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Jack Shitama Pt 2: Leading Through the Anxiety · The Church Renewal Podcast

• 0:04
  Speaker 1: Welcome to the Church.
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Renewal Podcast.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: I'm Matt.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: I'm Jeremy.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: This week we're bringing you the second part of our conversation with Jack Shatama, author of several great books, including Anxious Church, anxious People and.
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: If you Met my Family, you'd Understand.
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: In last week's episode we traced Jack's path into family systems theory, defined self-differentiation as self-definition and emotional connection, contrasted adaptivity with healthy connection, named why leaderless systems stay anxious and outlined strategies for staying present in the middle of systemic strain.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: This week we pick up where we left off and explore moving from insight to practice, preparing and pausing in hard moments, spotting sabotage by who's being defined, linking sanctification to a non-anxious presence and building habits for reflection and self-regulation.
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: If you haven't listened to last week's episode, we recommend that you start there first.
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: You'll find a link to last week's episode, as well as all of the resources we discuss in the episode notes.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Now here's Matt.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: And this group.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: We were doing a diagnostic at a church and they threw around that the pastor who was in the place was.
• 1:11
  Speaker 3: He was not a non-anxious presence and I had never heard that phrase before.
• 1:16
  Speaker 3: And a year and a half later I was sitting in a restaurant in Orlando and I looked it up on Mr Google and I discovered Friedman, failure of nerve, and that's where you could find that phrase, and I was like I don't even know who this guy is, and it was like there was a window that I didn't know was in my house and I opened it.
• 1:36
  Speaker 3: It was like here was a world that I'd been unaware of before.
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: That Failure of nerve in my taxonomy of the literature is like being in graduate school.
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: It's very good, you eventually need it, but it's probably not the beginning place, and I spent years trying to figure out how do I get back to kindergarten and about two and a half years ago, through a different organization actually, that had made use of your work, they had recommended Anxious Church, anxious People, or I get the inverted.
• 2:08
  Speaker 3: Which one?
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: It is right, that's it, yep.
• 2:10
  Speaker 3: And so I was like, oh, jack Shatama, I don't know who this is, I've never read this author before and eventually I found if you met my family you'd understand Is that where you recommend that people begin sort of your corpus?
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: Somebody said, jack, introduce me to this, I'm a pastor, I know none of this.
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: What's sort of a good reader's progression, if you will.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I thank you for saying that because, first of all, I knew, for two decades at least.
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: I was trying to do workshops with generation to generation and I could tell people had a hard time.
• 2:50
  Speaker 4: It was like graduate school and I read A Failure of Nerve in 2015, fall of 2015,.
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: And that's when I decided to write Anxious Church, anxious People.
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: I was like somebody has to say this more clearly and more simply, and so I feel like that's my calling is to take this stuff and try to make it accessible.
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: So thank you for saying that.
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: I would say it depends on the situation.
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: If it's a clergy person in I don't want to say in crisis, but in a really challenging congregational situation, they should definitely read anxious church, anxious people, because it has so many hooks for them to grab onto.
• 3:28
  Speaker 4: Oh, I get this, I see this right.
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: If it's just somebody who's trying to grow, personally, I would say, either If you Met my Family, you'd Understand, or Everyone Loves a Non-Anxious Presence, which is the really, really short book.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: I had a coaching client who was a millennial and he said you need to write something for millennials.
• 3:47
  Speaker 4: It's really brief, and so that's what Everyone Loves a Nine Anxious Presences.
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: You can read it in an hour and a half or something.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: Hour, hour and a half, so I would say one of those, depending on where you are.
• 3:59
  Speaker 4: In fact, my wife had said, after Anxious Church, anxious People, she said you need to write this just for people who aren't Christians, aren't church leaders, just anybody.
• 4:11
  Speaker 4: And I was going to write if you met my family you'd understand.
