Mark Sayers is Lead Pastor of Red Church in Melbourne, Australia and the author of a growing catalogue of books, including, most recently, Platforms to Pillars, published earlier this year. He has become a significant voice in helping the Church in the Western World understand and respond to a rapidly changing context for ministry and mission.

In our conversation Mark talks about growing up in a believing family and some of the key moments and influencers in the development of his own faith. He discusses some of the early challenges he faced in church leadership and his understanding of mission and of how 'personal renewal leads to corporate change'.

We also discuss his writing, which he summarises under the rubric of missiology. Mark describes his process of writing, driven by his curiosity about how the world works and how God interacts with it - all grounded in his rootedness in local ministry.

Mark believes that the world is in a process of rapid change and that spiritual authority, created in moments of pressure, is what will set Christian leaders apart from other forms of leadership.

As is usual for these podcasts, we finish with some of what Mark would say to his 20-year-old self.

For more from Mark, you can subscribe to his Rebuilders podcast or pick up some of his books - see the list below:

• A Non-Anxious Presence: How a Changing and Complex World Will Create a Remnant of Renewed


• Disappearing Church: From Cultural Relevance to Gospel Resilience


• Reappearing Church: The Hope for Renewal in the Rise of Our Post-Christian Culture


• Facing Leviathan: Leadership, Influence, and Creating in a Cultural Storm


• Strange Days: Life in the Spirit in a Time of Upheaval


• The Road Trip That Changed the World: The Unlikely Theory That Will Change How You View Culture, the Church, and, Most Importantly, Yourself


• The Vertical Self: How Biblical Faith Can Help Us Discover Who We Are in an Age of Self Obsession


• The Trouble with Paris: Following Jesus in a World of Plastic Promises


• Platforms to Pillars: Trading the Burden of Performance for the Freedom of God's Presence

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