#263 | Platforms to Pillars: How Do We Survive in a Platform Society? with Mark Sayers

You know, I just was reading a UN report yesterday about 60% of people in the world are dissatisfied with their lives and think the future won't be better. That's a huge amount.

And that's the UN report was saying this is weirdly the other UN indicators of like infant mortality going down, access to clean water standards actually living standards have actually risen compared to historically. But we feel worse. And I think this is the platform pain point.

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A lot of people know about apologetics, but they don't necessarily know about cultural apologetics, which is extremely important because it's the work of establishing the Christian voice, conscience, witness and imagination within a culture so that Christianity can be seen as true and, and satisfying. And in order to do that, it requires analyzing the structures of a culture, especially its deep structures.

And when we're talking about that, the person we need to be talking to is none other than our guest today, Mark Sayers. Mark is a cultural commentator, he's a pastor, he's got a prophetic insight and he's written some paradigm shifting books.

And today we're going to be talking about his newest book, Platforms to Pillars. I want to make sure I got the name right because I keep wanting to say from Platforms to Pillars, it's a fantastic book.

It's right in the line of his other books. And I just wanted to give a warm welcome to those who serve the Lord to Mark Sayers from Australia. So it's so good to connect with you here today.

Yeah, fantastic to be with you, enjoying this, looking forward to this time.

Let's start off getting to know you just a little bit for those who don't know you. But are you ready for the Fast five?

I'm ready.

Okay, here we go.

Got my coffee. Ready to go.

Get your coffee. Because it's right. It's night where I'm at, it's morning where you're. So you really need to be caffeinated for this conversation.

I mean, for me it's later and I'm still caffeinated. So here we go.

Yes, here we go.

So you read a ton. And I'm always asking this to people, what are the top three books that you're reading right now?

Great question. I'm reading actually a D.H. lawrence novel called Kangaroo, which is a book he read about Australia when he was here.

I'm reading Joseph Minich, I think that's how you pronounce it, book Bulwarks of Unbelief, which is this sort of look at secularism as this idea of a techno culture. And then I'm reading another book called the Monastic World. Still.

I've been sort of in that for a little while, but that's actually a history of the monastic movement and so that's been fascinating as well. So they're the three. There's a couple others on the go as well, but they're the main three ones I'm working through. I have.

I want to ask questions about that, but I can't. So I'm going to go to the next question because there's the monastic question. Just makes me go crazy because I just want to know more about it.

All right, number two, you do travel a lot, so the place that you travel to the most is where and why.

I've probably been to. I mean, within Australia.

I've been to Sydney a lot recently and I'm from Melbourne and Melbourne Sydney have a rivalry, but I do enjoy going to Sydney.

So Sydney, but internationally probably has been London most in the last sort of 10 years, so administered a lot in the UK and particularly in London. That's probably been the main place I've been.

Well, you actually wrote this in your book. You were there for the coronation, right?

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that was.

That was, yeah, a strange, strange moment in the sense that I was physically present, but you couldn't be further away because there's so much security and I couldn't really see anything and it was pouring with rain. But it was a weird thing. As Australians, our head of state, we've got a Prime Minister. Head of State's there, the king.

So this weird thing of being on the other side of the world, your head of state being coronated, but yeah, didn't get to see much.

Still something to be a part of something historical. That's pretty cool.

Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Okay. Number three, because you are a Public figure. One thing people don't know about me is what?

Well, I think, I think kind of question like, I think being in Australia, being. I mean, there's an element where it's a public figure, but also sort of live here in Australia where people aren't that enamored with public figures.

So probably the thing is that my life's very normal and so I sort of have this space where I do these things and write, but then the rest of the time, you know, I'm just sort of walking around my neighborhood killing football, going to local supermarket. So maybe people don't realize how ordinary it is when you had someone doing this from Australia.

Number four. If you could meet one non biblical historical figure, who would it be and why?

Oh, wow, that's great. Fascinating question. There is. This is. I'm just gonna. This is off the top of my head. I kept noticing this figure.

I've read so many books and this figure, Adnan Khashoggi, just kept me up. And he's got this international mystery man.

I don't think he was necessarily a good guy, but he just was at the heart of all these different global mysteries. He was an arms dealer, oil. And I just read like in the year or two, couple space of a couple years. His name just came up in these references.

Like he's, he's, he's. I was reading this book about Richard Nixon and like Adnan Khashoggi turns up at his funeral. I'm just like, who is this guy?

So more just I would want to meet him and say, what on earth were you up to, mate? Like, you seem to be behind everything, so it wouldn't be like some heroic figure. It's more like a, a, a curiosity. Like, what were you doing?

You seem to be an international man of mystery, almost a Bond villain in some ways. Sounds more like Horace Dump. Yeah. Oh, totally. But yeah, I think he was sort of behind things a bit. So he was an arms dealer sort of guy. So. Yeah.

Okay, that was off the top of my head. Strange one.

No, no, no, that's, that's the point of these. Number. Number five. If your life were a book, what would you title it and why?

That's a great question.

I'm waiting for someone to tell me. That's the horrible question.

It's, It's. Oh, man, I don't know. I don't have any great titles. I think years ago I just had on my Instagram, I just threw up for a while.

I think my, um, my bio was some bloke and I do feel like, you know, at the end of the day, I'm just some guy. God's used me for some things, but. Yeah, so maybe that some bloke.

It's a good perspective. Well, let's, let's transition in to talk.

A little bit about your book.

Okay. Because I, I had. The first book that I got of yours was Non Anxious Presence, and it caused me to get Disappearing Church and Reappearing Church.

And I, I read Disappearing Church this week, and I read this this week. And you have a very great, I mean, just a fantastic insight into the culture.

And I, I told my wife, I said, I felt like you crawled into my brain like an explorer and you came out with a map and started drawing everything that was going on in my head. So I don't know what that means for you. It's a little bit creepy, I understand.

