John Mark Comer (Author of The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry)

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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. Hey, if you're loving this podcast, you are not going to want to miss my next book, Master of One, which will be released on January 21st. I wrote this book to help you guys find, focus on and master the work God created you to do so. So on this podcast you're listening to other people who are world class masters of their crafts. This book is for you to either find or better focus on or more deeply master the work that you're engaged in every day for the glory of God and the good of others. So the book's not going to be available until January 21st. If you haven't heard already, I'm giving you guys an amazing incentive to pre order the book. I'm giving away a seven night European cruise to somebody who pre orders Master of One. That's right, you and a friend, the friend of your choice, so choose wisely, are going to win this trip. You're going to go to Italy, Rome and Florence. Specifically, you're going to go to France, you're going to go to Spain, and you're going to end up in Barcelona, where I'm actually going to fly over from Tampa. I'm going to meet you in Barcelona for dinner and you're also going to go on a tour of the magnificent La Sagrada Familia, the largest church in the world. It's been under construction for more than 100 years and it was probably my favorite story I wrote about in Master of One. There's a fantastic story of Antoni Gowdy, the architect behind La Sagrada Familia, that I think exemplifies the heart of the book better than any other. So if you want to win this amazing trip, go to jordanraynor.com that's J O R-A N R A Y N O R dot com. Hey, I told you guys last week that I had a really special guest this week, so I'm very excited to share the conversation I recently had with John Mark Comer. John Mark is a pastor out of Portland and he's the guy who's really largely responsible, honestly for Master of One. I was reading his book Garden City years ago, and he mentioned this term Master of One, which we talk about in this upcoming conversation. If you don't know who John Mark Comer is, seriously, forget about Master of One. Just go buy every book that John Mark has ever written.

He.

He's one of my favorite authors today, maybe second only behind Tim Keller. Honestly, I love this guy this much. He's the pastor of Teaching and Vision at Bridgetown Church in Portland and the author of just some great books, including Garden City, one of my all time favorites, God Has a Name, and most recently the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry, which is so fantastic. I mentioned on Instagram a couple weeks ago, I think we're going to look back 20 years from now and recognize this as one of the most important books of our generation. So John Mark and I recently sat down. We talked about why Hurry is, quote, the great enemy of spiritual life today. We talked about how to turn off internal noise that leads to anxiety in our lives. And for all you West Wing fans out there, we went on a little side path, talking about our mutual love for Aaron Sorkin, the creator of the West Wing Social Network, Moneyball, and some other great TV shows and movies. So without further ado, please enjoy this terrific conversation with John Mark Comer. Jon.

Mark, thanks for joining me.

Yeah, such a joy to chat, man.

Yeah, I've been such a huge fan. I'm fanboying right now.

Real hard. You're ridiculous. You're very kind.

So, hey, but I learned something new about you in your latest book, Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. You started watching by far my all time favorite TV show, West Wing.

Come on. Once Aaron Sorkin stopped writing and then once Sam Seaborn left, the whole thing tanked for me because Sam like brought this joyful emotional buoyancy to offset the super depressive characters.

Well, and Sam was also, I mean, Sam's like the perfect embodiment of Sorkin himself, right? He's like boundlessly optimistic. Are you a Sorkin fan?

I am. One of the things I love about Sorkin is I love how all of his characters, superheroes, but instead of like, you know, they can fly or they can jump through a concrete wall, they just talk and think faster than any normal human being ever could in real life. And so I just love the like, blisteringly totally fake intelligence and speed. Ironically, for somebody who's written a book on Hurry, the West Wing is about the fastest paced drama in the history of drama.

It really is. Sorkin's my all time favorite writer. I just think he's like truly exceptional. It is that, like those heroes and this like boundless optimism, these utopian worlds that he creates, whether it's the White House or the newsroom. So did you.

It's very ethical. Like he's dealing with morality, even if it's different than, you know, ours at times. From the perspective of Jesus, there's an ethical undercurrent underneath most of his work, you know.

So did you finish the show or did you give up at season five?

I've kind of petered out, but I like once in a while we'll still watch an episode. I barely. So part of my rule of life is I barely watch any TV or film. We have no TV in the house. I have a laptop though. So it's like maybe once a month or once every other month on a Monday night. So we have long Sundays with church. So Monday night I'm just trashed. I'm so tired. So that's kind of my night. I'll eat dinner with the family and then the family kind of knows. I get two hours or so before bed to just go close the door to my room and hide. And sometimes in there I. I'll watch one because I hear it gets better at the very end. My friends have told me it gets better there's a new president coming and it gets better. But I've yet to get to that part. I'm still in the lull.

So that was my advice for you. If you're going to stick with it, skip to the end of season five, second to last episode, Gaza. And just go on from there.

Yes. No, I'm there. I just got to Gaza. That's where Dana gets hurt, right? Yeah.

She gets in the motorcade.

Yes. So I'm like maybe two or three episodes into that. Josh is in the hospital in Germany right now. Yeah, yeah. You know, I'm getting better. All right. It gets better. It gets better. Just wait for it.

Okay, keep going, my friend.

