Jon Tyson (Pastor at Church of the City New York)

Today's episode will begin in three minutes. But first I want to tell you about something crazy I'm doing for my new book, five Mere Christians. I've never seen an author do this before, but I'm giving a money back.

Guarantee on this book.

I'm so confident you're gonna love this book that if I'm wrong, if you pre order the book, you don't love it, I'm gonna send you a $20Amazon gift card as a money back guarantee. Why?

Two reasons.

One, this is a different book for me, right. I know this is a very different biography. What is Jordan Rayner doing? And I know it's risky, so I'm going to de risk it for you. Because listen, in my other books, Redeeming youg Time, the Sacredness of Secular Work, Master of One, etc, etc, I am telling you and me how we can glorify God in our work, but in five Mere Christians, I'm doing something very different. I'm showing you what that looks like practically through these unforgettable life stories of five Mere Christians from history. These are the top men and women that I would love to have on this podcast today if, you know, they weren't dead, right?

So that's the first reason this is.

A risk and I'm gonna de risk.

This book for you.

Here's the second reason. I'm just confident you're gonna love this book. My friend Mark Batterson said, quote, five Mere Christians proves that biographies can be extremely entertaining, profoundly helpful, and mercifully short. If you're looking for a book that combines the punch of a great sermon with the pace of a great thriller, this is it. Highly recommended. End quote.

But here's the thing.

In order to qualify for this money back guarantee, you got to do two things. Step one, pre order five Mere Christians in any format, hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever. And then step two, go to 5meerchristians.com and fill out the form on that page and that's it. But you got to do it by midnight Eastern Time on May 9. By filling out that form, you'll also get all the pre order bonuses listed on 5merechristians.com and be entered to win this crazy, epic trip for two to Europe. So visit 5meerchristians.com right now to sign up. Now, please enjoy today's episode.

Hey friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I'm Jordan Raynor. How does the Gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren't pastors or religious professionals, but who work as factory Workers, professors, and custodians. That's the question we explore every week. And today I'm posing it to my friend John Tyson, one of my absolute favorite teachers of the word. He's a pastor at Church of the City, New York, and the author of some great books, including A Creative Minority and the Intentional Father. John and I recently sat down to talk about what will make us mere Christians distinct in the workplace. We talked about John's framework for thinking about Sabbath as ceasing, resting, embracing the father's goodness, and feasting on his gifts. And we talked about why the goal of local churches should not be to take people out of the work they're doing as mere Christians, but to equip them for that work outside of the local church. I think you guys are going to love this conversation with the brilliant John Tyson. John Tyson, I can't believe it's taken us so long to have you on the podcast. Welcome.

Thank you so much. Really happy to be here.

Yeah. So, hey, unlike a lot of pastors, you've been a quote unquote mere Christian. You've worked outside the church. You worked as a butcher, right?

That is correct, yes. And Eugene Peterson was a butcher.

Really?

I didn't know that. Yes, yes. A big chunk of his story and his early formation takes place in the butcher shop. So I feel like I at least have some other friends who pastor in that space. But it was, yes, I'm a fully qualified apprentice butcher. Graduated into a, I don't know, an adult butcher. I don't know.

Yeah, I heard you dropped out of school to do this to be a butcher's apprentice. What's the, what's the story there?

That's interesting. So when I was 14, I've always had a good work ethic. I think that's sort of from the family that I was raised in. When I was 14, I went and got a part time job. Wanted to get some money for myself. I worked for a boss that was absolutely incredible. A visionary, very successful businessman. And he's the first person that ever told me, john, you have a leadership gift. And when I was 14, he said, the other kids who clean up the shop after school follow you. You're a leader. At 16, he basically cast a vision for my life. He said he, hey, drop out of high school, do an apprenticeship with me. I'll teach you how to retire by 30. And he laid out this vision. He basically painted a vision of the four hour workweek. For me. It was by age 20, when all of your friends are just Working their way through college, paying off their college debt. I bought my first house when I was 19 because he told me to. He just gave me a vision of being a leader and managing and working, and it was the joy of accomplishment. So he cast a vision. I had to drop out of high school at 16 to do it. I'm really glad I did. I learned a lot, a lot from the butcher shop.

Okay, so when did God redirect your path away from slicing meat? How did this happen?

The weekend I turned 17. I became a Christian in a Pentecostal youth revival. What was fascinating, my boss said to me, I got a scholarship to study theology when I was 20 in America. That's how I moved here. It's a miracle they let me into college without a high school diploma. And my boss said to me, he used to call me Johnny Swank. It's a long story, but he was like, johnny Swank, don't go and be a monk. Now he's like, wait till you're 30. Let's keep doing the plan, and then you can go do whatever you want. So I became a Christian at 17 and sort of derailed his and my plan for my life.

What's the Johnny Swank story?

The Johnny Swank story is I honestly wasn't ashamed of being a butcher. I had no class consciousness. I just was like, I do remember a few people now saying to me, oh, sure, you want to do that? And I was, like, really good at it. I'm finding a sense of joy and meaning in doing it. But I always had a little bit of a snobbish crust to me, so I'd always dress better than everybody else, and I'd always show up with cologne on in the meat factory. And so they started calling me Johnny Swank. He's a little too swanky for the meat factory. And that's. That's how it stuck. Yeah. Yes. In all communities of men, you have your sense of belonging when you were renamed. And even if that name is slightly derogatory, it's a sign of belonging, and it's actually a sign of affection. So Johnny Swank is what it was.