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: But I had this book in me about habit formation, because I learned how powerful habits are in my 50s and I was like I wish somebody would have taught me this in my 20s and so I wrote that.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: I ignored her.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: I wrote that one second, nobody bought it.
• 4:33
  Speaker 4: But then I wrote if you met my family, you'd understand.
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: I think I mean you could hand Roberta Gilbert to people, which is what I would have handed to people before, because she does talk about the general concepts of Bowen.
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: But I think, yeah, now I hand people if you met my family to understand, because I think it's the great sort of beginning spot I have, as I've had the privilege now to teach this to people and coach people in it.
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: I have discovered, as people have talked to me about it, they're like great Matt, thank you for telling me that I need to learn differentiation of self.
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: Thank you for letting me know that.
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: I appreciate it.
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: But the way that that comes back to me is you've now given me, in Protestant speak, you've given me a new law without power, which forced me to really think about what's this intersection between?
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: For Christians, as we think about this?
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: Because certainly people can experience personal development.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: They can gain value from family systems theory apart from Christianity, particularly if they have.
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: You know, perhaps if they've engaged with therapy, they are a real learner.
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: They've applied themselves to emotional intelligence kind of stuff.
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: There they've gained self-awareness.
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: People can grow in this and use this without christ.
• 5:51
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'm not saying that's impossible, but all the realm that we work in is christian leaders, and as I have thought about this and thought about how to teach people this, um, I've thought about um j and I've thought about Paul an awful lot, because I've thought about how do I form Christians with this in a way that is genuinely biblical, and so one of the things that I've coined is that the gospel lets people afford to differentiate.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: It's costly to differentiate.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: There's some cost involved in it.
• 6:29
  Speaker 3: When you're a Christian leader, because you destabilize things, you don't know how the system's going to respond.
• 6:35
  Speaker 3: It may react in a way to eject you if you differentiate, but it's worth it and it's possible because of Christ, because of the solidity that we have of person in Christ.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: That's what I see in Jesus.
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: He knew who his Father was.
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: He knew his goals and values.
• 6:53
  Speaker 3: Tons of surrounding, togetherness, pressure and yet he knew who he was.
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: He knew what his time was.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: My Bible readings through John right now it's not my time, yet he had this presence, as Friedman would put it right, that worked.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: So how do you see that intersection of sort of we call it spiritual formation now and growing in differentiation, growing as a non-anxious leader?
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: How do you see that intersection?
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: So I think one thing is I think Jesus is the epitome of the non-anxious presence.
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: He is the epitome of self-differentiation.
• 7:30
  Speaker 4: Talk about sabotage they put you on a cross, right?
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: I mean, you rock the system so strongly that that's what happens, right, and he knew it was going to happen and he went there willingly.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: I think that just understanding, first of all, he's a model for us, somebody who's really clear on God's mission and vision and is willing to stay focused on that.
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: I think that's part of it.
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: I think the other part is just this understanding of sanctification, right, that in the means of grace, through our spiritual formation, our spiritual disciplines, through God's grace working in us and through us and I like to say even in spite of us we get formed in the mind and likeness of Christ, and so we are able to start to see people the way God does, the way Jesus does people the way God does, the way Jesus does.
• 8:30
  Speaker 4: So I think of self-differentiation as growing in our mind and likeness of Christ that we are through, not on our own power, right, but through what God does in us and through us.
• 8:36
  Speaker 4: And so I think that's the way I've looked at it in terms of my own development and working with Christian leaders is this is becoming more like Jesus, and when we do that, we speak to the world what our Christian values are, because you think about how he was able to say what he believed, to give others the freedom to disagree.
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: He didn't tell people you have to do this, make your choice, but here's what I'm about, you know, and that's to me that's powerful, right.
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: That's when we focus on God and we say that this is what we are about.
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: Give it a try.
• 9:18
  Speaker 4: You don't have to, but give it a try.
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: That opens up that space for people to think about it.
