A Conversation with John Mark Comer - Rich Wilkerson Jr.

well hey everybody i am so excited about this moment i've been looking forward to this for a very long time uh but i have got from portland oregon uh the pastor of bridgetown church uh john mark comer and john mark i'm so thankful that you you'd come on and take some time with us and really as you and i have kind of been chatting this past year uh if you guys don't know i've stalked john mark comer like he's probably never had a friend like me because i randomly got his number from a mutual friend and i just started hitting him up leaving him voice memos and he's probably like bro it's kind of inappropriate man like bro to bro like you're coming at me pretty hard so i'm in a little bit like i'm in a spot right now where i'm just so thankful for your voice and uh how much of an impact you've made in my life but thank you so much for coming and being a part of bootcamp live man no you are beyond kind man and if by coming you mean clicking a little link on my computer it's a lot easier than flying you know across the country 3 000 miles this past fall at vu church we did a collection of talks entitled restless and so much of the collection was honestly i think i was texting at the time just based on your latest book the ruthless elimination of hurry and if i'm being really honest with you the culture at vu is fast-paced it's charging um yeah i think we try really hard to engage with culture and to keep up and nothing about your book or anything about your message is against work or uh against productivity but no no no what you're introducing is is uh a callback to rest what what has this been like for you uh over the last three months of this quarantine experience and whatnot and just even with the message that you've introduced to the world do you feel like people one of the things i i heard you teach about one time is this idea that sabbath is coming for you a forced sabbath has there been any thoughts inside of you like wow there's something with the cadence of creation here a little bit that we're slowing down yeah well you know the goofy thing about covid is it's so different for different people so if you're an emergency room doctor or a pastor i have more work now than i've had in years you know and if you're uh on furlough from work or you're a knowledge worker and you don't have little kids then it's almost like a kind of sabbatical i was telling my mom who's basically a writer and you know and she's she was like you know she would never say this in public so let me say it for her to embarrass her she's like i'm loving this is she's an introvert this is like a long awaited sabbatical for me she's not leading some large organization or you know doesn't have little kids at home so it's such a different experience for different people you know um and this is where for a lot of people yes this is kind of like a first introduction into sabbath into rest but of course you know our your iphone will take all of that away from you if you let it and so you know what i mean you can be just as busy in a digital kind of iteration as not before but yeah rest is a central you know deep passion of my heart and a deep thing and and again i think it's a great myth that activity equals productivity and i don't think the science is behind that you know we've read those i'm sure you've read this stuff but a couple months ago after the book came out i would have put it in the book there was two big things that happened microsoft tried a four-day work week in japan and this other high influential company tried a five-hour workday but they made people leave their phones at the door and they blocked like social media accounts and and stuff from people's laptops and in both cases one was like they were nine to one i think it was five hours a day and the other was a four day work week productivity went up by 40 percent 40 unbelievable and so the reality is we just waste insane amounts of time especially those of us that kind of have to do some work in the digital space like we're doing right now and have to be on our phone at some level you know and the difference that just the pure math between somebody who works 80 hours a week and between somebody who works 50 it's so negligible they say that after 55 hours which is about six days of work your productivity plummets you know so i just think that you know it's a myth that oh we should rest rather than be productive we should rest to be productive in fact the more important the more in demand your job your life is the more important rest is you're a sports guy right yeah so i'm i'm not a sports guy but i've been learning a lot about like that the category and and forgive me if i'm way off here because i i know just enough to be dangerous um but i'm interested like the psychology of sports and i'm sure and the idea of load management is a really interesting idea which started out i think in baseball where you have this unique phenomenon where a pitcher can only do so many throws and like the star pitcher in this example is what gets the team to you know the world series but then you get the world series and he can't pitch all of the games or he'll throw out his arm and so there's this really unique psychology there and then in the mba my understanding is it's really controversial right now because you know you don't want the trainers are recognizing a player is a holistic being not just a body or a group of muscles there's a mental toll an emotional toll this is central nervous system so the most important players actually need to rest more and once lebron james sleeps like 11 or 12 hours a night or something like that and