The Carey Nieuwhof Leadership Podcast
CNLP 038 – What to Do When Your Prayer Life Stalls Out—An Interview With Jared Brock
(upbeat music) - Welcome to the Carrie Newhoff Leadership Podcast, a podcast all about leadership, change, and personal growth. The goal? To help you lead like never before, in your church or in your business. And now your host, Carrie Newhoff. - Well, hey everybody, and welcome to episode 38 of the podcast. My name is Carrie Newhoff, and it's so good to have you here. Thanks so much for joining, and I hope our time together today helps you lead like never before. And today we're gonna talk about an issue that I think affects more church leaders than maybe we like to admit. And the issue is prayer. And I have a theory, it's just a theory. And here's my theory. I think more Christian leaders struggle with prayer than we realize. And I think it might even be an occupational hazard when it comes to leading in ministry that prayer just for whatever reason seems to be harder, or maybe not as rich as we thought it would be. And I think that's especially true of church leaders. The irony, of course, is that it's essential. Like you have to be prayerful if you're gonna be in church leadership. And I think that's true of your Christian. I mean, if you're a Christian in business or a prayer church organization or Christian stay-at-home dad or mom, you want prayer to be at the heart of your relationship with God. But I think when you're in ministry, it's just, I don't know, it just seems to be a little bit harder. I run into a lot of leaders who are dry when it comes to prayer. And so our guest today, Jared Brock, was in that place when he was in his mid-20s. He was just, you know, Christian solid, but like his prayer life just kind of dried up. And so he made a proposal to a publisher that said, "Hey, will you pay for my expenses "if I go around the world studying prayer?" And I just, I want to spend a year living prayerfully. And so he did, and he wrote a book about it. And we're gonna link to all of that in the show notes and you can have a look at that. But I mean, my goodness, it is a really, really exciting conversation that I've got with Jared. And I think it really keys in to a key struggle that we all have. And that is simply, how do we pray? How do we, how do we pray? And I know I've gone through seasons that are really, really dry. I've gone through seasons that are really, really rich. And I want to stay on an even keel. In fact, while I'm, you know, this podcast is going live to air, I'm actually teaching a five part series at our church, Kinexis Church, where I lead full time on prayer called Pursued. How to get more out of prayer than you were thinking. Something like that. I always forget the subtitles. But anyway, it's called Pursued. And man, that took like months for me to write. It's based around the Lord's Prayer, but it's just, it's an honest struggle about, you know, why is it that prayer so difficult? Or why is it so one dimensional or so superficial? So I think this is a really timely podcast, a really helpful podcast. And, you know, prayer is just an area we all struggle in. And one of the values I have, I think you pick that up if you've listened to this podcast with any regularity, it's just authenticity. And some of you might be tempted to go, I'm gonna hit unsubscribe right now, because you say sometimes your prayer life is dry. Well, go ahead and do it. But I think if you talk just honestly with people, you'll discover that a lot of people go through seasons in their prayer life. And maybe you're in a season right now where it's just pretty arid. And I'm glad we can have the conversation. And I think, you know, surprise, surprise, there's no magic bullet. Like just pray these three things. And all of a sudden your prayer life will be rich forever. But I'm really grateful for the conversation with Jared. And for his book, it's called "A Year of Living Prayerfully" by Jared Brock. And again, everything will be in the show notes. So if you just go to karaenuhoff.com/episode38, you'll find it there. And I just wanna thank all of you again, who make this so rich. I love your comments. Thanks for just being honest in the comments and not like fake, that's great. And if you're struggling in the prayer area, you may wanna head over to the show notes and have a look. And for those of you who are new to the podcast, thanks so much for joining in. And the best way to make sure you never miss an episode is to subscribe. And you can do that on iTunes, TuneIn Radio or Stitcher. And you can do it for free. These podcasts are always free and will always be free. But if you wanna kinda pay it forward, here's something I would love. If this has been helpful to you, one of the best ways you can get the news out other than sharing it directly on your social media, social media, is to go to