• 9:23
  Speaker 4: That's part of what brought me to Jesus was being in touch with people who were like that.
• 9:28
  Speaker 4: They didn't tell me I had to do it, they just showed me by the way they lived, and I think that's really powerful being able to model that for people in a way that reflects Jesus.
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: I think the other thing about that is any kind of leader when they're focused on the mission, when they're telling people this is not about me, this is about our larger mission.
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: This goes back to Lencioni, right, it's focusing on what we are about and it's not in a surrounding togetherness pressure way.
• 10:02
  Speaker 4: It's in a.
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: I want us all to express ourselves in healthy ways so that we can get there together.
• 10:09
  Speaker 4: And I think again, jesus was if he wasn't focused on the mission, nobody was right.
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: I mean, he was laser focused.
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: We'll put listener.
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: You may be listening to this and going.
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: I never thought about Jesus that way.
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: We'll link in the show notes.
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: I never thought about Jesus that way.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: We'll link in the show notes.
• 10:24
  Speaker 3: I think it was the most helpful paper by Robert Creech, who talks about Jesus and differentiation in the New Testament.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: I'm assuming you're aware of that paper.
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: No, I'm not.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: I'll take a look at it.
• 10:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so Creech is one of the co-authors of Leader's Journey, which I think is one of the sort of you know, undergraduate pieces of literature that's really helpful for people.
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: If you're a Christian leader and you're wanting to grow in this starting with Jack's stuff, listening to his podcast regularly and then maybe touching into some of Bowen and Friedman, roberta Gilbert but trying to if you want to develop as a Christian leader, Leader's Journey is one of those middle-term kinds of volumes that's very, very helpful on your way to failure of nerve, which I still think is the graduate volume for leaders.
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: You want to get there, but you've got to get a lot of groundwork in, I think, before you get there.
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: Jack, we're probably getting closer to the end than the beginning here.
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: How do you help people grow to become differentiated, non-anxious leader?
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: As you coach people, how do you help them take baby steps in that direction?
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, so, first of all, the term I like to use is insight is not enough.
• 11:37
  Speaker 4: So you can learn this, this theory, and you can understand it, but it really doesn't matter until you've actually tried to practice it.
• 11:45
  Speaker 4: It's a practice, it's a lifelong journey, and so it's really in those in-between times that make the difference.
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: So I know I'm going to have a difficult conversation.
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: What's important to me here?
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: The goals and values, values thing.
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: How do I want to say that?
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: I mean, I don't I can't tell you how many times I've rehearsed a conversation in my head because I want to be able to say it in a healthy way.
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: So that's that's a part of it too is just preparing, just thinking about what's what's important and and how do I want to show up in that moment.
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: Then there's the moment itself, right, and that is the hard part, because so often we get it wrong.
• 12:30
  Speaker 4: Over 50% of the time we get it wrong, that's okay.
• 12:33
  Speaker 4: Over time you will get it right more often, maybe not more often than you get it wrong, but you will get it right more often.
• 12:42
  Speaker 4: And when I say right, it's just that you're going to show up in a healthy, authentic way, right, and then afterwards it's okay, what happened?
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: Was I my best self?
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: Did I say what I wanted to say?
• 12:57
  Speaker 4: How did I respond to whatever they were doing?
• 13:01
  Speaker 4: And I know I try not to use sports analogies, but if you're familiar with NFL quarterbacks, they watch a lot of game film and the reason they watch a lot of game film is because they start to recognize patterns and it slows the game down.
• 13:18
  Speaker 4: And doing that, reflecting on what happened, not just moving on and getting bitter, not just moving on and saying, hey, I did great, but what happened here and how could I do better in the future.
• 13:31
  Speaker 4: Over time the game will slow down for you.
• 13:34
  Speaker 4: Over time you will start to be able to think in the moment, but it doesn't happen without that preparation and that reflection.
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: So I think those things are really, really important.
