Dr. Mark Shrime (Chief Medical Officer for Mercy Ships)

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How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as customer Service reps, electricians and architects. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to Dr. Mark Schreim. He's the Chief medical officer at Mercy Ships and a lecturer in global health at Harvard Medical School. Dr. Schreim and I recently sat down and had a terrific conversation about how his three appearances on American Ninja Warrior have actually sharpened his skills as a physician. We talked about how the gospel compels him to think differently about checklists inside of the operating room and why he felt he could die happy during a near death experience in his 20s. Trust me, you are not going to want to miss this episode with my.

New friend, Dr. Mark Schreib. Doctor Schreim, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.

Thanks for having me.

I feel like I'm staring in the mirror at a much more handsome version of myself because we just both discovered that, number one, we're wearing the exact same Sony headphones and number two, the exact same pair of Warby Parker glasses with the exact same grain beard.

Right.

Oh my gosh.

The only difference is you have more hair.

I do have a bit more hair. By God's grace alone.

By God's grace alone.

Hey, man. So our listeners just heard me introduce you as the chief medical officer, Mercy Ships. Before we talk about your role, what's Mercy Ships? For those who listen to my episode with Scott Harrison way back in the day. They have a little bit of context here. But.

But tell us what this organization is.

Yeah, Mercy Ships, it's an ngo. It's a non governmental organization. It's a charity, you can tell by the name, runs hospital ships. We deliver surgery, education, training, research from the decks of two hospital ships, both parked on the or docked on either side of the continent of Africa. We have one ship right now in Sierra Leone, which is where I'm currently sitting. And we have another ship in Madagascar. It's been around since 1978. Yeah, and hopefully we'll be around for another 48 years or more.

Help me overcome my ignorance and maybe some of the ignorance of our listeners. Why ship? Why not build a hospital on land? What's the deal with you guys being docked right there on the coast?

There are a couple of reasons for this. First of all, a large proportion, and honestly our stats people would know the exact proportion. But a large proportion of people live within a hundred miles of the coastline anywhere around the world. Secondly, there's definite reasons to build hospitals. Like, I'm not against that at all. But secondly, people, basically everything that we have is self contained within the hospital means we have reliable electricity, reliable oxygen production, reliable suction, all the things that are water, all the things that are necessary to do complex surgery. And that means we can do a lot more complex surgery than in some of the hospitals on land. Not because the surgeons are better or whatever, but simply because our infrastructure is a lot more reliable and a lot more secure.

Interesting. All right, you're chief medical officer. Does that mean you're simply pushing paperwork and running a team all day? I'm assuming you're actually in the or. Take us inside of a day of the life of Mercy ship's chief medical officer.

There is a lot of pushing paper and meetings. I spend, on average, go to one of our ships for about six weeks at a time twice a year. So I try to do six weeks on one shift, six weeks on the other ship. The rest of the time. Yeah, is, you know, it's a. It's an also administrative role. So setting the strategy for our. Our programmatic work for where we're. Where we're going in the future, what we're trying to do, we're really trying to build our education and training. So it's both. I'm on the ships right now, which means most of my days are in the operating room. I just came out of the operating room about two hours ago, and I will be on for another week or so.

And then.

Yeah, back to the. The meetings and the. And the emails. Yeah, I love it.

You were practicing medicine here, here in the United States.

Talk us through the story and the.

Path that led you to the work you're doing today, and take as much time as you'd like, because I'm sure it's a long story. I really want to understand how you got here.

I'll go all the way back to high school. Fundamentally, and I say this a lot, I never wanted to be a doctor. Like, medicine was the furthest from my mind. I wanted to be a linguist. I wanted to be a rock star. But what boy doesn't want to be a rock star?

Hang on. Time out. Time out.

You didn't want to be a doctor. You want to be a linguist.

Have you read When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Copy?

Oh, my gosh. This is his story.

Yeah.

This is Dr. Palantidi's story. Fascinating. All right, continue.