iTunes and leave a review. And like over 170 of you have already done that. I would love to get some more every month. You know what that does? It just, I don't know, somehow it magically influences the algorithm at iTunes. And it's kept this podcast in the top 50 Christian podcasts in the world consistently. And so just thank you for doing that. And so thank you to Nick Blevins, a friend of mine from Baltimore who recently left a review. Thank you to Darryl who left a review last month. Thank you so much for Josh Bain, friend of mine and Athens who left a review and Nate left one recently. And then there are others, you know how iTunes works with them, usernames and that. One guy left me a five star review and he's got a great acronym. It's called You Have Me Confused. That's his username on iTunes. But anyway, thanks for the nice review. You said just wow, gave it five stars, really appreciate it. And I read every one of them and they mean an awful lot. So there's sort of fuel on the journey. They help the word get out there. And if you could do that even this week or even today, that would be awesome. But anyway, back to prayer. And here is my interview with Jared Brock. Really cool today to have Jared Brock on the podcast. Jared, welcome. Thanks for having me, Gary. Hey, we're just getting to know each other. We know a bunch of people who know there's sort of mutual circles happening here. But a real, real thrill to have you on the podcast. And Jared, tell us a little bit about yourself before you jumped into the year that we're gonna talk about during this interview. Just give us a little bit of background. And I guess I can start by saying we're both Canadians. You got it. Yeah, we're both on Tarowens, in fact. That's right. I grew up in the church. My dad was a church planter. And my wife was a missionary kid. So we are sufficiently messed up. And I first kissed her in the summer of the seventh grade when we were 13 years old at a news boys concert. And-- That's pretty Christian. That's a good Christian. That really is. That's how you know it's love. And we've been married for about six and a half years. And we run a charity called Hope for the Sold to Fight Human Trafficking. Wow. And that's what you do full time with all that. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, we've made a couple of documentaries on it. And tour the films around and things like that. Yeah, your documentary's played in over 100 theaters. Yeah, that's right. Wow. That's amazing. And shown here in Barry as well, you were here last year. And so that's what you're doing. But you had a really interesting year. You call it the year of living prayerfully. Tell us a little bit about that. Well, it actually started in the Red Light District of Amsterdam. We were shooting the documentary Undercover. And our first night in the city, we went down to the district. And as we were about a half a mile away, we heard chanting and was getting louder and louder and louder. And we realized when we got there, that there was a soccer game on. And there's about 300 drunk guys outside of this one bar puking in the streets, sweeping into the canals, police on horseback, crazy, crazy din. And Michelle and my wife got to go into a number of the Red Light Windows with a friend of hers who was a care worker there. And these girls are sick, and they're tired, and they're scared. And one of them just looked out at the mob and she whispered one word, dangerous. Because what happens is, if their team wins, the guys come and celebrate with the girls. But if their team loses, the guys come and take their aggression out on the girls, so either way the girls lose. And in the middle of the Red Light District is the oldest building in Amsterdam. It's a 800 year old church, and it's still active. And every hour on the hour, the church bells ring, and men abuse women to the soundtrack of church bells. And I stood in the middle of this, and I was just completely overwhelmed. And I said, "God, I need your power and prayer to end this." And that's where that journey started. - Wow, yeah, I mean, I've been to Amsterdam. I haven't been to the Red Light District, but... - You're not that much. - No, I'm sure I'm not. Oh my goodness, so that really moved your heart. - Yeah. - And tell me what happened afterwards. You went on a 37,000 mile journey? Doesn't that take you to the moon and back? I'm not very good at math, but... - Yeah, pretty much. We went to... We went to over a dozen countries, basically a publisher agreed to pay for the trip if I'd write a book on prayer. And so, yeah, there's... - That's a good book deal, by the way. - That is a great... - That's a really good book deal. Doesn't usually work out that way. - Yeah, so 37,000 miles, 12 different countries, we ended up having an audience with the Pope and had lunch at the Vatican, and went to North Korea