• 13:45
  Speaker 4: The other part is just knowing what matters to you.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: When you get clear on your goals, it's going to help you in any situation.
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: Because you're not going to, you're going to be less likely to express your way in a way that really conflicts with those.
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: That's very good.
• 14:05
  Speaker 3: It reminds me this is an interesting intersection, maybe to explore a different time, but I commonly yesterday I recommended Crucial Conversations to somebody that I was coaching, because this, what you've just talked about, is some of their philosophy about how do you approach a difficult conversation in a way that it might not produce what you fear that it might, but it might actually produce good fruit.
• 14:32
  Speaker 3: And so you don't avoid that difficult conversation.
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: You do it the best that you can Trust the Holy Spirit to work in the midst of it and trust the results to God, because you can't do anything else.
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: But if you've prepared and you've brought the best version of yourself with you, right, the conversation has its best chance of going well.
• 14:54
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: You can't determine what the other person does, but you can determine what you do right, and that's, I think, the most that the Lord expects.
• 15:05
  Speaker 4: And to the extent you know the other person, you can even anticipate what they're going to say, right?
• 15:11
  Speaker 4: So occasionally they're going to surprise you, but more often than not you already know how they're going to respond and so you can prepare yourself for that.
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: The other thing is this idea of self-regulation and the idea of pausing.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: You talked about that earlier and in fact that's an emotional intelligence.
• 15:30
  Speaker 4: They talk about the pause all the time.
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: Right, and the idea of letting go is a gift, but actually taking time helps people to relax and in that moment where we're thinking, we're getting from our primitive part of our brain, which wants to react, to our thinking part of our brain.
• 15:52
  Speaker 4: We're actually giving ourselves time to respond in a way that really is in line with what we want, what we believe.
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: You would think, oh, if I don't respond right away, people are going to think something's wrong.
• 16:04
  Speaker 4: But they actually appreciate somebody who's being thoughtful.
• 16:07
  Speaker 4: And in fact, one of the things I'll say is, if you feel uncomfortable, give a social cue, look up, close your eyes or even say I need a minute to think, and when you do that, you give yourself a much better chance to show up, as you said, as your best self.
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: Especially as a people pleaser.
• 16:29
  Speaker 2: I have a friend who regularly will say I'm just thinking about what you said right there, Just to give the space.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: I love that Not give assent, not give agreement, but not disagree.
• 16:40
  Speaker 2: Let it marinate.
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: If you're a listener and you're hearing that and hearing Jack talk about that movement from sort of the back of your brain, your amygdala, where your emotions get processed very, very quickly, and the front of your brain, your neocortex, has not caught up yet, If that's new to you, we can link to Emotional Intelligence 2.0, but we'll also link to Ken Sandy, who most people know because of the Peacemaker has also now done some work that he calls Relational Wisdom, which is a very overtly Christian version of emotional intelligence for Christians to grow, and it's called RW360.
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: He does a really good job of talking about this and helping people grow in it.
• 17:24
  Speaker 3: We use it with people in our organization because we think it's so helpful.
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: So we'll link to that as well, because I think that that's part of that.
• 17:31
  Speaker 3: Learning to slow down is that I let myself.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: I don't feel so insecure about myself that I have to react right now.
• 17:40
  Speaker 3: Right, but I feel secure enough in Christ that I can go.
• 17:44
  Speaker 3: Okay, I'm going to be okay and the situation's going to be okay if I do take a pause and I don't have to panic.
• 17:52
  Speaker 3: I have to be anxious even in that little micro moment, right.
• 17:55
  Speaker 3: Right, I don't have to be anxious.
• 17:58
  Speaker 4: Well, you may feel anxious, but you're keeping it to yourself and giving yourself a chance to figure it out.
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: You know, that's all it is.
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: An odd question I hadn't planned on asking occurs to me.
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: Is that inauthentic?
• 18:18
  Speaker 4: Well, it's not responding automatically.