So I grew up in central Florida When I was doing my internship at the White House, I guess all the boy bands were big at this time. Yeah, this is, like, mid 2000s. And because Backstreet was founded in central Florida, my nickname became Backstreet, which was a terrible thing to him. Not nearly as cool as. As Johnny Swank and your snobbish crust.

Listen, man, I don't know. They were both. I remember that era well. I had a friend you. You actually he's now he runs RC Sprawls Legionnaire Ministry. He was in the Backstreet Boys and in Sync. What? Yes. And he dropped out of both bands. He was with Lou Perlman back at the time when they were being formed. He dropped dropped out of both bands and gave his out of biblical conviction and then sort of went on to run Legionnaire Ministries for RC Sproul.

That's so wild. This is not where I expected this conversation to go, but this is amazing. I could do 20 minutes on this. Yeah. Geez.

Yeah. So it's like you want to talk about. You want to talk about mere Christians, Dude, There you go.

There you go. Hey, man. My audience hears from me every week that it is not necessary to do what you did to go into pastoral ministry in order to follow Jesus fully and faithfully. But I love it when our mere Christian listeners can hear that from ordained ministers like yourself. And I know this is a topic you and I have talked about before. Take a minute and expound upon the sacredness of the seemingly secular, quote, unquote, work that our listeners do most of the week.

Well, I mean, I think we make a lot of mistakes. And I think the biggest mistake is probably believing that it's the Christian's primary job to build the church. Jesus said that he would build the church. Our job was to seek the kingdom. The kingdom was bigger than the church. It obviously includes God's people and the institution of the church. But his goal is to extend the rule and reign of Jesus in all of life. Ephesians 4 says that because of the ascension of Jesus, that what God is doing is filling the universe with Christ. So that work of joining God in the renewal of all things, finding that redemptive edge where God's kingdom is pushing back on the forces of evil, is what we're called to do. So obviously the goal of life is the cultivation of godly culture in the world. That's why people were put on earth and through the redemptive lens of Jesus, our goal is to bring redemptive culture. And that happens in every sphere of life. Jesus isn't just Lord of the Bible and morality and sacraments, he's the Lord of all of human life and culture. And so it's our job to. The church's job is to equip people, to send them into the world on mission to extend the kingdom of God. And the kingdom of God can be found in baking bread, cleaning streets and working on good advertising. It can be found in any sphere of life. So the goal of the church is to equip people for the mission of God, which is a vocational mission. It doesn't exist to suck people out of the world into the church for sort of a moral survival alone. So I love that I sometimes, when I preach places, will ordain everybody. I do an ordination service where I ordain everybody for mission in the kingdom of God. And it might sound a little tacky. I'm telling. I've had people come up in tears and say, this is the first time of my Christian life. I feel like that what I do in the world and all week matters. So that's it.

I love your perspective on this, and I know you've thought really deeply about this with our mutual friend Dave Blanchard and the team at Praxis and a lot of other people. But, like, make this a little bit more concrete and tangible. If you were talking to a butcher, go back to your previous vocation and you're trying to help a butcher in your congregation understand what it looks like to bring the kingdom to bear in that meat shop. What does that look like exactly, John?

Well, it's definitely multifaceted. It probably starts in your interior life, which is the motivational structure of your heart. I want to do this for the glory of God. I want to have integrity in the way I do it. I don't want to sell bad meat. I don't want to miss. It's so interesting. One of the greatest tests. I'm not. It's been a long time, and the statue of limitations is probably passed. But one of the great ethical tensions of my life. My boss used to sell mutton as lamb, and he came up with a stamp imitating the Australian meat and livestock stamp. And he would take mutton and stamp it as lamb and sell it as lamb. And I remember very clearly becoming a Christian saying, I'm not doing that. And so why aren't you doing that? I'm like, that's unethical, mate. I can't do it. I've got convictions. And so it starts with your interior motivational structure, begins to move its way out sort of ethically, that you've got to have a framework of your ethics for how they participate in your industry. You know, where's it moving towards beauty, brokenness. What lines do you have to draw in advance? Under pressure, you'll probably fold. So you've got to determine them in advance. So you've got, you know, the butcher shop it was like, am I selling meat at the right price? Am I selling the right meat? So there's a sort of an ethical dimension. Then you want to do a good job. I think God is honored by excellence. And so you want to have a good product, you want to do your job. Well, if you've had bad meat at a barbecue, trust me, the kingdom of God matters in the meat shop. So, yeah, I would try and do everything for the glory of God and try and do as good a job as I could. And then I would try and care about the people I worked with. I would try and. Which I did. I try and love them. I try and share the gospel with them. I try and care about them as holistic beings. Yeah, I would try and care about the people that we served. I mean, I definitely saw a celebratory element of it. One of life's greatest gifts is gathering around a table. And meat for many people is at the center of that. And so when a great piece of meat comes out, either with a group of men in the backyard watching a game or a family meal or a fine dining, when it's brought out, you get caught up in the larger vision of celebration, redemption, and the kingdom of heaven being a feast. And so if you can get all of those pieces sort of lined up, you can find tremendous meaning, even in a butcher shop.

