Brian Sanders (Founder of the Underground Network)

The episode you're about to listen to was released back when the Mere Christians podcast was called the Call to Mastery. Now, if you love Mere Christians, you're still going to love these older episodes because the majority of each conversation focuses on how the gospel influences the work of our guests. With that disclaimer out of the way, please enjoy the episode. Hey, everybody. Welcome to the Call to Mastery. I'm Jordan Raynor. This is a podcast for Christians who want to do their most exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. Each week, I host a conversation with the Christian who's pursuing world class mastery of their craft. We talk about their path to mastery and their daily habits and how the Gospel of Jesus Christ influences their work. Guys, today's episode is a dynamite one. I'm talking to Brian Sanders. He's the founder of the Underground Network, an incredibly innovative ministry that is now operating in 17 cities and seven countries. Brian and I talked about his freeing approach to calling, outlined in his terrific book, the Six Seasons of Calling. We talked about how we can think about eternal in three stages of rest, reward, and reigning. And finally, we talked about why it's so essential that we believers not, quote, unquote, lose the plot of redemption and why we do what we do. Trust me, you guys are gonna love this episode with Brian Sanders. Brian, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, Jordan. Good to be here, man.

We've got an unbelievable number of mutual friends. We both live in Tampa. How in the world is this the first time we're meeting?

Because you're elusive, man. That's why.

It is. This reputation I've earned is like this elusive guy around town. I kind of dig it. I kind of dig it, but not if it keeps you from meeting awesome people like Brian Sanders. So, hey, I was mentioning before we start recording, my assistant, who doesn't rave about many things. She's very even keel. It's something I really respect about her. She has been raving about your book, the six Seasons of Calling. What's the core premise of this book? Because I want to unpack it a little bit, but I want to set the table for our listeners.

I guess the idea is maybe behind it all is just that we probably have this erroneous idea that calling is something that happens maybe once in our life, that we have a sense that this is what I'm meant to do, this is my vocation or something. Maybe that's not the case, that maybe our calling evolves over time. And I'm making the argument that it's certainly More than one of these events, one of these kind of watershed crisis and discovery events. And my taxonomy is that there's about six of them or that they occur every 12 years or so in a normal developmental cycle of the Christian life. So I'd say that's maybe the baseline idea.

I love this so much because I completely agree. I don't think calling is static. I think it's dynamic. And I think when you see it through that lens, I think it takes a lot of the pressure out of discerning the right thing. Right. Have you seen that with readers? Has the pressure kind of eased a little bit here?

It's twofold, isn't it? Imagine the pressure that you feel when you're 22, 23 years old, and you're thinking, what am I meant to do with the whole of my life? You barely can understand the next six months. That's a lot of pressure to put on somebody. What mark are you going to make in the world? Can you have clarity on the trajectory of the fullness of your life? And then also when we hit a crisis in our mid-30s or late-40s or 60 or something, then what are we meant to do with that? When we actually feel like we're 23 again and we actually feel like life is starting over in some ways, your kids leave the house, or you're meant to feel like something's maybe wrong with you because essentially you're beginning again with that crisis of identity and. Exactly. Part of what I'm arguing is that's perfectly normal and healthy. And if you can embrace it, it can result in a kind of new dawn in your life, a fresh awakening to who you are and to what God's called you to.

Yeah, I touched on this idea, the dynamic nature of calling in my book Master of One, but you've taken it to an entirely different level, which I love. I think a lot of Christians view calling the way that Hollywood views romantic love as if there is this one Mr. Right in the world. There's only one thing God created us to do, but he has kept it a secret, and we are on a wild goose chase trying to find that magical one thing. What would you say to that line of thinking that I think is implicit in a lot of corners of the church right now?

