A Leader’s Challenging Presence

Philip All right, this is episode 17 of All Are Yours. Welcome.

Sean 17.

Philip That’s right. 17. And we’ll see if we’re even picking our voices up — having some audio difficulties. So if you can’t hear me too well, you could turn up the volume, and then we’ll yell.

Sean Probably we’re not a real legit podcast unless we can say we’ve had some technical difficulties.

Philip That’s true. So we’re on our way to being legit by having technical difficulties.

But the goal during this time is to not be anxious. So that’s something we wanted to talk a little bit about: specifically, how to remain a certain kind of presence in a certain kind of environment. What it means to lead a group of people in different institutions, whether it’s families, churches, businesses, or other.

So currently, at our church, both with our men’s group at Men to Men and Titus 2, our women’s group, they’re going through Joe Rigney’s book Leadership and Emotional Sabotage.

Sean Right.

Philip Yep. And Sean and I have both read and reread and appreciate Edwin Friedman’s book A Failure of Nerve.

Sean I should have looked it up. Was that one of your five? One of your seven, when we talked about books?

Philip That’s right. That was the one that taught me to stand.

And so, apart from that, there are always, it seems like, applicable situations where a leader’s challenging presence is necessary.

Sean Or, I mean, even if you’re not the leader per se.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Somebody needs to have — well, if you’re going to have health in the system, if you’re going to have health in the body, some part of it, some person in that group, has to have some sort of appropriate, challenging-in-a-good-way presence for there to be goodness in the body. Let alone leaders — certainly for leaders. Which even Rigney’s book, Leadership and Emotional Sabotage, he’s trying to emphasize what qualities of leadership you need to have. And he’s riffing off — did you say he’s riffing off of Friedman himself? Like, he quotes some parts from Friedman earlier in the book.

Philip Right.

Sean Friedman himself was not a Christian.

Philip Yeah.

Sean So he has a variety of things which really are still some great observations, which are fair, even if you’re not a Christian. Rigney tries to show how the Bible actually describes a variety of those things.

Today I asked ChatGPT if it was familiar — because I already had a thread where I was asking it some questions — if it was familiar with Friedman’s work and A Failure of Nerve. And then I did actually ask it to tell me what it thought presence meant. And in particular, I followed that up with, what would you say — what would you guess the next text to put in front of this word would be, algorithm, in terms of a Bible word for presence?

And at least ChatGPT’s explanation was that it requires a multitude of Bible words to actually go into presence, which I thought was interesting. Interesting from hypomonē, endurance, because that’s one of your two Greek words. Hypomonē, or endurance, or steadfastness — that would be a part of presence. It included peace, which I think peace has a lot to do with a challenging presence; that could work. And then I think maybe faithfulness was what it suggested.

I mean, I’ve tried to think about it with my own natural intelligence, not just artificial intelligence. My son was telling me the other day that he was listening to something that talked about: before we develop artificial intelligence, shouldn’t we work on natural stupidity first? I thought that was pretty funny.

But ironically — I told you this, and I don’t mind saying it — you, dear listener, you won’t know that we started our recording later than we had scheduled to. But that’s because I was in a meeting in which, of the two points of feedback that I got from that meeting, one was that I was angsty.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean If not in a particular meeting that we were all involved in a while ago. The feedback was that I presented some angst, I came across as angsty in that meeting. I’m not sure that then I was supposed to take that as a life principle. But I regularly feel like I can describe things better than I can embody them, while I’m on my way to try to embody them better. So maybe challenging presence continues to be, well, figure out what that looks like and then try to get up in there — as opposed to, “Oh yeah, I’m a natural, non-angsty, good-presence kind of person.”

Philip Yeah.

Sean So, imagine — because you had already proposed this as the topic earlier today. Awesome. And then that was the feedback I got. So, we all have things that we can grow in, we can work on.

Philip Yeah, it’s difficult. So being is —

Sean — challenging.

Philip Challenging, that’s right.

I mean, leadership in any context — and this is one of Friedman’s big points — leadership has less to do with technique or method or skill as much as it has to do with the presence of the leader being able specifically to navigate through emotional dynamics, relationship dynamics; being able to understand how certain emotional strings are pulled and how different people react to that. And so I did appreciate a lot of Friedman’s detailed explanations on how some of this stuff works, and his metaphors related to viruses and the immune system in the body and all of that.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Yeah, like in a family.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Which is part of the reason even why I was saying earlier: somebody in the system — ideally it’s the leader, ideally it’s the head of the body. But yeah, multiple times Friedman would give examples of, in a family, if something doesn’t go right, and then everybody’s response is to get upset —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — then that reactivity is just going to spiral. Everybody’s a domino. Somebody has bad feelings, and the way that the next person responds to that is by having bad feelings, which then provokes more bad feelings in person A, and then the kids come in. So if A and B are mom and dad, they get into a fight and then that spills over onto the kids. If nobody can resist the immediate reactivity, then they do not have presence, or nerve, as Friedman is describing. They don’t have the nerve to be able to withstand the conflict or the criticism or whatever it is that they don’t like.