for New Year's, Mount Athos in Greece, Teze, SEC, Monte Cassino. We went all over the place, basically exploring the world of Judeo-Christian prayer traditions across the faith family, including some of the weird uncles and crazy cousins. (laughs) - Wow, okay, so start walking us through that. I mean, didn't you also live as a Jew for a season? - Well, I didn't live... Our first thing that we did was we wanted to explore Judaism. Jesus, of course, was a Jewish rabbi, so we started with Passover in Brooklyn with ultra-Orthodox ascetic Jews, and so I emailed 78 rabbis before one of them agreed to let us into his home for Passover with him and his disciples, so that was a fun experience. And then from there, I went to Israel and Palestine, went to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, and everywhere associated with the life of Jesus. - Yeah, and wasn't that rabbi's house, his whole kitchen was filled with tin foil or something? - Yeah, it looked like a spaceship. (laughs) - Yeah, basically, you have to be so kosher that a really devout Jew will actually cover their microwave and their sinks and their faucets, cover their entire kitchen with tin foil so that it remains kosher for Passover. It's quite... - So that there's no yeast, right? - That's right. - Under that, that's like, wow, that's... - That's different. - Quite the process. I think the funniest thing that happened there actually was my wife used the bathroom at one point, and she turned off the light. And a couple minutes later, one of the disciples said, "Hey, Michelle, can you turn the light back on?" 'Cause they're not allowed to turn on light-string Passover. - Right. - So Michelle's... - Because that's breaking the Sabbath. It was in order to break breaking the holiday the holy day. - So Michelle's telling me this as we're driving away after midnight in our car, and I go, "Honey, I just went to the bathroom and turned the light off." So we left 15 Jews in the dark for the rest of Passover. I feel so bad. - Oh no, oh no. - Well, so tell, okay, let's go through this, 'cause prayer is a struggle, I think, for a lot of Christians. And would you say, before you did this, and then I wanna jump into Judaism, before you went on this trip, what would you call your prayer life? Because you grew up in traditional evangelical Christianity. I mean, was it rich, was it alive, was it vibrant? - So, Gary, when I was in high school, my prayer life and experience was quite remarkable. I actually was part of a Christian group at my school, and we actually got kicked out of the school, and the teachers took the school board to court for infringing on religious freedom and won. But we ended up beating outside all winter, and we were on the front page of the paper, and on television, and we're like 17-year-old punks, right? We met outside in the snow all winter. Coldest day was in the minus 30s, and the Salvation Army brought soup and hot chocolate and sleeping bags and stuff. - By the way, the Americans always ask. So, minus 30, is that Fahrenheit or Celsius? I always say, it doesn't matter, it's just cold. It's just cold. - So cold. - I think they eventually equalize. Okay, so you're outside, it's minus 30 Kelvin or whatever, and you're outside freezing, and the Salvation Army is bringing you food and warmth. - Yeah, and what we found was that it became such a testament to our school, and we ended up seeing like 40 kids come to Christ that year. - Wow. - Including some of my now closest friends, like one of the guys is a church planner. One of them just took his first pastor out of a church, like, "Peak guys in my wedding party." I'm just an incredible revival, and so, we're seeing kids get saved every week, and we're like praying for the interest, awesome. But then, we get married, settle into the nine to five, just white picket fence American dream, and something happened in our prayer life, just kind of, it became meal times and bed times. - Right. - I knew I wanted it back, and the way I said in the book is I wasn't trying to like sprinkle cilantro on a burrito, I was trying to learn to cook again. - Hmm, so what made your prayer life when you go back to when you were a kid in high school? I mean, that's not the experience the most teenage. So, what were some of the characteristics or qualities that made your prayer life so alive and vibrant, and then so possibly effective, or at least contagious? - Yeah, I think probably part of it was, like, I mean, we were seeing lots of answers to prayer. The bigger thing I think though, is that there was an activeness to it. It wasn't just like sitting in a corner, praying a routine or tradition. It was very active, it was very, you know, we're doing youth group, we're doing events, retreats, like we're really like evangelizing, telling our friends about Jesus. Like, it was the whole Benedict Ora at La Borra