Yeah, no, that's so good. And in a way, what you're really talking about is, hey, don't retreat. Engage in culture. Engage through what you call redemptive participation. In the first book of yours that I read and loved, I don't know how long ago this was, but this little short book called A Creative Minority. Can you give our listeners a high level overview of this book, if you can even remember? I don't know. When did you write this? 2015.

Yeah, I wrote it for the 2016 election when everyone was losing their minds. Yeah, it's basically was just a very, very short attempt to give people a way to think through how to participate in culture that was increasingly secular. So some people tend to withdraw. They've got a separation instinct. Some people seem to capitulate. They have a syncretistic element. I was like, how do you remain engaged in the world, not of the world. How do you touch the world and shape the world, but without doing it with ungodly coercion or relying on the flesh? Came across an essay called A Creative Minority, and it was by Jonathan Sachs, the chief rabbi in the uk, and he just had this idea of a creative minority. And it was how the Jewish people have approached participation in the world. And it was basically to remain true to their faith and convictions, but to exert their influence in society towards a theological vision of Yahweh's rule and reign in all of life. I mean, the Torah is very confusing for modern people, but if you understand it was designed. The reason the Torah in one verse can talk about the female menstrual cycle, what to do with the donkey if it falls into a pit, and what you should do on your roof is because they wanted you to see that Yahweh was Lord of all of life. It was a unitive framework at the time. There was a, you know, there's various gods for various elements of life. And so people were caught up in idolatry, looking at different areas and. And to be able to unify all of life under one Lord. Monotheism was a revolutionary concept at the time. And so the goal was no sacred secular divide. Be faithful to Yahweh and bring his influence to bear on all of life. So creative minority was taking that, applying it to the church and then asking the question, how do we not retreat from the world? Jesus certainly didn't do that. How do we not capitulate to the world? We all hate compromise when we see it like that. But how do we engage it and influence influences is before it was corrupted by social media. A beautiful word from the Latin, literally having the idea of something flowing through you. It's an effortless overflow based on who you are. And so when the church goes into the world, not trying to control the world or cow from the world, but engage the world faithfully, it often exerts a tremendous influence on culture. And that's the church's job. Be distinct, but engage, hold these things in tension. So that was the vision. It did get, I think, some measure of resonance, particularly sort of millennials and below, because they knew they didn't want to give in to a leftist neo Marxist understanding of life. Its primary critique, not just economic, but is fundamentally religious. That's a philosophy of radical materialism, exclusive materialism. But they didn't want to just wait to get to heaven and enjoy God when you're dead. So it did seem to provide that vision of engagement with faithfulness without being outcome obsessed, but still hoping to make a difference in the world. So that was sort of the big idea behind it.

Yeah, the book is really built around these six defining marks of a creative minority. I'm really putting you to the test, if you can remember them. And talk us through at a high level what it looks like to be a creative minority in our increasingly post Christian culture.

Well, yeah, I can. The first thing I want to say about a creative minority is this. Is that a. I thought about updating it twice because I think society has shifted a little bit. So that was written in light of the first Trump freak out now the first time around, I mean to pause for a sec. I don't want to be divisive. I don't know how people voted in your community. So the people who are listening to you. So, so I'm hesitant to that but I would say it's. I wanted to rewrite it because I think the first time around there was, there was grace not knowing. You know, a lot of people didn't vote for Trump, they voted against Hillary. But now I think it's such a political disaster I'm hesitant to. So I wanted to rewrite it with including a chapter on prayer. But the basic idea is rewrite it right here.

Let's just rewrite the book together. Let's outline it.

I'll add the last. So credit. Minority is about a different kind of relationship. So it's basically about forming covenant relationships. The way society moves at its best is when you have a tight knit of people with a shared vision and deep, deep commitment to one another. So talk about two of the fruit most fruitful communities like this, the Moravians, who a small group led by Zinzendorf who were the most generative Christian community in history for their size. Little congregation of no more, a village of no more than three to 400. But they did more for Protestant missions in a couple of decades than the previous couple hundred years. And then obviously the Clapham sect, Wilberforce and his circle of friends who had a tremendous influence on what happened in the uk. So people forget the relational dynamics. Everybody want vision. But you won't get that kind of fruit without relational commitment. So instead of just having loose networks and associates, how do you have deep covenant relationships? Second one's narrative. How do you live in the proper story? We're creatures of narrative. The framing and story we perceive ourselves to be in determines the role we play and whether or not we view ourselves as successful. So you've got to have a compelling alternative story to the one of either fatalistic secularism, sort of a flattened out world with no enchantment, no vision, just sort of this is it or yeah, so a flattened secularism or just a radical individualism. The story is just about me and you. Just you're just an uber consumer taking everything in. So you've got to have a story about God and redemption that makes sense of the human longings and moral vision. Then you're going to have distinct ethics. The people of God of particularly around sex, money and power. The Catholics, I think, really understood the gifts and distortions of sexuality. So they warned against sex, money and power. Their response was an over response. So theirs was chastity and poverty and obedience. I think they were moving in the right direction. So we talk about generosity and faithfulness and servanthood as a response. Ethical distinctions then different practices. You are what you repeatedly do. James K. Smith's obviously written a lot about how our practices shape our lives. But you've got to have counterformative practices. If our practices mimic the secular consumer practices of the world will be no different. And so you've got to have distinct practices. And how you do that then it's a different authority. When you have a sort of exile mentality, you go along as far as you can. But there's definitely going to be moments of tension. So you think about how Daniel handled this. Daniel in the Lion's Den is not a children's story. It's about a man of faithfulness living by radical trust, believing in a larger kingdom. He actually had quite a bit of favor. It was jealousy that put him in the lion's den, not sort of religious pressure. They weaponized his religion because of his loyalty to Yahweh. But. So you've got to be as good a citizen as you can, as long as you can, until there's a point of difference. And then you've got to diverge based on biblical authority and then participation. Which means you've got to get in the world and shape the world by being a part of it. The way salt and light in essence manifests through every area of our lives. And so I think if you built a community with those six pillars, you'd really have something quite potent, which is the goal of our faith. It's not size, it's potency. The kingdom of God comes in seed form. A potent seed will bear staggering fruit. 100x Jesus said with the right soil. But I would add, with all of that being said, I would definitely put a chapter in prayer in there. And I would call it a different power. So a creative minority has to be powered by something different. It can't be powered by grievance. It can't be powered by sociology. It can't be powered by the flesh. It's got to be powered by The Holy Spirit. And so when God's people depend on God, I think that makes a radically different community. And then I think I'd probably put a chapter on love in there. A creative minority has to be a loving community. You can get a lot done with a lot of commitment and you can build it on anything other than love. Love is the distinctive of the Christian and it is our sacrificial love for one another that defines us. So if I was going to add a couple chapters, it'd probably be those.