But it's gonna, we're gonna have a little bit of fun with this as we go. So what though, was it about this? What did the spirit do to stir you to write this book? I mean, what was it?

Yeah, I think it was two things that came together. One was I just began to notice how the word platform was increasingly attached to leadership. You know, I hadn't heard that years ago.

I don't think you heard this term.

You know, leadership was something, whether it's in the secular form, in a religious form, in whatever sphere, could be sports, coaching, politicians, community leaders. Was something which emerged out of character, is really what, you know, like skills or character.

And, you know, you recognize that those people then got prominence or whatever through. Through their character or skills or leadership acumen. But then you begin to hear this way. It was framed as like, no, you've got to build a platform.

And if you have a platform, people are going to hear you, you're going to get followers, and then you gain leadership. Yuval Levin, in his book A Time to Build, has a little bit in that where he sort of described what was going on.

I think that's when it first clicked for me. He talked about how increasingly people use institutions as almost jumping off points to build platform.

Now, whereas previously you sort of served the institution, institution informed you, now you're sort of using the institution. And so I just began to think, hang on, there's got to be something going on beneath the surface.

And I think also seeing a lot of leaders, not just in the Christian world, but in other places, fall from platforms after they built these platforms. So you can rapidly rise, but also rapidly fall. I just thought this needs to be explored a bit, because I think it.

Talking to younger leaders, there was almost this sense, like, I'd meet people who are doing great stuff, but they felt that it wasn't legitimate because they didn't have a platform. So they might be in a community helping that community, doing amazing stuff.

You know, they might have a church, they might have a food bank, they might be involved in municipal politics, making real change. And they felt like they weren't.

I'm like, well, but they're like, oh, that person over there's got a massive platform because they have a blog or an Instagram account or something, or. And so I thought this is really needs to be sort of dissected.

And then the second thing, too was just a general sense of how the world has radically changed from a world that is built around institutions. That's in many ways what created liberal democracies.

You know, the Western Western culture, but also other cultures, and how institutions were being replaced by platform digital platforms.

The power, you know, really hit me at the presidential inauguration where you had in the front row, you know, the CEOs of the digital platforms ahead of the politicians. And I thought, wow, that's a sign. Regardless of where you are politically, that's a sign something's really shifted.

And, you know, even president, you know, Xi. Xi Jinping's sort of battle with Jack Ma, who in China had his own digital platform.

And I thought, wow, when the head of the Chinese Communist Party feels threatened by a guy with a digital platform in a totalitarian state, really, that's another signal. And just at a very baseline level, you get on a train, you get on a bus, and everyone's on their phones. Like, the power of this thing.

So it was those two things, digital platforms and this idea of leadership as platform coming together. And I thought, wow, it's great. Those two things, or maybe they're the same thing. That's what I thought.

And I think that's where I came to, as I wrote the book.

How do you, though, define platform? And before you do that, I have a question that you didn't have listed in here.

Who do you see as the first Christian that was really developing the modern platform? Was it Driscoll?

Great question. Yeah, I think. I think it was. It's probably multiple people at the same time with different elements.

Like, I think that, you know, you know, early bloggers. Do you know what I mean? I remember being really like, early. I had.

I had with a friend when I was really young, we had one of the sort of First Christian websites talking about church differently. It's not there anymore. And straight away I remember seeing like, oh, wow, this is different.

I mean, we had this experience where we wrote an article about worship or something and then we forgot about it. And then we came back two months later. My friend's like, that's getting so many hits. And we're like, why? This is weird.

Like, because you still had that newspaper mentality. You wrote an article, it's time bound. And then we saw that in the comments, this huge sort of battle had began between different people.

Had nothing to do with us. It went, they started talking about the article and then they started just fighting.

And then I remember thinking, oh, wow, this is going to drive hits.

You know, like, I have, I have another friend who's a was again, very sort of early, sort of well known blogger and in both the Christian and secular space, you know, and he was, he was someone who sort of also helped to understand how you could make this profitable and so on. So just these different things in my head came together. So I don't know if it was one person. I think it was almost a cohort of leaders.

And perhaps Beatrice was one of those people.

But I think there was a whole bunch of people who were at that time in different fields, you know, like, like there were Catholic priests who became famous in this time. So there's different people in different spaces.

I think sort of were at a time when the technology was doing something and the culture was doing something.

So then let's talk about platform then. How do you define platform?

I mean, we, we all know that people have a platform, but you have a special, special definition for it and how we've become a platform society. Can you elaborate on those two things?

Yeah, so it's a form of.

I sort of began to think it's a form of influence, but it's also a form of individualism which sort of sees the need to have validity to be elevated, to be seen. And that if you have this elevation, the more people will see you, that gives greater validity to your message.

So, you know, that is something which initially was sort of around leadership. And I trace it back to its origins, which you could trace to the stage in ancient Greece.

You could trace it to the dais which, which royals had, which said, this person is different because they're elevated.

But what's really interesting is that sort of merged with our sort of democratic sensibilities where we feel, well, everyone needs to have a dais, everyone needs to have a platform, everyone needs to have A stage. And so it's sort of an elevated form of individualism. And it's.

It's contradictory because we think everyone should have a platform, but then we'll listen to those who have the biggest platform, you know, so that's sort of how I define it.

When we're talking about platforms, though, you mentioned something that struck me when you referred to the platform pain point. What is the platform pain point?

Yeah. So there is this element that I think what is happening is we are moving towards a new sort of phase.

So if platform is a later stage of individualism, we're sort of moving to this pain point now where in a sense what's happening is we've told we want platform digital platforms, so social media, online spaces offer us the promise of elevation, but everyone's being elevated. And also at the same time, we're being extracted data. So this is not, you know, if something.

It's been said about the Internet, if something's free, you're the product. Right. You know, so if you sign up for that thing, oh, this is free, great.