So somebody in that has to be — I’ve used the illustration before, when it comes to gossip, that you want to be like wet bread dough to somebody’s lit match. You want to make it so that they can’t get anything on fire in you.

Philip Right.

Sean And applied to this conversation, I don’t know that wet bread dough is the presence that you want to have necessarily. But at least in terms of not immediately freaking out, or flying off the handle, or getting mad that somebody else is mad — fighting fire with fire, fighting bad feelings with your own bad feelings.

Philip Right.

Sean Families have that, and definitely then larger institutions, even countries, nations, have that kind of bad-feeling-to-bad-feeling.

Philip Mm-hmm. Well, and so I think Friedman said something like that sort of environment, cultures where everybody’s emotions are fused together.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Like one triggers the other one right away, in that sense. And I think what you’re tempted to do — one way that your emotional response to that comes out is by anger or lashing out, that sort of thing. But another emotional response is to avoid the problem altogether, to walk on eggshells around these people, to not want to have to experience this pain of surgery, so to speak, of having to dissect this problem and uncover the issue and risk the people who you’re leading getting upset with you.

And so a lot of that sort of response is still emotions being fused together, where the leader is reacting to the other people’s emotions, in this sense, by closing up and abdicating or avoiding the problem, because he’s looking for just some kind of quick fix or pain relief, as opposed to uncovering it.

Sean Sure, I mean, this is why a lot of guys get drunk.

Philip Right.

Sean They’re trying to — there they are, like you said, that is a kind of reaction. It’s not like their great ordered loves at the top are getting drunk. They’re driven to that dullness, to that version of running away. So they’re not running away maybe in their car, but they’re running away in terms of their wit, their readiness to engage — by just getting drunk, or any number of other hobbies, or television, or just ways to compensate or to ignore the problem. It is a kind of reactivity.

So I guess in that sense, that’s a presence, but it’s not a challenging presence. It’s not one that’s providing any benefit to the other people who are having a problem.

Philip Right. Well, and again, a lot of the time with leadership I think we think about everybody who you’re trying to lead clearly cheering you on, they’re encouraging you — we’re all taking this hill together, and everybody’s on the same page, and your problem is out there. And so that’s the assumption maybe that some of us have.

But a lot of the time it’s the people from within that you’re experiencing the problems from. And so then a leader is tempted to react in that other way. If he is convicted to take this hill, he’s tempted to make the people his enemy, because they’re holding him back from taking this hill. And so that too is an emotional reaction.

So whether you’re avoiding the problem and you’re just going to stick with this pseudo-peace with the people, or you’re going to create enemies of the people who you’re trying to lead because they’re in the way of the problem — either way it’s an emotional response, an emotional reaction, that’s not navigating through that. And so I think that is applicable in a lot of different ways, where the leader is able, again, to have that presence that pulls people in with him, as opposed to distancing him.

Sean So somebody that is listening to this — I don’t know who — somebody still wants us to define presence, I’m sure. So what would you define presence as? I mean, obviously there’s not a trick. It’s just, I know you and I tend to enjoy the Platonic categories. I enjoy the abstract.

So in terms of concrete, we’ve already given some examples of the presence. On one hand, presence you would think would be even just geographical location. So you’re next to a person, you are with them, you’re nearby to them — so that’s a physical presence. We’re talking about an emotional presence.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So I guess, in terms of starting with definition, emotional presence is at least the good kind of presence. Because if we were saying that abdicating — it’s not whether but which — well, abdicating is, you can geographically or physically be in the same room but emotionally you’re somewhere else. So emotionally present means that you’re attentive. So that would have to be one part of it.

What else would you, if you were defining presence — tell it to me like I’m five.

Philip Yeah. I do think — and again, a lot of this is me taking stuff from Friedman. And I don’t remember how much of this is him, how much of this is my own kind of process, or things I’ve heard from you or other people as well.

But I do think that the presence of the leader, the father, the pastor, the business owner, whatever that is, starts with his own sense of self. And that sort of sense of self where you understand your identity — in our context as Christians, your identity in Christ, how God created you, your frame, your measure of faith, your calling, your vision, your mission of what you’re pursuing. You understand the purpose that God has for you and where you’re headed. You understand the purpose that God has for you, for your household, for your church.

And this is all being held as that sense of self, that sort of integrity. And that stable, substantive sense of self is required, is necessary, in order for a leader to have any sort of presence. As opposed to a mush — or maybe even the opposite of that sort of thing would be something like a virus, or a leech, where you don’t have any of your own sense of self, so you have to leech onto somebody else to pull that from them. That is not leadership. That is not that sort of presence.