And maybe in some ways, you know, romantic love is a good metaphor because it's not to diminish that catalytic moment where you fall in love with somebody. It's the beginning of a relationship. Right. But you don't even know what you don't know at that point. You know, I was reading the other day, John 16 again where Jesus says, it's really cool, this line that stood out to me, something like, I have much more to say to you, more than you can bear, but when the spirit of truth comes, he'll guide you in all truth. So like he was basically saying, guys, there's so much more stuff I want to tell you and teach you, but you just can't handle it right now. Like where you are in your life and understanding who I am. And so much hasn't happened yet to you that I just can't tell you all of that now. And the person I was when I was 20 and the person I was when I was 30, of course you're meant to grow. You're meant to discover new things about God, about yourself, about the world. You're meant to deepen your character. And so it's not that you're a totally different person, but you are being conformed into the image of Jesus. And so you look more, hopefully you look more and more like Him. And that means that the way in which he delivers your calling to you is what you can bear, it's what you can understand. But hopefully you will. More of that will be revealed. So in a sense, calling changes with the changes of our lives. It changes with maybe the old idea of sanctification, that you actually become more like Jesus. So you're capable of greater levels of obedience, greater levels of trust, I guess, and some assignment in the world.

Yeah. And maybe growing more into the image of the work that we're going to be doing on the new Earth. I've never thought about it in that context. Right. But as we age and we get closer to that thing, I don't know, who knows, we know there's work on the new earth when heaven comes to Earth. Isaiah 65, maybe that's a part of this process is getting closer as to what that work is that King Jesus is going to allow us to do for his glory.

I think that's a profound idea. It's like, I think it was Mike Bickle that said this life is just a 70 year internship.

That's so good.

But I mean, if you think of it that way, and it is an argument I make for day seven, essentially death or, you know, leaving this world, moving into the next, that we have been promised some things obviously rest is a part of that idea of like the last.

Yeah.

You know, but also reward and then reign. Like this future work which you're alluding to. That and maybe the whole entire thing was just preparation for that, you know? So if that's true, it is growth and development. It's not just trying to get out the bad and trying to become more holy or be less sinful, but it's actually preparing us for something creative.

Yeah, man, that rest, reward, reign framework, that's dynamite. But that's it, right? That's kind of the arc that we see of eternity. There's present heaven where believers who are in Christ Jesus are going to rest until Jesus brings heaven to earth, where we will receive all of our work, all of our actions will be judged and rewarded. I think a lot of people view Revelation 21 and 22 as the end, but it's just the beginning.

Right?

Right. Because Revelation 22:5 says we are going to reign forever and ever alongside Jesus the king, anyways. Yeah, that'll fuel our hope. All right, back to calling. We're getting off base on one of my favorite side trails. I love this. Let's be real explicit. What are the six seasons of calling as you've outlined in this book?

Yeah, so, I mean, because I was looking at most of my experience is with people pursuing some sort of missional idea or missional identity and just watching that over time change and evolve with them. And so the first two are easy. Zero to 12 is childhood. There's a lot of, obviously there's a lot of a whole body of work and research on early childhood development. And 12 is a pretty easy turning point for us because of puberty and so on. And even in Jewish culture and ideology, 12 is know, turning point toward adulthood and, and then adolescence. A lot of work has been done on adolescent development and understanding that about from about 12 to 24, from puberty to about 24, there's a lot of changes happening. We're talking about the formation of the prefrontal cortex. And our brains aren't finished forming really until about 24, 25 years old. So those are easier. And there's a lot of work done in understanding how we grow and change and develop through those two, what I would call days, those two seasons, you know, 0, 12, 12, 24. But less work has been done, I think, in terms of adult development. And so if you keep on that pathway. So I would say the calling that God has on a child is simply to be a child. It may be the only time in our lives, 0 to 12, when what you are is all you're really meant to be. And I make an argument for that, both biblically, but also socio Psychological, developmentally, whatever. And then the adolescent. The job of an adolescent is really to be a student. So day one is about a call to be a child. Day two is a call to learn about the world, to test it, to push back, to try to understand the world in which we live. Then I would say early career 24 to 36, I would call that a call to be a servant, to learn, to be a team player, to come under someone else's vision, to discover as much as you can about yourself, actually. So if the student is learning about the world, our 20s is about discovering what we can and can't do, what our skill set is, what our personality is, what we do well, what we do poorly. And I would argue just try everything, you know?

Yeah, yeah, totally. Yes. Experiment widely.