No, no, you're being signed up because there's data being extracted from you and the whole trajectory.

If you think about, like, individualism, you know, the sort of individuals in particular, as it emerged post war, you know, if you have a figure like James Dean or something, you know, it was sort of the rebel. They didn't play by the rules, they were a bit of a loner, they had individual freedom.

They're often hedonistic and they sort of could just drive off into the sunset. They weren't bound by anything. Sort of almost what, you know, rebel without a cause sort of thing.

But what's interesting is almost this late form, and I've called it also crisis individualism. It's actually an individualism which has ended up being very hurt. Like. Like.

I remember when I was young with my family, we went to the UK on a holiday and we noticed that fashion was really different. Like fashion in Britain was different to Australia. And then I went to the US not long after, and fashion was different there.

Now I notice when I travel, it's the same everywhere. And trends just online spread like that. So you're seeing more conformity.

So not only people are more like each other, they're algorithmically influenced to think the same. Plus also they're extracted for data and increasingly addicted. So it's not, you know, James Dean sort of riding out of town on a motorcycle now.

It's just people hunched over their phones. So this is creating a tremendous Pain point in the world.

You know, I just was reading a UN report yesterday, about 60% of people in the world are dissatisfied with their lives and think the future won't be better. That's a huge amount.

And that's the UN report was saying this is weirdly the other UN indicators of like infant mortality going down, access to clean water standards actually, living standards have actually risen compared to historically, but we feel worse. And I think this is the platform.

Pain point part of what we do here. And it's a passion of mine because you're describing it. So it's my contention that as Western culture continues to help birth.

I mean, Christianity and Western culture kind of went hand in hand in the establishment of the modern world, but there was a detachment. And it seems like Christianity then has been smothered by Western culture.

And as Western culture continues to go in different places with technology, with capitalism, with the performance culture, which you talk about in the book, you talk about this performance aspect.

And I even see it in ministry all the time, where now everything is driven by these performance metrics, this platform mentality and this platform society which we become. It's become so the cliche, the frog and water.

You know, it's boiled up and it's even in the church because the church doesn't know how to separate itself from it. What's the danger when we have this performative aspect and we apply this into the church and itself today?

Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Jesus in the, in the Gospels warns those who pray not to pray, like the Pharisees.

The Pharisees were religious and, you know, like, I think it's, you know, it's attributed to Chulian, but, you know, he said the Gospel is always like. Like Jesus was crucified on a cross between two thieves. The Gospel is always between irreligion and religiosity.

And so Jesus sort of pointing a finger at a form of religiosity that the Pharisees were practicing. And in some ways the Pharisees were the reformers.

They were against the sort of Sadducees or the secularists or the Herod Party or whatever you want to call them. So I'm sort of, you know, doing a slight anachronistic, but I think people get the point.

And so they were trying to bring people back to a good religious foundation and Torah observance. And the way they did that was trying to be public.

So they were trying to be public and pray on the streets so that those who they thought had abandoned what God wanted for Israel would be, you know, chastened. But Jesus is like, you know, don't do that. Don't. Don't fast in this particular way. Don't let everyone know what you're doing.

Pray in your sort of closet. And there's something that is. I think it just didn't have the technology set up that it's built for performance.

You know, I just saw something, literally, not long before I got on here, of, you know, intimate ministry moment where a leader was praying for someone. And without the performance element of it, it seemed like a genuine moment.

Someone had come to Faith, and they were praying with this leader, but the leader had put up a picture of them praying with this person and explaining the whole story. And there's an element where part of me is like, this is a beautiful moment. Like, praise God. Is this someone's come to salvation.

But there's just something in the framing, the technology, where. And I get the intent, like, I totally get the intent to tell the good news stories. You know, there's something at church, you know, we'll celebrate.

I had someone come up to me last night and just share. Someone they knew had come to Faith, and that's brilliant. And in that communal context, that was totally appropriate, you know, to share.

You know, we just had a couple people come to Faith in church last week, and we've just mentioned that. But it's different when it goes online because it becomes decontextualized, disembodied. It becomes this floating thing, and.

And it just sort of turns into this performative thing. So it's like. That's what I was trying to sort of say, this form of influence.

It has its positives and negatives, but it also has this performative reality because we have become the content makers. I'm going to weirdly tie this all back to the show Friends. The show Friends changed television, changed entertainment.

When I think the cast demanded $1 million per show, which was just huge for network TV. And it wasn't long after that that reality TV got birthed. Because with reality TV, you could have people fighting to get on, say, the show Survivor.

They weren't paying anything. They got a tiny amount of money, and they brought in massive ratings. So instead of having to pay the cast of Friends millions, you could have people.

You don't have to pay anything, barely anything, and you get ratings.

The next step of that was YouTube, Instagram, having the public creating content, you know, so there's an element that there's two things coming together here. And again, too, I'm not making any hard and fast rules because there is a lot of nuance and discernment needed in this.

And I'm not, you know, we can get religious and go, everything is. You shouldn't do anything, you know, But I think that that performative element is all over culture now, you know, and you even see it.

One Australian invention is the selfie.

The term the selfie, you know, and we shorten everything in Australia, but the selfie, you know, you see this now where people will, you know, 30 years ago, people, they're in Paris, they see the Eiffel Tower, they'll take a photo of the Eiffel Tower. They may have got a stranger to take them and their family maybe, but now just people insert themselves in the picture.

So there's this performative element which says if I'm seen, it validates something in me. And in some ways it's trying to grab at a moment of permanence, like I was here in Paris, you know, but it falls short.

So there's a disembodiedness to it.

You also mentioned, though, that there's a pain point in participating in social media as we're talking about that. There's also a pain point point if we don't. There's a cost. I liked how you continued to bring that out.

