book around Thomas Aquinas and he basically says, ‘that God will send His saints to an age who is the contradiction of that age.’ If the culture goes into aestheticism and self-starvation, God will send a saint who is a feaster and an enjoyer of life. If the culture goes into gluttony, he’ll send a John the Baptist figure and in sense, they’re like this medicine or antidote. And I think that really captured me, that concept. And, I think also it also flows out of this idea that so much of Christian response to culture is theoretical and we all point at different ideology. That ideologies actually do derive things.

Mark Sayers: But, I think how this age is being run is a… How do I describe it? There’s a methodology that, hey, you’re all individualistic, you’re unique, you’ve got to find your own identity and that’s what we’re told. But then there’s this giant mechanism of culture, which presumes that we’re very programmable, we’re very predictable, we’re like animals or nodes in a network which can be milked or mined for data and information. So, we actually can be against secularism, but then all the different ways which is forming this world view, we’re just giving into.

Mark Sayers: So, the first one, I would say is, attention. This moment in history promises freedom and exploration and creativity, but really it’s just mining us for attention. Cell phones, social media and increasingly even facial recognition in stores, is all mining how we act, how we move, what we do. And stealing our attention. They’re studying us and it’s stealing our attention because attention is a commodity in the world. So, one of the first things I realized is that… I began to think about this, what is attention? Attention is your focus, you’re focusing on something. And, in a sense, focusing on something is actually worship. So, I’ve actually seen how worship and prayer become this almost counter-cultural rebellious activity now, where we actually steal time back.

Mark Sayers: A German writer, a Christian, talks a lot about worshiping this beautiful waste. Almost like a luxury item that we almost take, it has no utility apart from just giving glory to God. And I really like that idea that we actually need to steal time back or recapture time back and actually direct it towards God.

Mark Sayers: Another one would be that, increasingly what we’re seeing in both in divisions of the left and the right. Which really, what so many people missed, from 1970 onwards both became quite radical in their approach. And in a sense, the left sells us a vision of freedom, where we define who we are and no one else can speak into that. And the right sells us a vision of self which is really about where the market takes over everything and politics and what’s civil disappears and you’re just an individual consumer.

Mark Sayers: That being social, in the best sense of the word, and I think I want to say community. I think it’s just the act of being social now. In a sense like social’s level one and communities level two. But, actually deciding to spend time with people is actually again also a rebellious act. I’m going to have these meeting points where I’m going to meet with people, which literally just could be Sunday worship. It’s interesting that we had the small group movement in Bible studies and all that, were one of the ways which modernity created Christian community in the midst of an individualizing society. But we now have the phenomenon of people going to church regularly on a Sunday every five, six weeks. We’re becoming more and more disembodied. So, I think that that concept of actually stepping into the social, creating community.

Mark Sayers: If you’ve grown up in church it sounds so ordinary, but it’s increasingly becoming actually fraught. Our societies are becoming increasingly dislocated, lonely places. I think it was in the United States, one in four millennials have zero friends now. Like not a couple or not a couple of bad ones, none. So, offering people just friendship, offering people long term relationship is huge.

Mark Sayers: A third one, I would say, is being present and embedded and embodied. The Incarnation is a theological truth, but also it’s something that speaks to us. Increasingly we are not present. Go to a bus stop, go on a train, people are not even there. I find in these moments where I go to look at the weather for the next day and then there’s a message on my phone and then all of a sudden someone sent me a link and I’m looking at an article… Then I wake up almost forty five minutes later, I’m standing in my lounge and like, where did that forty five minutes go? And, as a dad, we see this. As a dad with my kids running around me the horribilest moment, which happens to the best of parents, is when your kids say, dad, can you get off your phone and look at me. And you’re, oh, my heart. But this is because most minds in the world are wanting to take our minds and our attention to where they are.

Mark Sayers: So, another thing is actually just being physically present. So, I’ve actually just been… I go for a walk every day and I often listen to podcasts or music and I just began to turn it off and, I’m just going to be present. Smile at the person walking by. The guy with schizophrenia who wants to have a chat and it could be a crazy chat, but just actually I’m going to be present for this. Notice a cat. Notice the warmth. Actually reincarnate into the world. For years there’s been talk of incarnational ministry. We’ve just got to go back to incarnational living now. I think that, that’s one.