Experiment widely and don't feel the pressure to be the boss, you know, yet. And in some ways, we. In terms of the Christian story, we probably rushed people too soon into primary leadership, and we're paying the price for that. You know, we have a lot of cautionary tales right now. Yeah. For people who were rushed into leadership in their early twenties, and their character was not forged in a season of serving. So I would say that third day 24 to 36, is really about serving. Yeah. And then you'll appreciate this, Jordan. But that call to create that day four, 36 to 48, I think, is really like, probably like a high watermark for our careers. It may be a point where we really figure something out that we're. We were a part of an agency, an organization, an enterprise. We have problems with it. You know, we think this should change or could be better in some way, and that becomes our moment where we maybe step out a little bit or we do create something. We bring something in the world that didn't exist before and wouldn't exist were it not for us in some way. It doesn't have to be a big thing. So it'd be a company or a ministry or something. It could be, you know, a book that's written or curriculum or a group that started in a neighborhood or something, but something truly unique and creative that only you could do and bring into the world. And then day five, you know, 48 to 60, I would say, is about the call to be a mentor. So child, student, servant, maker, mentor. So day five, then, is about you kind of step out of the middle a little bit. You're less interested in being the boss and being the one driving, but you have created something. You have brought something in the world, and you want to sort of see that given away and the wisdom that's discovered. And then the last day, day six. I use the word mystic. Somebody with one foot in the next world and in this world. And their focal point becomes smaller. They have a smaller group of people that they invest in. It's kind of like day six of creation, where God makes human beings in his own image. Not to stretch the metaphor, but we look for a smaller group of people to pass on who we are.

Yeah. It's the passing of baton.

It is the passing of batonic. And a preparation of our own hearts for eternity, for that next beginning that we talked about. Yeah, yeah. I love it.

I love in the book, you marvel at the fact that God took His time creating in those first six days. What do you think this means? What do you make of this, Brian?

Whatever we think about the first chapter of Genesis, first few chapters of Genesis. Yeah. Whether those are literal days or metaphorical days or whatever, it wasn't instantaneous, right?

Yes. God paced himself. That's a wild idea.

And he wanted, for some reason to layer one piece of creation upon another. And I'm not a biologist, you know, so maybe there's some sort of significance there. But I think probably for people like you and me just to look at God not only taking his time, but being deliberate about what I would call development, saying, I want this sort of world to exist. I'm going to take these steps, I'm going to move in these periods of time to get to that final end point or really to create a world for human beings, for my offspring. And so the last thing it creates, of course, is us. But he has slowly made this world for us, and then he rests. And presumably when he puts his image in us, he'll appreciate this, Jordan. We carry that creative intent. Maybe that's even what it means to be made in his image. Yeah.

I know a lot of scholars who would say that's exactly what it means to be made in this image. Basically, up until Genesis 1:26, when God says, let us make mankind in our image. We know one thing about the image of God. He makes stuff.

Right? Right.

He creates. Right. So to be made in the image of God is to be made to be creative and to make more of this world than what we started with. Right. I thought this is really interesting. You call it the primary developmental threat in your later years is this fear of obscurity. And I think every human, not just in your 60s and 70s, I think every human being fears this. Maybe every adult. I don't think kids fear this, but you know, dying in their work, not outliving them. Right. How have you thought about this person? Like, how can God's word help you, help our listeners deal with this very real, very human fear?

Maybe it goes back to what calling really implies. For me at least to believe in something like calling, to say that there's such a thing. It first implies that there is one who calls. You know, this has almost become a secular idea, calling, but it's ours, right? It's rooted in mysticism, actually. To have heard a voice, you know, a vocation is rooted in the mystery of God speaking over a person's life and saying, this is what I've made you for. And we understand it to some degree having to do with purpose and significance and maybe fulfillment. Do your calling, you'll feel fulfilled in some way, job satisfaction. But actually the first connotation of calling is just that you're known by God. If I shout out one of my kids names in the house, it's because I know them. It's because I have this deep relationship with them. I know them by name, but yes, it means they're meant to come to me. The first connotation of calling is to come to him and to be in relationship with him. And so I think as we go through these sort of crisis and identity crises throughout the course of our lives and come back to him, return essentially to that core idea that I'm called by him because I'm known by him, because I'm loved by him, because he wants me for himself first and then, yeah, there's something for me to do. There's an assignment that he has for me that only I can do in the world. So if you think of it, Jordan, that way, to me, the two deepest longings of the human heart are to be known and loved and to have purpose. We want intimacy and we want significance and calling gives us both. But if you don't first have that draw from the well of intimacy that God knows me, he wants me, he has something for me to do. If you rush ahead too quickly to the idea of like, what is my purpose or what can I do in the world that makes me significant, then I think you lose the plot a little bit. And later in life it becomes more important the purpose, more important the work, more important the assignment, than it does that core relationship. And again, as you come closer to your own death, to walking from this life into the next, intimacy matters more even because you realize I'm about to receive my reward and Actually, my reward is Jesus himself. It is to look into his eyes. It's to be face to face with the one that knows me and has walked with me through the whole of my life, who's been my best and purest and truest friend. This is what I have lived for, is essentially this moment. It is union. It can only be summed up in Revelation as a marriage. You know, is that the deepest of all intimacy that we know. So I think obscurity is a threat to us in part because it muddies that water. It obscures even the idea that. That our whole reason for existing is union with God. Not to do cool things or perform or whatever.