I love it. There's the new outline coming soon for John Tyson. I want to go back to this idea of participation because I talk to a lot of Christians these days who are working in large companies that are increasingly hostile to the ways of the Lord. And it just feels increasingly secular and they just feel the desire not to participate, to leave and take a job at a church or maybe a business run by a fellow believer that's better aligned with their values, if you will. What would you say to that person? Obviously this is highly situational. Obviously, if you're in a job that's requiring you to sin, that's a non starter. But in general, what's your advice to people who are coming to you with that type of internal conflict?

I do believe that general principles misapplied to do damage. So I would say, hey, is the Holy Spirit leading you to do this? And I would sort of interrogate your answer. Why is you want more convenient? Too much pressure, you don't feel equipped. So I would affirm it if there was a deep sense the Holy Spirit was doing it. I do think about William Wilberforce. He basically went home. I think he was about 24 years of age and he wrote out 20 words. And those 20 words did more to impact Western culture than maybe any other 20 words written, which was the eradication of slavery and the reformation of manners. And that happened because his mentor obviously said to him, we got enough pastors, men stay in politics. And I would say that if Christians keep abandoning the places of the world, what do you think is going to happen? Of course it's going to get worse. You want Christians in there giving an alternative vision of the world. I think every other community understands this. I don't know why Christians don't understand this part of it may be because we're living in an idealized past. I think people radically underestimate the role of cultural Christianity that wasn't truly Christianity. The 70s and 80s, when the cold War was really, really kicking up, people went to church not because they love Jesus, but because they hate the Russians. The swelling church attendance, a lot of it was just like swearing allegiance to the flag, which is, if they're atheists, we're Christians. It wasn't necessarily a deep faith. So I think a lot of times there was a surface morality that people long to get back to, but that doesn't mean there was necessarily deep faith. That also doesn't mean I don't grieve the godlessness in our worlds today. I think of the psalmist who said, rivers of tears flow from my eyes because I do not obey your law. I feel that grief at godlessness. But I would say to people, go into the world, and maybe we've got this framework that we're fighting to make America Christian again, as opposed to viewing ourselves as sent by God into a secular culture to be salt and light and witness. And when you take on a missional lens and you have a posture of being sent, rather than just a. Maybe even a moral or historical lens, I think you just end up with a different view of what it is that God wants you to do. In order to be salt and light, you must have contact with darkness and meat or whatever's decaying. I think that that's our core job. So I would encourage people to get a vision of being sent by God to try and take some of those core elements of doing your job with excellence, looking for the redemptive edge, moving your career towards it, loving your co workers, working with excellence, stewarding the influence God gives you. I try and have that framework that informs what I did, and I go back in and engage as well as I could. Yeah.

In light. It's such a beautiful picture that Jesus offers of us, of salt and light. Light is primarily characterized by its contrast to darkness. Right. So I'm always interested, like, how do we mere Christians turn up the contrast, if you will, in our lives?

Right.

You pointed to love. What does it look like to be distinctive in how we love within the workplace?

