In A Non-anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed Christian Leaders, Mark Sayers argues that shifting events and massive culture changes mean that we have now entered a "gray zone", which is "a chaotic, confusing, anxious, and complex place filled with change. It is the space between a passing era ending and a new era forming."

The question he poses is: How do you lead in a moment like this?

Mark Sayers is a pastor in Australia and a prolific writer and speaker and podcaster.

He is something of an authority on changing culture and the church.

In this book, he sees our chaotic and anxious times as an opportunity for renewed Christian leaders to supply the leadership that churches need to navigate the storms.

The Gray Zone

Sayers begins by defining the "Gray Zone". This is the turbulent space between the passing of one era and the emergence of the next era. It is formed in the overlap of the old era with the new one. It contains an intensification of the passing era while simultaneously exhibiting traits of the coming era.

The world is in a time of significant and rapid changes in politics, technology, culture, and in the global order, all hinting at a new and different future. And these changes seemed to have accelerated with the arrival of COVID-19.

KEY IDEA IN THE BOOK: We have not entered a new era; instead, we have entered an in-between phase, a gray zone.

As Sayers says, "A gray zone is confusing and contradictory, filled with change and conflict. Everything seems to be up in the air."

Sayers makes for compelling reading as he describes this churn. The book is optimistic from the beginning however:

We may not know without hindsight when the gray zone will end, yet it is the environment in which we are called to lead. To live out the kingdom of God. For those who have found themselves overrun by the sheer pace of change over the last five years, who anxiously try to find their bearings in this time---you are not alone. Gray zones are challenging places that operate under different rules. However, we follow an unchanging God, who is advancing His kingdom in this gray zone moment.

The book contends that gray zones are the kinds of places that God seeds with renewal and rebirth. Sayers then states that, "God uses leaders to seed His plans in the world". Of course I can understand the importance and significance of leaders, but I still find this phrase slightly odd. I prefer to say God raises up leaders... But this is a minor criticism.

The anxious world

The second part of the book looks at the anxious world that we inhabit and describes the trend away from "strongholds" towards a networked topology. By that, Sayers means structural changes that have have enormous implications for how we lead and live.

At this point the book begins to talk about the anxious, grey zone as "wilderness". This idea becomes more and more important as the book progresses.

Strongholds are protective structures created to to find security, safety, and prosperity in a threatening, chaotic, and unpredictable environment. An era may then be defined as a period in which a stronghold in the form of a state, kingdom, corporation, or organisation maintains dominance over a system, projecting its power and control outward.

In recent times, globalisation and the spread of the Internet has brought about decentralisation, driven by network dynamics. The world is a now a vast, complex, connected network where power shifts away from existing strongholds.

The motivation to build strongholds is driven by anxiety. In all their forms, the walls of strongholds are designed to keep the bad out. However, as we will learn, networks have a way of going around stronghold walls. This means that in our networked world, anxiety returns.

Our gray zone will not be a fleeting moment but rather an indefinite period of ongoing disruption and instability as the patterns that have defined the world for the last half-century are radically reshaped.

In a network, power is fluid. It moves around the network, creating new sources of power and undermining prior centres of power. In the network, "hubs and coalitions vie for power. The once-dominant central hub can no longer maintain control over communications, and a vast array of communications floods the system. Story wars (battles over which narrative will define reality) replace the singular defining narrative in which a dizzying array of narratives battle for dominance. People worry less about the singular dominant communication of the government and start worrying about disinformation and dangerous conflicting stories".

In such confusing times, tribalism rises and crumbling strongholds led to new crisis of identity.

This analysis certainly resonates with me. It has the ring of truth about it!

Leading in the zone

The concluding section of the book looks at leadership and how all these cultural changes are re-defining the task of leadership. "Leadership was once seen as the art of building consensus. However, now it can feel like the act of desperately avoiding conflict---a change that is creating anxiety in many leaders." Mark Sayers builds on Edwin Friedman's solution to this challenge, which is that leaders adopt a key posture: the non-anxious presence mentioned in the book's title.

Edwin H. Friedman wrote a famous book, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (New York: Church Publishing, 1999), which has since influenced many books, as well as this one. Even before the effects of the internet intensified the pattern, he understood how humans tend toward anxiety and the challenge that this presented to leaders. He recognised that anxiety flows virally through social networks, enveloping institutions in unhealthy emotions.

As a network is swamped by chronic anxiety, the people within the system no longer act rationally. Instead high emotion becomes the dominant form of interaction. The anxiety present swamps and overwhelms the vision of the organisation within the system.

In a chronically anxious system, conflict and retreat become the dominant modes of engagement with others. It becomes nearly impossible to gain any distance from an issue; reaction, hurt, and high emotions replace contemplation and thoughtfulness. Reflection is replaced by reactivity.

Sayers believes that we see this mood everywhere, in social media interactions, in political discourse, even within churches and families.

