A Non-Anxious Presence

A congregation may be physically present within their church, but their primary influence comes from the digital networks to which they are connected. These digital networks may be political, cultural, or theological.

For Friedman, the non-anxious leader played the role within an emotionally unhealthy social system akin to the role that white blood cells play in the human body, fighting infection and bringing the system back to health.

“Leaders function as the immune systems of the institutions they lead—not because they ward off enemies but because they supply the ingredients for the system’s integrity,”

Biblical scholar John Walton comments on the rest of God on the seventh day: “We can discern that resting pertains to the security and stability found in the equilibrium of an ordered system.”4 God, as the ruler of the earth, has defeated chaos and brought order. Why? So that humans will have a functional, orderly system in which to work and worship. Humans are hardwired by God to desire functionality and order to fulfill our God-given roles.

The testing in Scripture is more akin to how a personal trainer at a gym may take a new client through an initial fitness test to assess the starting point of where they are physically and where they need to improve. The initial test for many people can be humbling. They are revealing how we pridefully overestimated our abilities. Yet this is part of a more extensive and beneficial process. The client will then be given a tailored program designed to grow them over time with the help of the trainer, who guides them into a healthy and fit person. In spiritual testing, our actual spiritual state is revealed in all its inadequacy and failings. This, however, is part of a broader strategy of spiritual growth.

growth can be activated in dormant seeds when they are placed in unusual and challenging environments. The seed of renewal is activated in leaders in tough environments.

The most comfortable of environments from a temporal and earthly perspective are the worst environments for the seed of the kingdom to grow. “God values character and maturity much more than we humans do. Here is a fact: character and maturity are more important than comfort and ease,”

aren’t complicated and complex essentially the same thing? “The two aren’t the same—and complexity isn’t just complication on steroids,”3 answers business writer Margaret Heffernan. A complex environment is more than just a complicated environment, with even more complications. The two are completely different beasts, with different rules and fundamentally different ways of behaving.

Complicated environments require efficiency. Complex environments require adaptability.

Thus, in chaos, we need orientation. We need to know how the environment has changed and properly reorient ourselves to that changed environment before we can chart our direction of action.

You are not created to remain paralyzed in anxiety. You were not created to offer an anxious crowd quick-fix solutions and a panacea for their lostness. You were not patterned after heaven to retreat into a comfort zone. You were made in the image of God to bring chaos into order, as you act as a channel of God’s will on earth. The Spirit manifests the pattern of heaven in the world, and we mediate that pattern as God’s workers in creation.

Yet the story of Saul is a cautionary tale. It shows us that one of the worst things that can happen to a leader is for them to have success before they have been humbled, broken, and prepared by the Lord. When this happens, our success can quickly become our stronghold.

Many things have happened to me in my life that I would never want to go through again. Yet, I also know that if I hadn’t had those things, I would not be the person God has made me today. Those moments of difficulty, pain, and pressure also have been some of the deepest moments of growth. No pressure, no depth.