Okay, so my answers are simple in theory, hard in praxis. Getting back to sex, money, power. You have a distinctly Christian sexual ethic that you hold with integrity. Look, man, the LGBTQ community doesn't want to hear another lecture by porn addicted men misogynizing women in their fantasies. So you've got. You got to have a distinctive sexual ethic that you live out with cost and conviction. Number two, how you steward your resources. You've got to be disproportionately generous, and everybody wants to serve the poor. I'm amazed at how few people actually do. We don't give sacrificially, we give proportionally. So you can get a very rich person that gives a lot of money, that doesn't cost them anything. And I think there should be a sort of a sacrificial distinction, a simplicity in our lifestyle. I think it's class distinction, not poverty per se. There should be something with, to whatever degree that God has blessed you that is distinct amongst the community of people that you live with. This is going to sound crazy. It might be as simple as driving a Kia or an Explorer instead of a Range Rover in your community and amongst your friends. Now, listen, that sounds like such a level of privilege, but for a lot of people, that's actually a helpful thought, that you're not maxing them out your lifestyle possibilities in the range of blessing that you have. And then I think you've got to hold power differently. You've got to hold power as a servant. You've got to literally seek to build other people up, not just take. I think if we do that. But I also do remember what Andy Kraut says. I think about this a lot. He says, it's not hard to be radical in our world today. Don't watch TV and give 10% of your money to the poor. And it's like, that is a sign and a wonder. A sign points to something beyond it and a wonder makes you go, why are you doing that? I think there's smaller things we can do that are quite provocative that actually point the way to others. I think a big one is civility in the modern world, getting out of the rage machine, being able to listen and empathize. I think that goes a long way. And I think enemy love and forgiveness is something our world doesn't do very well. It's a secret weapon of the church and the better. We love our enemies. We're kind to those. There's that scandalous verse in Luke's account of the Sermon on the Mount where it says, your father is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked. You're like, oh, ungrateful and the wicked. And he goes, that's when you'll be a son of God. That's when you'll really be like your Father. It's when you're kind to people who don't deserve it. So I think there's small things that are pretty simple on a podcast, but when you're confronted where with a situation where you have to live that out, they get more challenging. And I think that's why they're so significant.

But I do think they make a big impact. Right. These are seemingly small things. They're simple things. They're not easy to implement. But when we do, yeah, it raises eyebrows. It raises questions to which Christ is the only answer. I think another one, probably less powerful than a distinct sexual ethic or power or money, is rest. Right. I think as we work shoulder to shoulder with other ambitious professionals, if we're the ones taking time to rest from that labor, to say that the world will keep spinning if we don't keep checking our emails at every hour of every day, I think that's powerful. Right. Like, you've talked about Sabbath quite a bit. How do you think about this?

Do you think this can be one.

Of the ways that we're distinct as mere Christians in the world?

Well, Martha dawn wrote a book on the Sabbath that was wonderful. In it she has a quote where she says the Sabbath is in essence the practicing of the sovereignty of God. What that means is to step back and say, God, I believe that you are God, not me. That when I don't work, you can work. And I'm just gonna have to trust you. We've gotta remember the Sabbath was given primarily in an agrarian culture. And there was like stuff you had to do, harvest season, sowing season. To trust God, that he would literally meet your needs was a very, very large distinctive in its time. I do think it's the same in our world today. Depending on who your audience is, depending on the socioeconomic status, it impacts people differently. There's a lot of people who are so wealthy they can rest more than everybody else. You can get the van life people who are sort of like, screw the system and their whole lives are basically a few YouTube videos and rest. And then you can get the people who are the self care people and the self care people are just resting for themselves. Sabbath is a wholly different concept. It has a vertical orientation. It is about stopping from our work. So it's not like work's terrible. We get a break from. It's like, no, you get to live a meaningful vocation all week long. What a gift. And then you get to take a break and reorient yourself around your vision of God. I put this in the chapter on rest and the beautiful resistance. But there's that image of John the beloved who is resting on Jesus chest. And I love that image. On the Sabbath we get reminded again that we're not what we do. And so Marva Dawn's four part movement is cease Rest, embrace and feast. Ceasing from our work, resting from our labors, embracing our identity and feasting on the goodness of God. And if you were literally to get a piece of paper, draw four quadrants and write those words, cease, rest, embrace, feast, and just have like a little mini Sabbath plan, that day would be filled with so meaning, so much meaning. Last Saturday I did this. I got to tell you, I was sitting in my room overwhelmed with the goodness of God, the beauty of God in the world, in tears for about an hour. Not because I was having some dramatic spiritual experience, because I'd stopped for long enough to reflect on how kind God had been to me, to grant me so much mercy and kindness and blessing and favor. And it was real because I had space to remember it and contemplate it. That's one of the ways we deepen our relationship with God. We appreciate his beauty. We break off the turning everything into a utility that we can commodify and use for, for ourselves and we just enjoy the goodness of God. So yeah, it is definitely a weapon. I tell people in a culture of exhaustion, rest is spiritual warfare. I think we forget that.

So what does ceasing, resting and embracing God's goodness look like typically for you most weeks as you observe Sabbath?

Well, I try and do a 24 hour Sabbath. I think that's what God meant. But I'm not a legalist, mate. It's a gift to be stewarded. I try and do it from 5pm Friday night to 5pm Saturday night. I normally preach on Sunday, so it's hard to shut it down on a Saturday night. So yes, I try and I don't work. And what do you mean by you don't work? I mean I literally do not do anything productive that is advancing my life goals or responsibilities. I stop working when I rest. I'm looking for spiritual, physical, mental and emotional rest. Rest from the trauma of the world, the news cycle of the world, the tragedy being blasted into your heart in sound bites, snippets, in high definition. I'm trying to get rest for my mind and all of the scheming and pressure, dreaming and planning and my worries and anxieties, just to rest my mind, to rest my heart, to be able to just be at peace, you know, It's a beautiful thing to breathe deeply and enjoy just being alive in the world and then your body. We need sleep. The rabbi suggested if you have, if you're married and you haven't had sex that week, it's a nice little day to catch up. It's a day for sleeping in. I always sleep in. Such a gift. It's the only day a week I do. And if you're like, well, I have kids, it's like, well, you sleep in the night before. I mean, you go to bed earlier. That's the only way you can pull off. If you've got little kids. Yeah. Cease rest then embracing. It's like, man, you're getting in touch with who you are. It's contemplating our future. This is who I am. I am not what I do. I am who I am loved by. I reorient myself in the story of God. I get out of the striving and earning and the rage and I just embrace Jesus and the kingdom of God. Let the Abba cry get a little louder. Lose my concern and pressure, knowing that I have eternal life and I'm gonna live in a new heaven and a new earth where righteousness dwell. I'm a rule and reign as a king and a priest. I gotta get in touch with those elements again. They gotta be real in my heart. So I want to. I want to draw from that well of security and identity. And then I want to feast, man, you save practices, everybody's different. You have little things that you. I use the phrase pleasure stacking. You do as much glorious stuff in a 24 hour period as you can. And if you do it right two days before, you'll be looking forward to the Sabbath. Like you'll be on tiptoes looking for the end of the week. And then if you do it right two days later, you'll still be like, man, that was good. And then the good news is that you get to turn around again and just anticipate.