Mark Sayers: Fourth one. In this culture which is actually mining us for information, it also mines us for reactions. And, sadly in the social media space, what spreads more virally is actually negative emotions and anger, outrage. And I would also say lust. Lust for consumer items, lust for pornography and we want to be outraged. I read Ryan Holiday’s book earlier this year, who’s a marketer.

Jared Brock: Which book?

Mark Sayers: It was, Trust me, I’m lying. Literally you’ll have… Corporates now will have a campaign and then they will actually create a faux outrage thing that their own campaign is sexist or racist. They actually manufacture… Which is insane. He begins the book by saying, I’m… He says something like, ‘my pregnant wife’s in the car’, I think he says, ‘somewhere in LA and I’m vandalizing the billboard of the account that I’m actually running.’

Mark Sayers: I think he’s doing a book launch and he actually created a false campaign that the guy whose book he was promoting was sexist. Because, that’s the only way you can cut through now. So there’s this reactive, anxious age. I think also since September 11th, we’ve moved into this time too of a reaction to the risk in the world. In terms of this culture of fear as well.

Mark Sayers: So, another thing that Jesus said of Himself, He’s the Prince of Peace. The scriptures talk of a peace that transcends all understanding, modeling Him being a person of peace and even just more than bringing peace between conflicting factions, but actually just modeling what a non-reactive thoughtful, calm, peaceful presence is so counter-cultural and actually like healing balm to people. Just sitting down. And even I’m doing it. Cal Newport said “don’t like online.” I saw a story before on Twitter this morning about Serbia and basically how Chinese police are now walking on the streets of Serbia. They’re actually patrolling in Serbia and they’ve sold to Belgrade this facial recognition system.

Jared Brock: They’ve sold it to 18 countries last year, yeah.

Mark Sayers: Like my area where I live in Melbourne, my local electorate, there’s been huge, huge controversy lately where a member of parliament has been accused of being an agent of influence of China. Both the left wing and the right wing candidates here have been accused of that. That’s a thing which brings fear up in me, to be honest. I was, I’m going to re-Tweet this, bang! But then I thought, no, stop. What’s your actual response? And I keep having this thought, which comes back to me, which I got when I read Timothy Dudley-Smith’s biography of John Stott. And, he talked about Stott would see these things in culture and then he would retreat to his retreat in Wales and would write on them, but he’s writing slowly. He’s, what’s the Biblical response to this? What’s the best thinkers, in a secular world, saying about this? And then come out with this measured Christian response. And, I want to be more like that than just reactive. So, I think that’s the last one. Being reactive. There’ve been a few there for you.

Jared Brock: The Marines have a saying, ‘Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.’

Mark Sayers: Wow, that’s good. Yeah, it’s good context.

Jared Brock: So, my wife and I, we have not been able to make it through a single episode of This Cultural Moment in less than an hour because we pause and pray and laugh and cry and talk and it’s putting words to things we’ve been talking about for the last three years. And, even as you were giving me those four major areas where we need to zig, some things came to mind. One of them was, I think the word koinonia is going to make a big come back in the church in the days ahead. Like you said, we’ve got this idea of connection and then maybe friendship and then there’s community, but there’s also brotherhood, fellowship, koinonia. It’s pushing towards non-political communism.

Mark Sayers: Yeah, yeah, I know you’re right.

Jared Brock: The other thing I totally, totally am on the same page with you on, is this idea of attention hijacking. My wife and I, we’ve really engineered our lives in such a way that if the world is going to go disembodied and distracted and digital that we need to go embodied and present and physical. So, we actually don’t own cell phones, we don’t have Instagram, we don’t have Netflix and we try to just be with people. And I’m protecting my attention, like you’re saying, we need to be guarding that precious commodity for higher purposes. I really feel you on that one.

Jared Brock: Okay. Question number four. So, one of the things that I did for my first book was I traveled to France, to try to locate the kitchen where Brother Lawrence practiced the Presence of God and I eventually found it near the Luxembourg Gardens in an old Medici chapel. One of the lines you say often that I really love is, ‘While culture demands perfection, Christ desire presence’. You’ve also said that you’re trying to build your personal life on three things. Spiritual formation, post-Christian mission and the presence of God. What practical things can Christians do to practice the presence of God in this time and place?