What any of this has to do with your work or mine? I have no idea. Here I am talking about my favorite show, which is all about how fast can you live. It's like the anti ruthless elimination. Let's go as fast as we can and still be Josh Lyman and act like we're happy all the time. Exactly. Nobody could possibly do that in real life.

No. So I got lots of questions about the book. But first, I actually have some follow up questions to my book. Right. So I know you and I have exchanged a number of emails about Master of One. This book that's coming out in January.

Fantastic.

I was thinking about this part of the interview. I really think the three people that influence this work the most, Greg McEwen, essentialism, everything Cal Newport has ever written.

Come on. Heck, yes. Well, including how to win it, how to be a high school superstar or something. I've not read that one.

Not that I actually have a. I.

Have an eighth grader. So we're going to read that next summer before he goes into high school.

I love it. And you're the third, right?

Oh, you're so kind.

The title, I think I told you this via email. The title, master of one, I stole from you, I took from Garden City the first time I heard this, that supposedly Ben Franklin was the original one to say, jack Waltric, master of none. And you talk about how you hate that advice. Can you talk about why you hate that advice and why you're a proponent of being a master of one?

Yeah. So the folklore there, and this is not like scholarly, historical, you know, studious detail. Don't footnote me on this. But the legend around it is that the original saying, I don't even remember where it goes back to, was master one. Well, like, dract of all trades, master of one. And the idea was that everybody should have a healthy level of generalist in them where they can do a little bit of everything. And they're kind of think of like the Enlightenment, the idea of a Renaissance man. You know, it's obviously a more masculine time. So now we would hopefully apply that to women as well. But everybody should have, like, this broad spectrum of kind of knowledge, acumen, basic skill set. But then master of one. The idea is that everybody should have at least one thing that they're just incredibly good at. You know, like a master craftsman or craftswoman, a skill, an ability, an acumen, a reputation, some kind of cumulative knowledge or whatever that you're just a master of. But then, of course, Benjamin Franklin, and some people attribute it to Mark Twain. Like, it depends. Like, this is where the history kind of breaks down. But supposedly Benjamin Franklin was the first one to twist it and, like, make a joke and say, I'm a jack of all trades, master of none, which has become the kind of parlance that, you know, I grew up hearing people say, well, I'm kind of a jack of all trades, master of none, meaning I do a bunch of different things, but I'm not very good at anything. And that clearly was not true of Benjamin Franklin. And it was hopefully not what the wisdom saying is trying to get across Is that what your book kind of gets into, I assume.

Yeah, that's exactly it. So in the introduction, I talk about how I actually don't have a problem with people who are jacks of all trades. Like, I think I'm a jack of a lot of different trades. I think the problem for Christians who view their work as a primary means of ministry and loving neighbor as self is not being able to point to anything that we can say. I'm becoming world class at this.

Yes. I'd love to get your take on the book. I've not read it, but that's making waves right now. The title, the subtitle is something like the Power of Generalist Range. That's what it is. What do you think of that? I've not read it. Is that a counter argument to this? Is it like a both and kind of thing? I just know that book's making waves.

It's making a lot of waves. And I've just started reading it and it seems like there is a lot of overlap in these arguments. I mean, I think what David Epstein saying in the book is that being a generalist is a good thing. And I would concur with that. I think you've got to be a generalist to be, as Paul said, all things to all people.

I think.

I think that helps to have a wide array of interest and skills and.

Hobbies especially, I would imagine. Does he argue, like, in a fast training world, how everything's constantly changing kind of thing?

That's exactly right. Yeah. But I would be interested to have a discussion of him about, you know, how to go big on this one thing. Like, I've always heard of the T model, which I really like. Right. So if you picture the letter T and uppercase T, you're going really broad across a wide range of skills and disciplines, but you're going really, really deep into one of those things.

Oh, I love that. I've not heard that. Yeah, that's great.

So for you, I think you talk about this in Garden City, your one thing, if you will, is really teaching Scripture. Is that right?

Yeah, I mean, it's gotten a little bit clearer even from that. But yeah, I mean, as a general rule of teaching, and then specifically I'm attempting to aim. I mean, the Bible teaching Scripture is one thing, but even that's a very broad category. Library of Scripture is a very wide library that encompasses a whole lot of different ideas and historical viewpoints and cultural backgrounds. So I think really specifically I'm trying to hone in on Jesus One line in Matthew 28, teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. Which I had kind of an epiphany moment with that text a number of years ago when it hit me as I fancy myself a teacher, not in a pretentious way, that's just what I do for a living. That's what I relate to and feel like I've made to do. And I've been teaching scripture for very many years. But it hit me that, you know, in business parlance is the difference between teaching the what and teaching the how. And what I taught people was what Jesus commanded them, not how to obey what Jesus commanded them. So it's one thing to teach a biblical theology of anxiety and teach people, Jesus says, do not worry, it's a whole other thing to teach people how. In 2019, with an iPhone, in a city, in a stage of life with little kids or whatever, wherever you're at, how do you actually become, in Edwin Friedman's language, a non anxious presence as the world is just spinning out of control into nonstop anxiety, particularly in the political world. That I think really has given me some new, sharpened. So I've sharpened kind of clarity of focus. So yeah, I'm specifically teaching the Bible, but more specifically attempting to teach people how to follow Jesus and experience, you know, spiritual formations, the academic language, basically transformation of their soul into people of love and joy and peace.