What does your pleasure stacking look like?

Oh, it's different for everyone, man. But for you personally, it's pastries, it's chocolate, it's jazz music, it's smoking a cigar. If the weather's nice outside, riding my motorbike, time with my family, definitely an afternoon nap. It's just, I read poetry, I look at sort of travel blogs of beautiful places in the world. I haven't been yet. I'm just trying to marinate my heart in beauty. I think it was. I don't know if it was Eldridge or Keller. I think it was Eldridge, but he said we have to take in as much beauty as we do evil in order to sort of keep our hearts alive. And so taking in beauty is a gift. I do that a lot. Poetry, photography, painting. I relax, I sort of describe it In Florida you don't have these often and when you do have them, they're probably so dramatic. But up here in New York we have a snow day. And a snow day when it's just. When it's like, don't even try going into the office. There's people skiing down Broadway on a good snow day in New York, you know, and at that point you sort of just throw your hands up and it's like a free. It's a mulligan day. It's like, let's just do whatever. And Sabbath is a scheduled snow day every week. It's just a. Let's just do whatever. Let's or in our hearts towards God, let's enjoy him and let's not try and even be productive. Let's just receive this as a gift. So yeah, no.

And it's been that life giving gift for me. But it is different than self care. I'm glad you pointed this out. It is part of that, but it's much more than that. And really reorienting ourselves towards the father's love.

Yeah, definitely.

My favorite book of yours is the Intentional Father. Your bestseller so far came to me a couple of years ago when I just became so convicted that I was a hundred times more intentional about the work I do in my office than the work I do in my living room. Right. And I think that's true of most people. I'm sure you've heard that from a lot of people. What's the source of that? What drives us to be so much more intentional about the work we do in the office versus the work we do in our homes?

Well, part of it is there's a measure of control a man has in his work environment. There's a measure of expertise and competency. So it feels good. You feel like you know what you're doing. That feels good. Trying to parent your kid's heart mate. That thing's a black box. How do you get in there and understand them? You can't control them. I guess you can for a little while, but that's normally detrimental. They just don't do what you want when you want like people do in the work environment. And so that could be challenging. I also think we might just give too much to our jobs and not have anything left. You just get home and you're like, man, I'm just done. Hey kids, you guys want to watch Disney or. And they love us for letting him do what they want. But it's just a cop out. We know it in our hearts. So Yeah, I think it's probably stewarding our energy, our capacity, a lack of being able to control our kids because they just literally have a will of their own. I tell you what gets a man to be intentional. Two things. Love and regret. Love and regret. There's no pain like the pain of a parent who has not parented well, man, I think the pain is worse than the pain of marriage. I think the pain is worse than the pain of relational betrayal. There's no pain like looking back and you've got a bad relationship with your kids and, you know, in your spirit, sometimes they're their own people, they do what they want. But you just know, I dropped the ball here. That is such an acute level of pain in my pastoring. So I've spoken a ton of podcasts on the intentional Father. Every Father's Day, I do another round sort of a thing. And one of the biggest questions I get asked is like, I feel like I've blown it with my kids. Is it too late? And I actually think the power of a father is so great. A father's blessing, a father's affirmation, a father's love is so potent that I actually. I'm not sure it's ever too late. That if you move towards your kids now, there may be a whole season of repair you have to do. And sometimes it's a little patch in the wall, you know, like, hey, sorry, and you just. And other times it's a gut renovation of your relationship, and it's slow and it's costly. But I do believe that when a father sort of turns back, anything is possible. We love Luke 15 story the Prodigal Son. Here is a father on the horizon waiting for kids to come home. I'm telling you, mate, we live in a world right now of prodigal fathers, and it's actually kids at the end of the road waiting for dads to come home. And I believe the response is home. When a dad comes home, I believe very often, very often the response is welcome home, and there's a party thrown in return. So I say, let the love of God find your heart and head towards home. Your kids, you may have to repair. There may be work that needs to be done, but I'm often amazed at the grace kids are willing to show us because of how deep that father's blessing and love is.

That's good.

It's been a year or so since.

I read the book, trying to remember. Are there tools and practices in the book that you basically borrowed from the world of Work in an office setting and applied to the work of leading your family. Like goals, core values. I know there's a lot of different practices in the book, but is there any application, any translation there from work at the office to work at home?