has a kitchen staff and like hyper meticulous about rest i read this great book on olympians and it said what separates the elite from the professional was not how hard they trained but how hard they rest wow and it was basically saying once you get to that level of athleticism everybody's training at the same level of diligence what really separates the greats are how seriously they take rest and for us as followers of jesus whether you're an elite athlete you know or a ceo of a major company or a mom or a graphic designer who's like trying to make a business or just you know we're nobody famous or whatever like there's something to rest that at a psycho spiritual level is an expression of our trust in god do we trust that there is a god running the universe and it's not rich booker said it's not john mark homer it's not me god is god i'm creature not machine and i embrace my mortality and my finitude when i think you bring up something that's so important as we're talking about that in the idea that as i rest it's requiring me to trust god which i'm learning more and more about things that require me to trust god also require discipline around that system and plans and practices um in in your latest book uh the ruthless elimination of hurry which i think almost all of our team we've been telling our staff to read it and we've promoted at our church and so many people have gotten so many great testimonies and stories from it but you had something you talked about in the book that happened to you a couple of years ago that was quite significant would you mind maybe just sharing a little bit about that what happened in your life that created some change are you referring to like kind of burnout leaving the church kind of yeah yeah yeah i mean um you know so just because we've got we've got so many leaders and whatnot that are watching right now and that's what i want to get at for people in terms of i think a lot of your message came from a place of of burnout yeah you know i mean dude the sad thing is it's it's i don't even really need to tell you the story because it's the common trope of type a person started something some really good intentions mixed with a lot of ego and shadow and went really hard and burned out and caused some damage along the way you know um it's such a common story it's so sad like why do we have to learn that from the inside out you know but yeah planted a church and it grew really fast but i just um you know i didn't have the emotional maturity or even really the emotional wiring from god to function in that kind of a role and you know that's a really scary thing in particular for pastors when your gifting outpaces your just emotional and spiritual maturity and when it often puts you into situations that you're really not made for so you know portland's a big design city one of the main things you know that we run out here at business levels advertising agencies and a lot of the designers in our church i talk to they'll get this weird thing where they keep getting promoted if they're really good at design and then they end up in like a executive management role and advertising is like they're like the one like artists that are like all hustle culture workaholic kind of people you know like crazy hours fast turnaround on demand you know hey we need this thing for coca-cola by thursday very you know multiple marriages kind of stereotype you know and they'll talk about this dynamic where they're they're really artists and they keep getting promoted because they're so good at their craft and then they end up in management working 80 90 hours a week and they're like they're not a manager that's the next step up that's where they make more money that's the career thing that's how they get the next gig but it's not actually who they were made to be and so that can happen you know if you're a communicator in a church culture you can kind of just get put into this world therefore you should be the lead pastor of this large church therefore you should oversee there and he's like well maybe you shouldn't maybe you should work for somebody else doing that i'm literally trying to hire somebody else to lead our church so i can just teach and help people pray that's really kind of the main thing i want to do you know well and i think that in the book this idea of hurry culture i love what you're leaning into because so many people right now are chasing a dream or happiness and it's really about more bigger the bigger it gets the happier i'm gonna be be i need to go faster i need to keep up who are we keeping up with um we're running so fast what do you think this is doing to our souls because this is the question that i've been asking myself since august after i was really leaning into some of the things you were teaching about as i've read the book um it's funny we're talking about covet 19 right now because i really made major progress you might say it's baby steps but it was massive steps for me with just my devices and my phone yes social amazing but kovid it's like i'm relapsing i gotta go i have the same words we were putting great great boundaries and parameters around our dinner table things of that nature just steps um what do you think this hurry culture is is doing to our souls and you're in portland i'm in miami these are not slope places this is no this is fast pace yeah i mean thomas merton i don't quote him a lot because he if you know his story really did not end well but he had this great line that hurry is a form of contemporary violence and you know it's violent because it kills all sorts of really important things it kills not just like inner sense of peace and i'm calm and happy