Mark Sayers: Yeah, great question. I think the first thing, which sort of links into something I just said, is that I realized that I started on this thing where, because God captured me with that idea. Reading Brother Lawrence was one of the things which did that as well, going after the Presence of God. But then I think the first thing I realized was that I wasn’t present in the way that I wanted to be.

Jared Brock: Oh yes, yes.

Mark Sayers: My mind… And it’s just been really interesting, living in Australia, being far away from much of my audience, I’ve put limits on my travel. But still I’d be away a month of the year on planes and stuff like that. It’s been really interesting just… I have nothing booked in for another year, of international travel. And it’s strange, I’m happy to get on planes, but actually I just felt for some time, which seems so counter intuitive, because God’s doing all these things with reach and voice and book and stuff like this, and cultural moments. That exactly at that moment, He’s actually telling me to be more present in my community and in my church and just my neighborhood and even just aware of my physical surroundings. So I think the first thing is to actually learn to be present yourself, to just actually take notice of, where I am.

Mark Sayers: The second thing was beginning to, I think, re-engineer your day. I know Frank Laubach, the Missionary to the Philippines, who wrote a number of books around this, which particularly influenced Dallas Willard. He wouldn’t get out of bed until he had acknowledged the presence of God and stopped and slowed himself down.

Mark Sayers: So, I think that very, through the day, presence of actually sensing where God is and stopping and having this regular thing of stopping. I begin my day… And you guys have gotten rid of cell phones which is… There’d be a bunch of people going, wow, that’s next level, how do I do it and still keep in a sense like Cal Newport has that digital minimalism thing. So, I put my phone, computer, everything at the other end of the house and I just have this space where I begin the day and begin by focusing on Him.

Mark Sayers: I look out the window, and I actually look at the back yard and the sky, I tend to notice what the weather is, I begin by thanking God for what He’s done for me. Opening my scriptures and praying and reading the scriptures, that’s been a thing for me as well. Realizing His presence in his word, he’s present as I’m reading the scriptures as well, this sense of His presence as I read His words. And then taking that into the day. I think what God’s really done recently for me in this is… I notice is that, your attention gets hijacked most powerfully when negative emotions are at play.

Mark Sayers: I would have these days where I set up my day, it’s all great, and then something happens, something goes wrong at work, there’s some interpersonal conflict, some fear comes up, whatever it may be. The presence is out the window, in terms of my attention to it.

Mark Sayers: Just recently, particularly reading the Psalms and just prayerfully reading them, particularly in the high forties to early sixties, there’s this sense where David’s on the run, and he’s constantly using this term, the ‘stronghold’, and God is his ‘stronghold’. I think that God illuminated something for me in that, that in that sense he’s on the run. He’s a king without a stronghold and military power, political power is, when you hold the ground, a particularly high ground that’s fortified. And David doesn’t have that. And what he’s learning in that moment when he’s on the run is actually that God’s presence is the stronghold, the sanctuary is the stronghold.

Mark Sayers: And so, I’ve been trying to learn this thing that whenever I feel fear or worry, conflict, anything like that, that actually I almost physically will go into another room, even if it’s just go to the bathroom, pretending to go to the bathroom and just, you’re my stronghold, I’m in your presence, this is the safest place.

Mark Sayers: And the concept of praising God in his sanctuary, in his stronghold, it sounds so simple, but it’s actually profoundly transformative and actually taking it to God in his stronghold first, is actually seeing his presence as also a protective place. I feel that there’s this thing going on, particularly at the moment, in… We can do a whole thing on the history and sociology of it. But we’re becoming, increasingly, a safety driven culture, particularly in Australia. Melbourne, my city, it’s next level. And in one sense, it’s great, you get to live in one of the worlds most liberal cities and it’s very safe, but there’s almost this fear increasingly taking over. I’m trying to see God as my place of safety. And the presence as my place of safety. They’re three things I would recommend to others.

Jared Brock: Good. Okay. So, my best friend and I, prior to getting married to our respective wives, we found out that there’s a place in Arkansas called, Crater of Diamonds State Park. It’s this 911 acre pile of dirt that spits up diamonds and anything that you find you get to keep. So, we drove 3000 miles to dig for diamonds. We did not find a single thing but we learned a lot about rocks and a lot about diamonds. And, the single most important thing that is necessary to create diamonds is pressure. And the Western church has had it pretty easy for the past century, but I get the sense and I know that you get the sense that pressure is building.