Yeah. But it's the source of that relationship, that identity, being with God first, before we get an assignment, before we get work to do. I love this. I've mentioned this before in the podcast, just seeing this in the baptism of Jesus, right? Jesus comes out of the water, says, this is my son, in whom I'm well pleased. There's the identity. You are my child. Now you've got some work to do, right? Go kick off this big public ministry, working all the way to the cross, Right? But it's the identity first that enabled that work to begin. Right?

And I think even part of the case I'm making in the book is that these discoveries that we make at each stage of life, these sense of calling, like a calling to be a child, actually, and then a calling to be a learner, a student, we don't lose those. We don't trade those in for the next one in the next season, that we build upon them. They're cumulative. Right, so that's exactly right. That if we learned in our early years that we are a child, you never lose that. You keep that with you through the whole of your life. But if you didn't, if there's some sort of developmental breakdown there, that, in a way it inhibits every other form of development. So Jesus knew he was a son, a child. And you never lose that. It stays with you all of your life to be a child of God, a son or a daughter of God. And then, yeah, you learn to be a learner, a student in your adolescent years, but you never lose that. You always are a student. And then you learn to be a servant in your early career, but you're never meant to give that help. You don't trade that in for to become the boss or the CEO or whatever. You keep that servant identity. So each of them, in a sense, they build upon each other and they Become necessary for the next revelation of your own character development. And maybe your calling, which the baptism of Jesus, I just think is what a poignant vignette that is for precisely that idea that Jesus knew, even as he went into his creative moment in life, that he was just a son.

It's almost like these callings compound. It's the power of compound interest applied to call. Right. Like, it's super interesting. I do think, though, I think a lot of people, once a child, always a child. I think that can get muddy, though. It can be easy to be going day in, day out doing quote unquote, the work of the Lord and lose sight of being a child of God.

Right.

Like, how do you maintain this identity? I mean, legally, obviously, we never lose our identity as children of God. That's not what I'm saying. But how do you cultivate the experience of sonship day in, day out and reminder that you are first and foremost a child of God?

I make the argument in that first day that the big developmental concept is play. That a play researcher that said that play is essentially the only thing that human beings do where the point is just Joy. Yeah.

Stuart Brown. Dr. Stuart Brown.

Right. Okay, thank you. There you go. So I think later on in life we still play in quotes, but maybe there are other points like winning or succeeding or whatever, fitness or something like that. And maybe there's a clue there to the renewal of our sense of sonship, daughtership, childhood, childlike faith. To stay connected to the kingdom as a child is to still keep Joy as a target. I don't. I don't. That's probably a poor way to say it, but not just to play, but to look for joy. Because a child isn't trying to win. They're not trying to be the best. They're not trying to compete where someone loses and put someone down. They want to interact with the world in a way that gives them a sense of wonder and joy. And maybe that's what the way you keep that heart is, to be playful, to continue to have a sense of joy, to be with people in our life of prayer, with God. Obviously it's not just have a hobby or something. It's probably something deeper than that. So. And I'm going to be honest with you, Jordan, this would not be a strength of mine.

So that's why I'm asking the question. That's exactly what I'm asking, because we went deep on this with my friend Kristen, Joy Taylor here on the podcast a few weeks ago. Like, I'm Terrible at this. There are very few things in my life that I do for the pure joy of doing them. Everything is intentional, everything is purposeful. And I don't think that's healthy.