But, you know, I am the firstborn son of an immigrant family, and so firstborn sons of immigrant families, Right? We have three options. Doctor, lawyer, or failure. So I went into medicine, and really, I hated it. I absolutely hated being a doctor. Hated medical school, hated residency. By the time I sort of got to the end of medical school, I really like. I didn't know what specialty I wanted to go into because again, I didn't like anything that I was doing. So I chose, I thought, the specialty that would allow me to work as little as possible, make as much money as possible. So I could whatever, do linguistics or music or whatever that specialty was. Ear, nose and throat, I thought. Or that's what I chose. And it didn't give me that. I did not like residency either. At the end of residency. So four years of college, four years of medical school, five years of residency. Towards the end of residency, it was time for me to decide what I wanted to do with my residency. I could go out and be a general ent, or I could subspecialize in any of the different subspecialties in ent, one of which was head and neck cancer. And I had had some exposure to the head and neck tumors during my residency and actually kind of liked those. So I went on to do a fellowship in head and neck cancer, which was not as bad as the other two as medical school or residenc. I kind of enjoyed that. Anyway, long story short, towards the end of that, I took a year off. I did two. Two fellowships. Between the two, I took a year off, spent six months of that year just traveling. Started in Iceland and it ended in New Zealand. It was an amazing time. And then six months of the year, basically wanted to sort of give back, do good, so to speak. And that's when I found Mercy Ships. Back then, this is 2006, there were not a lot of organizations that did the sort of head and neck tumors that I was training in. Mercy Ships was and is still one of the only ones that specializes in that. I actually heard about Mercy Ships from Scott Harrison. He doesn't know this. Yes. So I was in New York City. Scott was in New York City. He had just come back from his stint on the ships, was doing a photo exhibition of some of his photography. A friend of mine somehow heard about it, dragged me along to it. Scott's showing all these pictures, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, this is what I'm training to do. So that's how I got hooked up to it, came to Liberia for the first time. Then in 2008, by the time I finally got to the ship and really had an epiphany moment the first time I walked into the hospital itself on the ship and saw these patients with head and neck tumors at various Stages in recovery, and finally, you know, 15 years of post secondary education, most of which I hated. I finally had this, like, oh, this is what I have been training to do for the last 15 years. And I didn't even know it. And that started the path. And I spent six months on the ship then and have come back once or twice a year for the 17 years since.

Wow, that's amazing. That's a really long time. All right, so your publicist sent me a copy of your memoir, Solving for why, and this, like, really, really juicy headline on the back of it talking about this traumatic car accident at some point in your life. What is this? Where does it fall in the timeline? And did it play a part in God leading you to Mercy Ships?

No, not in God leading me to Mercy Ships, but actually happened when I was in Liberia. That first time that I was on the ship, a group of us decided it was a weekend, decided that we were going to get away from Monrovia, which is the capital, and head up to a beach town. It's about three hours to the northwest of Monrovia. It's a beach town called Robertsport. So 20 of us, we hired five taxis and set off for the weekend on the beach. The way from Monrovia to Robertsport is pretty simple. You drive about an hour north. This is back in 2008. That road was paved. And then you turn left and drive about two hours west on what was not a paved road at that point.

Pretty flat.

Like, not super terrifying, not super scary, very well maintained. But punctuating that road were these small, rickety wooden bridges. So we get onto this road, the taxis were driven by kids who were like 18, 19 years old. So. Right. Kids and cars. We started going really fast on this road. The car that I was in, the taxi that I was in, was at the front of the pack. So. So the kid who was driving it would go as fast as he could until he got to one of the bridges. Then he would slow down. He'd take the bridge responsibly, and then he'd go fast, as fast as he could, to the next bridge. Well, what happened at one of those bridges is he stopped and he slowed down. It's a dirt road, so he kicks up a whole bunch of dust behind him. The car behind us doesn't see us, smacks right into us, and we fall off the bridge and into the ravine. And the crazy thing is that, first of all, time does slow down. Time very much slowed down. Like, I still remember the ground just kind of coming to hit the windshield. But I also remember thinking, just very calmly, like, oh, this is how I die. I'm okay with that. Now. Nobody died, thankfully. The car was totaled, but we had whiplash and scrapes and bruises, but everyone was okay. But that, oh, this is how I die, and I'm okay with it. That stuck with me. Like, why was I okay with it? I was about to. I was young, I was about to die. Why was I okay with it? And that stuck with me in that I realized it didn't happen at that point, but I realized in processing it afterwards, I was okay with it because I felt like, okay, I'm finally in the place. I'm finally doing. My book is called Solving for why. I'd finally started solving for why. I'd finally figured out what my why was and was solving for it. And. And so I was okay with it. I was at peace with it. Whereas I think had that car accident happened five years before when I was in the middle of med school and hating med school and hating all. Everything that I was doing, I would have been less at peace. Whereas there I was in it. I was in the thing that I think I was supposed to be doing.