There's a cost for doing this, there's a cost for doing that, there's a cost for not participating in that. And even this type of, you know, cost analysis, it's like, okay, wait a minute. There's a cost for everything that we're doing today.

What's the cost of not participating and becoming these kind of Luddites.

Yeah.

So know one, one a couple of types of costs, you know, one is, you know, there is technology which brings opportunities, you know, and what I'm trying to do with the book is not so make it about much about the technology, because I think people get stuck there, but actually about the ideology that builds the technology. So, you know, one. One of my favorite stories is, you know, I'm here in Melbourne.

The state I'm in is called Victoria, and It's in the 19th century of A. Of a farmer. Oh, sorry. A shepherd finding a scrap of newspaper. And it's a spurgeon sermon which was printed in this newspaper.

He would preach in London, it would be telegraphed and put in the paper in Australia. So this shepherd finds this that's just blown somewhere in a field in.

In on the other side of the world in the 19th century and comes to Faith kneels in the field and becomes a Christian. Brilliant example of technology's benefit. The Roman roads, the Roman postal systems were technologies, social technologies that Paul used.

And the gospel went around the, you know, the Greco Roman world. So there's these tremendous benefits to this. You know, we're having this conversation on these platforms.

I have a podcast, you know, I can write books from Australia.

I mean, I often think if the Internet imploded, but me writing books would be so much more painful, you know, because I can just email, I text my publishers, you know, have chats, you know, so you know, that, that there's those positives. The other cost too is like now because the world has become so Internet immersed.

So for example, if you have teenage kids and you're choosing not to give them a phone, that has a cost because they are socially, you know, that things will get communicated on WhatsApp or, or tick Tock or whatever the party they, they don't hear about, you know, the friends gathering at the park, they don't hear about it. So there's a social cost as well.

And I think one thing I also try and bring it in the book is that we're moving beyond the opt in, opt out model of the Internet because of the Internet of things. Electric cars capturing us, refrigerators, ring doorbells. So much of your life now is frighteningly filmed and captured. Smart watches.

And that's only going to be more immersive rooms will literally. So yeah, so all of these are sort of increasing those cost analysis pain points.

There's so much that you talked about where you talk, you mentioned the technological immersion, but I like the fact that you mentioned that there's an ideology that's underneath it in some respect. Our psychology has been formed by this constant performance loop feedback.

And you mentioned that the feedback loop, the high performance loop, that we get that, we get it back, we get that and get it back. But as it goes into the church, we, we have to fight in some respect against it. There's a human, like you said, there's a benefit.

I call it the humanizing effect.

There is a humanizing effect for human flourishing that happens, but implicit in it because it's part of creation, there's a dehumanizing element at the same time simultaneous to that brings some type of cultural idolatry to the surface that can play upon the flesh. And we have to be able to guard against that as followers of Jesus.

But it's hard because we're being carried along in these, this kind of river or rapid, if you will of technological advance that our, our previous generations had no idea about. We've just been awash in it. This is where I think the idea of the pillar comes in. And to those who are pillars.

Am I.

And feel free to correct me.

Yeah.

Is this idea of the pillar to draw upon the, the cumulative wisdom of the generations before. In some respect it's the C.S. lewis chronological snobbery.

We're saying we need to talk to the people of previous generations in order to keep our bearings in the middle of all this. Is that right?

Yes, 100%. And it sort of entered my thinking in Australia in a national conversation around reconciliation with indigenous people.

And a big part of Australian Indigenous culture is elders, eldership. Huge thing. Often people are called aunties or uncles in Aboriginal culture and they're actually chosen as elders.

And eldership in Australian Indigenous culture is really important because it's a passing on of knowledge and cultural knowledge.

And so, you know, there's different things you'll be at can be community events even, you know, like where they'll basically thank any or, you know, pay respects to any elders present. And so it just caught to me that Australia's got indigenous culture and then it's this very multicultural contemporary other culture.

And they've got these two tracks going on which is just completely incoherent at times where I think rightfully indigenous elders should be respected as carriers of, you know, one of the world's oldest living civilizations and the passing of knowledge at times when they've experienced oppression and in modern Australia.

But then really this other time where there's this youth culture of modernity and where it's just all about experience, it's about you, it's about individualism. Old people are to be mocked. It's a progressive progression myth, that progress myth that the future's smarter than the past.

So I just, I just was at a number of events where I'd hear the respects paid to the Aboriginal elders and then thinking, hang on, the rest of Australia does not respect eldership.

So is that just a thing for Indigenous people or is it should be something for everyone, you know, and you know, I think it was Edmund Burke talked about, you know, institutions sort of treasure the wisdom of. They almost offer a vote to previous generations. And there is something about our culture which a platform society is an information society.

It's not a wisdom society necessarily. Silicon Valley's obsessed with IQ and intellect and artificial intelligence is an attempt to build a machine intellectual.

But sometimes you can have, as we've seen, there can Be very insanely, almost genius level smart people, but they're not wise. And so I think eldership is a, is a way of passing wisdom.

And it says there's a kind of, kind of content that's not necessarily information, it's wisdom. And pillars was a word I was trying to use. I didn't, I realized the word elder I could have ran with in the book.

But it gets confused with church polity and you know, all this stuff and is it old?

But then you know, I discovered in, in you know, revelation and then you begin to see in other parts of scriptures this describing the people of God as a new living temple in the world and us being pillars. And when someone passes away in they'll often be described as a pillar of the community.

So if an elder passed away, this person was an elder of, sorry, pillar of the community. And that term is like. That means they don't just play an individual role, they play a communal role. It's actually something.

And if you think about pillars, they're part of structures which enable flourishing. You know, a pillar is not the center point, if that makes sense.

It's actually a support structure working with others, providing strength, resilience over time to enable things to flourish. And ultimately the biblical picture, the presence of God, you know, to be central in worship.