Right, right, right.

Spoiler alert. And so, yeah, no, I'm unpacking this and trying to understand how other people are doing this because, number one, I think this is important to really accept experience what it's like being a child of God. But I also think it's pretty important to doing our most exceptional work. I think it's hard to be truly world class at what we do if there's no just totally purposeless fun.

And there's that research about happiness that is kind of coming to the fore right now that there's this kind of U curve that people are happiest. The research of Andrew Oswald and others where people are happiest when they're young. So, you know, late teens, we register our highest levels of personal happiness. And then when we're old, essentially it's a U curve. It's a downward facing U curve. And we're our saddest selves at the height of our careers, our highest earning potential at our highest creative moment, you know, where we're actually doing something that maybe we've built up to have a sense of significance or place or whatever in the world. That's when we're the least happy. So it's a little bit tragic, actually, and maybe it's something to do with a broken American dream or something. But maybe you and I are both confessing to each other here that we have been there in that, the bottom of that U curve. You're driven by something, and that's a good thing. And you're creating something, you're building something, and that's a good thing. But we do lose sight of maybe the joy and wonder. And maybe we have an overdeveloped sense of our own significance at that point in life. And so we take on too much, too much responsibility. And a child doesn't probably feel that way. And older people don't either. They let go of that. They stop thinking that they are the center of the world, at the center of the universe. And older people can manage joy and pain at the same time. When we're in our midlife, we tend to think we have to eliminate pain, we have to eliminate suffering to create happiness, that they're mutually exclusive realities. But the truth is, I think one of the things that people who are older discover is you always carry a little bit of sadness in you, but you can also look at the world with wonder and joy and those things can happen simultaneously. That happiness stuff is a little bit daunting. So if you figured out Jordan, I'll let you know.

Yeah, that's exactly right now. Yeah, no, it's really good. I do think part of this is related to this over overinflated sense of self and purpose. I talked a little bit about this in my last book, Redeeming youg Time. Like we would never explicitly say this, but I think implicitly we tell ourselves, well, God created this work for me to do and so he needs me to do it. Right? And that's a lie, right? Like God doesn't need any specific person to do any specific work. If I die and the things on my to do list aren't his to do list, he's going to complete them with or without me. And as I meditate on that, I find a lot of freedom and can approach the work in a more life giving way, knowing that it's a response of worship. And yes, I'm contributing to his plans to renew creation, but if I don't finish the job, that is more than okay because he's going to have to redeem and perfect everything I do anyways.

Right. There's a guy called James Cars who wrote a book that no one read called Finite and Infinite Games. And then Simon Sinek popularized it. He just wrote a book called the Infinite Game. But Carson's idea is that human beings do play these two kinds of games. Finite games are like, you know, checkers or football or something. They have rules, they have boundaries. It's clear how to win, you know who your opponent is. It has a beginning and an end. Those are finite games. But he says we also play infinite games. Infinite games don't have clear rules. They don't have necessarily a beginning or an end. The goal of a finite game is to win, to defeat your opponent, whatever. The goal of an infinite game is to simply play, to simply keep playing. And something like the gospel or the kingdom or church or the Christian life, these are infinite games. This is the infinite game, you know? Yeah, I think the older you get, the more you realize, oh, I'm a part of something that started well before me, it will go on well after me. God is in full control of Himself, his people. I get to play a part. It's not that purpose is like the whole world is hanging in this deep, profound sense of responsibility in my calling, but it's that I am privileged to play a part. I get to be handed you know, an assignment within this great theater, this great drama of the unfolding of the story of God in the world over time. So I am important. It's a paradox, isn't it? There is a part that only I can play. There are lines in this script that only I can say, but the story will go on. You know, you can say your lines or not say your lines, but this play will unfold for the world to see either way. And so you are significant. You do have a part to play, but at the same time, you're not as significant as you think. And actually, God's story started well before us, and it will go on well after us. And his church is going to be okay, and his justice will reign eventually, and goodness will triumph and all of that. So also letting go, I think where we go wrong, Jordan, I'm sure you probably agree in the church and Christian leadership and stuff is we play a finite game. We turn the church into a finite game where I'm trying to win or be better than some other ministry or have a bigger church or more significance or whatever. Success in some earthly terms, metrics, whatever.