• 18:20
  Speaker 4: Yes, I would say it's authentic in that you are trying to be the person you want to be, okay, and you know, from a Christian standpoint, maybe the person you feel God calls you to be.
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: Now that's also.
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: Sometimes you could say people pleasing is like that too, right, um.
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: But I think what what we start to realize is that people pleasing is not helpful to other people as well.
• 18:53
  Speaker 4: Um, it doesn't help them to grow up, it doesn't help them to learn to deal with their own pain and their own grief, and, and so I think, yeah, you could say maybe it's not being authentic, but it's presenting yourself the way that you think is most helpful, and I think that's important, especially as a leader and as a Christian.
• 19:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah, no, I agree with you.
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: I wonder if my my money also be just like.
• 19:22
  Speaker 3: If I'm anxious, then people should know I'm anxious, because that's what it means to be authentic.
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: But we're leaders and sometimes that means actually subsuming yourself for the good of the other person, to love them well and for the good of the system.
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: Sometimes actually being authentic to how you feel inside is actually unhelpful to the system.
• 19:39
  Speaker 3: Right, and your responsibility is to it.
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: We talk about.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: We've talked about triangulation here a little bit, but we've also talked about being differentiated and, as you were talking earlier, jack, I was thinking about the person who has, you know, can use the term over-functioning, but they're anxious about the child that's learning to ride a bike.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: I can hold on to my kid's bike, but my son's 15.
• 20:06
  Speaker 2: If I'm trying to hold on to and I'm sorry he's 14.
• 20:08
  Speaker 2: If I'm trying to hold on to the seat of his bike while he's pedaling, at this point I'm going to harm him.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Now, there was a point, while I was teaching him to ride his bike, that I was holding onto the seat so he wouldn't fall.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: And there was a point where I was sort of holding onto a seat and he was falling and it was uncomfortable.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: But I think it's.
• 20:24
  Speaker 2: I think Friedman talks about how being uncomfortable isn't what hurts us.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: Failing to grow is.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: And in triangulation, as you've talked about and as Friedman's talked about it, an unhealthy triangle happens, I should say, when I'm not comfortable with something and so I'm going to intervene in a relationship where I don't belong because of my discomfort.
• 20:53
  Speaker 2: Well, as you're asking that question, matt, I'm thinking, if I'm feeling anxious, that's not a me and you issue.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: That's a me and God issue because I'm asking the question Fundamentally.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: I'm answering the question, I'm not okay, god doesn't have me.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: Something's wrong and as soon as I can frame it that way, I say this is about me and God.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: So if I'm not showing that anxiety, I'm being authentic and that I'm recognizing.
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: If I tell you I'm really unanxious because of well, if I start putting that on you, I'm triangulating God out of this in the moment.
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: And I think to really walk that way requires us to recognize that I'm asking the question does God have me?
• 21:35
  Speaker 2: Is he seeing this Kind of sounds?
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: A lot like David?
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: Are you seeing?
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: Are you watching?
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Do you see what's going on?
• 21:41
  Speaker 2: I, there's people all around me.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: They got their knives out, they got teeth like dogs.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Uh, my flesh has been torn up.
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: And the thing that you know I think all three of us could attest to this from our personal lives the, the, the, the and the truth that is both comforting and painful is that God says to us do you remember my son who was crucified in a tree?
• 22:05
  Speaker 2: Yes, I see the pain you're going through and yes, I care.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: And the fact that I'm letting you walk through pain right now doesn't mean I don't see you, don't care and don't love you.
• 22:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but I'm asking you to trust me.
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, wow, is that hard?
• 22:24
  Speaker 4: yeah yeah, but the way freeman put it was he has a bias towards challenge over comfort.
• 22:29
  Speaker 4: Um, because it's challenged, it helps people grow and that's a gift we can give to others to not over function, not rescue them.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: And it is a fine line, right?