You're really intent on your laser focused in your work, which I love. You're one of the more focused people I know. What do you have to most frequently say no to vocationally or maybe even personally in order to pursue true mastery of your craft?

I think the first thing I have to say no to is my phone because in my experience it just encroaches on every minute of every day. And not everybody, like, you know, it's funny, deep work that we both love by Cal Newport and for whom I would credit a lot of this perspective from. But it's funny, I read that with our staff at one point, you know, and we also read Greg McKeown's Centralism. And it was so interesting to see like different people's responses. And some people loved it and other people were like, this is terrible. I see how this is helpful for you. But like I'm an admin, I'm supposed to be on email all day and like, you know, doing things online. And that was a little bit of a good wake up call for me. A little bit to privilege and a little bit to just oh, like not everybody, like my main Job is creating content. And that requires hours and hours and hours of head down, no distraction in a book and on my laptop writing, you know. So I think the main thing I've had to say no to is my phone and letting it encroach in my life. So creating kind of a digital rule of life that I live by. The other thing I've had to say no to is just a lot of leadership stuff and a lot of interpersonal meetings, you know, so I kind of do. So I'm no longer the lead pastor at our church. We've kind of moved me into a role of teaching. I've come to the conviction that at least a medium to larger sized church, that leading well is basically a full time job and teaching well in the way that I want to teach is basically a full time job. I don't project that onto all people. Maybe it's just better to say for me and the way that we want to lead our church and the way that I want to teach, I understand that different people are wired different and some people are just have higher capacity than I can and they can take six hours one day a week and craft a sermon and it's amazing. And they can just leave the rest of the time. I'm not that guy. So phone first, leadership second, probably interpersonal meetings. So that's the hardest thing for sure because we live in this fascinating world of digital access. So people have more access to us than ever before. You know what I mean? Not just through email and telephone, but now through, you know, websites and through instant messenger and you know, DMs on Twitter and Instagram. And the other day I was like, you know, once a week I attempt to answer all of my Instagram direct messages and it just keeps taking longer and longer and longer. And I'm like, is this worth like an hour and a half of my week? You know, but then it feels so rude not to. And then Instagram just came up with some new thing where they now let you leave voice texts. And so people started leaving me voice texts. And it's like instead of a quick glance and you know, thumbs up emoji, it's like I have to listen to five minutes of, you know, and they're wonderful people, but I don't know this person at all. And I'm like, ah, you know, and then you travel and then you meet people and instead of being like, oh, that was a great trip to Australia, I met these people, I'll never see them again. Maybe if I ever come back, I'LL see them now. It's like, let's FaceTime next week. And the problem is they're all these wonderful people. So it's not remotely about, you know, I'm in demand or I'm. So it's just more like our connectivity is way higher than the human capacity for relationships. I mean, Sherry Turkle from MIT has done a lot of work on this and she points out what military theory has already discovered, what sociologists have said from hunter gatherer societies, the basic human organization kind of size is about 100 to 150 people, that most human beings have no capacity for relationship beyond 100 to 150 people. And the problem is in the digital age, most of us, you know, even if you're not in the knowledge economy or in some kind of a public sphere like you are, I am. Most people just look at their followers on Instagram and Twitter or who they follow. Most of us have way more connectivity than we have capacity for relationship. So that is by far the hardest one because I feel it feels mean or it feels unpriced like, or it feels pretentious or whatever to say no.

Yeah, but like you say in Garden City, and I think I quote you on in Master One, we have to say no in order to say yes to the work that we believe that God has called and created us to do that. Right. Which is hard, but it is necessary. So, hey, here on the call to mastery, we talk to world class masters, in your case, a world class teacher, about a lot of different things. But one thing we keep coming back to is routines, habits. And in a way, it's kind of what your entire new book is about. The ruthless elimination is basically just your kind of rule of life. Trying to model Jesus rule of life. So I think I know the answer to this, but can you talk about why you wrote this book? Why this topic as opposed to something else?