Yeah, yeah. No, it's so good. And I think when we get lost in that bigger story, then the role that I play in the story, right, the part I get to play is less important. Sheryl Sandberg, when she was COO of Facebook, used to say this all the time to new talent, right. When they were recruiting talent at Facebook. Check. Listen. When you are asked to hop on a rocket ship, right, you don't ask which seat, you just get on the rocket ship. Because we're going to the moon, right? I think it's the same thing with the kingdom of God. Jesus has drafted us all into service of cultivating the eternal kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. The part we get to play, who cares, right? Who cares? Just get in the game and make a choice as to what that calling is going to be in this season of life and get working. So Brian is super helpful. Hey, I want to talk a little bit more about your work. You were the executive director for the Underground Network for a while. Which season of calling was this for you?

Yeah, good question. So obviously, I see my own story in this as well. And I was a part of a parachurch college ministry for my 20s and early 30s, and that was good for me to learn to have a supervisor and to be a part of a big organization. And I'm critical by nature, so I would see things I disagree with. But to play my Part anyway, to still be a team member, to learn, to submit before I lead and that kind of thing. I was still planting things and starting things because that's maybe a thread of calling through the course of my life, but then to sort of step out to look at the church and to say there are certain things about the way the church was done that I just felt weren't right. So at some point you realize that you're complaining about. It doesn't really do anything. It doesn't honor God. No one listens anyway. So I think it's around your mid-30s where you realize, well, you're a grown person, do what you think is right. Why don't you start something else? So the underground comes out of that, and it is exactly a day for creative endeavor. It's. It's essentially to step out of, of the existing kind of ecclesial landscape and to try something else to experiment. And so the underground is my day for creative contribution to the world. But I'm day five now, right. I'm 49. So I would say I just stepped into this day five, 48 to 60. And it's interesting that right around 48, I felt like I need to give this away to a younger team of leaders and I just need to move out of central leadership. And so I did that. And I went to Europe for a couple years and have entrusted a really amazing group of young leaders to take on the underground. I have other work that I'm doing now which is really more in line with that mentor day where I'm taking some of what I learned and discovered through my career so far and trying to multiply that essentially to share that with others. So, yeah, I mean, it does mirror my own story. Yeah, I love it.

Give us the 32nd overview of what is the underground network, Brian?

I mean, the underground is an experiment in church. If you were to have a bias towards mission, towards empowerment, and you were to think of the church as essentially a network of autonomous, smaller missional enterprises, or what we would call microchurches. So, I mean, the platform itself is an incubator for microchurches and a network for called people to start small expressions of the church and then to link those small expressions of the church together in a family, a network of microchurches. And as an approach, that idea is gaining traction not as a franchise or as a model, but just that idea of kind of decentralizing the church in some way, I'd say that's become interesting. Even traditional legacy bigger churches are taking a good hard look at that. Which I think is the right thing to do.

Well, yeah, I mean, because you guys have achieved some impressive scale, right? The underground network has what you guys call movement hubs in 17 cities, seven countries. How did you do that? How did you guys figure this out? This fairly unique model of ministry, we.