So I think it needs to start with having an understanding — and I think Friedman uses the word integrity — having a wholeness of who you are. But in a culture of anxiety, that sense of self is then what gets thrown back in the leader’s face. He is accused of being selfish or proud or self-seeking, because it is said that he’s unwilling to yield, he’s unwilling to give way.

So I think if a man does not have that sort of stable understanding, sense of who he is before God, walking before God in that way, he will be unable to effectively lead the group of people he is leading, whether that’s his family or the church or whatever other institution he’s responsible for.

So I would start presence with that, maybe.

Sean Okay.

Philip That sort of sense of self, of integrity.

Sean Yeah. So then if I am talking to somebody, or trying to apply it to myself, and I am trying to get that identity — I wonder if an additional part of describing that could be that you’ve learned, and you actually — I get that it could be too frivolous of a word, but you have learned and you actually are committed to what is good.

And so it’s not just personally. I personally am experiencing that, or I personally own it — but the objective things that are good. So my sense of self, even though it’s individual, is built on some objective reality. It’s not just made-up self-esteem.

Philip It —

Sean It is based off of what God says is good, and what God says is good in being a person, a human being, an image bearer. What God says is good about being a husband or a father, or what God says is good about being a man, or — to our female listeners — what God says is good about being a woman.

So, having an understanding and delight in what is good: what is good to do, what is good to pursue, what is good to be. That’s another way of talking about my identity. How do I figure that out? Well, I’m looking for the things that God says are good, and then I commit myself to that.

Which, even like with salesmen, when they believe in their product, as opposed to just trying to push it off onto somebody else — I’m not trying to push off what is good onto somebody else. I actually am holding on to what is good, clinging to what is good. And therefore, if I’ve really got a good grasp on that, then I’m not just immediately pushed over by somebody else being irritated, or by somebody else who doesn’t yet see what is good, or even criticizing what is good.

If I genuinely get that, then I have also got some substance. I mean, substance is maybe too inert as a synonym for presence, but a person who’s got presence also has a gravity, and that gravity is then not pulled away by lesser things. That gravity is able to maintain its own space. In fact, that was a phrase that I have in my notes from another book — being able to hold space is —

Philip Right.

Sean — the same kind of idea as presence, or substance, or gravity.

And again, in terms of how to get that: one of the things that I wish I could have read more from Friedman is how to actually develop the nerve or the presence. He talks about how great it is, and I do love those parts. But if you don’t have it, just “not being reactive” or just “not being anxious” — you know, Bob Newhart says, “Stop it.”

Philip Right.

Sean And good, there’s a place for that. Don’t be like that, sure. But in terms of, okay, I hear you, I want to have the right kind of presence —

Philip Right.

Sean — well, what do I do? Well, again: learning what is good, being committed to what is good. Which is going to include, as image bearers, it’s going to include being in the relationship.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Because I do think that especially guys, or guys who have a lower social need, a lower social bucket to fill, they can feel like they have a gravity, but they’re not actually drawing anybody.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean They can act like they’re fine by themselves, and that’s good, but it’s not actually then a challenging presence. Being by yourself and being happy is not presence. So even the idea of presence assumes that you’re with those other people.

Philip Right.

Sean Hence why — you don’t really identify as a leader without there being other people, followers, right? So that’s why the discussion assumes that we are interacting, that we’re in that network, that we’re in a system. And what is good, then, is doing what is good for your people. Which is being there and knowing what is good even for them, and even when they are irritated about it.

Philip Right. Well, and that’s where, again, it’s more than just wisdom, I guess, in the sense that a leader requires followers to be a leader, but he also does not, in a sense, take his direction from his followers. That would break the definition of leadership.

Sean Yeah, there’s got to be a difference between getting feedback from the followers and taking direction —

Philip — from the following. Exactly right. And so to have that sense of presence would be — again, it’d be broken if your substance was defined by what the followers think is a good substance.

And so I do think that as believers we have a bigger advantage than Friedman did, by appealing to God as the source of our presence. And so I think that the way a person develops that is with the fear of the Lord. You start there. You start by taking God’s presence seriously, and not ignoring his presence in every aspect of your life, public and private.

And so seeing God as that sort of challenging presence for you, and taking that seriously, I think, is what starts to develop that sense of integrity in a person, in a husband, in a father, who then is able to hold his own presence to be challenging toward people’s sanctification — to be challenging his wife toward her sanctification, his kids toward their maturity in Christ, his church toward that as well — where that source is not in himself, but he continues drawing that from God.

So I think fear of the Lord is the beginning of this challenging presence for a leader to have.

Sean Sure, I totally agree with that. I have also been thinking that all nine of the facets of the fruit of the Spirit, but maybe even especially the first three, seem to connect with this presence as well. Love, joy, and peace.