• 22:40
  Speaker 4: Because when they're first learning, when do you let go of the seat and let them fall?
• 22:45
  Speaker 4: Maybe there's a time, maybe not, maybe they'll learn it without you having to let.
• 22:50
  Speaker 4: Maybe you let go and they'll learn it, and they don't even know you let go.
• 22:53
  Speaker 4: But there are times when they're wanting you to hold the seat too long and letting go is a gift.
• 23:04
  Speaker 3: As a coach, I get the opportunity to help people pull things apart and help them reflect and to think about it.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: I'm curious what habits have you built for yourself of reflection?
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: I'm going to guess that you have some habit of stepping back and going.
• 23:18
  Speaker 3: What happened there, right?
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: Yeah, could you talk to us, because I'm trying to build that in the people that I get to influence in my organization is step back.
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: Take a look at it.
• 23:29
  Speaker 3: We have a transitional pastor in a very difficult circumstance right now and you've given me some ideas already for me to help him step back.
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: So how do you do that?
• 23:36
  Speaker 3: How do you step back and reflect and go?
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: Oh, here's what's really going on.
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: That wasn't apparent at the moment.
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
• 23:44
  Speaker 4: So if it's something that's really intense and that's just really working on me, I just have to kind of step away and take a walk or something like that.
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: But my general routine is running on a regular basis, and when I run, I don't run with music, I don't run with a podcast, I just run.
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: That's Holy Spirit time, right, that's a time to just reflect on what's going on.
• 24:10
  Speaker 4: And so if we don't create that kind of space, we'll never know what we're going to do next.
• 24:17
  Speaker 4: The way Freeman defines self-differentiation, it's the ability to express your goals and values in the midst of surrounding togetherness pressure.
• 24:24
  Speaker 4: Well, if you don't take time to reflect, you don't know what your goals and values are.
• 24:28
  Speaker 4: And so, like in coaching, when somebody knows they're going into a difficult situation, we spend time saying what do you want out of this?
• 24:37
  Speaker 4: What are you willing to live with?
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: What are you willing to live with?
• 24:40
  Speaker 4: What are you willing to give up?
• 24:43
  Speaker 4: Let's get clear, so that when you're in that moment, you're able to express what really matters to you and you don't get hung up on the things that don't matter to you.
• 24:50
  Speaker 4: So for me, it's running time, it's meditation time, sometimes it's sitting in the hot tub, but it's just taking time to not try to force the situation, but to let the situation come to you.
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: His name's escaping me, but the guy who's the genius behind IBM, take one.
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: When they were a hardware company, he talked about the fact that the fault of most leaders is that they don't take think time, they're only doing.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: I hear you saying something similar.
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: So, jack, you're Japanese background and I have had the privilege of coaching some Asian pastors, people in Asian congregations, and so I've spent some time thinking more about shame and honor cultures and one of my observations as an evangelist in America now is, compared to when I was first learning evangelism 35 years ago, we had very much a guilt and innocence culture and you could talk about justification and people really got it and it was helpful on that plane.
• 25:56
  Speaker 3: In that 35 years our culture has moved some to where it is more shame and honor in a way that you would see in more maybe Middle Eastern cultures or Asian cultures.
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: And it strikes me that in a shame and honor kind of system, shame works kind of system, shame works.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: It is togetherness, pressure, it is conformed to the group's expectations.
• 26:27
  Speaker 3: In an environment like that, differentiation itself becomes much more difficult because you're not living up to the cultural value, and that's hard.
• 26:39
  Speaker 3: It might be right, and I think it is.
• 26:42
  Speaker 3: There's all kinds of cultural values that Jesus upset.
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: There's all kinds of cultural values the Apostle Paul upset.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: The gospel both affirms cultures and critiques cultures, because all cultures are made up of image bearers, so they have great possibilities, but they're also sinful image bearers and so there's all kinds of liabilities, right?