in the moment but it kills love it kills your capacity for attention it kills your capacity to live in the spirit moment by moment the basic thesis of my book is really just that hurry is incompatible love so my call to slow down isn't just hey slow down man so you're less stressed out and you have a better life that's great i'm sure jesus would want me to feel less stressed out but life is hard and full of suffering and you know paul said i face daily the pressure of all the churches and jesus said in this world you will face trouble be a good cheer i've overcome the world but you will face trouble that's like a promise you don't normally claim from god but it's a promise you know so life is hard i mean that's just there's no way around that anybody tells you different is selling you something so it's not just like how do we feel better it's how do we actually adopt the pace of jesus i quote this japanese theologian kosuke koyama in the book who has this beautiful little essay you can read it it's just a couple pages long called three mile an hour god i had to google i'm like three mile an hour apparently three miles per hour is the speed that you walk at unless if you're a new yorker then it's like 10 mile per hour god but you know i was like three miles around he just says this great like thing about how you know we walk with god we don't run with god and there's this and he talks about the pace of love and how if god wasn't love he would go faster but because god is love he slows down so i just i mean to get very practical i'm a dad i have three kids and a wife and i'm a type a personality when i am in a hurry my worst moments as a husband and father are when i'm in a hurry and when i'm exhausted when i'm under stress and i'm tense and i'm not rested and i'm late i'm trying to get my three kids out of the house on time for jerks to preach about slowing down or whatever i mean dude that is when i am sarcastic and i'm harsh and i'm getting the car right now and one kid you know i don't have time to talk about that get in the car right now why are you always late and just just stop talking to get in the car like the worst aspects of me that do damage to the people i love the most come out when i'm in that place of hurry overload exhaustion fatigue tension you know i just i'm not a loving person and we could run through the same rubric of paul's you know kind of the new testament his tri-part thing of of um love joy and peace you could the same is true for joy and the same is true for peace i mean the last time you felt like deeply at peace in your soul when you're late for an air for a flight you know what i mean and you're like right stuck in traffic you're like ah it's just the worst hurry dude it just is a deal breaker if you want to live in the kingdom of god with jesus it's beautiful what you're saying in terms of that moment for for burnout for you what was some of the turning points where you begin to discover a new way of life it was it teaching that you heard or you just said i can't keep going like this do you do you feel like like i guess what i'm getting at is that sometimes it seems like there's two ways to learn right like you can either hit rock bottom or or you can listen to john mark comer right now or or get good teaching yes do you feel like that burnout was was a catalyst for you in terms of um a new way of lifestyle for you or are you still tempted to go back to those to that type of pace like is that is there a governor on you with your disciplines is that is that what you're naturally uh do would you naturally try to run that fast were you trying to just keep up with what you thought you had to do um the answer to both those questions is yes you know i mean it was more than burnout that set me on a different trajectory and we can come back to the conversation it was a stark wake-up call to who i was becoming we can come back to that if you want it wasn't just burnout um it was spiritual formation or whatever you want to call it um am i tempted to go back to it yes every single day do i want to in the depth of my heart no not at all god's god save god save me from that but you know i mean every single interesting thing i'm sure you're feeling this too it you know in your mid 30s but my one of my best friends and i we talked about this a lot how there's a weird thing where right when your career is it hate to use that word as a pastor because you know we don't like think about it that way work whatever ministry whatever you want to call it is kind of at its zenith where like there's more work for you to do you're more in demand than ever before is right at the time when you're in your kind of mid-30s through 50 where you are most needed as a dad depending on when you had kids if you follow like psychologists normally talk about the the primary emotional caregiver for a child especially for boys but for a child going mom dad mentor and they'll kind of say and this is like not uh chauvinistic this is like a secular psychology thing mom is kind of zero to six or nine dad is like six to nine through the teenage years and then mentors like kind of 16 and up you always need dad mom and you always need everybody but that real like deep need it's kind of for mommy when they're really little and then all three of my kids have come into the dad's stage you know and so man i just need to be more present to my kids now than ever every single day i face a temptation to prioritize my work over my family and my phone over what's actually happening in front of me it's not a day goes by you know and with the devices and i have a device they do good in the world but they're literally engineered to take you