Because the love part is what assumes more than one. The love assumes the desire for the benefit of the other. The joy is, we’re not just doing this because I’m bigger and stronger; we’re doing this because it’s better, and we’re all going to be happier. Like, this is the goal. Not just that I’m going to be joyful, but that I’m not going to get you out of your bad attitude by my bad attitude. I’m not winning you to joyfulness by my bitterness, kind of thing. And then the peace is that more imperturbable — you’re not just a pushover, like we said, the immediate sort of reactivity.

All of those — love, joy, peace — these are vertical parts of our relationship with God, and hence even why they’re part of the fruit of the Spirit. So when God is indwelling us, this is what it’s going to look like. And ironically, because self-control maybe would be the most action-obvious of the fruit of the Spirit described — I mean, maybe goodness, but even gentleness and kindness, these are more attribute than action, kind of thing. So fruit of the Spirit has a lot to do with presence.

And when we’re looking to God, when we fear him, when his Spirit is dwelling in us, this is what it looks like. And again, it is in connection with others that we see that sort of life, that sort of character. And love, joy, and peace are the position that you talk from.

Philip Right.

Sean So they’re not just — they’re things that are there before you use any words. They are there before you make any calendar appointment. It’s just who you are —

Philip Right.

Sean — in heart, coming out.

Philip Right. And yeah, I mean, this sounds great.

Sean Yeah.

Philip But I do think that —

Sean I already said that I can describe it better than embody it. So yes, it does sound great.

Philip Yeah. I do think that most people don’t like, at least in the moment, a leader presenting that sort of integrity, demonstrating that sort of presence. Because it naturally goes against that chronic anxiety of the group.

And so it also takes self-control, or a stable presence, in order to appreciate that in another person as well. So if you are being chronically anxious, you’re going to have a hard time appreciating a person’s self-control or integrity. It’s going to come across to you as that person being selfish.

Sean Or, potentially — I guess this could be considered selfish, but — not caring, or not appreciating how bad the problem is.

Philip Right.

Sean Yeah.

Philip So in that sort of environment, where one person — and normally, naturally, that would be the leader there who is supposed to be demonstrating that challenging presence — and the group has a certain kind of anxiety, they’re being reactive. The leader is tempted to — and Friedman talks about this — he’s tempted to demonstrate empathy, where you are maybe succumbing or going in line with the weakest of the group, because you are accused of not caring, not loving, you’re accused of being selfish. You are then called to have this kind of empathy where you tolerate or go with other people’s weakness.

Sean Yes, like the goal is to get comfy in the anxiety together.

Philip Right.

Sean As opposed to moving out of the anxiety.

Philip Right.

Sean It’s to maybe put the gas mask on in the room that’s filled with fumes.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Rather than to get out of the room into the open air.

Philip Right. Yeah. Maybe —

Sean Another — the empathy side defined that way, where you’re not actually trying to help. Because Friedman obviously is where we have learned to make more of a distinction between sympathy and empathy. And I’m happy in conversations to do that. I don’t feel like arm wrestling everybody to stop using the word empathy who is not familiar with the discussion. And the people who are going to get Rigney’s new book — great, I mean, I plan to read it at some point — The Sin of Empathy. And he defines it, from what I understand; I’ve listened to him talk about it. So again, I’m happy being able to define, in conversation, empathy as just sitting with them in the mess.

Philip Right.

Sean As opposed to what historically seems to be a better word, sympathy, which is: you appreciate where they’re at, and are not actually mad at them necessarily —

Philip Right.

Sean — but you’re also not trying to leave them there.

Philip Right. And I —

Sean — come alongside to get them.

But another option is to then become where you think you can manage it all. So you move from, well, let’s just all go sit in the suckiness together and try to get along — or some kind of management, some kind of technique, some kind of, maybe even, my angst is stronger than your angst.

Philip Right.

Sean And so I just move you out of yours into a different kind.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And that’s not what we’re talking about. That’s not it either.

Philip Yep, for sure. I think with parents we have that a lot.

Sean Sure.

Philip Where our kids are freaking out, and so we try to overpower their freak-out by freaking out stronger, and to be able to control them in that way.

And yeah, I agree that empathy could be a semantics thing, and there’s no need to argue there. But also — is it Renee Brown? Is that her name?

Sean Brené.

Philip Is it Brené Brown? Yeah, Brené Brown. So she had some book or something about empathy as well.

Sean Yeah.

Philip And there was the video clip, right, where she understands the difference between empathy and sympathy the way we do. She agrees with that. So she says that sympathy is appreciating the person who’s in the pit, but not climbing in with them. Empathy is climbing in with them and sitting with them in the pit. This is Brené Brown’s explanation.

Sean Right.

Philip And she’s saying that sympathy is wrong and empathy is right. Like, that is what leaders are supposed to do. And so somebody who understands the difference and lands on that side is kind of what we’re talking about, where the leader is called to do that in our culture. And we’re saying not to do that.

Sean Yeah, because the way you go sit with them and just stay there — that is a kind of presence, I guess. But it’s not the challenging presence, which is what you said the title of this episode is about.