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: So the gospel both affirms and critiques cultures.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: So the gospel would critique aspects of shame cultures.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: I guess my point here is that I feel like it might be getting harder for leaders because the pressure to fit in, to be in the group, to submit to the surrounding togetherness pressure, it's higher than it was 35 years ago.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: I see it with my kids in comparison to when my wife and I were first coming to Christ and maturing as adults.
• 27:32
  Speaker 3: So how do you see that intersection?
• 27:34
  Speaker 3: You've had a longer view even than I have, but how do you see that intersection?
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: Do you?
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: You see the same way, maybe first yeah, um.
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: So first of all, I think that, um, you'll notice it's happening when you actually say something about somebody who's outside of the culture and um, and you're not doing it in a derogatory way, and people get upset, okay.
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: So let's look at politics right now.
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: If you say anything about somebody in the other political party, that's oh, I think I kind of agree with that.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: Oh, my gosh, talk about shame, right, how could you?
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: How could you?
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: And yet that's a problem is that you can't be differentiated, you have to fall in line.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: I don't think any culture, any society can move forward until we get past that, and so I think we were very much in that shame and honor.
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: The paradox is that it's not as a culture in general.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: If you want to see shame and honor at work, look at Disney movies, so look at Encanto or look at Moana, right, it's like oh, these traditional cultures, everybody goes along, everybody does the common good, and of course then the protagonists know I'm going to do my own thing, and they self-differentiate, and then they're sabotaged and all that kind of stuff, right.
• 28:57
  Speaker 4: And they self-differentiate and then they're sabotaged and all that kind of stuff, right.
• 28:59
  Speaker 4: But the great thing about these traditional cultures is they're stable because everybody goes along yes, because they have a common good.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: On the other hand, cultures like ours, where it's all about self-definition, emotional connection doesn't matter anymore, because you're in that party and I'm who I am there's no stability at all.
• 29:22
  Speaker 4: We can't agree on common good, we can't agree on truth, and so it's chaos.
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: And what Murray Bowen said was this is part of a societal regression that started after World War II and that it's probably not going to end until a crisis in the mid-21st century.
• 29:42
  Speaker 4: He was talking like 2040, 2050.
• 29:44
  Speaker 4: Some type of crisis that brings us together.
• 29:47
  Speaker 4: I hope Jesus comes before that, but you know, I don't really want to be around for a crisis like that.
• 29:57
  Speaker 4: That doesn't sound very good, but I think there is some truth to that, because we are not able to be ourselves and accept others the way they are.
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: It's either you honor what we are or shame on you.
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: I think that's you know.
• 30:13
  Speaker 4: We're asking for trouble trouble.
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, if you want a longer view of what Jack just talked about as a listener, we'll put a link to Stanky's last book, which is a longer view of what Jack's just described, and he's very, very helpful on that.
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: Well, jack, we appreciate you joining us today.
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: I hope that you have reaped the rewards of how many times I have referenced your books to people.
• 30:43
  Speaker 3: We will be bereft when the Lord takes you home, and I mean that, brother.
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: You've made a very, very significant contribution to this space and helping the people that we serve churches and pastors grab a hold of things that they might not have even known about until 2014.
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: I didn't even know that window was in my house and I'm so thankful that you've invested all of this for the sake of people around you.
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: What do you see?
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: Last question what do you see still needs to be done?
• 31:18
  Speaker 3: What do you think still needs to be worked on in this space for Christians?
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: Like, what do we still need to chew through and process?
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: Do you think?
• 31:30
  Speaker 4: Well, I think at the macro level it goes back to what you were saying about the shame and honor.
• 31:34
  Speaker 4: I think we need to learn to love other Christians that disagree with us.
• 31:42
  Speaker 4: Right, that's all the time we have for you, that's right.
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: We're not doing a very good job of that, you know that's true.
• 31:53
  Speaker 4: I mean, in my own United Methodist denomination we just had a split, you know, and one of the most valuable things to me was that I stayed in the denomination but I remained close and connected to some of the clergy that left.