away from the present moment distract you addict you to manipulate you and monetize your attention like that's literally what they're designed for i found myself i get angry at the addiction sometimes i'm i threw it i was like i'm sick of this man like it's wasting too much time some of the language some of the language that i've been learning from you that i love so much i want you to kind of weigh into it is you use this phrase a lot uh apprenticeship to jesus yeah and talk talking about the way of jesus and being like jesus and becoming like jesus um so much of this i i read richard foster's book on celebration of discipline i hate to tell you but like yeah i was taught meditation but not really oh right right yeah i think i kind of heard a sub point about solitude but no one's ever said man i'll be you know rich no i don't do solitude man i do i do so maybe just talk about some of that language and just i want once again people at vukomp just uh maybe it's an introduction maybe for other people it's review but uh talk about that that language and where that comes from and what that means to you yeah well i mean dude you know all of this uh the word christian is barely used at all in the new testament two or three times never as really like a identity statement from followers of jesus the two words that are used to self-identify are mathetase is the greek word which is normally translated disciple and a deltoid which is normally translated brothers and sisters or family so we're disciples and we're family like that's what it is to be jesus people in the church you know and disciple um is a word that we're kind of used to the problem is it's not really a word used in modern english so what christians do is they then import kind of a weird set of assumptions for example you know a lot of people think a disciple is like a really mature person that's not true at all if you write about peter you never know or people think that um or people most people use disciple as a verb like rich who are you discipling or who discipled you which is again not bad it's never used as a verb anywhere in the new testament just as a noun and if you put a synonym in there you would never say rich who are you christianing or who christianed you yeah who are you believering or who believered you you'd be like what are you talking about you either are you aren't a christian you either are a believer this person played a key role in my life and this person was a mentor and this piece was a teacher but i mean what are you talking about believe it me that's what i mean discipled me we use that language and there's an important thing there because if disciple is a verb if it's something that is done to you then it puts the onus of responsibility for you to grow and mature to become like jesus onto somebody else if disciple is a noun if it's something you are that you choose to be then it puts the onus of responsibility onto you to follow jesus so why we use the word apprentice is partially just because i think there's a lot of misconceptions around discipleship and what people say when they hear when they say discipleship they either mean one-on-one mentorship or they mean leadership development or they mean in-depth bible study all three fabulous things we do them we're for them but we don't call them discipleship we call them mentorship leadership development and bible study you know discipleship the reason we use the word apprentice the greek word's mathematise and it was a technical term from the jewish educational system in that day it was actually started by the philosophers so aristotle was a mathematician socrates he was a student under learning from socrates how to be a great mind and philosopher and that's what that's how the rabbis used it for their their actual students that would literally follow them around learn from their yoke jewish way of saying their set of teachings and eventually that was how it was like an apprenticeship program how they were trained to become rabbis themselves and traveling from synagogue to synagogue and this is a language that jesus uses and so a lot of greek scholars have argued that the best english word we have there's different ways you can translate it disciples great student is another one but then again we think of like university student like i go to class and take notes and then i go back to my life so a lot of them argue apprentice is the best word for it best translation of it because that's what it was like to apprentice under a rabbi was to follow him around to make it your whole life goal to become like him not just to get lectures from to actually emulate this rabbi and then to become eventually a rabbi yourself and do what he would do so we kind of break apprenticeship to jesus down into three basic goals to be with jesus become like jesus and then do what he would do if he were you you know so that's kind of our gra our working model of what it means to follow jesus or apprentice under jesus well i heard you say one time and i really like it we all wear the what would jesus do bracelets down here in miami but i do think that i do think that you introduce uh a deeper concept which is what would jesus do if if he were you yes because you're not a single celibate jewish guy from the first century what if you're like a mom or a grandma or like you know how would you you know no i think it's i think it's absolutely incredible and i'm trying to figure out how we can put that on the bracelet now though i'm trying to go with the uh what the letters would be but it would be uh it's i i just like that language so much i think the way that you explain it um especially if i'm talking to people