Philip That’s right.

Sean I mean, if you get a good definition of presence, it kind of includes challenging. But there is a way to see, even like you said, the virtue of being nearby, but not doing any kind of “hey, let’s get out of here.”

Philip Right.

Sean Which, the medical version of that — I think it is true in Washington State that affirmative therapy, so when a young person comes in and says that they think that they’re a boy but they were born a girl, or whatever, that doctors are not allowed to challenge that. They have to immediately affirm it. So they’re there and they’re giving the feedback, but the feedback is just patting their face. It’s just —

Philip Right.

Sean — “Let me help you in this miserable feeling that you’re having, supporting you.”

Philip Right.

Sean And we would say, well, that is a kind of presence.

Philip Right.

Sean But it’s not the one that actually genuinely knows what is good.

Philip Right.

Sean And that’s part of why — okay, well, what does it mean, and how do you get it? Well, you submit yourself to what objectively God says is right, good, true, beautiful, those kinds of things.

So when you are developing in your own substance of grasping and enjoying, being committed to truth, goodness, and beauty, then you want that for the people that you’re with. And you know it’s not true, good, or beautiful to manipulate them out of their mess. It’s not true, good, or beautiful to try to out-angst them from their anxiety. But it’s also not true, good, and beautiful to leave them there.

Philip Right.

Sean And the point of what we’re talking about is that this has a lot more to do with who you are before, than the three steps, the life hacks.

Philip Right.

Sean My favorite tips.

Philip Leadership tips. This is not about that.

Sean Right. The people that you’re with are freaking out. “Do you have any tips for me?” So maybe there are some tips, but those tips need to come from the substance, the presence.

Philip Right. Yeah, so I think if you are a man with integrity — a person with integrity; this could totally be a mom with her kids, or a woman in any kind of context where it’s applicable. I’m saying “man” because I’m a man, and so that’s my framework that I’m thinking about.

Sean I affirm that you are a man.

Philip Thank you.

But so if you have those standards outside of the group — so the group is not the source of your standards — I think that it’d be difficult for you to be consistent with those standards and have an empathetic approach where you are then not naturally creating a challenging situation. Because it’s going to come into conflict. You have this problem, this anxiety here, and you have your own standards. And so that’s going to be in conflict.

So I think the response to that, instead of empathy, would be a sort of responsibility. Where you hold yourself responsible for your own actions, words, whatever that is, and you also hold these people responsible for their own actions and words as well. You are calling yourself and you’re calling them toward responsibility — not toward patting yourself on the back and feeling bad for yourself and continuing in this moping.

But okay, this is your situation. And the situation could have totally been not that person’s fault at all. Like, they were sinned against. So, are you responsible for the way you then respond to that sin?

And so I think a challenging presence — a father, a pastor, whatever that is, with that challenging presence — would be calling people toward responsibility, as he himself is also taking responsibility. So, as opposed to empathy: where selfishness is alleged, there is integrity; and where there would be empathy, there is instead responsibility. I think that would be the contrast there.

Sean Which is a different way to say what you were describing before: that sometimes people don’t like when someone is self-controlled, because that is a conviction — whether it’s conviction as in a mirror, like “I see what I should be and I’m not,” or it’s just a reminder, “Oh, they’re not going to fix it for me necessarily. I’m going to actually have to do something.”

Philip Right.

Sean When we convince ourselves that somebody else can do it, somebody else can make it right, then we don’t have to bear that burden of responsibility.

Philip Right.

Sean It’s weird how — I guess sin is largely a version of thinking that we can do what’s easy. Thinking that we can do what doesn’t require much of us. Like, the default should be fine. Obviously there are sins that are more aggressive. But I guess, especially in our day of angsty apathy, why aren’t people doing more things to try to get out of their anxiety?

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean They want somebody else to — maybe they don’t even want them to fix it. They just want them to affirm it, affirm their sadness or whatever. Because there’s something deceiving — sin deceives us into thinking that it is better if we don’t have to do stuff, don’t have to do work, don’t have to be responsible, don’t have to be a self even.

Philip And this is the appeal for the tips, right? I mean, we mock tips —

Sean The quick fix.

Philip Right. But that is what it is: give me the five steps. And there’s a whole market for all of this — for weight loss, productivity hacks, whatever problems you’re dealing with. Buy my product and it’ll fix your problem.

Sean Yeah, because Friedman’s subtitle is A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. Is that right?

Philip Yep, that’s right.

And so yeah, I think that is a big part of it, where it takes real work to cultivate real substance. And in some sense it even takes a seedling of substance to grow more substance. That is something that’s real. That is not just a facade, just the right words to say in this moment, or the right solution formula. That’s not what it is.

And so Friedman does talk about how somebody with that challenging presence has a lot of tools at his disposal in different situations. He doesn’t just look at everything on a black and white scale. He sees the different nuances and is able to come up with the right solution, because he has the real substance for it.