At that time as the car's hurtling down. If you had the wherewithal to articulate the why that you've solved for, how would you have articulated that?

This is such a great question. I think the way I will articulate it now, what I would have said then was be on a ship doing surgery in Africa. But it's deeper than that. And the way I articulate it now is in my book. I say, you know, my. My why fundamentally is a why of justice. And I know justice has. Has connotations these days, but it's. It is the least of these. It is providing, and I happen to have the skills to do it. In a surgical standpoint, that just happens to be what my training is, but it is in bringing to the least of these the love of God.

I don't think you could put it. All right, so. But this is fascinating to me because the way you decided on the ENT specialty is the way that most young people, Christian or not, discern calling. They say, I want to work as little as possible and make as much money as possible. They'll never say that explicitly for fear of being judged. Right.

What would you.

If you could go back 20 years and talk to younger Mark now? Talk to one of our listeners, right. Who's at that stage and is trying to think of a more Jesus like way to discern where to invest their vocational talents. What would you tell them?

There's two ways I want to answer that. First of all, one of the two questions you kind of asked in that question is kind of, would I recommend younger Mark to do the same thing he just did? And I never know how to answer that question because I am where I am because of what I did.

God's used all those things to produce this. Yeah, totally. Exactly.

So as much as I hated those 15 years, they've brought me to what I do right now. I also. This may be an unpopular statement. I also firmly believe that there isn't one path for anyone. And my path has changed over the course of these, whatever, 17 years that I've been doing this. So I don't know that there may be some people for whom God speaks in this very directive way. This is what you should be doing for the rest of your life. You know, if you've read Mother Teresa's memoir that she kind of heard some of that. But for most of us, I think we don't get that. And what I would say really is going back to what I just said, what is it that you can do this year, next year, the next four years of your life that allow you to center the least of these in a way that you enjoy? Because. Right. I could center the least of these as a. I don't know, as a lawyer, as an accountant or whatever. I would not enjoy that. I enjoy the medicine. So what is something that would center the least of these that you enjoy that you are good at and let's be honest, that you can get paid for? That's really where I think you should. Any one of us should be focusing ourselves.

It's really good because that's the path. Jesus. Jesus suffered outside the city gate. Hebrews does. I wrote this in the epilogue of my last book, the Sacredness of Secular Work. I just pulled it up. I said, quote, while all good God honoring work matters for eternity, not all work matters equally for eternity. And because today's a rounding error in the grand scheme of eternity, the most rational thing you could do is optimize this life for the next one, to spend it rather than save it. To take every opportunity you can to make your work matter even more for eternity, end quote. But that does not necessarily mean changing jobs. You did right. But I'm really curious, like, pretend you didn't go on the ship. You stayed here in the US what would it have looked like to serve the least of these in those roles that you want a trajectory to have for these 20 years here in the States?

That's such a good question. Before I get to that, there was. Way back when I was growing up, I was one of my best friends. His grandfather had been a missionary in Lebanon, actually, which is where my family's from. And he gave me at one point, 10 rules of life. I don't remember the 10. I do remember one of them. The one rule of life that I remember was wear out. Don't rust out in the Lord's service. Ooh, damn, that was really good.