I found it very interesting when you're talking about the performance aspect and you're talking about how we've mediating institutions have gone down. People bypass that with technology. They don't have to go through that for that approval.

But just as James Davison Hunter has said and several others, we need those institutions to convey greater meaning. However, we're just in this, you can't just say that, you know, you have to be able to do it and apply to people.

But we're seeing that obviously within the Christian community as people are the great churching, especially here in the United States. You're seeing that with Christian higher level institutions.

One of my alma maters has moved to Canada and you're just seeing the removal of the institution, the bypassing of that framework.

And it's fascinating to me as you're describing this, that we still need that wisdom piece and people are still seeking it out, just not through that institutional level. It's. And not even through family in some respect they're going on.

I think of Malcolm Guy who's like Jerry Garcia meets Bilbo Baggins and people just want to go see the dude because he's just this guy.

Given this wisdom is what we're going to continue to see or does the church need to recover this idea of, in some respect of a generation that feels like the world went on without them?

Yeah, it's interesting. Like, you know, it's. I like that Bilbo Baggins. Yeah, he is like that.

He was on the show.

Totally is that.

Have you met him?

Yeah, yeah, no, no, no, I know of him. Yeah, I was just in Ireland a few weeks ago.

And it's interesting, you know, the story of Ireland is very much one in where you had this social collapse, you know, in people called Dark Ages, Late Antiquity, where the Roman social structure breaks down and the institutions which had sort of maintained, you know, Rome had fallen over, and a lot of other social institutions as well. And so you have these characters, you know, St. Patrick being probably the most famous, who in some ways are like that.

They are wandering Christian wisdom figures. They're not institutional.

And many of them were just trying to almost, you know, imitate the desert fathers and go and create these spaces to pray and. And that was a form of mission then.

But then around them, institutions begin to build, you know, and I was just literally with a friend, Rob, who's in the Church of Ireland, took me to Monster Boys, which is one of the Celtic high crosses. There's. There was a monastic community, I think, starting the 5th century, really flourished in the 10th century.

But a lot of these monastic communities started with one guy, one saint, who basically people gathered around, you know. So I'm wondering if we're back there, as you say that.

I'm wondering if as the Internet sort of undermines institutions and a lot of older institutions are leaving that you have figures who show wisdom, but then there's a sense that something needs to build around it. But I think the danger is as well, for every guide, you've got to take as well.

And, you know, there's an Andrew Tate or you know, there's these other figures that because of. Because, again, if the performative element, it will always go to the shock. Like there's an element because it's. It's.

There's a mechanism which is a profit mechanism in the background. I mean, you know, I think both of us are hoping that people watch this and learn from this podcast.

If in the next 10 minutes I started swearing my head off and attacked a public figure and said some crazy things, heretical, controversial things, probably this. The hits are going to go way up.

And if you put it on Insta, and if you put it on YouTube saying Mark Sayers crashes out or something like this, and Put a big bright colors in a picture of me looking crazy. It would probably get a hundredfold of the hits. So there is this element where the controversial, the shocking gains more traction.

So people are looking for wisdom, but there's also a danger here as well. So the guide interview will not be as much as the one where despite the wisdom, the shock. So there's always this battle on these platforms.

That's the part that I can't stand, personally. I don't like the fact that people.

Use.

Or instrumentalize the pain of others for their own benefit.

I personally struggle with that because I think even in the performative element of the Christian life, I think about Jesus when you pray, close your door. And that I think is even doing a ministry such as this that is somewhat public.

I struggle with that, honestly, because it's like you want Jesus to be the one that comes through, not you. And it seems. And I think of. Was it Jake Paul? You see the boxer and. And when he got up and he's like, he. He made a comment.

He's like the currency of the modern world is the eyeball. Yeah, it's attention. It's an attention economy. What you can do to hold my attention.

And so then the church has to become this competitor where now vying for the attention of people. And that just seems wrong. Like it's wrong that I'm. I'm trying to compete with a TV show or some Internet personality to get you to commune with God.

So then I'm tempted to manufacture something in order to get it, rather than relying upon the spirit of God to truly push through that form. Because this, I think the ideology that you're talking about is something that I see and I.

And I see many churches kind of embrace that wholeheartedly. And many pastors, they're burning out at an unprecedented rate.

Yeah.

And I think people are de churching because they're tired of I don't need a song and dance.

And I was just talking to our audio producer before this, and I'm seeing more and more people convert to Orthodoxy or Roman Catholicism because the safety of the tradition and removing. I remember John Drain at Aberdeen writing a book about 15 years ago called the McDonaldization of the Church. You know.

Yes, it was a great book and it brought that out. My question is, as you mentioned before, that kind of monastic idea. And I think back, now you're talking about blogging.

I think back to the Internet monk Andrew Spencer back in the day, but today it still seems to me that you've got some that are advocating for that, like the Benedict option with Rod Dreier. I just don't. I did inner city ministry where you got people working two jobs and that's just not an option.

People are struggling and I know that for us, like I've got teenagers, like you said, there's a cost involved. That's the world they live in. They're digital native. How do we then help? We're not going to be getting rid of that anytime soon.

The Internet's not going away. White truth said no of this Internet fad.

How do we create then counter liturgies or counter catechesis that help our people navigate this well without just getting caught up in the complete tidal wave or tsunami of technological advance? And not just technological, but this ideological advance.

I like how you said, you know, not just focus on the technology but the ideology behind it because it is market driven. We are product. How do we do this? Any ideas on that? You got to solve all the problems.

You gotta do it quickly because in our economy people are starting to not want.

Yeah, exactly the three answers. Yeah, really interesting. I mean I think you made some really valid observations there.

Again, I just mentioned I got back from Europe and it's fascinating in very secular places like Scandinavia, Germany, Netherlands, these places, seeing all of a sudden young people starting to turn up at churches. And interestingly some of the churches unsuspecting and 100% there's a move towards Roman Catholicism and Orthodoxy.