Jared Brock: But that what could come out of this season is something beautiful and more importantly, unbreakable. Now, I don’t want to get all weird about it, but now that we’re living in the age of corporate surveillance, do you sense that the church might experience another round of persecution in the days to come and if so, what should we be doing about it?

Mark Sayers: Yeah. Well, yeah. So many good things in there. I think, first of all, I 100% agree with the pressure thing. In a couple of weeks I’m participating in the Australian leg of… Dave Kinnaman has a book out, Faith for Exiles. He’s president of Barna. Basically, what they’re saying is that, you’ve got these people who are leaving church, increasingly millennials and then you’ve got people in church, cultural Christians. But then you’ve got this smaller group, that they’re calling resilient disciples. In America, it’s about 10%, in Australia, it’s 8%. But what’s so interesting they’re discovering is, that’s a small number and almost a disheartening number, but they’re producing fantastic disciples. And I’m seeing this, I’m seeing the millennial’s who are staying in church, who have lost all their friends, but are still coming back.

Mark Sayers: This Friday night… I’m sorry, Saturday… What day do I go to church? Sundays. Sunday night passed, just our 5:00 PM service, which is mostly millennials. Just think, people on their knees, crying out to God, it’s actually encouraging me, seeing the diamonds that I think this pressure is already just starting in the last couple of years to produce. Like people going, I know I’m going to be unpopular. I think for a while we had this… And I talk about this in Disappearing Church, but I think we have this relevant idea that, hey, you can be a Christian and you’re going to be totally hipster and cool in the culture and just glide through and have best of both worlds. That’s gone. So, I think it’s producing something.

Mark Sayers: The thing I’ve learnt, particularly I think of anything that the September 11th, and the various electoral shocks of late have told us, prediction is a fool’s game, but I’ll still be a fool. I do think that we’re seeing this interesting shift from… There’s always been this debate between, was Orwell’s 1984 vision of the world, which was in a highly surveillant state, really based on Stalin’s Soviet Union and then you had Huxley’s Brave New World, which was much more of a pleasure-driven dystopia where people, for most, just imprison themselves in their own pleasures.

Mark Sayers: And at times it does feel like we’re weirdly after Huxley’s vision of a pleasure-driven future, which enslaves us to our desires that eventually then we’re just going to end up in a 1984 reality. I mentioned before about China, and them exporting increasing their surveillance thing. This is happening. The battles we are seeing in Hong Kong at the moment, really, many of them driven by young Christians, highly educated or Hong Kongers who came through Christian schools who are looking at the Chinese surveillance state. Which is a bizarre blending of a Leninist party, which has given up communist economics and embraced hyper-capitalism with a super Silicone Valley surveillance state apparatus, which blows everyone’s, in the West, political spectrum out of the water.

Mark Sayers: That indeed could happen. I’m not sure where it’s going to go, but I think that I’m more now concerned about authoritarian regimes and how they’re emerging around the world, than I am about political correctness in the West. If that makes sense? I don’t think that political correctness in the West has the will… It’ll have some enigmatical Saxon people or… You can’t go and work at that university. But I think what many Christians around the world will face soon with coming technological reaches, is far more frightening.

Mark Sayers: I think the thing with Hong Kong, and look, I know the Hong Kong protests are controversial amongst some people in the sense of… But I think that the essence of the movement in terms of those who are trying to do it in a non-violent way, is just a fantastic example of millennials engaged. Millennials can get bagged on a lot. But I actually think what you’re seeing there is an incredibly open source… I’ve seen videos online of them singing worship songs as riot police are coming at them and protecting themselves with umbrellas. There’s something in that where I just feel like we’re seeing something now, which we’re going to see more of in the future.

Jared Brock: Yeah. My wife was raised in Ethiopia and we recently went to visit and when she was growing up, kids on the street would run up to you and they’d say, ‘ferenji, ferenji, ferenji’, which means ‘foreigner’, now they run behind us as Caucasians, and they yell, ‘China, China, China’, because they assume that anyone who isn’t black is Chinese. All the roads that are paved they call them China roads because, how that was explained to us, is that the Chinese government effectively built them and charges tolls on them for the first 20 years and then when they fall apart it reverts back to the Ethiopian government just in time to renew the contract. Their reach is definitely expanding, and you can only imagine that surveillance will quickly follow.