Tell us more. This is good. That's it.

That's it. Like, just wear out. Like, as you said, don't.

You know? How did you interpret that? How did you interpret that?

I mean, what made me think of it is what you said, spend your life. Don't save it. In the service of. In my. In my mind, in the service of the least of these. You know, I was looking for jobs in the US they're very often, you know, I. My. My desire to work in this field was fairly obvious to people. Like, I would say it. I mean, it would come out in interviews all the time. It was a common thing for chairman of departments to say, oh, you're interested in global health. We also have a lot of, you know, we have an indigent population in whatever city that I was interviewing in, so you should work on that. And yes, and no. This is where there's something kind of nebulous and inchoate in what I'm about to say. Whereas I absolutely love the work I do right now on the ships, I never felt that same spark in serving other populations. I didn't feel that same spark in serving the incredibly wealthy populations in Boston. Or when I said center the least of these, doing something you enjoy, that you're good at and that you can get paid for. That's the inchoate stuff. Like, what was it inside me that was saying, oh, but that doesn't count? There was something inside me that was saying that. And I think this is something that especially those of us who especially. I'll speak to any of your listeners who are in medicine, we are trained on such a prescribed path that listening to our gut and saying, oh, this doesn't sit right is not something that we do very well. And I think, you know, Christians as well, like, listening to our gut is not actually something that we are particularly good at. Um, and there was. There was something about it that made me say no. And that's what I would say, is that I don't know what it would have looked like, to be honest. I don't know if, if I would have. I don't even know if I would have stayed in medicine because. And this is something maybe we could dig into. The medicine itself for me is a tool. It's neither here nor there. I am doing the same operations now in Sierra Leone as I did when I was practicing in Boston. My hands move the same ways, I write the same orders, like it's exactly the same, but it's massively different because I am where I really feel like I'm supposed to be. In. In that, in that. Why?

And that's why you could have died happy.

And that's why I could have fallen off that bridge. Well, yes.

Yeah, that's good. It's really good. I actually think that's a really, really helpful way to think about it. All right, so we've been talking about how your faith is clearly shaping what you're doing, Right. I'm really curious how the gospel shaping how you do what you do vocationally.

Because when I asked you that question.

In our pre interview like a year ago, this has been a long time.

Coming, I thought where your head went was like really interesting to me. You said, quote, the American medical system.

Approaches care in the wrong way, end quote. And you went on to describe this very assembly line mentality to care rather than focusing on what you call actual restoration. So describe what you mean by actual restoration. I really want to learn more and.

I'm really curious how your faith shapes.

Your thinking about how you define true restoration. Yeah.

A passage that I turn to often is after John the Baptist has been captured by Herod, about to be put to death, right. And sends his disciples to Jesus basically to be like, all right, man, like, did we back the wrong horse? Are you actually the Messiah and Jesus? Answer. I love Jesus's answer, first of all because he doesn't dismiss John's doubt. He doesn't say, well, of course I am, you should stop doubting. He also doesn't say yes or no. He says, go back and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind see, the lame leap, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the lepers are cleansed. And then I love the. I think it's the message that translates the last one. The destitute are told that God is on their side. That is just like mercy. Ship's motto is bringing hope and healing right. The blind see, the deaf hear, the lame leap. The dead are raised, the lepers are cleansed. That's healing and the destitute are told that God is on their side. That's hope. I mean, what better expression of hope is there? The American medical system, obviously, first of all, it's a prophet, motive driven system. So our, and it's the reason that I really stepped away from it, we are incentivized to do more. We are incentivized to do it as quickly as possible. And so we do end up becoming cogs in a machine. I mean, when I was practicing full time in the U.S. the meetings that I would have with my chairman were routinely and that's just me. Like the meetings that every physician would have with the chairman were about your profit and loss statement. Here's your profit for this quarter and here's years how much you had to pay for overhead. Good job. Or you need to see more patients or you need to do more complex surgeries or something to get your RVUs, your relative value units up in no way addresses whole person care at all. And you know, the system is designed, it's, I want to say doctors can get a bad name and I'm not here to defend doctors, but we can get a bad name because look, I spend seven minutes with you, that's not because I want to spend seven minutes with you. That's because the system is designed that I only get seven minutes to spend with you. And so therefore I have to be laser focused, the thing that you're coming to me for. Whereas here, at least on the ship, where we aren't profit motive driven at all, I can sit down on my patient's bed and hear the story of the last 30 years of him trying to get care for his tumor and what he had to go through and what that meant and why his wife left him because of it and like all that sort of stuff. I love those stories. I love that part of the transformation as well. And you don't get that nearly as much in the medical system. So we can do the, the blind seeing and the deaf hearing very well in our US medical system, but the destitute are told that God is on their side. We kind of forget that part.