Yeah, I mean, there's the long version, the short version. Let's start with the short version and ask anything you want. But basically five years ago, you know, I'm in my early 30s, I'm leading a megachurch, and I just hit this wall at an emotional level. Burnout, anxiety, exhaustion, kind of emotional crisis, and not scandal or anything. Just like extreme kind of emotional burnout. And then at a spiritual level, I had really just stalled out in kind of my spiritual formation, in my ongoing process toward becoming more like Jesus, I had just hit this wall and was not. Felt like I was not moving forward anymore year over year, becoming more and more like Jesus. And in my experience of God by the Spirit. Yeah, so lots of things happen. Went on a sabbatical, got deep dive into spiritual formation, psychology, therapy, soul care, Sabbath spiritual disciplines, you know, all the stuff. And through that process, much of my life began to change. Of course, one of the first things you realize you have to do is massively slow down and simplify your life. You can't do everything, you know, you have to accept your limitations, you have to say no. All the stuff that we're both passionate about. But I came across this story. I've been for I don't know how long now, a couple years maybe, sharing a meal with John Ortberg, who's a pastor, kind of a generational. And if you don't know John Ortberg, he is a generation ahead of me and kind of really one of the best, I think, teachers, writers, pastors of the boomer generation. And he's still very healthy and brilliant in teaching and leading in Menlo Park, California. So we get to share. I wouldn't call him a mentor, but we get to share lunch on a regular basis, let's put it that way. He's out of my league for mentorship, but an incredible guy and just kind of everything I want to be when I grow up. And anyway, through my time with him, one of the reasons I have been getting time with him is because he himself was mentored by Dallas Willard, who was a philosopher from the University of Southern California, who also like a writer and teacher of the way of Jesus, who's played more of a role in my kind of view of what it means to follow Jesus than really anybody outside the New Testament. So, you know, my first time I sat down with John, I just started asking questions about Willard. You know, I'm not. Cause I didn't care about John because I just wanted to know like you were mentored by him for two decades or something, like, tell me stuff that it's not in your books, whatever. So John tells this story about Colleen Willard up. This was in the late 90s, before the phone. John was on staff at an internationally known church, already was a best selling author, very busy, blah, blah, blah. And he calls up Willard and basically has this similar sense to me, like I'm stuck, I'm getting sucked into the busyness, the hurry, like I don't know what to do. And asked Willard basically for advice. And John said, you know, there's a long silence on the other end of the line because quote, with Willard there was always a long silence. He was just Notorious for being, like, incredibly present, incredibly unhurried and slow even. You know, that's why many people didn't listen to him or don't even read his books because they're a little boring. But he's like, he almost did it on purpose, you know, and it was a very cultivated way of living. Anyway, and then Willard said, just two lines. He said, hurry is the great enemy of spiritual life in our day. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. John, you know, obviously was super impressed by that, wrote it down, and then as John tells the story, basically said, all right, what else is there? And then Willard, there's another long silence. And Willard said, there is nothing else. You must ruthlessly eliminate hurry from your life. And, you know, it's so funny. When I first came across that story, it just struck a really deep chord in me. And, you know, I live in Portland, Oregon. I'm in one of the most secular, progressive, post Christian, whatever moniker you want to put on it, cities in our country. And if you had asked me prior to that story what's, like, the greatest challenge that I face following Jesus and attempting to help other people follow Jesus in the city, I'm not sure what I would have said. Most likely politics or the left or the right or progressive theology or money or scandal. I don't even know what I would say said. But I doubt Hurry would have even, like, made the list, much less made it to the top. But it's so funny, like, deep court of resonance. And the more I sat with that story, like, the more the spirit of God just worked on me through it. And I really became one of the same conviction that, man, I think Hurry is the symptom underneath so many of the other symptoms. And I've really just come to the conviction that Hurry is incompatible with the life of Jesus.

I want to talk about that some more. So in the book, you made this point that I never thought of before. You made this point that, you know, the Gospels are biographies, right? And when we read biographies of people like, I don't know, Steve Jobs or Elon Musk or Billy Graham, whoever, we pay attention to the subjects, lifestyles, their habits, but we don't actually do that with the Gospels. Right.

We pay a lot of attention to.

The theology and the ethics that are taught in those books, but we actually don't pay attention to the way that Jesus lived. So what did Jesus's lifestyle look like?

Yeah, and I love that you say that. I love that you bring that up. And not only do we pay attention to the lifestyle details when we're reading Elon Musk or whatever. But we often then instinctively like copy them. Often in the case of a musk or whoever, we intentionally don't copy them. Right, right, right, right. You know what I mean? Depending on whether our goal is to turn humans into an interplanet or become people of love, which are very different goals. So God bless most. That was a fascinating biography. But yeah, so, yes, I love that you're bringing that up. And that's a deep conviction of mine. And there's so many things that could be said about Jesus lifestyle. One of the first things that you notice is that he was just rarely in a hurry and that so many of the gospel stories that come to us are stories of interruptions where Jesus was interrupted and you know, and then would pause and be fully present to the moment. Jesus said, I always do what I see the Father doing. Like just so aware of God on each moment, of the people in front of him, each moment and the need of each moment and the goodness of each moment. We'd look out, you know, look at the birds of the air kind of thing, where I imagine like a pause after that, like just pause and look around at the birds of the air, you know, in the world of abundance and the goodness of the world that we're right now breathing the air of, you know, so unfortunately, there's much larger kind of theological categories for why we read the Gospels not as biographies, but as about Christ, but not about us and not about how we follow Christ. And much of that goes to the Protestant Reformation and the understanding of the gospel as what Christ has done for us rather than as a model to follow and putting those two things at odds with each other in ways that are rooted in the Protestant tradition that I think, even though I come from that tradition, are very unhelpful to discipleship to Jesus.

I like how you describe following Jesus as apprenticing under Jesus. So for you 30 something dad, teacher like me living in. Well, I'm in Tampa, you're in Portland. What does it look like to model Jesus's lifestyle? So we already talked about, I mean, we're talking about hurry, we're talking about phones. I don't think Jesus would have been addicted to a smartphone. What are some of the other ways that you're modeling the way of Jesus?