Mark Sayers: Yes, yes. And I think in some ways China’s a bit of a disruptor that much in the West haven’t noticed. I think we’re starting to see it in New Zealand, Australia and Canada now. But I think it’s going to hit the United States at some point and I think it’s going to completely subvert the current left, right understandings and how do you respond to China? Which, yeah, it’s absolutely fascinating.

Jared Brock: For my first book I actually went to North Korea. I was part of the first tourist delegation that visited for New Year’s. That’s my dubious claim to fame.

Mark Sayers: Wow!

Jared Brock: And, one of the things that just struck me was, Billy Graham’s wife, Ruth, she grew up in Pyongyang. She grew up in North Korea. It used to be this beautiful, evangelical place. I think it was one in 10 Pyongyang citizens went to an evangelical church every Sunday and you talk about it in your book, in Reappearing Church, how Kim Il-Sung’s father was a Presbyterian. I’m just praying that somehow… The Kim dynasty is a formidable force against all odds and my prayer for Kim Jong-un is that he actually just rediscovers the faith of his forefathers.

Mark Sayers: Wow, yeah.

Jared Brock: Okay. Two questions left. Okay, so, Reappearing Church, your new book. You are so much more hopeful than I am, I live in Canada, where they’re literally passing secularism bills. But both you and I love to travel to sites of revival for fun and you’ve said, in your new book, that ‘revival is renewal gone viral’. That is the Tweet of the century. Can you explain the process of how revival can happen in the church and can you also talk to us about the ‘death ground’ and ‘being pickles for Jesus’.

Mark Sayers: Yes. Yeah, so first of all, I think that the reason that I’m more hopeful is, because things are looking worse. Now that sounds completely counter-intuitive, but I think as I read religious history, I began to see that it’s at those exact moments, where, like, this is so hopeless and maybe this answer will sort of encapsulate all of this. But, when things are so hopeless, when we can’t do anything about it, I think particularly the American church, which is so pro-active and activist and resource rich. There’s a temptation, when you have all of that at your finger tips to still rely on your human strength. It’s very tempting. When you get to the point where you’re like, man… My state government is similar to what you’ve spoken of in Canada. I live in the most progressive state, passing bills which are not Christian friendly at all. I look at all that and I have no idea how to change this and I know good, faithful men and women of Christ who are trying to change things in the political sphere.

Mark Sayers: I just think that there is this push which is coming, which is unstoppable. And whether it’s that stuff, whether it’s just a straight up, pleasure driven consumerism, whether it’s authoritarian China, there are so many fault lines in the contemporary world that then as I started to look at the Revival history it’s at exactly those moments when God did something, when you’re like, we are completely gone.

Mark Sayers: Almost like just saying it straight, we’re absolutely stuffed, that’s the moment when God turns up. But the process of that and the concept behind renewal going viral and turning into revival is, as I also studied in history, I wrote that, that happened in miniature in people. Martyn Lloyd-Jones said basically, ‘revival happens when men and women get to the end of themselves’. You see this, throughout Christian history, someone who is just broken down and then God does this personal renewal in them, they discover something. It’s almost like those diamonds, the pressure in their personal life is a metaphor for what’s happening in the culture. And a diamond is produced in that person’s life. But then actually it grows.

Mark Sayers: I used in the book, Charles Simeon example, who was at Cambridge in the 18th Century. Just the opposition the guy faced, even just in his personal life, in his church. That then is translated into this wider social dynamic, where he gathers with a smaller group of Christian leaders but then those leaders go out and play this part in the symphony of what God was doing, renewal, all throughout the world. In a sense, all over the world, through the architecture of the British Empire which God turns on its head and uses it for good when it’s being used for some nefarious purposes. There’s this sense that at moments like this the personal crises that people listening might be going through reframing that and saying, hang on, what if God wants to produce a diamond in that pressure and what if all across the world God is producing diamonds?

Mark Sayers: And one of the things I prayed about a year ago was, God, as I travel around the world, show me who are people who you’re actually using for your next renewal and revival. The holy, the hungry, the humble. I’m seeing this thing that people are going through and part of what God’s done with me in the last little bit is saying to these people, hey, you know that actually I just met someone two weeks ago in another country, and another continent whose experience is exactly yours and something is happening.