And that requires time.

That requires time and investment relationship and.

Having time to look the image bearer in the eye and hear the story behind the symptom.

Right, Right. Yep, exactly.

We talk a lot about this on the podcast of okay, you're in a job, you've got, let's pretend you know, you're working for a huge hospital system here in the US how do you think in A restorative manner about that job. How do you renew what's broken, fix what's broken and out of line with Jesus's kingship within that job? And I have so much respect for people who can do that well, who can see, oh, here's the path, long term path to how we make these big changes.

But sometimes you can't.

Sometimes God calls you to just leave the system, right, and to go do the work elsewhere. And that's your story. So what does the actual restoration look like? As a doctor, beyond hearing that patient's story, how would you define the. The true restoration you're bringing to patients on board Mercy Ships?

Yeah, my mentor here on Mercy Ships, a guy named Gary Parker, has been doing this for over 30 years. When he gives talks, he often quotes a quote attributed to Napoleon, which is, the man becomes the man of his uniform. And he says this in talking about the patients with the big facial tumors, the deformities, et cetera, that you become the person of your deformity. And you see it so often, patients, especially with the big facial tumors, they don't look you in the eye because nobody looks them in the eye. Everybody looks them in the tumor. And the literal transformation in the way a person over the course of a week in the hospital after their surgery, the literal transformation of the way that they relate to others, it's so palpable. So, yes, we're doing surgery. I love it. But we're doing more than that, right? We're changing the uniform. We're giving these patients back the right to sit at the table of humanity that has been denied them.

Do you know the story of David and Mephibosheth from 2nd Samuel 9, mind me. Oh, my gosh. You just like, quoted like the end of the passage. This is beautiful. David has defeated Saul, you know, he's installed as king. And he looks around and says, who's still around for the house of Saul that I may show God's loving kindness to. Which crazy thing to say, right? You got to imagine David, courtiers are like, dude, what are you talking about? Soldier's your enemy. Take a victory lap. And they find this guy Mephibosheth, that Saul's grandson now also has, happens to be Jonathan's son, right? Who obviously David was fond of.

But Mephibosheth is crippled.

He's lame in both feet. And David chooses this social outcast to extend God's loving kindness to. And he sits at the table for the. At the king's table for the rest of his Life as if he were one of David's sons. That's the gospel. Because we're.

We're Mephibosheth.

We're Mephibosheth.

And so you, by giving these people.

An opportunity to change that uniform, to, to put, take off old self, put on new self, man, it's, it's a parable. You are, you are orchestrating parables in the operating room. That's beautiful. It's really beautiful, man. Beyond the actual restoration, how's the gospel shaping how you do what you do practically on a daily basis?

Like maybe to make the question a.

Little bit more concrete, like, can you think of a situation at work, a decision you made, an action you took that could only fully be explained by your commitment to Christ? Maybe partially explained by doing good, whatever.

But could only fully be explained by.

Your commitment to the ways of Jesus?