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: That were my friends and colleagues, and that, to me, is everything I mean to me.
• 32:13
  Speaker 4: That's what I think, what it means to be a Christian, what it means to be a follower of Jesus.
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: So I think, at the macro level, I think it's somehow teaching people that this is our calling.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: Our calling is to lead people in that direction of not judging others.
• 32:28
  Speaker 4: You know Matthew 7, that accepting people the way Jesus does, it doesn't matter what kind of outcasts they are in our eyes.
• 32:37
  Speaker 4: You know they're an image bearer, or you say so.
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: So I think that's to me, that's.
• 32:44
  Speaker 4: That's big work.
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: That's big work.
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: I think it probably at this, at the more micro level.
• 32:49
  Speaker 4: It's helping people to practice what it means to do this, and so one of the things I've gotten into is called positive intelligence, which is more of a pop psychology approach to self-regulation.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: But what I found is it's kind of a mindfulness-based practice.
• 33:07
  Speaker 4: It's not even Christian, but it helps people to better self-regulate.
• 33:11
  Speaker 4: It helps people to grow in emotional intelligence and to grow into self-differentiation.
• 33:15
  Speaker 4: That's just one thing.
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: There's all kinds of different ways to do that, but just helping people to regulate and to think clearly and to be able to differentiate in the moment, I think that's the thing that is ongoing, never-ending work outline to write because of working with so many pastors is on emotional management, because the vast majority of pastors do not get fired because they ran off with the secretary or they embezzled money or they were wayward in the doctrine of their particular church.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: That is not.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: It happens.
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: Those all happen, but it is rare.
• 33:56
  Speaker 3: Most of the time it's because they shot their mouth off at somebody.
• 34:00
  Speaker 3: They lost their ability to do that emotional management and that's what got them exited Right, and so I see that as the place that learning how not to be reactive right, typically the profile there is they never said a word.
• 34:19
  Speaker 4: They never said a word.
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: They never said a word.
• 34:21
  Speaker 4: They took it, they took it, they took it and then they explode and and you know that if that's not um helpful for somebody to look forward and see, oh, if I don't deal with this now, this is what's going to happen to me.
• 34:34
  Speaker 4: They're probably not going to get it anyway.
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, and there are a few who have been exited because they were well differentiated yes, absolutely, and the system couldn't divide it, right, absolutely.
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: To those guys I want to say I'm sorry and thank you for leading well, right, yeah, we're suffering.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: Well, absolutely.
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: And that's.
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: That's okay, because you're better off Absolutely.
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely.
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: And apparently the system needs more pain.
• 35:03
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: Friedman uses the word Matt you used a moment ago.
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: It's upset.
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: Upset doesn't hurt us.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: That's right.
• 35:12
  Speaker 4: Upset doesn't help, but chronic anxiety kills yeah.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Absolutely, jack.
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: Thank you so much for your time.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: This has been, like I said, a pleasure and a privilege for me and, I know, for Matt as well.
• 35:24
  Speaker 2: How can people reach you?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: We're going to post all this stuff, but from your mouth to ours, how can people reach you?
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: There's a website, thenonexiusleadercom, and there's a podcast, the Non-Excess Leader.
• 35:37
  Speaker 4: You can find everything in those two places.
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: I don't do social media, but you can email me to jack at christian-leaderscom.
• 35:47
  Speaker 3: Besides reading your Bible and praying, the best 15 minutes you can spend a week is at Jack's podcast.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: Thank you.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: You're welcome Appreciate that, Jack.
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: Thank you so much, jack, thanks so much.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: We really appreciate you.
• 35:59
  Speaker 3: Brother, take care.
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: Thanks for listening to the Church Renewal Podcast from Flourish Coaching.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: Flourish exists to set ministry leaders free to be effective wherever God has called them.
• 36:09
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• 36:16
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