Mark Sayers: So, I feel like a little bit of my role at the moment is just to say to people, hang on, something’s happening. The emails… The way God’s used This Cultural Moment has just taken both me and John Mark by surprise. The amount of emails where literally people come up and go, you said something I thought no one else was saying. There are so many people downloading that thing it’s not about the content, it’s actually about the dream that God wants to do in his next thing. He’s just used us to just name it.

Jared Brock: I 100% agree. So I’m such a tech early ditcher, I had Netflix when it was DVD only and then got rid of it. I had podcast, I had iTunes when Mark Driscoll announced he was going to start a broadcast. But I ditched podcasting and the only reason I re-downloaded iTunes is because I had four different pastors tell me, have you listened to This Cultural Moment? You have to listen to This Cultural Moment. It’s unbelievable.

Jared Brock: Okay, so we’re going to get to the last question in a second, but really quick. Death ground and being Pickles for Jesus?

Mark Sayers: Yes. So, death ground is a concept which really comes from Sun Tzu, who’s the classic Chinese sage of strategy and war. And he said that when you get your troops to fight on death ground, which is basically where they’ve only got one option which is to fight or die and that’s the best way to win a battle. But you can win a battle with a smaller amount of troops if you’re on death ground. I realized that, increasingly with faith, particularity the next generation, is on death ground. Unless you’re really in this, you’re going to leave and cultural Christianity doesn’t exist on death ground. So, in a sense, we can’t control the environment that people are living out their faith but, in a sense, I have this feeling that through us being put culturally into death ground, that actually God’s going to use that to create new life.

Mark Sayers: This concept of fermenting, that the early church fermented and there’s this sense that as you guide yourself and as we stay in the hidden places and God works in us in humbleness that there’s an increasing fermentation process which grows in strength. If you think about a pickle. You take a pickle and you put it in a jar and you put it in a dark place. And it’s in salt and, in a sense, what happens is, it’s actually dying to itself but in the dying to self the process of fermentation, actually we now know, releases these good bacteria. It’s similar to what scripture says, ‘seed has to grow underground to die to produce many seeds’.

Mark Sayers: Through this process of fermentation, that dying to self, produces the vital bacteria that our guts need for a healthy system. So I’m wondering where this process of pressure that so many people feel they’re going through, that churches feel they’re going through, denominations, Christian organizations. That actually through that process of dying to self, when we do that in a humble, holy and hidden way, actually God is going to release life giving bacteria into the system of the church and the world.

Jared Brock: I think we’ve got a ripe opportunity for some good hipster millennial examples, like we could use kombucha, we could use sauerkraut, we could use sourdough bread. I think Jesus would be preaching about sourdough if He was alive right now.

Mark Sayers: Totally.

Jared Brock: Folks that have been listening, Reappearing Church is the book we’re talking about today. I blazed through it, but I’m actually going to re-read it because Mark recommends that you read it with a small group of people. He calls it a ‘renewal cell’. And so, my wife and I are prayerfully considering who we’re going to read it through slowly with. I’m encouraging all of you to please buy some copies. Discern through your reading cell, your renewal cell could be for this book. It is a vital book. If you read one book this year besides the Bible, please make it Reappearing Church.

Jared Brock: Okay, Mark, last question. Last but no least. And this one is totally personal. But you and I share a deep connection with the nation of Wales. My wife and I, we have spent the last four winters overlooking the site where the 1904 Revival started with Evan Roberts and we’re actually applying for a two year visa to go and volunteer with Youth on the West Coast. And, what’s interesting is, for listeners who know anything about the 1904 Revival, it lit the nation on fire, one in ten people got saved. It was absurd but the town that we’re in, Cardigan, the Revival actually skipped over it. It hit all the towns around it and it missed Cardigan. And, so we really want to help these teens develop deep spiritual foundations so then they can go out and be missionaries to the world really. We want to contend for Revival in a place where it actually hasn’t happened before.

Jared Brock: So, my question for you Mark, is, what do you think the future holds for Christianity in males specifically and what should wealth churches and Jesus followers be focusing on right now?