So that takes something that’s real. It requires something that’s real, as opposed to just that sort of quick fix.

Sean Which — I think that by God’s grace we can say from experience that it is powerful. So, thinking of families where especially the mom and dad have that kind of maturity. Both of them have the substance. They are in fellowship with each other. Not that they don’t have any problems, but that they are handling them by taking responsibility. Even when one sins, they take responsibility by confessing that.

So in a family where the dad and mom are doing that together, the lack of anxiety among the kids, the security among their kids, is a powerful thing. And I think that we could say we’ve seen that even on the church level, when the elders are collectively — because at TEC, we try to really take seriously the plurality of elders piece. Not a senior pastor, executive pastor kind of thing. So when we think of the leadership of the church, we’re thinking of a group of guys. And when those guys together are actually taking responsibility, not freaking out — because there’s inevitably problems.

Philip Who would have thought?

Sean Yeah. There’s anxiety at times that gets expressed. And at times, especially when the elders are owning that without necessarily saying, “Yeah, we can fix your thing” — that has, and at some seasons even more visibly powerfully than at other seasons, that has actually created a much less anxious environment. The body is not always panicking.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean And again, there are ups and downs of that, and we’re aiming to have it be consistent and keep maturing, even so that it would be attractive to more people.

Philip Right.

Sean So they can bring in their anxieties.

Philip Right. Well, because I think what happens is, people’s anxieties don’t stay where they’re at. Either that non-anxious presence of the challenging leader brings people’s anxieties down, or it escalates them more —

Sean Sure.

Philip — so that then they leave.

Sean Yeah.

Philip You can’t really do that in a family. Not in the same way, I guess. It’s different if your kids are small than if they’re older. It also maybe is different with extended family, in-laws or whatnot, what that looks like.

But that’s the idea of being challenging: that by your presence you are requiring a response from the people. Either they get on board or they end up having to leave. There is no in-between. You are provoking.

Sean Yeah, I mean, how many groups have we been a part of, or have we seen, who want the leader to not lead anywhere?

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean They want to make progress without actually needing to move.

Philip Right.

Sean And then when there is a goal, or somebody’s just growing —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — someone is obviously maturing at a faster rate and that’s visible, that is provocative. Hopefully more toward the “ooh, well, I would like to grow too.” But yeah, I think you’re right in that it does make others uncomfortable in such a way that then they either complain about it before leaving, or they just try to get away from that.

Philip Right. Because in that sense, somebody who has integrity, who takes responsibility — I think where it ends up coming down to is then that leader being capable and willing to make a decision. A decision being committing resources, right? So a decision is not, “Oh, I think that’d be great to do that,” but “I have decided, I have committed. I am committing my time, my money, and even in that sense committing the group’s resources, the group’s effort, for this endeavor.” Versus staying in this indecisive blob, fog, and using different things for avoiding a decision.

So Friedman talks about being a data junkie, right? You’re endlessly collecting data because you’re unsure about the right decision. And even that is rooted in that sense of anxiety and freak-out, because you’re so scared to make the wrong decision. You don’t want to commit the resources and then find out that you were wrong.

But the leader who has the integrity, who takes responsibility, is able to make the decision and risk being wrong, and risk taking the heat from other people, the consequences of a wrong decision. He has courage in that direction.

So I think it’s integrity, responsibility, and then decisiveness would be that third point of a challenging presence.

Sean Yeah. Have you read the etymology of decide and decision? Have you seen that in any book?

Yeah, so the -cide part also is in suicide, homicide, patricide, or even in decision. It’s a different form that’s in the word scissors. So to decide is to cut off. So a suicide is to cut off one’s own life, and a homicide is to cut off someone else’s life. And so when you decide, you are cutting off options — you’re cutting off one for another.

Philip That makes it even more scary.

Sean Well, and that relates to then why you need to have a solid grasp on what is true, good, and beautiful.

Philip Right.

Sean And there is a way to procrastinate by investigation. You procrastinate from running by investigating which shoes are best, when actually, no — put the shoes on and go out the door, right? Figure some things out.

It’s not that there’s anything wrong with information. So this is not — should we put in a disclaimer? This is not a financial advice podcast, about “don’t do any investigation at all when you decide what stocks to invest in, or what tariffs to support,” or whatever. But there’s a way in which that is avoiding what is good.

Philip Right.

Sean And that itself is going to lead to — that is a choice to not make a choice. So you have to have that courage. Which, what made me think of the etymology of decide was when you got to the point. So you need courage, you need heart, to go ahead and move forward as best as you’re able. And lots of decisions are not life or death. So try one.

Philip Right.

Sean And go from there.

Philip Right. Well, and I think it comes out of taking responsibility, because the decision is yours to make. It’s for you to decide, for you to cut off other options and commit resources here. As opposed to blame shifting, when you’re avoiding responsibility: you want other people to make decisions for you so that then you could blame them for the wrong outcome, so that you don’t have to bear the burden of the consequences.