Had the courage to just start over, you know, to start from scratch. Most church innovation or change is incremental. It's transitional change. It's essentially we start with an inherited system and you try to affect modular change within it. I'm sure you know a bit about change management. That is one way to approach change management, modular, incremental. And I would say in the 20th century that was probably the primary mode of change was transitional, incremental, modular change. Because you had essentially more of a stable environment in the 20th century. And so that's how change works. The diplomat is the change agent in the 21st century that is just less and less tenable to change that way because the externalized change in the world is too fast, it's too rapid, so you have to be more radical instead of modular. And the startup has an advantage. So the startup can go from scratch and say, okay, what are our values? What are our founding principles? Releasing yourself from a certain economic model, everything can fit conceptually in with a brand new model. And so I'd say we had that advantage. You just start off and say, okay, if you wanted to build a church, form a full, comprehensive ecclesial structure that had a bias towards mission and empowerment and define the church as something small which could belong into the hands of ordinary Christians and leaders. There wasn't a clergy, laity divide, that kind of thing. If you wanted to free up the economic model so that you could plant cheaper, smaller, autonomous little churches, then what would you do and how would you build it? What staff would you hire? So we asked all those questions and it's early form, I often say the underground is like Netscape Navigator, you know, in 1998 or so. I mean, where even is Netscape Navigator? You know, it's gone. But it was like the first way to get on the Internet and it was useful to build out better web browsers. And I think and believe, I really believe that we're going to see the Chrome and the Edge and Firefox of the future. The church is going to do this better than we did. But it breaks open something to say you can reform the church from scratch comprehensively. That's probably the advantage we had. I feel a lot of respect even for people that are trying to change church and institutional systems, inherited systems. It's really hard. I mean, really, really hard. It takes herculean effort and a lot of time. And so I probably just didn't have the patience for that. But you know, some people may and good for them. And I would want to be supportive of anybody trying to see the evolution and reformation of the church, which by the way, happens in every generation. It's not just us that's going through this.

Yeah.

Every generation of believers has to take a look at the inherited form of the church they've been given, look at the scriptures, look at the Bible with fresh eyes and open hearts, look at the culture in which they're contextualizing the kingdom and start again. Every generation, I think is meant to do that.

Yeah. But no, I love this and I think this is a lesson for church leaders. But any leader of any organization, right, Just two diametrically opposed models of change. This modular form and this radical form. I do think it's interesting to think about like startups for maybe one of the first times, maybe the only time in history, I don't know well enough, like have a unique advantage. For centuries it's been a disadvantage to be nimble and scrappy and whatever, but that's actually advantageous in this day and age where radical change is the game of the day.

That's it. Yeah.

Yeah. So you exited your executive director role underground. What are you doing in this next season of life? You touched on it, this idea of mentoring. But what specifically does that look like.

For you with the National Christian Foundation? Trying to help them start what we're calling impact alliances. But this idea of collective impact, pulling together agencies, government, non government, churches, faith communities around certain causes. You have intractable social problems that will only probably can only really be solved by greater levels of collaboration. But the convening of that collaboration is a little bit unclear, like who has the right or power to convene those things. So I'm involved in right now in about nine of these alliances where we're trying to bring to the table siloed, disparate agencies to do strategic planning together, to look at the map together, to share data, to do whatever they can to create higher levels of efficiency and ultimately change, to move the needle in some of these what feel like intractable problems and in turn to release significant funding into those cause areas based on that, those higher levels of collaboration. So that's a very much a day five thing because you have to have a certain perspective. I'm not leading anything. I Just convene, I call meetings, I listen. I am in a place where I can trust the wisdom and the expertise of these people. This is their field, it's not mine. So this idea of like directional, visionary leadership, you can't walk into collaborative environments with those tools. They won't work, you know.

Hey, I love asking guests about their routines. I want to ask you about your reading routines because I've heard for years that the legendary Brian Sanders reads like a book a day. Is this true?

Well, it is and it isn't. Right? I mean it's audiobooks first of all. Although, hey, but still, yeah, yeah, I probably read what, 75 books a year. But yeah, audiobooks. I'm well over 350 to 375 a year.

This is insane to me. This is mind boggling. All right. I got to know, I got to know. I'm all I love and I think our listeners need to know. What's your system for capturing that knowledge and reviewing in the future? Like how do you build a knowledge management system out of all that?

Well, you're going to be disappointed because, I mean, look, I'm a hunter. I am just always looking for killer ideas. So the way I read is more like a search. I go cover to cover. I'm not cheating. I don't go halfway and count a book. If I don't finish a book, I won't count it. But I'm listening for the standout ideas. You'll understand this. Most of what I read is derivative. Like very derivative. There's a lot of conflated ideas. People borrow the same stories, the same research, whatever. But every now and then you get like a truly unique thesis of a book. I love the long form argument. I think that's being lost in our time. Like because of the nature of sound bites and Twitter and so on, we don't have the attention span. I'll read a book on intermittent fasting or something. I was like, I'll give you an entire book to convince me about intermittent fasting. My intention is not to really know that or be able to teach it or something like that. It's just have listened to a long form argument and I'm just looking for those killer ideas. So I do keep a list, a running list of the best ideas. Yeah, if I get one or two ideas out of a book that's good, I'd say that was a good book. Many books you don't get anything. Not because it wasn't nice or fine, but it's just because it's all derivative. It's been said before. Yeah.