Yeah, this is a good question. I had two things in my head. I'm going to go with a sort of more, almost more mundane one, which is a little bit of background. The WHO, the World Health Organization back in 2009, I believe, came out with something called a safe surgery checklist. If you've ever read any of a toy Atul Gawande's work, Complications being Mortal checklist manifesto, that was a lot of what he, he drove. The safe surgery checklist is the studies have shown that it decreases complication rates, mortality rates, et cetera, et cetera. We, like every other hospital, do the surgery check. The safe surgery checklist here as well. However, there's a difference in the way that we do it. Before every patient, we do the things. Is there a pulse oximeter on it? Did they get their antibiotics? Yada, yada. But in the morning, morning before all of the patients, we meet as a team, everybody that's in that particular operating room. So the anesthesiologists, the nurses, the nurse anesthetists, the surgeons, et cetera. And we go through every single patient in a systematic way, but in a way that allows anybody to ask a question, to say, oh, wait, have you thought of this? And this really levels the hierarchy, allows everybody to speak, everybody has their, their role, and then we pray for the day. That is a very different safe surgery checklist than you would, you would see in a hospital. And what I love about that is that more than anything else, I think that the strongest benefit of the checklist is the communication and the team building and the breaking down of hierarchies. It isn't just checking if somebody had their antibiotics. And for us to do that in this way and then to pray for the day before it starts really changes kind of the way that we approach our patients.

Yeah.

And it's also a humble way of recognizing that contrary to what many doctors might believe, you're not God. Right. Exactly.

Exactly. And honestly, I see this more on this ship than I did when I was practicing in the US that we really try to foster. And I also personally really try to foster this environment of I'm going to forget something and I want you to tell me that I forgot something or you're going to forget something. And I want to be able to tell you that. So, like, the only thing about me is that I know how to cut and sew, but everything else that's happening with the patient. Right. Like it takes all of us to do this. And so if I'm going to tell you, you have to do it my way, you're going to say yes, and we're going to make mistakes that we wouldn't have made otherwise had I listened.

It's really good. Hey, so in addition to being world class at sewing, love how you diminish your skills there. It's great. No big deal. You're also a world class athlete.

I mean, I was.

How have we not talked about this?

Right? You were. You competed on three seasons of American Ninja Warrior.

What in the world?

When do you sleep? What was this like? Tell me all about it.

Well, this started at about 2 in the morning when I was watching YouTube videos, which is when all the best ideas happened. I couldn't sleep. Was watching YouTube videos of ninja Warrior. And I had been a climber for a rock climber for a while and had this, just this, I don't know, this spasm of hubris where I was like, oh, this looks great.

Why not me?

I can do this. Yeah, why not me?

This is how I felt watching the.

West Wing in college.

I was like, yeah, I think I.

Can get an internship at the White House.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So anyway, I applied, I like sent in my application, made the video that I had to make and promptly forgot about it. I was 41 at the time. Most of the competitors were in their 20s. And I'm like, they're not going to pick a nerdy, introverted 40 year old doctor from Boston. And I actually left and went to the, to one of the ships and on my way back from the ship, I had, I landed and had voicemails from like, everybody call Ninja Warrior, they're trying to reach you. So I called it back and Long story short, they decided that they wanted to take a chance on me. I had never, like, trained for a ninja warrior at this point. Right. I'm still rocking.

You were just like, I think I can.

I think I can do this. So immediately I go on Google and I'm like, where are there ninja warrior training gyms in the Boston area? And I found one, drove up to it, and again, had that same hubris of, look, I have decent upper body strength. Like, I've been climbing forever. I should be fine. Could not do a single obstacle three weeks before I'm supposed to go on the show. But just trained for those three weeks, went on the show, did decently, and yeah, an obsession was born. For the next six years, ninja was. Ninja was what I did. Like, I would work and then I would ninja. And I. If I wasn't ninja ing, I was working out to prepare for ninja. Yeah.

This is amazing. All right, here's why I'm asking. I have a very specific reason why I'm asking about this. I'm a big believer in this idea that all Christians are called to the.

Pursuit, not attainment of, but the pursuit.

Of excellence in all things for the glory of God, the good of others. We're called to pursue the ministry of excellence.

And my personal strategy for doing that. And this is not biblical, this is personal. Has always been relentless.