And so that sort of decision, I think — when you’re talking about “do your research,” you do that because you understand you’re responsible. So, do I need to make the decision in five minutes, or do I have five days, or do I have five weeks? To understand that and then act appropriately, act accordingly to that.

So, Friedman does talk about medical situations, even his own medical situations, of different advice that he was getting — or maybe even not just recommendations, but pushes that he was getting from medical professionals in a certain direction. And he understood that he was the one responsible for these decisions. And so he had to make the right one.

And so having that sort of integrity, that sort of responsibility, to then set yourself up to make the decision that you would bear the consequences for, is different than just anxiously agreeing to whatever the professionals are telling you and then blaming them when things don’t turn out.

So a husband could do this toward his wife. “The woman who you gave me, she gave it to me and I ate.” Like, it wasn’t my decision. So, “the wife was pressuring me to buy this house, and so we sold our other savings and bought this house, and now I could blame the wife.” It’s like, well, that is not that sort of presence where you are taking responsibility for that decision.

And so again, it takes courage and wisdom in that way, to know what is appropriate even timing-wise. But yeah, if months have gone on and you see yourself dragging your feet, this isn’t you doing research. This is you being scared.

Sean Right.

Philip That’s different.

Sean So, we love the discussion about leadership, and as you said, even our men and our women at the church are reading a book on leadership and emotional sabotage, and he’s talking about presence a little bit. I don’t know if he emphasizes presence as much as Friedman does, but there’s definitely some of that in there.

So on one hand, it’s a subject that we love to talk about. It’s a subject that’s in a book that we’re reading. When you were thinking about what a good topic even for our discussion would be — can you think of groups that maybe especially could use some more challenging presence? Like, do you feel like our elders, our men — that we need to better understand it? We’re doing it, but we need to better understand it so that we can reproduce it?

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Or we understand it, but we need to understand it better for the sake of resisting, for having the challenging presence even in a culture.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean Like, as a church, to have a non-anxious presence in a community — that would be provoking. Not everybody is going to be excited about that. Even with Jerusalem’s rebuilding of the walls in Nehemiah —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — the point of some of the attacks and the rumors said about them was in order to get them to be anxious. It was to get them to stop because they were fearful. So that was on a community-wide level.

So yeah, when you think about challenging presence — we like talking about it, and we can keep trying to embody it better.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean That works for me. Can you think of — are there particular areas that you think maybe are more on the “let’s just sit together and mope, suck our thumbs” side?

Philip Yeah. I think we have a lot to be thankful for, where we do see a lot of this. And I also think that when we’re talking about living jealousable lives, when we’re talking about making Marysville a destination, when we’re talking about building a certain kind of community — none of that will be possible without more than one person embodying this challenging presence. We need a lot of people embodying a challenging presence.

In their own private lives, having that sort of integrity, fearing the Lord, understanding who they are before God. Fathers leading their families in that way, not being scared — fathers not being scared of maybe fighting the dragon inside of their wife, so to speak, right? Not being scared of the difficult conversations, not being scared to challenge their kids in the right way, starting from when they’re young, at that appropriate level. Having those conversations that are uncomfortable and that will drag out, that will interrupt your current aroma of whatever that is — whether you’re watching the game or reading a book, whatever you enjoy to do, your kid is freaking out, you have to deal with this.

And then also, I think, as we together as a community learn to embody this challenging presence — as I said earlier, we would start to not just appreciate but encourage one another toward that, toward embodying that challenging presence and taking responsibility to make the decisions to move the ball forward.

So I think we are doing some of that, and we want to be doing more of that.

Sean Yeah. I think, like, in my own efforts toward embodying it, I am less and less avoiding difficult conversations. I want to keep entering into those with glad presence. So I’ve got that in some notes that I’ve taken, even thinking and processing through the idea of challenging presence.

Because that doesn’t mean you don’t have the conversation. It doesn’t mean that you’re not talking to your family because you know the true, good, and beautiful — you have substance, but you’re silent.

Philip Right.

Sean You’re just there. Right? I mean, the presence is the platform out of which — or the substance out of which — you have the conversations, and you keep not freaking out on round thirty-two, not just from the start, because you’re not perturbed, you’re not irritated or angry, or then starting to take on their angst.

But one of the parts, even in the jealousability — thinking about the aroma that you want when you come in with the presence. So you want the joyful, even like love, joy, peace, parts of the fruit of the Spirit. The joy part seems especially critical, as opposed to just “I’m here, I know what’s good, I’m telling it to you. I’m not mad, but get over it.”

Philip Right.

Sean I mean, again, that is better than probably getting super angry or running away. But in terms of what we’re after, the joyful part, the glad part of that — while we are helping each other out of the room that is on fire. It’s not “fine, get out of the room that’s on fire,” or out of the room that has the fumes in it, or whatever it is. Doing that with some more joy —

Philip Yeah.