But it's also worth noting talking to some of the people in those fields, it's not every parish that people are turning up to. It's the alive ones that people are turning up to.

And it's the ones where people come and feel a sense of the presence of God in the liturgy or the Eucharist. And also to counter that, not to counter that, but just to add and broaden out the picture.

I know numerous leaders from mega churches, Pentecostal churches, who in the last couple years have sort of changed things up a little bit. Not, not heaps, but made it more community, more local focused, less digital focused. And they're seeing possibly more people turn up.

You know, I know some mega churches in that space have hundreds, some thousands of people come to faith young people recently. And then you know, there's, there's, I know some like Reformed churches and evangelical churches with this is happening.

So part of coming back from just sort of these, just listening to people and traveling around the world recently is like something profound's happening. And I'm asking the question what it is and I think what it is, is people are number one.

And there was some research done in Australia is that people are turning up to church. Whether again, it's the Catholic parish or the contemporary church. They're looking their first encounters.

They want to encounter the presence of God, a sense of the divine, the peace of God. There's an element that they're surrounded by information. And what I think it is, it's almost an unspoken thing.

They want to meet God, you know, And I think what we've done is we've done so much information and hey, here's, you know, like an information is important, don't get me wrong.

Believe in preaching the gospel, all that stuff, but they want to meet Jesus, you know, and so they will go to churches, whether it's the Pentecostal church, the Orthodox church, whatever, where they feel that, that that's a thing. I think secondly, people are desperately disconnected. You know, it was interesting. There was. I read a couple reports yesterday.

I'm trying to remember which one it was.

It was either Edelman Barometer of Trust or this UN Global Cohesion one where they said that we're moving beyond polarization into almost individual grievance culture. And I thought, that's really interesting. So it's now moving and fragmenting into. I'm just angry with everyone, you know, because I feel so isolated.

And there's this sense that I think people are looking for genuine forms of community. One of these churches that's. That's contemporary, that, that's bigger that I know.

I visited recently and I was amazed how much they pivoted to just mentioning people. It was such an amazing sense of community and family in the room. And I'm like, this is why people are becoming Christians here.

They're looking for community. They're so isolated. And, you know, I think that. I think the third thing is they're looking for something which is different from the world.

One big idea.

I'm actually going to preach on this in a series we're about to do is I think what people don't realize, and maybe the US is a little bit behind in this, but I think they're about to get here, but I think Europe is here. We're moving from a post Christian society. And in a post Christian society, you're always like, we were Christian, we're now post Christian.

How do we as the church position ourselves in this? We're actually moving and not everyone. So we're still in process, but moving from a post Christian society to a post secular society society.

A post Secular society is different because this is what's happening in Scandinavia. There's a whole generation same in Australia who don't know anything about Christianity. Their parents deliberately ignored it.

So it's new and dangerous and intriguing. It's punk rock in a way.

This is like orthodoxy is a bit punk rock to people because it's so different from the culture and everything you've been told to do. You know, I've spoken a lot about Nick Cave, who is the lead sing of the Birthday Party.

Sort of post punk artists from Melbourne moved to the uk, you know, and he was, you know, I remember watching videos of him when I was young and our version of MTV and he was on heroin and just like, you know, his video would come on and I was just like, oh, this is like as a young Christian kid, like this is the epitome of everything that's wrong. And he had like in Latin on his chest in one of the videos, like God is a pig.

You know, I was thinking like, you know, and then to hear him since the loss of his two sons talking about faith. He's going to church, he's going to high Anglican church in, in London. And the Australian sort of media can't handle this.

They don't know, they don't know how to process this, you know, but almost he's realized this guy who was like punk, post punk and post punk pioneer is like this is the next thing. And he's even saying stuff like it's not about spirituality. I don't want that stuff. I want religion.

I want to turn and sit in a church, you know, so there's something that's coming, but it's not just about Christianity.

Joe Rogan talking about how the pyramids were power plants or having someone on talking about that is getting hundreds of thousands more hits than a CNN sort of balanced, they think in their balance whatever thing, the mainstream. I think there's a moment that's happening. The U.S. congress is talking about aliens and angels and demons in subcommittees around UAPs.

You know, the London School of Tropical Medicine is mapping the magic mushroom world and the entities that everyone keeps on meeting. You know, In Germany, around 49% of Gen Z believe in esoteric beings.

Now in supposedly secular Europe, you know, we're seeing a rise of Wicca Western people converting to Islam. There's something really intriguing post religious so post secular happening. So I think that, and I think that's going to move quickly.

I have a sense the US will get there quickly. So yeah, my sense is that this is what people are looking for. They're looking for something.

Tom Holland, the historian, said recently, Christianity needs to keep the weird stuff, not get rid of it.

I love how you described it as a post secular. So are you saying it's post secular with meta modernity or just post secular?

I mean, I mean to pass those two things out. So, you know, I think meta modernity and most of my understanding is from, you know, the guys who probably.

I know it's been continued on, but I remember, I think the first encountering was Vermeulen and van der Akers from Belgium and Netherlands who talked about meta modernity is like in a Kantian sense that went between modernity and post modernity, sort of swinging backwards and forwards. And I remember first hearing that talk, it was like this badly filmed talk they did some architecture conference, like, wow, they're onto something.

It wasn't everyone, there's obviously marginalized people, but a lot of people felt that things were getting technological better, living improvements were getting better. That come through the period of the 20s, 30s, you know, two world wars, great Depression, things were getting better.

And there was this improvement, you know, that starts to break down in the 60s, but it still sort of keeps going until I really think the gfc where there's just like these breaks in the social contract where now again to citing that UN survey, you know, 60% of people in the world believe that life was probably better 50 years ago, despite the material improvements. So there is almost the social contract that things are going to get better is not there.