Well, you know, it's interesting. I would actually say if you go back far enough historically what you have is the office experience extracting the best of the home. Because society was primarily. It was, it was a FA society and business was built on a family affair. You get past the industrial revolution, you know, the atomization of the family, stuff like that. If you go back far enough, you're going to have families doing life together as mid sized multi generational communities, not nuclear families. And those values were extracted out of the family into the workplace. I mean, corporation is literally legally defined as a person, isn't it? We humanize the workplace because the values inside of them were often that came from human institutions like the home. So I think it could be. The thing I would say primarily is like, hey dad, use the toolkit and skills you've developed in your career. Extend that into your home. I'm often amazed how a man in the workplace will understand the importance of timing disruption in a business, but then scream whatever he wants at a fight with his wife. It's like do, do, do, do. No, you understand timing in every other area. How about timing in your marriage? The same thing with our kids. I don't think anybody would start a business or really get senior leadership without having at least a one year plan. But it's amazing how many people don't have a one year plan that are planned for the next year. They just let the school calendar run it. The consumeristic calendar. I think we'll do Valentine's Day to Easter, the Easter egg hunt, followed by swimming at the pool and maybe a few trips as a fat. And it's not that those things are bad, they're fine. You've got to live in some cultural context. It's just that you would never accept that in your workplace. I think, no, you're not in control. Yeah, I think we need to just be. And the book's called Intentional Father. I think there's two keys. It's not doing everything differently. It's doing what you're currently doing with intensity and intentionality. An extra 20% of effort in a family can change that family. And having intentionality doesn't mean you do more. In fact, it may mean that you do less. I'm not advocating for loading a bunch more stuff. You have to do as a dad on your shoulders. I'm actually just getting you to examine. I'm sure you've heard of Greg McKeown. I think he wrote Essentialism and then his book Effortless, which I loved. I try and tell people it's the effortless and essentialist philosophy applied to parenting. You know who is not effortless, you know who is not essential, you know who is not intentional? The American teenage system. That's what's suffocating you. That's what's choking you out. It's all the travel, sports, it's the over scheduling, it's the hyper emphasis on academics to the exclusion of other necessary things for sort of adolescent development. When those things happen, we miss out on some of these things. So I'm actually advocating for less intentionality and strategic framing and moving out from that. And a lot of people say, I could never do what you did with your kids. I'm like, dude, I could never do what America's doing to your family. Yes, my stuff was hard and it was work, but it was life giving as opposed to being on a treadmill of perpetual exhaustion.

Yeah. We talk so much on this podcast almost exclusively about the good work that God has called us to do outside the home. But let's not forget that the work of parenting is also work. Right? And we'd be wise to take a lot of the skills that God has given us in the workplace of intentionality, of discipline, of vision, casting, and applying that to our homes. This is not a podcast about parenting, so we're not going to go deep on the intentional father. But it is absolutely one of the top books that I recommend. I recommend it constantly. And by the way, this is written for fathers of boys. I'm a father of three girls and I still got so much out of it. And it's a really good segue. John, one of three rapid fire questions we wrap up every podcast with. Which books do you recommend most frequently to other people?

A decently read guy. So I'd have to say it depends on the topic. Can you go down one layer?

Yes. So specifically for this audience of ambitious Christian professionals, this could be a professional growth book. It could be a Christian living book that's particularly for ambitious mere Christians like the Burden is Light, which I can't believe we didn't talk about today, but anything for that broad audience.

I love biographies and I think the wisest people learn from the lives of others. If you have to make all your mistakes your own, we can do better than that. So here's A book I love Sacred Fire by Ronald Rolheiser. I mean, I just think that that is a book of books, man.

What's the biography you recommend the most?

I'm in the middle of Dr. King's one right now. A Pulitzer Prize winner. I just finished the one by Meacham on Abraham Lincoln, and I loved that. I love that book. Really? Yes. I mean, just understanding what a controversial figure he was. But his process of. Here's what I loved about the Lincoln biography, and I think it was called There Was Light or Let There Be Not Let There Be Light, Something about light. Sorry for forgetting, because I'm. I'm so deep into the civil rights movement right now in this biography. But what I loved about it was like, his understanding of influencing people over time. It's like he was perpetually frustrating the people who were against his agenda, and he was never satisfying the people he was actually trying to help. But he just had a long, slow, evolved vision. The thing about his life is you can turn him into a horrible racist or you can turn him into a hero. He was neither. He was a man who hated slavery and worked over the course of time to change it. So it's just watching a man evolve, watching his ethics develop, watching the key experiences that developed him over time. So I'm a big believer in biographies. I love, love Philip Yancey. Philip Yancey is my CS Lewis. He has saved my faith. But his biography, where the Light Fell, which is memoir of growing up, that really touched me deeply. I wept. I just wept in several places. Just what the damage fundamentalistic religion did, the damage of bad religion. Another one I loved was on the Road with St. Augustine by James K.A. smith that just talked about Augustine's journey to Jesus. I thought that one was beautiful. I've been reading a ton of. I reread the Founder's Mentality. That's a business book, basically, for entrepreneurs. I just took our staff through that. I tell you, a book that. The book that has probably stuck in my head the longest. I think I heard this in 2002, 2003. The leadership challenge by Poozes and Khosna. That book, I think, more than any other book I've ever read, has framed my understanding of leadership. Let me give it to you in literally 30 seconds, my interpretation of it. He talks about these exemplary practices. Number one is challenge the process. Leaders are always asking why or why not? That's how things move forward. Number two, inspire a shared vision. You've got to make people look good, like people care about the future when they look good in it, in their minds, model the way, which means you have to embody your message. Empower others to act, which is like create structures that give people, buy in and activate human potential and encourage the heart. People are absolutely starving for encouragement. Those stuff subconsciously. If you got around me long enough, you'd probably say, I see these five traits most deeply in your leadership. I'm always pushing the edge. Why? Why not? I'm always trying to cast a vision that's good for people, not just for myself. I'm always trying to embody what I'm teaching, close that hypocrisy gap. I want to empower people, help them reach their redemptive potential, create spaces for their flourishing. And then I want to. I want people to walk away from being in my emotional field, built up and inspired the More as possible. So I love that book. It's an old book, but. But it's one that's gone the distance for me.