Yeah, I think first off, just by building some of his core practices, or if you want to call them habits or many people call them spiritual disciplines, some of these rhythms of his life with God and God's people, just incorporating them in as best I can to my own personality and stage of life. So things like, you know, silence and solitude is huge for me. You read that in the gospels, Jesus would wake up early and he'd sneak off to a quiet, solitary place and he just pray. And the more, the bigger the crowds got and the more in demand he became, the more he would do that. And then also on the other side to that, living in community. Jesus like lived in basically co housing, you know, kind of intentional community with this group of people. And so our family, we've decided to do the same. And so we do our very best. We're not literally with each other 24 hours a day, but to do community with about 15, 20 people really intentionally doing life around tables, neighborhood together, sharing our lives, sharing our finances, sharing our emotional burdens, our joys, all of that, you know, as well as practices like Sabbath and radical generosity like this encroaches on money so much. And how money, what kind of role money has in your life. You know, things like fasting, like just trying to find the things that you see in Jesus life and incorporate them not in a legalistic way, but in the same way that you would read about some luminary in a biography and like, oh, I would love to have that kind of outcome, like to have some kind of the success this person has or the caliber of intelligence or knowledge this person has or whatever. And so then you instinctively do some of the things they did in the hope that you would experience life like that. So for me, none of this is legalism. None of this is about earning God's favor. None of this is about rules to follow as much as it is about how do I follow Jesus? Meaning, and I interpret that to mean how do I copy the details of Jesus day to day life in order to move into what he called the kingdom and experience life the way that Jesus experienced life and radical freedom.

Yeah. So I think the part of the book that really got to me the most was this, studying how often Jesus was alone, how often Jesus was quiet. You and I are both type A high achievers. So are so many people in our audience. And you talk about this difference between internal and external noise in the book.

Right.

And I know a lot of listeners.

Struggle with this, but by the grace of God alone, I actually don't have a problem turning off external noise. My screen time on my phone right now I'm averaging, I don't know, 15 minutes a day. I don't check email after I leave the Desk. I have a huge problem turning off internal noise. So you touched on this in the book, and then you didn't expound upon.

How you're tackling this problem.

So maybe that's because you haven't figured it out yet. But, like, how are you figuring out how to turn off internal noise? Let's say when you take, very practically, you walk away from your desk, you go be with your kids, you go be with your wife. How do you turn off the internal noise of work or whatever else is competing for your attention to be fully present and engaged in the thing you want to be engaged with?

Yeah, well, first off, I have this down and my mind is just like the Jesus version of Zen 24:7, you know? Yeah. I mean, first off, I think that external noise and internal noise are connected. You know what I mean? At some point. That's an unhelpful bifurcation. The point I'm just making is, ironically, this might be hard to believe for some people that are new to this practice of silence and solitude, that the external noise is the easiest one to deal with, you know, because you can just go somewhere without noise and leave your phone behind and your headphones behind and just go to a quiet cabin or go to a forest or go to a park, you know, but the internal noise of, you know, what Henri Nouwen called monkeys in a banana tree, meaning where your mind is just like. Your neurons are just firing like crazy, and it's scattered thought and rumination and jealousy and envy and lust and worry and to do lists and squirrel, you know, like, that whole thing. And we attempt to sit before God and let him love us and transform us into people in love. And 20 minutes later, all we've done is think about all the things we have to do and worry about this person and get mad at our boss or whatever, you know. So, yeah, I mean, just at a very practical level, what I'm attempting to do is each morning spend some time in, like, a breathing prayer, which is basically, you know, we're all very familiar with mindfulness as it comes to us through secularism and through Buddhism. And what most people don't realize is actually, like, the roots of that in the west come through Christian contemplative prayer. But because we're in a post Christian moment and everything's a reaction against Christianity, it's cool to bring in Buddhist practice to your secular workplace. But no, like, corporate executive would ever have, like, a Christian monk come in and teach you the Lord Jesus Christ, have mercy on me prayer, you know, Ironically, I think there's just a human wisdom thing there. And what Buddhists were discovering in, in the east, independent from Christ, there's some similarity. There's massive difference in massive similarity. The similarity is in the using your breathing and just simple focus on your breathing and release of the illusion of control to just like come to the moment and think about what it is that you think about. Kind of observe in a third party way, like, oh, what are the thoughts that come in and out of my mind and just observe them without judgment and then begin to focus on deeper. The massive difference is that Buddhism, there is no God in the sense of a personal being. So your attempt at meditation isn't to commune and connect with or even, or much less hear from a God that you're in relationship with. It's more to quiet your mind and increase your level of detachment so you suffer less and are happier, which is beautiful. But for us, I think we can steal a lot of that practice while putting it inside the relational framework of life with the spirit of Jesus. So yeah, very simply, just taking. You can do this literally for two minutes every morning and work your way up to say, 20. But just beginning in, you know, my first day, before my phone, before anything. So a strict rule for me is zero technology, no phone until I've had quiet time each morning with God. Now some people can't do that because they're stage life or they work in finance on the west coast and it's super early. Whatever.

I was just gonna say I started doing that three weeks ago after I read the book. Oh, wow. It's a game changer.

Oh, that's so encouraging to hear.

It's a very, very small change. I'm good about not checking email, but I will always pick up my phone in the mornings for no reason. Just had a habit.