The constant crisis that we're having is undermining the secular project. You know, so I was in Frankfurt again in Europe recently, and there's this big downtown statue of the Euro, it's the Euro sign.

And I thought about this and I thought there's all these other statues around Europe of all, you know, everyone from kings, reformers, political leaders and Europe tried to do this thing where we're not going to do that anymore. We're not going to talk about ideology, we're just going to have this ideology centered on bureaucracy, a common currency, good regulations, the eu.

It's not going to be personality driven. And that's really been the sort of order in the world. You could say it's Clinton economics or Reaganism.

You could put a lot of collapse, the parties together, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroeder in Germany. And it was like, things are going to progress, they're going to get better.

The Internet's going to make the world better, the economy is going to get to better, geopolitics can get better. All of that is falling down. And with the belief so that it's like people are losing faith in the great secularist project. That's what I'm saying.

So I think then all of a sudden they're open to more things. The trust in institutions which is globally plummeting means that they're looking at alternatives now.

So it may be orthodoxy, it may be Wiccan, you know, and I just remember being. Yeah, I mean it's Hindu nationalism is rising around the world. You know, it's not just, it's not just one thing. So nationalism is rising.

So this sort of post, post intellect, post post nationalist project. And it was multi dimensions.

And also too, I would say that and sort of what I'm getting at the book, there's an economic project in as well which is like, we don't need mediating institutions, you know, because they hold the individual back. So I think this is all collapsing. People like, I'm not, I'm more depressed, I'm not better economically. If I'm 32, I'm not going to get a house.

We could be in a war. Climate change making things worse, violence is seemingly bubbling up. What's the alternatives?

And I think this is where the church has missed because I think the Christian to post Christian era was well, if we can give them Jesus but not look like the church or an institution, we will get there like so many church movements with that. But I think now people are like, like it's interesting in the uk there's all.

I just saw an interview with Louise Perry, the feminist yesterday and she was like, I'm an agnostic, but me and my husband have started going to church. And there's multiple people in the UK saying this now, intellectuals like, I don't believe yet. Tom Holland's a bit like this.

But I'M going to the church.

That's the complete opposite of what we were told, that people can't stand the church, but they're really intrigued by Jesus and they have spiritual beliefs. Now people are saying, I want some order, I want some tradition. And there's a danger in this. There's a danger.

You know, one thing I was predicting for a while was a massive return of cultural Christianity. And people would sort of say, oh, come on, people can't stand it.

But as things get worse, like just say Taiwan invades, so China invades Taiwan tomorrow. There's a, there's a, there's a global war. The economy crashes and then we're living in the, you know, that.

Or AI gets in a really dangerous place, the environment gets worse. I think you'll see a huge shift.

You know, you're already seeing this in places like Poland, Slovakia, you know, Hungary, a turn to a form of cultural Christianity, which doesn't mean that people are necessarily devotedly in love with Jesus, you know. Yeah. So that, that's what I'm sort of saying.

I think we're going to escalate very quickly into a very different future that might catch us unaw, where if we're still in that Christian, post Christian paradigm, which again, too, just to add one caveat, is still operational in large parts of the world.

Well, I think your nationalism thing is right on.

And especially with the tribalism and the fact that with AI, I think people, I think hyperlocality is going to become more of a thing just because I don't think you can trust anything except what you see in your community. I think people are desperately grabbing for meaning any way that they possibly can, and they want to know who they're with.

So I think that tribalism is going to continue on. I think you're right on the cultural Christianity here. It's been fascinating because we have agreed to churching.

We've had that rise of Christian nationalism, which I'm still trying to figure out if it's, if it's, if it's as real as we have made it to be. But talking with a lot of people, I can say that it is.

I just did a series on it for Subsect myself and I'm interviewing Paul Miller, who wrote the book the Religion of American Greatness. And so what we're looking at, but nationalism isn't just in the United States, just as you said.

And I find it interesting that the impetus of what they're talking about, of making it a Christian nation, is the same impetus that was it, said Ketub. I think you mentioned him in the book the Egyptian who is writing about that. See that within the Arab Spring.

You're seeing it with, of course, Modi within India. I just think you're going to see nationalism continue to rise.

But let's bring that back into the church here for a moment because many of our people aren't necessarily thinking about what's going on at a global scale.

They're trying to figure out what am I going to do this next Sunday, how am I going to be able to talk to people, how do I shepherd them when it seems like they're just completely disengaged and they're caught up with whatever Internet conspiracies out there today?

How do we help continue to develop a counter liturgy when most of our services in some respect, and again, I'm kind of generalizing here, people come and see, get the performance aspect of it because we're performers too, within this global economy and then send them off. We need to be able to offer and get down into the form formative aspects of things and recapture that. Would you agree with that?

And helping them do counter liturgies as well as identify the cultural idolatries that are within them that they're trying to go against.

Totally. So I think there's two things that we need to do. So one is 100% that. That's a lot of what I do, trying to help people see it.

But I'd also add something else that a lot of what's been really interesting is a lot of people have asked the question, is the world trending right? Because we've seen a lot of right wing governments come into power. But in Australia, we've seen a left wing government coming to power.

You've seen that in other countries, a left wing government. The parties that are out of fashion are incumbent parties. So it doesn't matter whether you're left centrist, right?

If you're in power at the moment, people don't like you. Why? Because they hear you talk about lots of things. But what they're asking is eggs are expensive. Make eggs cheap. You know, gas is expensive.

You know, whatever it is, you know, my rent is expensive. So there is this thing also happening where there's this exhaustion over so many of these cultural issues.

And there's people like, hey, my son is just in a really tough place at the moment. I'm struggling to connect with him. I'm lonely, I've got some financial pressures. I will have a loss of meaning in my life.

My marriage just broke down.

When you actually talk to the people who are coming to faith and when I actually pastorally, I mean, this is the thing I appreciate being a pastor as well, is often I'll have these grand ideas during the week and I'm reading and listen to podcasts, and then I turn up to church on Sunday and I'm confronted with very real realities.