So you just have a running list of killer ideas from books. This is fascinating to me. We have radically different approaches to reading. But listen, you're reading a lot more than I am, so I don't know, maybe I need to rethink this.

Well, okay, so you, so you, you drill in more like you really try to integrate or understand what you're reading. Yeah.

I don't know if I've ever talked about this on the podcast, but yeah, I read almost exclusively on Kindle, unless it's an advanced copy of the book like yours that I skimmed and physically highlighted. Right. But yeah, I read on Kindle. It automatically syncs all of my highlights and notes to Evernote, and then I process all those notes. So I wait three weeks until the book is done, because after three weeks, a lot of the things I thought were important when I highlighted in retrospect aren't that important. Right. And I go through and I just review the note and I create permanent notes in my system that are tagged different themes that I'm writing on or will write on in the future. And a lot of it for me, I guess, as a non fiction writer is, yes, a lot of these ideas are repetitive, but the expression of them are very different. And the quotes and the stories that are used to illustrate that point are very different.

Right.

So it's worked for me. But I love the way you approach books.

So the pressure on you then is you have to choose good books to read. Yes.

Oh, oh, 100%. Yes. I am wicked picky about what I read. Yeah.

So if I knew, like, these are going to be the 20 books that are really meaningful, then, yeah, maybe I wouldn't read the rest. But I'm. I'm on this quest anyway, so it's like broad and shallow, I suppose.

Yeah, I get it.

Although maybe about 20 a year stand out to me. Those I buy.

Yeah.

And I do keep them and I relook at them and I'll go back through, but it's almost like the quest to find the ones that are worthy of my shelf, you know? Yeah.

All right, well, this is a good segue. I love wrapping up with these three questions with every interview. Number one, which books do you recommend or gift most frequently?

I'm at meetings here in Dallas and I just bought two copies of Upstream to give to some guys. I really like the Second Mountain. I've probably given that away a couple times. I've given away Systems Thinking for Social Change to people that are trying to understand some of what we're doing with collaboration.

Do you know John Tyson?

I don't know him personally, but yeah, I've read his stuff. Yeah.

John and I were together in Austin a couple weeks ago and he was trying to convince me to read the Second Mountain. Pitch me on the Second Mountain. Why do I need to read this? This is David Brooks, right?

Yeah, but how old are you?

I'm 35.

You don't need it yet.

So you and John, you. You old guys.

Exactly, exactly. No, it's all about where you are in life. And he's looking back to some degree and recognizing some mistakes he's made. And. Yeah, you're still in your zenith, dude. That's. That's it. I am. I am.

Feels like I am. All right, that's good. Those are good recommendations. All right, Brian, you're talking to an audience of Christ followers who are very diverse in terms of what they do vocationally. What they share is a desire to do exceptional work for the glory of God and the good of others. What's one thing you want to leave them with before we sign off?

I just think you have to stay close to the one who knows you and who made you and to not lose your why. I think it's E.M. forster that made a distinction between a story and a plot. And a story is the king died and then the queen died. It's just events. It's a sequence of events. He says, but a plot is the king died and then the queen died of grief. You know, a plot implies why the queen dies because she loves the king. We can do our work and do it well and focus on that, and we should, but to not lose the plot that we are loved known people, that we have an eternal future and that that relationship with Jesus is everything. It might sound simplistic, but stay as close as you can to the heart of God.

It's simplistic, but that's profound. Brian, I want to commend you for the exceptional kingdom work you do. Thank you for leaning into God's calling on your life in various seasons and helping others do the same. And, man, on a personal note, I just gotta thank you publicly for your love of our great community and for making Tampa look a little bit more like the kingdom of God. Guys, the book is called the Six Seasons of Calling. Go pick it up wherever books are sold. Brian, where can people connect with you?

Personally, I'm out there, social media. I'm probably a little more elusive than I once was. I'm becoming more like Jordan Raynor. But, yeah, going underground. Going underground. Post underground.

Well, Brian, thanks again for joining us.

Cool. Thank you, bro.

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