Totally. And most people sleep by their phones and 93% of Americans sleep by their phones. 76% of Americans check it first thing upon waking. Neuroscientists tell us that the two most important times for your brain are right before you go to sleep and right when you wake up in the morning when you sleep. Your brain is, as I understand it is, and correct me if I'm wr, neuroscientist who would email in, but your brain is basically re, you know, neurogenesis, recreating new proteins in your brain and replenishing your mind literally in your brain. And so, I mean, what happens when the last thing that you do before you go to bed is watch Netflix and you parade lust or greed or secular mindset. And then the first thing you do when you wake up is read a Donald Trump tweet or check your email or see a to do list from your boss or whatever. You know, what are you doing to your brain and to your nervous system and then to your body and to your person, you know. So yeah, for me that's such an easy one. Even if you just do 10 minutes, it doesn't have to be. I mean, the longer the better. But even if it's not three hours of fasting and prayer, just 10 minutes, 15 minutes where before you go to your phone, you wake, you read a psalm and you breathe before God. So normally I'll just wake up and have a few moments of gratitude and just quiet sitting in like a little quiet spot that I go to. And then, yeah, just trying to take some time to just focus on my breathing. And then I do it as a follower of Jesus. So I'll kind of imagine myself breathing in the Holy Spirit, breathing out all the other stuff and maybe breathing in the fruit of the Spirit one at a time. Love, joy, peace, patience, and breathing out the antithesis of each one and sometimes just really attempting to be before God and what St. John called silent love, you know. So for all the Christian mystics, the highest form of prayer was wordless prayer and Imlitz's prayer. So the lowest form of prayer and they weren't against it, was when you were meditating on the gospels, thinking specific concrete stories about Jesus and asking God for things. And they were all for that. But they saw that as the beginning of prayer. Even though in the evangelical tradition that's kind of the whole of prayer. But they saw the end goal of prayer is when you just have come to the place where you've quieted your mind and your soul and you now have the capacity to just sit before God, kind of spirit to spirit, or if you would, will to will, and just kind of sit in silent love before God, you know. So that very simple practice then I think attempts to carry me over. So then when I'm playing with the kids or I'm making dinner, trying to take single tasking to a whole new level and trying to turn everything into this kind of mindful practice.

I love that single mindedness approach to things. So I think you and I could probably talk about Cal Newport for an hour and a half in and of itself. So really early on in the process of writing Master of one, I shot you an email. I was like, hey, thanks for this idea. I'm taking It. But we're with the same publisher, so it's cool.

Right?

You recommended that I go read one of Cal Newport's books that I hadn't read yet called so Good they can't ignore you. And that ended up shaping Master of One in some, like, very significant.

Come on.

So the book basically says, and tell.

The story, the Steve Martin story, where the title comes from, just because it's so good.

So I don't remember exactly the Steve Martin story, other than he's the one who said, be so good that they can't ignore you. I forget the first part of the story. You tell it.

Well, I haven't read that book in a couple years. As my memory recalls. He was basically asked at one point, how do you get successful as a actor, comedian? And that was his answer was, be so Good they can't ignore you.

Yeah, I love it. So the book is basically an attack on this follow your passions advice in your career. Right, Right. And I'm assuming you agree with that premise. Can you talk about why you think that advice is particularly problematic and maybe even a little bit more specifically for apprentices of Jesus?

Which advice, Follow your passion or get good at something?

No. Follow your passions.

I don't know that it's bad advice. I'm not sure that I 100% agree with Newport on that. I just think it's idealistic and therefore potentially damaging or at least unhelpful advice. So I think Newport's basic critique, and then maybe I'll add some of my own thoughts in here. The common kind of Steve Jobs commencement address advice to millennial Gen X, you know, Gen Z kind of people, is follow your passion. And as a general rule, I think if you interpret that just to mean find something you really love and see if you can make a living doing it, I think that's not bad advice. But I think what Newport rightly brings up is a couple things. One is most young people, when they need to decide what passion to follow, you know, 22 or whatever, some of them don't have a passion yet. Right. So they don't even know. I don't even know what I'm passionate about other than video games or TV or whatever. Other people have multiple passions. I'm passionate about sports. I'm passionate about justice. I'm passionate about the economy. I'm passionate about politics. Like, I'm passionate about lots of different things. How do I know? Third, passions change over time. So some things that are really important to us when we're in our early 20s don't matter to us at all by the time we're in our early 40s or we sometimes disagree with things that we were once passionate about and we come to a whole other perspective or position. So what do you do then when your passions change over time? And then the final thing, I think Newport's main case is that just statistically, people derive more pleasure from being good at something, really good at something, than they do from working in a field that they overall care about. So I think his thing is basically, if you are good at math and you love baseball, you'll probably enjoy being an accountant for a firm doing something not remotely related to baseball, but you're just killer at your job than you would like working in some project management role for a baseball company or whatever. That's maybe a terrible analogy. Yeah, that's my understanding of what he's basically saying.

I remember there was this study that Newport cited in the book the Eyesight Master of One, This Yale researcher named Amy Reznesky, who studied what makes people describe their work as a job, a career, or a calling. This idol that we're helping to peddle in the church today. It was really interesting. It wasn't. And she studied this across doctors, computer programmers, administrative assistants. There's a pretty common theme here. The people who describe their work as a vocation, as a calling are the people who stuck around long enough in a given craft to get really, really good at it.