thing, pray and work as the two become one, everything you do becomes an offering. I think that was probably. - So back up, like in a, just 'cause I'm very fascinated by prayer. And I mean, I think it's been, anybody who's honest in ministry will tell you, it's probably one of the struggle points. Like for me, I'm writing a series on prayer right now, and I'm like stuck, and hey, I could talk about 40 minutes for five Sundays about prayer, no problem, and I pray every day, but like, do I really have a rich prayer life? I don't really know, like compared to Jesus, absolutely not, compared to other people, no. I mean, so what made for a very vibrant prayer life? Like, what would you do? Would you pray for hours? Would you meditate? Would you just like, no, you just prayed and acted? Like, what did that look like? - It wasn't like hours, it was just like, there was a passion to it, right? Like, okay, so the Bible obviously has so many relational metaphors for our relationship with God. He's like a father, he's like a king, he's like a master, he's like a friend, it's closer than a brother, like, God is all these metaphors combined. So the marriage metaphor is very helpful for me. So like, I could spend 10 hours a day sitting in a quiet room with my wife, saying the basic few things over again, that's not a rich communication with my spouse. But if we have 10 minutes together one day, and it's like passionate, oh man, this crazy thing happened, and we're so excited about our day, that's actually probably better for our relationship than five hours of very boring monotone conversation, right? - That's a good analogy, that's a great analogy. - It's helpful. - Because that's often the way life works. It's not like you get uninterrupted hours with people. Or yeah, if you took those 10 minutes, and it was just, how was your day fine? How was your day fine? What are you doing now? Good, what are we gonna have for supper? It's very transactional, right? Which sometimes prayer can be, it can be very transactional. - I had the opportunity to have breakfast with Pete Greek. He's the founder of 24/7 prayer. He's the prayer pastor at Holy Trinity Brompton in London, England. - Oh wow. - And he said, you know, Jay, most people think that prayer is like one dish, but prayer is a buffet. If you eat the same food item every day your whole life, you will get sick and die prematurely. Prayer is a buffet, it's so many different things. If you just talk to your spouse in one way every day, hi, how was your day fine, how was your day? Your marriage is doomed. Your relationship with God is doomed. It is relational, it is action, it's quality time, it's being in nature, it's walking. There's so many different things. It's so much more than just the rote routine and tradition, which is what I had slipped into. And I had read a lot about prayer pilgrimages. Christians in the Middle Ages used to take time out of earth to focus on things above as kind of like a spiritual shock to the system. And I wanted to experience that. So I basically recreated a medieval prayer tradition. - Oh, wow, so tell us about that. - Yeah, so basically, you know, as I said, 37,000 miles around the world. And so we went from Judaism to Orthodoxy. So Greek Orthodoxy, I went to-- - Before we leave Judaism. - Okay. - What did you get, did you have an aha moment when you were with the Hasidic Jews? Did you have a moment where you kind of went, oh, now I'm learning. - Oh, definitely for sure. Like, I mean, we spent about six hours at the Rabbi's house and went to synagogue and all that stuff. And one thing I really loved was they fight like crazy. Like they're yelling and screaming at each other over theological disagreements. But it's in the spirit of love and understanding that-- - In the synagogue or in the house or all of the-- - Yeah, over dinner in the house. - Oh, wow. - And what I loved about it that I think we're missing in evangelicalism is the spirit of unity when we argue about our theological points. They said to me, they said, Jared, discussion and disagreement is not only permitted, it's encouraged because we are working out our faith. I was like, oh, man. - Oh, wow. - 'Cause we've got 40,000 denominations in Protestant territory. - Yeah, yeah. That's just church split territory. That's what that is, right? Well, we don't agree, so we can't get together any. - Totally, yeah. - The key word in Christianity is Christ. Like, if we could focus on that and what's beautiful is one thing that all the denominations agree on is that prayer is essential to the Christian walk. To our faith. So that was the thing that kind of united all the places I went. - Okay, that's super helpful. So then you went from Judaism to Orthodoxy. - Yes, so by that you mean Eastern Orthodoxy? - Or Orthodoxy, yes. - Greek Orthodoxy. - So I went to Mount Athos, which is like the Mecca of Greek