Top Ten Quotes: A Non-Anxious Presence
Ounce for ounce, one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read this year was Mark Sayers’ A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders. Sayers’ thesis is that our world is in crisis. No matter where you fall ideologically or politically, you can agree that’s true. We’re in one of the most topsy-turvy timelines I can remember in my half century on this greenish ball.
A Non-Anxious Presence challenges leaders to navigate the current crisis – not by adding to it – but by remaining faithful in it. If you’ve not read it, I highly recommend that you pick up a copy.
Here are my top ten favorite quotes:
- Gray zones are disorientating in-between places, where little seems to make sense. The war has ended, but peace hasn’t arrived yet.
- For those with eyes to see, the seeds of renewal are everywhere.
- When we are anxious, we seek out strongholds. When we cannot find a stronghold, we build one. We seek to centralize control and power in a stronghold. The architectural plans for strongholds are first drafted in the anxious human heart. Strongholds are humanity’s oldest antidote to anxiety.
- When a stronghold is unable to continue to operate as a buffer for our anxiety, its legitimacy comes into question…Once the legitimacy of a stronghold is questioned, it no longer absorbs our anxiety. Instead, it becomes the source of our anxiety.
- [A] more connected world becomes a more conflicted world…tribalism replaces consensus.
- In a decentralized world, organizations, institutions, and churches can find themselves entangled in cultural battles as groups within their ranks create new feedback loops of discontent.
- [T]he leader’s chief tool of influence is their presence.
- …the Bible shows us that the wilderness is the place where we encounter and are refreshed by the presence of God. The wilderness is where non-anxious leaders are formed, where we learn to become adaptive, creative, and resilient leaders in God’s strength, not ours.
- To partner with God as He brings renewal in the world, in the systems and organizations where we live and lead, we must learn to detect His voice before moving forward; this is a countercultural act in an anxious system, which demands instant action, quick fixes, and fast-acting remedies for pain.
- Without God’s presence, the wilderness offers only isolation. With the presence of God, the wilderness offers us insulation from the deception of the crowd.
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