Right.

So it's this idea that, like, passion is a side effect. Like, long term sustainable passion in a career is a side effect of mastery, not the other way around.

Right, yeah. Gosh, that sounds good. Yeah. I mean, I think that's really helpful. I think for me, as a follower of Jesus, obviously, you know, Newport's just approaching it from like a business kind of productivity. Wonderful stance. But I think for me, again, overall, I think find your passion is not a bad idea or bad advice. But with those caveats, I think for me, the rub is our work. You know, in biblical theology, work is an expression of love for God and neighbor. And so it can't be an attempt at self fulfillment or self actualization, which is what it is. As you know, even more than I working in this field, specifically in particular in the secular Western world, for upwardly mobile people, work is religion. You know, cue that article just recently in the Atlantic about how millennials idolize their job and yet most of them are miserable in it. You know, if you read that, it was just a fantastic article. And I just love, like hearing A secular writer basically saying work has taken the place of religion. It's where people get their identity, their self worth, their sense of meaning, their sense of sense of purpose, particular if you're in a major city. And yet the ironic thing is it's a bad religion. Just look at the stats of mental health and happiness coming from work and it's woeful. It's like, why are you giving. I have a very robust theology of work, so I'm for work. I'm for taking your career seriously. I'm not saying like quit and just go do whatever. But man, when you look to it as your God, religion, identity, sense of meaning, what a tragic way to live. So I think that's one of the main rubs is find our passion. It can't be what do I really want to do to make me happy and give me identity and meaning. But there's a way to ask that in the sense of like, from a Christian perspective, what is the spirit of God stirring up in my desire? And that's where I don't know if you're familiar at all. Dignitian spirituality, which is, you know, in the Christian tradition, takes really seriously the role of the heart and the role of desire. And the Christian beautiful. I think the Christian understanding of desire is way more helpful than both the secular or the Buddhist take on desire because it has a nuanced view of human desire as a of means mixed bag between what the writer Paul in the New Testament called the flesh and the spirit. Kind of some desires that are animalistic and primal and narcissistic and instant gratification that we need to deny much of what our church would call oppression or repression and then other desires that we need to absolutely live into and follow and fan into flames that move us in the direction of love and discerning which desires are from the flesh and which are from the Spirit, which are disordered and we need to, in Jesus language, crucify them and which are like from the Spirit of God and we need to follow them. So in that sense, like, I think there's a Follow the desires in your heart from the spirit of God that lead you to love God and neighbor through your work in a specific way. I think that's good advice and that's.

The point and that's the differentiation. Right. I grew up as a millennial. My boomer parents would always tell me, follow your passions. And that was always followed by do whatever makes you happy.

Right.

No generation has had more opportunity to do whatever makes them happy. And yet we're miserable. That's not the point of life. The point of work is the point of life, which is to love God and neighbor as ourselves. And we do that when we do exceptional work and we just serve people through the ministry of excellence.

Right.

It's less relevant what the actual work is. Just find something, choose something. Let your passions be a pointer. For sure. I think oftentimes what we're fired up about is what we naturally gravitate to in terms of aptitude, in terms of giftedness.

Absolutely.

That's the point. Service to neighbor and prioritizing others. Happiness above your own is what in turn leads to both. It's kind of the only thing.

Do you use that Buchner quote in your book?

No.

Basically his definition of work was, don't quote me if this isn't verbatim, but it's the place where the world's deep need meets your deep gladness. Yeah. You know what I mean? So it's this like both and of like, what's your deep gladness? What's the deep ache in you to do that? And what does the world also desperately need? You know, I love that that kind of both end.

So it's easy for people to call your work my least favorite term, quote unquote, full time ministry. What encouragement would you give to our listeners who are working as baristas and marketers and entrepreneurs and project managers about the eternal significance of their work? I know you could talk for an hour, but it's just a quick commendation of those listening that are not in, quote, unquote, full time in a. Yeah.

Oh my gosh. Well, first off, you know, broad umbrella, what we just said, work falls under the category of love. And that's about both motivation and about action and about relationship. And you know, not all work can be done as an act of love. And so some work is not loving and can't be done in a loving way, you know, but most work, including most secular work, can be done as an act of love. And Jesus said, love your neighbor as yourself. He didn't say like, like pray for your neighbor as yourself or preach the gospel to you. Like those are all beautiful things that are part of our life with Jesus. But he said love, which is a beautifully broad category. Secondly, I just say that a biblical theology of work, you have to start in Genesis chapter one. And so often people just ignore the whole first part of the Bible when they think about work and they just try to think it through kind of spiritual, western categories. But in Genesis 1, long before you get to all the stuff that we're talking about. Like, human beings are created in the image of God as image bearers to rule over the earth, to take the raw materials that are found in a particular part of the world called the Garden of Eden, and then to transform them into a space, a garden for human beings to thrive in relationship to each other, to the earth itself, and above all, to God. And then Adam and Eve, these kind of proto humans, in Hebrew, their names are literally human and life. You know, human and life are created by God. And their job description is basically to spread Eden out, to expand the territories of Eden until it covers the whole earth. You know, as they be fruitful, multiply. Now, obviously, it all goes horribly wrong, and here we are. But the original biblical theology of work remains. I love Keller's, you know, definition of work, which is basically rearranging the raw materials of the earth into. I forget what he says. Something or other. Maybe you can quote it, but do a place for human beings to thrive with God and each other, that is still like. I mean, that's what a barista does. They rearrange milk and coffee and a tree in the form of a paper cup or whatever, and a space, and they rearrange it into this thing to create space for relationship and practice hospitality and create space for more good work to be done in the city and create a third space for people that are transient, don't have families and city to come together and be in relationships. So that's good biblical gospel. I mean, God blessed work, even if it is not gospel in the sense of proclaiming the good news about Jesus, the Messiah, which is also important.