And even in a hyper politicized and polarized place like the U.S. i still think at the end of the day that a lot of people that's front of mind, you know, those very ordinary things. So I think this is good news for people because there's a lot of people who I feel like, oh, Mark, do I need to understand everything that you do?

And I almost endlessly will say to people, you don't need to know everything. I'm reading this stuff so you don't have to. And I'm trying. I'll give you a podcast every few weeks to try and understand it.

That's all you need to do. If you want to listen to that, great. But keep doing what you do, which is being in your community, loving people, building community.

It may seem small and fragile, it may seem tough, but don't underestimate the impact that, that, that has. And so in a sense, I remember, I think I've given the example for.

I remember once I was looking at some stuff around polarization and I was reading it and just seemed so tense. There was an article in our news here in Australia, and I walked to my daughter's elementary school and I'm waiting for her.

This, when she was a bit younger, and this mum walks out with a new baby. And then all these women, like just flock to the new baby.

One was a woman in hijab, One was another woman in sort of active gear, you know, not wearing extra clothes. Another one was like covered in tattoos. And they were all going, how are you going? Everyone relating to each other, different people.

And I just felt like the Lord say, that's the real world. That's where 80, 90% of ministry is going to happen. It doesn't play by the rules that online seems to happen.

And I thought that's the space that Christians inhabit. And so I think we also need to have the confidence that by living an alternative, keep doing that, keep cultivating that space.

I think it's going to have increasing fruit as we go on from here.

I always like to end our conversations with what's a water bottle that we can give our people that they can have a spiritual truth to to nurse them throughout the week. What's a concluding thought that you have for our audience about just their everyday life and their ministry, where they're at right now?

What I realized in writing this book is there's a counterpoint to the platform. The platform is very visible.

And what I've seen is that often when you have honest chats with people that a lot of leaders, pastors, and I'm sure I know it's true, many of your audience will there's often sufferings that we have in our personal lives that are not public struggles that we've had.

And what I've seen in my own life, what I've seen in others as I've spoken to people about this, is that when that's brought before the Lord and walked with the Lord, what that actually gives you when you walk through these things is actually something that is very different to what the world offers, which is spiritual authority.

When you've had a terrible time and you've suffered and you had an ongoing struggle, and when you faithfully walk in the midst of that with Jesus, it's almost like something intangible happens that people can actually sense. You can't measure it online. It's not performative. Even when it's not spoken of, something emerges through you.

So my concluding water bottle this week for people would be that I think many people listening have perhaps been struggling with something. It's been a hidden struggle that you've brought it before Jesus and that will benefit your ministry.

People will see that it adds depth, soul, character, spiritual authority to what you're doing. So be encouraged. But I think the new currency, yeah, the eyeballs are a currency, 100%.

But also spiritual authority in the kingdom of God is a currency. And perhaps God been developing. God's been developing that new without you realizing it. But maybe it's time to realize it.

Mark's voice is so important and so is his book. I've posted a link to my full review in the show Notes. It's an important book and Mark's voice is one that we desperately need to hear from today.

Seriously, the core truth that I took away don't chase platforms. Be a pillar. Platforms don't last. Pillars do. Invest in the people God has placed around you where you are. Love them, serve them, become a pillar.

And here's the first step toward that. Join our next Blueprint cohort based on my book Blueprint Kingdom Living in the Modern World.

We'll be meeting on Wednesdays from 12 noon to 1pm Sept. 12 through Oct. 22.

For just $49, you'll get six weeks of interactive teaching and discussion designed to help you apply the Blueprint Framework in your life and ministry.

You will walk away with practical tools for navigating our current cultural moment, a clearer vision of God's kingdom story and our place in it, and the encouragement of other pastors and leaders walking the same road. It is a good reminder that we all need to hear that we're not alone. You are not alone.

This is not just another Bible study, and it's not just another leadership course. It's a space to grow, to wrestle with real challenges, and to discover how God's Blueprint is reshapes every single part of our lives.

If you've been longing for clarity, if you're looking for encouragement or you're looking for a practical framework for ministry in today's world, this cohort is for you. There are only 10 spots available, so don't wait.

Sign up today as one pastor from a previous cohort said, the ministry leader cohort I joined through Apollos Watered Will was not only a source of insight, but also a genuine community of leaders to learn from. Together, we wrestled with the unique challenges facing our churches and explored ways to meet them.

It was also inspiring to hear from younger believers serving on the front lines of college campuses, bringing fresh energy, creativity and ideas to the conversation. Thank you. The link to sign up is in the show notes and I would love to see you there.

But before I go, I want to invite you to join me next week as I talk with Brian Miller about his book Sanctifying Suburbia. We often think of the suburbs as safe, comfortable and spiritually neutral.

But what if that comfort is actually discipling us in ways that we don't even realize? What if the pursuit of convenience, bigger homes and busier schedules individuals is quietly shaping our souls, our churches and our mission?

Brian pulls back the curtain on the hidden formation of suburban life. He shows us the idols of individualism and consumerism.

But he also shows us how God's kingdom can break into the most ordinary places, the cul de sacs, coffee shops, soccer fields and neighborhood parks.

It's a conversation that will both challenge and and encourage you, pushing you to see the suburbs not as a spiritual utopia, but as a surprising mission field where God is already at work. You won't want to miss it. Hope to see you there.

Thanks for joining us on today's episode of the ministry Deep Dive, a podcast of Apollo's Water, the Center for Discipleship and Cultural Apologetics we hope it helps you thrive in your ministry and in today's culture. Let's keep the conversation going. Check out our ministry@apolloswater.org and be sure to sign up for one of our ministry cohorts.

Connect with others in the battle. We need one another. And remember, keep diving deep and as always, stay watered. Everybody.