Orthodoxy. It's an all-male, holy mountain in Greece. Females are forbidden. There has not been a female on Athos in over a thousand years. - Oh my goodness. - Including no female animals. They import male only animals. - Now would that be difficult for you because of your advocacy for women in the rest of your life? Like in the fact that you're married? - Yeah, Michelle was not happy that I was gonna spend a week on the Aegean Sea without her, of course. When I came back, she realized that she wasn't missing much. Like, I mean, the whole place needs a woman's touch. The monks on Athos, they pray seven to nine hours a day and they work seven to nine hours a day. And I asked, "When do you sleep?" And one of the monks said to me, "A good monk will only sleep one hour per night." And I was like, "I will never be a good monk." - Oh, wow, I'm done. - Yeah, that's it. Really? - Yeah, so I learned a lot of interesting traditions on Athos. But one of them that stuck with me is, they have these little bracelets called metanese and they have knots on them. And as they put their thumb on the first knot and as they breathe in and breathe out, they pray that Jesus prayer. Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me as sinner. And then they put their thumb on the next knot. Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me as sinner. And the idea is that every breath will become a prayer to God and they'll begin to pray without ceasing. So I really started thinking about like, man, how can I attach physicality to spirituality? So there are so many ways we can do that. As we shower in the morning, God cleanses me from all unrighteousness. As we put on our clothes, we can put on the armor of God. As we walk to work or bike to school, we can pray about our spiritual journey, just trying to find ways to attach the physical and the spiritual. That's the big thing I took away from Mount Athos. - Oh, and that's a really good idea too. Back to your earlier point, I mean, prayer being a buffet, not just the same dish day in and day out. You've got to look for different forms. It's not always kneeling by the side of your bed or sitting in your favorite chair or whatever that happens to be. So I can see that. And it's very interesting. I mean, Dallas Willard talks about that. That we have particularly an evangelical Christianity separated the spiritual and the physical. So that the physical is always bad and the spiritual is always good. And he makes the point in spirit of the disciplines that that's just not remotely biblical and that we need to reclaim a physical spirituality. - David danced before the Lord. - Mm-hmm. - He did, he did. Okay, so that's really interesting. Now, take us to the next stop. - So then we went, so we went Judaism, orthodoxy, and then we went to Catholicism. So we went with kind of the original, Jesus was a Jew, and then we went to orthodoxy, the oldest strain of Christianity, and then we went to Catholicism, which is of course is the biggest. - Yeah. - Yeah, we went to Assisi, where St. Francis was from, Monte Cassino, where Benedict was from, and we went to the Vatican, of course. - Right, yeah, yeah. - Through a lot of work and prayer, ended up getting an audience with the Pope. - And it's crazy. - Oh, yeah. - So you actually met, was this Benedict or who? - No Pope Francis, the new one. - Francis. - Yeah, okay. - Wow. - Yeah, so what was really cool about that was, we just had a couple of minutes with him to ask him one question about prayer, and you all have to read the book to find out what the answer was. - Great, gotcha. And we'll link to that in the show notes, by the way. - What was really cool is, he actually gave us rosaries as a gift, and they're stamped with his papal insignia. And the motto that he picked was, "Lowly but chosen." And I thought that that was so, so cool. 'Cause you know, this guy's entitled to like, a dozen room, palatial kind of papal mansion, but he actually lives in a spare room with a guest house, and eats all his meals in the cafeteria. Like he was at the next table for lunch. Like, you just got this sense that like, he's trying to be like Jesus, you know? - He's a very different kind of pope, that's for sure. - Totally, and what was craziest twice during a conversation, he asked me to pray for him. And that really hit me. I was like, you know, here's the man, the spiritual leader for a billion people, and he realizes his need for a power greater than himself. I was like, that's good. - Wow, wow. So from Catholicism, obviously that's a really cool story. What are some key insights then? - Yeah, so one of them that I really liked was, we went to Avila, where St. Teresa was from, as well as John of the Cross, and explored the world of Ignatius of Loyola. - Oh, wow, founder of the Jesuit. - Yeah, and the John of the Cross, Dark Knight of the Soul, wow, my