It's good. I've never heard of it. I gotta check this out. It's really good.

It's classic. Yeah, yeah.

Who do you want to hear in this podcast, John? Ideally, somebody who's not a pastor, but somebody to come and talk about how the gospel influences the work they do in the world.

I tell you what I want to hear. I want to hear anybody who's under 23. I want to hear Gen Z. I want to hear how Gen Z has. So number one, I want to ask the question has the faith and work message is a small hidden message, which is sad to me because I think it is the message of the message of the kingdom of God. So, A, it doesn't have a big enough audience, period. B, I always worry that the best content doesn't make it to the next generation. There's a few boomers, some Gen X growing millennials. But I don't know if this is a message that's found its way. I think it's. Let me say something controversial. I think that in the same way that faith and work was extracted as a vision and converted only to serving in the church, I am worried that Gen Z has lost a vision of faith and work and is doing what was done to the church around the issue of justice. And what I mean by that is they're bypassing vocational calling and thinking. The only thing matters is if you do justice in the same way another generation said the only thing that matters if you're serving the church. Justice is a part of what we're called to do. Do in the same way that being a part of the church is a part of what we're called to do, but we have a calling within which that takes its shape. And so I would love to see how anybody in Gen Z is really embodying the best principles of the faith and work movement and pushing it out vocationally.

That's really good. John, what's one thing from our conversation you want to reiterate to our listeners, this audience of vocationally diverse mere Christians? Before we sign off, I want to.

Say this, which I alluded to if I was rewriting creative minority. I put a chapter in prayer there. The more secular in the environment, the more intentionally prayerful people became. So the deeper you get into bringing faith and work into the darkness of the world, the more important it is that you abide in Jesus love and rely on the power of the Holy Spirit. Daniel went to prison for prayer. It was the seeking of God that enabled him to do that. Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego wouldn't bow down out of allegiance of worship. Esther saved the kingdom. It was prayer and fasting. So my whole point is I sometimes say we're so lukewarm as a church. Now this is the pastor in me talking. We're so lukewarm as a church that when we remove the sacred secular barrier, instead of everything becoming sacred, most things become secular. And I think the goal is to make sure that we bring a potency to our faith in the darkest places. The best believers I know in New York who are high level Wall street people or successful in the business world, the ones who are most successful are the most radically dependent. They are acutely aware of their need for the restraining grace of God in temptation, the importance of having the power of the Holy Spirit to bear the fruit of the Spirit in places where the flesh is manifestly acting and the importance of relying on the love of Jesus, not building their identity, on their sense of accomplishment by spending time and abiding in his love. So I would reiterate, the more success, the more calling, the deeper you go into the world, the deeper you need to go on the love of Jesus to do that properly.

Very well said. John, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do, brother, for the glory of God and the good of others, for showing us what it looks like to work as a creative minority and a faithful presence in our increasingly post Christian workplaces. And just for your encouragement to our listeners to lean into the work that God has created them to do. Guys, John's books are phenomenal. We've talked about a creative minority. We touched on the intentional father. I can't believe we didn't get to the Burden is Light. But John, thanks for hanging out with us today.

No worries man. I really enjoyed it. And much grace and peace to everybody listening.

I hope you guys enjoyed that episode. Hey, if you did, do me a favor and go leave a review of the Mere Christians Podcast on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen to the show. I'll see you guys next week.

Hey friends, this is your last chance to claim all the amazing pre order bonuses for five mere Christians before they go away at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on May 9. I've never offered this many pre order bonuses on a book before, so when you fill out the form@5merechristians.com Number one, you're going to be entered to win an incredible trip for you and a friend to tour CS Lewis's favorite spots in Oxford, explore Olay Kirk Christiansen's former stomping grounds at Lego headquarters in Denmark, and much more. Number two, you'll be invited to join my first ever interactive reading, culminating in a zoom call with me and my co author on this book, Caitlin Daily Cox. Number three, you're going to be getting a money back guarantee to try the book risk free. And number four, you'll also get access to a free course I'm not selling anywhere called how to write a book 10x faster and better with an Affordable co author. You can claim all these bonuses in just two simple steps. Step 1 Pre order 5 mere Christians in any format you want. It can be hardback, ebook, audiobook, whatever and you can order it from wherever. It doesn't matter to me. Step 2 Go to 5Mere Christians.com and fill out the form of that page and that's it. I'll send you all those bonuses. You'll be entered into the sweepstakes with one simple form submission. But hey, don't wait all of these off. All of these offers, all these bonuses. They're going away at 11:59pm Eastern Standard Time on May 9th. So visit 5meerchristians.com right now to claim your bonuses.