As tools for gaining space and relief from an issue, humour, irony, and satire are lost. To the emotionally immature, everything becomes at best a slight, at worst a direct assault. Feelings become all-powerful and fragile all at the same time. Conflict, sexual activity, and even violence become normative forms of social engagement and interaction within a chronically anxious system's network of human relationships.

It becomes almost impossible for leaders to see the bigger issue and tackle systemic issues because the focus is continually brought back to the latest crisis and to the feverish emotional responses that are swamping the network. The digital network acts like a super-spreading agent of anxiety within the already existing relational and social networks. Churches and Christian organisations that have been overtaken by chronic anxiety then tend to resist growth.

To this uncomfortable, yet familiar challenge, Friedman proposed a novel and radical leadership solution. He argued that the most vital attribute to lead, especially in anxious human environments and systems, was a non-anxious presence. Thus, the leader's chief tool of influence is their presence.

KEY IDEA IN THE BOOK: In anxious environments, leaders leverage influence through being a non-anxious presence.

Friedman argued that anxious leaders may well turn to quick-fix solutions, that offer a pain-free and rapid exit from the challenges found in anxious environments. He recognised that a leader who applies quick-fix solutions, even when they fail to address the root issues we genuinely face and fail to lead us toward growth, will be championed in anxious networks. So good communicators who home in on a quick-fix solution and apply it seemingly successfully in their context, may find broad audiences beyond their organisation, grow a platform, and even achieve fame, perhaps becoming caught up in a celebrity circuit that showers approval and which celebrates quick-fix solutions. Sadly, the true root of the issues is never properly addressed, and deep, renewing growth is not seen.

As Sayers ruefully comments, "Now more than any other time in the church's history, there is no shortage of quick fixes on offer that promise us growth without pain."

KEY IDEA IN THE BOOK: Christian culture can offer us models of leading from the comfort zone, which can look successful from earthly metrics but fail to lead people into spiritual growth.

For someone with my kind of church background, this gives much food for thought!

Sayers then develops his main thesis: gray zones are the wilderness.

In scripture, the wilderness is the place where God tests his people, (Deut 8:2-4), where God causes streams of living water to appear, where "he wins us back and gives us gold".

The book stakes the claim that "the gray zone is where He wins our hearts back to Him, where He turns a valley of trouble into a gateway of hope".

This means that the testing, the difficulty and the challenge of the wilderness, and our contemporary challenging gray zone moment is where we encounter God's love for us. He allows us to move through difficult moments. To live in confronting places. He tests us because He loves us enough to grow us; this means we must reevaluate our gray zone moment as a place ripe with the potential for spiritual growth".

Speaking to leaders, Sayers suggests that to grow in spiritual authority, leaders must first step outside of their comfort zones and escape the grip of the myth that life is going wrong when we are not feeling good.

The book highlights this key idea

KEY IDEA IN THE BOOK: To grow, and lead others into growth, you must abandon the myth that leading will always feel good. Comfort zones insulate us against growth; gray zones activate us into spiritual growth when we say yes to God's invitation to grow with Him.

For me, this seems seems to echo the message of Leadership Pain: The Classroom for Growth by Samuel R. Chan. As with this book, Chan's brilliant book speaks eloquently to the challenges faced by leaders.

In its concluding chapters the book develops further this idea of the leader formed in the wilderness. Adaptability learnt in the wilderness is the very quality demanded in complex environments.

"The seed of the anxiety that invades and infects human social systems is found in the disconnection from the presence of God, which occurred in the garden". And so we can only truly be non-anxious presences with the presence of God.

Accurate perception of a complex environment may be the fruit of a heavenly perspective found in the wilderness, where the world is viewed "from a distance". Ultimately, it is encounter with God in the wilderness that will make the difference: the presence of God turns the hard ground into holy ground.

Then, almost before you realise it, the book has ended.

At first I was dismayed. Where is the multi-point checklist of what to do in the wilderness? What website do we visit next to get our detailed instructions? I felt a little shortchanged. Then, on reflection, I could admire the genius of the book. It makes a compelling case for the seeing the times as a wilderness experience, especially for the church in the West. Sayers speaks of hope and God's track record of meeting people in the wilderness and birthing something new. It is now over to us to be attentive to God. Should be notice a bush during without being consumed", like Moses, we should take the care to investigate further! Non-anxious leaders are formed in wilderness experiences and then are ready to face down the Goliaths that oppose them.

Conclusion

I have read most of Mark Sayers' books - this is definitely one of the best. For more, read this recent article by him.

Don't be put off by its new terminology or by concepts like anxiety. He writes clearly and in a readable style, perfect for ordinary leaders like me.

His analysis of the times that we live in is both penetrating and convincing. His grounds for hope are assured because ultimately he sees leadership adaptability and innovation arising from among thousands and thousands of unknown leaders across the globe meeting with God in the grey zone.

Highly recommended - whether your interest is understanding the times and appreciating the task facing leaders, or you have a leadership mandate of your own to fulfil.