that are new to church culture which so many of us in our church in miami it's like this is the first place they've ever been to and you start using words like i'm going to disciple you they're like what are you even talking about what does that even mean and i think that language of apprenticeship it just it so clearly begins to define that i'm trying to live like this guy i'm trying to do what he did and just just the model of how you guys have broken that down it's really got us in miami looking at how we're programming and how we're living and right examining ourselves and this is uh so much of the reason why i wanted to get you on here today i'm curious um some of your thoughts just on things like technology and things like social media um we're kind of talking right now about how these things can become addictive and these things can be in many ways detrimental to your soul right we know they're tools but many times it kind of feels like the tools end up using us has any of your thinking shifted i mean in this cultural moment that we find ourselves in like are you kind of like oh i maybe we need that more than we don't we're on a zoom right now we're thankful for technology can you just weigh into some of that because sometimes it's used for good sometimes it's catering it's a lot of this it's pushing what we what you what we don't want to see keep happening in the church like there's a comparison culture there's a trail i just i just love you thoughts on that and i'm not trying to always speaking to us you know help help voo a little no well dude dude no i mean no i have more questions and answers on all of that you know i mean here's the reality this technology has been designed to manipulate us so we're on a zoom call right now it is recording this conversation uh algorithm somewhere if i understand correctly is analyzing the words that we're saying in order to then sell that data to marketers to then manipulate me through advertising so right now i could go adidas adidas adidas easy easy easy and probably if i google something after this whoa an adidas advertisement will come up what a shock and it's designed to get me to spend money it's designed to get me to think a certain way about socio-political issues and often designed to get me to vote in a certain way and to think that i chose this position rather than was manipulated by the power brokers today that is this technology i mean economists call it the attention economy it's literally designed to take your attention through distraction and addiction things like scrolling on instagram things like the like button all of this is at a neurobiological level i mean tristan harris if you're familiar with his work if not google tristan harris worked for google was a design philosopher has started a non-profit now who's basically trying to get a hippocratic oath for software designers because he's seen behind the curtain and he basically argues that when silicon valley started things like the like button things like scrolling all of it was based on slot machines they wouldn't study gambling if you think of a slot machine where you know people go in you put a quarter in and like it's all like the house always wins but there's that psychology and they don't let you win every time they let you in and neurobiologically a slot machine and checking for text messages or notifications on your phone shows up in your brain the exact same way the exact same addiction it's the same thing so now that means now does that mean that we should throw our phones away and go become monkeys maybe but here's how i i've been thinking about it paul the apostle paul utilized the roman system of legal rights and of roads and transportation and of letters that was designed for oppression it was designed to increase the empire conquer nations and get greater taxation to make the rich richer he subverted what it was designed for and used it to spread the gospel through the mediterranean to where in three centuries over half of the empire were followers of jesus wow so we have to first just be honest about what technology is it is designed to distract us and addict us and manipulate us anybody that says differently is living in a fantasy now that means if we're going to interact with it we have to do so in a discerning way in a ruthless way in a disciplined way and our intent has to be to subvert it so how do you take a zoom call and do great good in the world how do you take instagram and not just make it look like your life is perfect and you're always happy and you know and if you do this you'll be like how do you just actually use it to subvert those narratives and not and that's hard to do and i don't have all the answers to that regular on a regular basis you know i mean this morning we're at the end of a building project for our church and so i posted a couple i'm trying to post pictures of the remodel project because our church is like dying to meet together we've all given money to this and you know we're supposed to dedicate the building two weeks ago and so i'm posting for our church to get excited to like just remember that we're together and we want to come back and to have this hope then i'm thinking what if i'm a pastor of a church that doesn't have the money to buy a building or i remember how i felt when all of my friends were like getting given buildings for their churches and i'm like oh you know i don't know and set up and tear down when i'm exhausted you know and you just got given this gorgeous like facility or whatever and it makes you feel lame and insecure and where's god you know so i'm like in posting trying to encourage my church am i discouraging other