Sean — as well.

Philip Some more laughter.

Sean Yeah.

Philip Yeah. I do think that, again, you’re not going to cover everything in one book. And I think there are certain premises that Friedman had in his book that you would draw conclusions toward joy from, but that is an area I think that he did not really emphasize.

Sean Yeah, probably. Not not to mention it. And because Rigney does use this phrase as well — Friedman talks about it as playfulness. And if you can only respond one way, if your options of responding are angst or anger or whatever, and you don’t have a repertoire, an arsenal of responses — he seems to summarize that under the idea of play, or playfulness. And again, Rigney brings that up as well. A healthy place, a healthy institution, a healthy home, is going to have playfulness in it. So yeah, the laughter is right; that relates to the joy part.

Philip Right. And so Friedman talks about this balance. We didn’t really say much about the word he uses: the well-differentiated leader. So he calls this challenging presence a well-differentiated leader. And he has these two points, of holding the conviction and the connection, right? So we did talk about that — and those are, for Friedman, what the well-differentiated leader has: he’s convicted in the idea, whatever that is, and he’s connected with the people. So he holds that balance, he holds that tension together.

But what he maybe doesn’t talk about as much is that sense of optimism for the future. Where you don’t just have a conviction in the standard, or connection for the people, but you have a sense of opportunity, optimism, a sense of joy and delight — that where you’re trying to lead the people toward is a place that is good and is going to result in good outcomes.

So, having conviction, connection, and optimism. And Paul uses this trifecta of faith, love, and hope, right? So he says this in 1 Corinthians 13, about faith, hope, and love — he brings them together. He says it again in 1 Thessalonians: faith, love, and hope, and he brings these three together.

And so, conviction being faith, connection being love, and optimism being hope. I think that sort of challenging presence is what we want to have, where again it’s not just this sour sturdiness of a father, but it is a playfulness — the father being a bestower of blessing and having a hearty laugh as he’s giving out these blessings.

Sean Yeah.

Philip That is what we want to be more of.

Sean I mean, I think we’re getting better at describing it, talking about it, repeating it.

Philip There you go.

Sean Yeah. So, the embodying it — individually, household-ally —

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean — institutionally.

Philip There you go.

Sean These are — on one hand, they’re necessary if there’s going to be genuine progress. They are also — and watch, listen to this hope that’s about ready to just come out —

Philip I’m ready.

Sean — it’s not just necessary, it’s inevitable, because this is what God has purposed for his people.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So we might be resistant to growing up. God is not reluctant about growing us up. So his purpose is blessing his people. His purpose is not just eternal blessing, but working on it right now. So we might not reach peak sanctification next week, but our resistance to it is going to be disciplined.

Philip Mm-hmm.

Sean So, he wants his people to be beautified and glorified. That’s why his Son died and rose again. The good news is not just that we avoid hell, that he came and got us out of hell — that is something to be thankful for. But his vision for us includes all the things: to know his love and be in fellowship with him, and make us more like him.

So, being transformed from one degree of glory to another. What is ahead is more glory, and the more glory is not the sour stability, like you said. The more glory is going to be the right kind of presence, where we are going to be made like that.

And we ought to be consciously aiming for that, praying for that, encouraging each other to that — but also trusting that we’re not after something that God doesn’t want. We’re not trying to make icing on the cake that he gave us, in addition to. This is his purpose for us: to be glorified, and to be in that process currently.

So as we look to him, that is exactly what he’s going to produce. So we have work to do. We’re responsible. But we’re responsible even to consider his purposes and his promise. We’re not the ones who made him give us his Spirit. So we are commanded to be being filled with the Spirit. We’re commanded to walk in his Spirit. But the indwelling of the Spirit was all his idea. And so we just need to pay attention to who he has made us to be, and live that out.

So there is that guaranteed hope that we didn’t make up. That’s God’s idea.

Philip There you go.

Sean So we’re just depending on him to bring about that jealousability. Same way — not to try to bring it back around to dispensationalism.

Philip Oh, sheesh.

Sean One part about the jealousability on the historical timeline is, that is what God said he’s going to do. That’s his plan: to bring about all Israel being saved by blessing a people and making another people jealous for the blessings they could have in Christ.

So this kind of life that we have been describing, with the presence and how we relate to each other — those are the kinds of blessings that are inevitable. Which don’t allow us then to just be lazy, “let go and let God.” But it is our reason for hope, that this is what he’s going to do. So we would have a harder time as Christians resisting it than embracing it and actually tasting the good things that he has for us.

Philip Might as well laugh and have some fun.

Sean Take an offering, be done.

Philip That’s right.

Sean Yeah.

Philip All right, well, there you go. Hopefully this was somewhat of a challenge — even if we’re not present in body with you guys.

Sean Yeah. Digitally present.

Philip That’s right. There you go. All right, out.