Mark Sayers: It’s really interesting for me, my mum did our family history. And, Australia’s a funny place in a sense that everyone comes here, whether you’re migrants or part of the whole convict experience and forgets where you’ve come from. So strange that I have this reset button on history. But when mum did the family tree, she discovered that we were convicts… And people outside of Australia don’t always understand that but in a sense it was really-

Jared Brock: Penal colony, yeah.

Mark Sayers: A penal colony. But a lot of them were just poor people. We basically arrived in Australia at this incredible place, a place called Port Arthur which was this Pentonville-style prison. The sort of prison that Foucault talked about of surveillance and all this stuff. You’re given a number, not a name. The wardens would have cloth on their feet, so you couldn’t hear humans. They’d preach the gospel while not being able to look at other people in this bizarre church where it has these shutters on each side. So you go there, and it’s quite a dark place.

Mark Sayers: My great, great, great, great-grandmother was a Welsh servant girl who got pregnant, threw the baby in the river. So this bizarre thing of this land that thrown out of coming here. I have this real sense, and I felt this in the UK when I was there in May, that with Brexit and Britain almost losing its political and economic power in a sense. And almost being humbled, and some would say humiliated in a way. But what if God actually uses those spiritual connections of the British Empire, but actually makes them in an equal and returning way?

Mark Sayers: I got to be prayed for by a Nigerian bishop when I was in England who talked about the fact that Britain sent out the good news, but now Nigerians are coming back and bringing back the good news. I saw yesterday, online, in Singapore, that a church in Singapore has actually bought a seminary in Wales and is going to reset it because they’re so committed to that Welsh Revival as part of their history. They want to give back.

Mark Sayers: I just think that there’s something particularly… Renewal always comes from the peripheries. I think of of Britain and I think of the Hebridean Revival, which is as far north as you can get. I think of the Revivals that happened in places like Coleraine in Northern Ireland. I just have this real sense that God’s going to particularly use the peripheries of the United Kingdom. And he’s going to use people coming back from other parts of the Commonwealth.

Mark Sayers: So just hearing your story, it’s absolutely fascinating to me that just another tick in what God is doing there. And I now Wales is one of the more unreached places at the moment, but again the example I give in the book is that, often when the water goes out and seems like it’s not coming back in, at some point the wave’s going to come back in. And, I just wonder whether we’re going to see some restarting of fires that we saw earlier. So, I’m excited to hear your guy’s journey as part of that and would love to see Wales again resound to the sound of hymns in its hills.

Jared Brock: Yeah, one thing that I learned a few years ago that I thought was so fascinating, was Sam Walton, when he started Walmart, he decided that they would not go to a New York City or a Chicago or an L.A. until they had taken the countryside. So their strategy for the first decade was just small town, small town, small town. So that by the time he landed in a New York City, they landed with a massive footprint, and they effectively took over the country.

Jared Brock: I know, This Cultural Moment is totally targeted at the Melbourne’s, at the big metropolitan’s. But, we know the world is becoming more and more citified and I wonder if God isn’t going to use these country teenagers who are going to get lit on fire to then go off to uni in a London or an Oxford or a Paris and light the cities on fire, so- do it again, Lord.

Mark Sayers: I agree. Yeah, yeah. I think that there’s been a lot of conversation with Cultural Moment, just reading again, I mentioned this Empire of Democracy book I was just reading last night. And just seeing that I think one of the great unspoken divides is between city and country and country is, in a sense, being left behind, in many ways. But I think you’re right. That makes it even more ripe for renewal.

Jared Brock: Well, Mark, my wife and I, like the Apostle Paul writing to the Philippians, every time we think of you we give thanks to our God and thank you for everything you’re doing to speak the truth in this post-truth moment and thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. I really appreciate it.

Mark Sayers: Ah, it was absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much.

Jared Brock: Okay, friends and family, we have lots to do and lots to become. First things first, please go and download every single episode of This Cultural Moment, read Disappearing Church to lay the groundwork, then read Reappearing Church with a small group and grab copies of pretty much all of Mark’s other books. Send me the receipt at jaredbrock.com for free goodies. Follow Mark on Instagram @marksayers, on Twitter @sayersmark. His podcasts can be found at thisculturalmoment.com and thelivingtemple.org. For everything else head to marksayers.co.

Jared Brock: Thank you so much for listening and until the next time you creep my phone conversations know that you are loved. Shalom.

Like this? Please share so others can grow, too.