churches man that like to to not admit that tension is a great is a great fool's errand i think you know so i think some critical engagement something as simple as thinking before an instagram post what am i trying to make people do think or feel by posting this there you go and then an honest like well maybe i'm just trying to make myself feel better or maybe i'm just trying to get more followers so i can sell more books or maybe i want them to actually really consider this idea or maybe i don't want them to do that this would index some of them or maybe i really feel like they should go read this passage or let me like you know what i mean and just an honest nonsense go angsty and like hate yourself like why am i posting this and what do i want people to think feel or do as a result you know and just just pause for a moment and let that inform what you do um i'm so grateful you're on our the the conference we we shifted it to go virtual and we decided to name it hello new world we don't know we don't know this we don't know what this new world is but that's kind of what we're thinking a lot of this about a lot of the conversations are leading towards what does this look like and just lastly really quick what yeah what are you seeing and maybe a better word is what are you sensing um for what's ahead with the church and that that could be the positive that could also be the concern i don't know i'm more putting it in the ball in your corner just as we're closing here what do you see in sensing with the church and yeah you know i think the most honest answer to that rich is i don't know there's a lot of prediction out there and you know i think sometimes prediction is really smart people who know it's but a lot of the time it's just an attempt to grasp for control and at its best any form of prediction right now whether it's from a top-ranking epidemiologist or a politician or a pastor of the future of the church at its best i think it's educated conjecture and so i think we actually can really help people as pastors i think part of our role is to help people live with i don't know and the uncertainty and make peace with that you know like cancer people that have been through cancer talk about how the best doctors i've not been through it by the grace of god but talk about how the best doctors aren't necessarily the smartest ones that make the best predictions they're the ones that kind of say here's a few different ways it could go you could live this long or that but we don't know but i'm with you and i kind of wonder if the same could be said for best pastors that the best pastors and leaders aren't necessarily the ones that are like crazy smart and like it's going to last this long and this is what's going to happen and this is what's going to happen in the church but are a little bit more like man we've never been through a global pandemic in the digital age with modern understanding of germs never happened before um and so my my guess guess that's all this is his guess is jesus teaching that to those who have more will be given and to those who do not have even what they have will be taken away scientists even have a name for that phenomenon there's an interesting thing like in you know music it's like one percent of professional musicians make 99 of royalties and it's the same for literature basically a couple authors float the entire publishing industry and um so there's something there i think that strong churches will get stronger and think just my guess weak churches will will get weaker or even die barna's projecting for a hundred thousand churches to close their doors as a result again that's all educated conjecture some of that's really sad some of that i think there's a life cycle to churches some of that could be healthy you know and um some of that could be renewal so i think there's a stripping away of pruning right now in jesus metaphor the church is being cut back like what are we actually about what is life actually about do we need all the sound and the lights and the things and who what is the church as a pruning but i think there's more than there's a stripping away and a reseeding so i think there is more creativity from the spirit in people's imagination right now than i've ever seen i'm seeing more entrepreneurs more people dreaming more innovation more creativity more people having literal prophetic dreams as they sleep for their future more people discovering their destiny more people asking hard questions about what do i actually want to do as i come back how do we come back differently not just the same i don't want to go back to the way it was so man i think for people that are young and thinking and entrepreneur like all of us but especially in that demographic should really be paying attention to their creativity right now what is the spirit of god seeding in your heart so good john mark comer ladies and gentlemen bridgetown church john mark we uh we're so grateful for you and hopefully you know um i don't know i don't think you have any enemies in this world but you definitely don't have any enemies in miami we are praying for you we love you we're so grateful for your voice we think it's really really needed and we can't wait to get you down here to miami because you're part of the family now and so we're so grateful to take some time thank you for all that you do we love you so much love guys on social and in the chats right now make sure he he feels it for sure i love you my friend thank you yeah same to you thank you for your kindness

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Length: 32min 56sec (1976 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 29 2020