Focus on one vocational thing at a time. But your resume and the resumes of other people that. That I really respect suggest that this is not the only way.

Right.

There's a lot of evidence for having a serious avocation. So I'm really curious, man. Like, have you found that this avocation.

As a ninja warrior has made you.

Better at your core vocation as a surgeon? Okay. Yes. How. What's the connection?

I don't understand the connection between these two things at all.

I would never have picked it to become a better surgeon. They're very different skill sets. And honestly, ninja's been worse for my hands than anything else could be. But the one thing more than anything else besides the athleticism of ninja warrior, that the one thing about ninja warrior that especially I think as Americans we don't really do often is risk is basically facing fears. And, you know, that sounds so cheesy and so.

No, no, this is really good.

But exactly like, it's exactly this. It's. I've been fairly open. I'm open in my book that anxiety is something that I. I live with. And ninja is, you know, it's. It's anxiety inducing. You're 16ft above the ground. You're having to jump, you know, 12ft to catch something, something. And if you miss it, you fall into. Onto a mat or into some water. And the operating room is the same, right? There are times when I'm in a. In a surgery and I'm like, okay, this tumor is big. Like, I may not be able to get this out. I'm gonna get this out. But I may not be able to get this out. I'm gonna get this out. But I mean, like, my. My brain's doing this. Like, you gotta do it. You can't do it. You gotta do it. You can't do it. And the ability to trust yourself, the ability to trust. To trust yourself and to not trust the anxiety voice is something that Ninja really taught me. It's that phrase that gets circulated every once in a while that the sort of do it scared. If I waited jump for that obstacle until I was no longer scared, if I waited to make that move in the operating room until I was no longer scared. If I waited to make a career shift until I was no longer scared. If I waited to make any of these decisions, I would stay on the same path that I've been on that has me stuck. And I was stuck. For example, when I was in medicine, I would never have gotten off of it. This avocation for me, Ninja, was really good, both from an athletic standpoint, to prove to myself I was an introverted, shy kid growing up. So to prove to myself that I could do it. But it was also good for me just to understand that that risk is okay, but that fear is okay. That that fear that's telling me that I can't do something may or may not be right. I may not be able to do it, but I also trust myself enough to. To wherever I land, whether I do the thing or don't do the thing. I trust myself enough to get up from wherever I land and keep going.

It's really good. That was a killer answer to a question you were not prepared for.

Thank you.

Because I'll say, man, like most of my heroes, did not have avocations. Mr. Rogers, who I love, Fred didn't really have a hobby. CS Lewis didn't really have a hobby. Unless you consider drinking beer at 10 in the morning with Tolkien, you know, it's not a bad hobby. It's not. It's not bad. It's not a terrible hobby. But you and others, I'm like, man, I need to strengthen my point of view because I do believe there's A way in which working out those different muscles make the muscles of the core thing that God's called us to stronger. So really compelling case.

I mean, let's. Let's just continue with this muscle analogy. As climbers, we use a particular set of muscles. We use our back, we use our biceps. We don't use as much our anterior muscles. If we don't train those, we become worse climbers and we get more injured. So same thing.

Yeah, same thing.

I love it.

Oh, man, this is so good. Mark. All right, Mark, four questions I wrap up every single episode of this podcast with. Number one.

Excellent.

Isaiah 65 tells us that on the new Earth, we are going to long enjoy the work of our hands, free from the curse of sin, which I don't even think we can even begin to imagine how glorious that will be.

I don't think there's going to be.

A lot of surgery going on in the new Earth.

Right.

So what job would you love for God to give you on the new Earth?

You know, I thought about this because you did prepare me for these four questions. And my first thought was, I, I love what I'm doing. Why can't I just be a surgeon on a hospital ship? But yes, in theory, the blind will see, the lame will leap at that point. So, hey, can I be a linguist man?

That sounds amazing. Yeah, I love Psalm 37:4, which says, Take delight in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart. I think it's interesting. Like, on the new Earth, we will perfectly delight in the Lord because we'll be free from the curse of sin. And so there's no disconnect between. Between our desires and God. So if you want to be a linguist, either God's going to say yes or.