That's a great encouragement. All right, three final questions I like to ask very rapidly of any guests. You read a ton, two, three books a week, which is insane. What books do you recommend or gift the most to others?

Oh, man. For 30 somethings and up, I gift this book called Sacred Fire by Ronald Rolheiser. If you're younger and you're still kind of feeling the upward mobility of life, wait, just remember this for five or ten years down the road. If you're entering early middle life, the weight of responsibility, work, family, marriage, the tiredness, the drudgery begins to settle on you when you're. When that time comes. Sacred Fire by Ronald Rolheiser, my favorite Catholic writer. Another book that I pass around. A lot is tiny. You can read. I mean, you could if you wanted. You could read the whole thing in 30 minutes. It's called Letters by a modern mystic by Frank Laubach. And it's just a collection of letters. It's basically like a modern version of kind of the practice of the presence of God, if you're familiar with that from Brother Lawrence. And it's absolutely beautiful and sophisticated and wonderful. I keep it by my bedside table and read a little bit before bed each night.

I love that.

Third, I would normally give something by Willard just because I'm obsessed with Willard, you know, Willard's favorite. Yeah, but which Willard. That would depend on the.

Yeah, you're right. What one person would you most like to hear talk about the intersection of their faith and their work?

Oh, man, you're hitting me on the fly with that question. I'd love to hear somebody working in the film industry from the perspective of Jesus, talk about how they reconcile that. You know, what is one of the darkest kind of forms of cultural work right now? I think that's most hostile to Jesus vision of human flourishing and what it looks like to be in there as a follower. I would love to just hear like the inner ethical dialogue that they're writing, wrestling with, and dealing with. You know what I mean? Whether that be an actor or a director.

I was talking to somebody yesterday who said Denzel.

Yeah, that would be a fascinating. Yeah, that would be a great. Yeah, you just never hear about it. You know what I mean? The Christians that seem to do well tend to be, you know, known as Christians, but they're not like verbally processing biblical theology. How do I, you know, how do I be in this movie that has all this stuff in it, you know, and say, like, I would love to hear that.

That's part of the purpose of this podcast, is to give them the space to process those things, because there's not.

A lot of places maybe even more so follower of Jesus in politics. Like, I'd love to hear the thinking behind somebody in Hollywood, but I think I know what I think on that one. But the political one is still one of my biggest open questions, especially coming from more the Anabaptist dream of the church. Like, what's the role of Christians in politics? At what point does wielding power become a form of violence or coercion and what's, you know, but yet these things need to be done. And I had lots of uncertainty and open questions in my mind about on Christians role in politics, you know, so I'd love to hear from a good politician who's not just giving you a spiel, who's actually processing what does it look like to be in this space as a Follower of Jesus.

Yeah. Well, as we get closer to election day 2020, we'll certainly have some of those guests on the show. I got lots of great connections in that world. All right, last question. What one piece of advice would you give to somebody who's pursuing mastery of their vocation for the glory of God and the good of others? One takeaway, regardless of what that vocation is, what would you tell them?

Yeah, I mean just the stock answer would be habits over time.

Discipline over time. It's the key.

Discipline over time. Yeah. Find something that you do every single day that will benefit you 20 years from now. Yeah, I love that. Whether that be reading or programming or whatever your thing is, you know, something that every day cumulative effect you're sowing into your long term mastery.

It's a stock answer, but you know what, but it's a key that you see in every master of every craft. Right. So I love it.

Hey John Mark, I just want to thank you for your masterful work as a teacher.

The Holy Spirit is working through you to change thousands and thousands of lives.

He's used you to change my life.

In more ways than one.

You may not know Patrakhsh responsible for the routine of Sabbath in my life. I'm so grateful that you are committed.

To mastering your craft, helping thousands of.

Others be better apprentices of Jesus. Hey, the book the Ruthless Elimination of Hurry is out right now wherever books are sold. And if you can't tell, I cannot recommend highly enough. So, John Mark, thank you so much for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Thank you for having me.

Jordan, if you enjoyed that conversation, you're going to love my upcoming book, Master of One. It is filled with John Mark Comer quotes. In fact, my editor at one point literally told me through the editing process that I needed to tamper down the John Mark Comer love. I can't help myself. And if you do pre order the book, make sure you enter to win the seven night European cruise that I'm giving away. That's@jordanraynor.com you can find that you're going to go on the cruise, you're going to have dinner with me in Barcelona and then, then you're going to go tour the magnificent La Sagrada Familia. So hey guys, thank you so much for listening to this episode called Mastery. I'll see you next week.