How does a leader become influential? According to Mark Sayers, senior pastor of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia, biblical influence is earned over time and through the content of one’s character. It doesn’t come via a platform that promises instant validation and visibility by focusing on one’s own presence.
In his latest book, Platforms to Pillars: Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God’s Presence (Moody), Sayers encourages us to take the posture of a pillar, providing stability and longevity, creating space for others to flourish, and elevating God over ourselves. He talked with Outreach about how the church can navigate a culture of platforms aching for more pillars.
What are the spiritual implications of digital platforms for the church?
God can definitely use different technologies, but there’s also an ideology behind social platforms, which is that you don’t need institutions. You don’t need to do the normal things people do, which is be in a place over the long haul and through your Christlikeness, through your character, over time, gain some credibility in the community. What the platform society does is offer a shortcut to influence. It equates visibility with influence. But it doesn’t really align with the kingdom of God mentality. Platform has misshaped some of our understanding of leadership, and I think that’s been a really damaging thing in the church. Lots of young leaders and pastors are starting to realize that you can’t shortcut godly, biblical influence amongst the people.
Many people may think of the late Tim Keller as a celebrity pastor who used his platform. But you say he actually lived his life as a pillar and is an example of a church leader who earned biblical influence. What did he do right?
I think Keller’s life does speak to us in certain ways. First, he pastored in one place over a long period. He was in New York for decades, and his primary place of ministry was amongst the community of people at Redeemer Church. The second thing is, he didn’t publish until [after many years of ministry]. He waited to be formed. He just thought, If I’m putting stuff [out] there, it’s not going to be mature, which is the complete opposite of the mentality today. He wanted his character, the Christlikeness in him, to be formed first.
I think God divinely chooses some people to have different levels of influence, and Tim Keller was known all over the world, but that flowed from the years of faithfulness, from walking with Christ, and from an inner world of private victories. He read through the entire Bible every year. Every day, he would spend time with God, spend time with people. And I think that’s a different kind of foundation than the false foundation of a platform that just elevates you for the sake of elevation.
You write, “When leaders are no longer respected within the community and no longer seen as moral pillars, the temptation emerges to create celebrity platforms within the church. Platforms appear to offer a means of regaining visibility at a time when the church feels less visible. If Chris Rojek is correct in his analysis and celebrity is a way in which the religious remains within secular society, then the opposite is also true. Celebrity is how the values of the world enter, operate and remain within the church.” What is to be done about this secularization of the church?
Rojek is a sociologist who’s written a lot about celebrity. He says that in the past people would venerate and worship God, and in certain places people would venerate saints. In a secular society, those forms of worship are put onto celebrity. It’s almost like worship, like they’re religious icons.
As respect begins to disappear in the culture, you create this alternate world where church leaders still get some sort of community credibility through embracing celebrity. There is a bit of a temptation there, where we begin to mirror the world through a sense of insecurity. But you know, very often the churches in Australia have been on the margins. I think there is a form of influence we can learn from that. There’s an upside-down kingdom that speaks to how Jesus operated and to how we should operate in the world. And sometimes that’s not going to be public credibility. In fact, it was public scorn for Jesus, yet so many people followed him and his message.
How can church leaders counsel people on how to live their lives as pillars when platforms seem to affect every facet of our lives?
It’s been really interesting. When I have preached on this, I have noticed quite a reaction in the room, like you’ve named something that people feel as shaping their lives, but no one’s given them the language. Now, you can tear down [a] platform, but I think the real task is actually communicating why we should live the life of a pillar. We stand on the shoulders of giants, in the sense that there are men and women of God who have gone before.
One thing I’ve often said to congregations is that some of you are here because there’s a great-grandparent who prayed for you. Many of the church buildings we’re in are because of people’s past giving. Many of the Christian institutions are built on what others did. And so we live and flourish in these spaces because of what people have done before us. Imagine if we did that again. I think there’s a really compelling vision in living as pillars in our churches, in our communities amongst our friends and family, and in creating space for others to flourish. We create space for the presence of God to be the center of everything we [are] doing.
What opportunities exist in broader secular society for the church to reestablish pillars now that we are starting to understand the implications of social media and all these things that a decade ago we were celebrating?
This might be surprising to people in America, but there was this fascinating research that came out in Australia where people lost trust in every institution in Australia, but the one that had gone up a bit, which just shocked me, was the church. What I realized was Australians don’t know heaps about the church, but they’re almost saying, Everything is rubbish. We might give you guys a try.
I think it’s local as well. I think the conversation’s been national or international, but most people live locally. I think back to who was in my neighborhood when that flood happened? Who was around when I was lonely and my kid needed a youth group? I think it’s actually those spaces that the church inhabits, and so I think as things begin to fall, people are going to look locally for connection. I’m very, very optimistic about the prospects in those places.
Any parting thoughts?
There’s freedom in releasing yourself from the platform mentality. Say you’re in a rural church. You get online and there’s this amazing production at some huge church that seems to be killing it in a major urban center, and you’re looking at that going, Oh, that’s not me—while someone’s waiting outside of your office with another complaint. When we realize that God places us in certain spaces to be pillars, you don’t have to build a platform. Platform doesn’t equal success. So I think the mental health, spiritual health, and emotional health of a lot of pastors and leaders will dramatically improve when we realize platforms are not equatable to serving God in the way he’s called us.