Or he's going to give you something.

Better that you're going to love even more. To his greater glory. That's a killer answer. Or you could have an American or a. A new Earth ninja warrior gym.

Exactly that. You're perfect. Perfect.

Love it.

That sounds fun.

Mark, if we opened up your Amazon order history, which book would we see you bind over and over and over again to give to other people?

Yeah, it's a book called Transitions by William Bridges. Well, there's probably two. That one. I'll talk about that one. I'll talk. Transitions is all about transitions as you can.

Killer title.

Killer killer title. You know exactly what you're getting. And Bridges. Bridges has now passed away, but his framework was that every transition has an ending. It has a beginning. And it has this, like, negative space in between. And he talks a lot about how we like to jump directly. We'd like to make the ending as short as possible, jump directly, directly to the beginning, and really just overlook the negative space in between. And he's like, this is where the transformation happens. This is where you codify the learning from the last one before you go into the next one. It's an incredibly good book. The other book that I recommend to a lot of people, especially those people in leadership positions, is a book called A Culture Code by Dan Coyle. It sort of talks about building team cultures and corporate cultures. He says that the best team cultures have three things. They have a couple common sense of purpose. They have belonging, a sense of security and vulnerability. And that without all three of those, culture tends to break down.

Yeah, it's really good. That transitions book I've never heard of. Sounds fascinating. No, it's. It reminds me. I heard. I heard J.D. greer preach this great sermon once about the white spaces in scripture. The. The space in between that have typically, like, tons of years in between there. Yeah, that's where God's doing a lot of his work. In between, for example, Joseph's dream and the years and years and years it took for that dream to be fulfilled. Or. Or in between. You know, when Jesus is 12 and 30.

Right.

There's, like, huge, wide space in scripture. That's really good.

Hey, who would you want to hear.

On this podcast talking about how the gospel shapes the work they do in the world?

I mean, my answer to this is, is the guy that I've mentioned before. He's my. He's the guy that was my mentor here on the ship. His name is Gary Parker.

I know.

The first time I met Gary, I realized for the. Really. For the first time that I'd met somebody whose faith really informed what they did. Deeply, fundamentally informed what they did. So if you haven't interviewed him, then I think you should.

Yeah, I have not. That's a great suggestion. All right, Mark, you're talking to this global audience of mere Christians doing a bunch of different things vocationally. You and I have hit on a few different themes throughout this episode.

What's one final thing you want to.

Say or reiterate to our listeners before we sign off?

Yeah, it's to be comfortable with. To be comfortable with not knowing how many times growing up as a Christian was. I like, gosh, I wish God would tell me what to do. How many times did I have to be reminded that it's less about the what and more about the who you are when you're doing it. So that's what I would say.

Oh man. Dude, that is so. That's so perfect. I say all the time, it is not what you do that makes the work sacred, it's who you do the work with and for that's what makes it sacred. Instead of secular. Dr. Schreim, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do for the glory of God and the good of others. Brother, thank you for being the hands and feet of Jesus in such a practical way, joining the Great Physician and bringing about true restoration to the least of these guys. If you want to hear more about Mark's story, check out his memoir, Solving for why A Surgeon's Journey to Discover the Transformative Power of Purpose.

Which, by the way, we didn't talk.

A ton about the book.

Can you give us the 60 second.

Answer to why you wrote this? Like what you're hoping readers will get out of it?

Yeah, it's sort of half memoir, half how to make big career decisions. And it's really that and a lot of what I talk to people about these days is how do I navigate the path that I'm on right now towards a deeper purpose. So that's what I would want people to get out of it.

It's really great. Hey man, thanks for hanging out with us today.

Thanks for having me man.

I really loved that episode. I hope you guys did too.

Hey, if you're enjoying the Mere Christians podcast, do me a huge favor and leave a review of the show on Apple, on Spotify wherever you listen to the podcast. Thank you guys so much for listening.

I'll see you you next week.

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