goodness, yeah. - So those guys were awesome. Like Ignatius got his leg blown off by a cannonball, and instead of getting amputated, he decided to go with operations without anesthetic. Like the guy was just tough as nails. - Oh my. - But yet so soulful, he writes the spiritual exercises, and it's been used by Christians, both Protestant and Catholic for hundreds of years now. So Ignatian meditation, contemplation, and examine. And examine is the one that's of the most interest to me, and it's not the discipline that I'd like it to be at in my life, but the idea of every evening, taking just a few minutes to examine your day, and see where God was at work. And just to attune yourself to how God is working in your life, I love that idea. And that was kind of a strain across Catholicism. Where is God moving? - So examine is, it's funny because you're bringing back stuff I read 20, 25 years ago, so it's been a while. Examine is the idea of basically inspecting your life for the activity of God, and you do that at the end of the day as a form of reflection. - You got it. - Okay, interesting. So Roman Catholicism. - Yeah. - And then tell me more. - So then we moved into ecumenism. We wanted to kind of bridge that gap and see who the ecumenicals were. So one of the- - And by that you mean inter-denominational. - Yeah, yeah. So one of the places that we went was, it's called Teze, it's an ecumenical prayer community, three hours east of Paris. And I was talking with one of the monks there, and I said, okay, help me understand this. You come from 12 different languages, 30 denominations, and a 75-year age range. How in the world do you not all kill each other? And his answer was so profound and simple and yet kind of funny. And he said, well, you know, Jared, we have committed here for our entire lives. So we have our whole lives to figure it out. - Oh, wow. - And I was like, that is a great example of what the church needs to be like. We're in it to win it. We are a family. Christ is the keyword in Christianity. Let's work hard at getting on the same page wherever we can, just having grace where we can't, because they will know us by our love. So that was, you know, Teze was amazing. - And there's a lot of like chanting with Teze. I always pronounce it Teze. I don't know, that's how-- - There's without Teze. - Yeah, yeah. Chanting and liturgy and that sort of thing forms a lot of the heart of their prayer, does it not? - Yeah, the biggest thing that their prayer includes is actually silence. So this was my big takeaway from Teze. We would pray before breakfast, before lunch and after dinner, and each time of prayer started with eight minutes of silence. - Oh my goodness. - And they do that based on a quote by the founder, Brother Roger, and the quote was, "Maintain inner silence in all things so as to dwell with Christ." As Christians, we don't practice silence like Buddhists. We're not trying to achieve emptiness or nothingness. We're trying to create a quiet moment where we can hear the still, small voice of God in a crazy, busy, loud world. So that was a big one for me. My prayer life now is actually far more quiet because if you just talk the whole time, that's a speech or a monologue, that's not a dialogue. And bringing it back to the marriage thing, if I just talk the whole time, I would not have a good marriage. You have to listen, you have to hear the voice of God in order to then act. So that's-- - Okay, so let me, if I can drill down on a couple of those thoughts, how is that, there's a lot of talk about meditation. I mean, if you look at what is-- - Transcendental meditation, yeah. - Exactly, and I mean, guys like Tim Ferriss from Four Hour Body, Four Hour Work Week, really talking a lot about meditation these days. It's now accepted as a great business practice and Christians have had a very strange relationship with meditation over the years because they see it as sort of Christian, but not really Christian, is silence different from meditation or did you encounter Christians who meditate it as well? And then what does that look like? - Yeah, well, it's funny you should say that, like I think I just listened to that meditation. It was Tim Ferriss talking with Arnold. - Yeah, yeah, with Arnold Schwarzenegger, he asked that of every guest. It's just like, what is your spiritual practice in the morning, what's your first hour look like? And I just heard him on a recent episode 'cause I listened to Tim Ferriss show and he was saying the key denominator between all the successful people that he's interviewed it seems to be, the leader seems to be meditation. - Interesting. - Which, and he's just fascinated, he just started in the last year meditating so. - Well, Andy Croch has a great quote about that. He says, if you don't take time to contemplate, you will exploit. And it's so true, if you don't take time to be mindful, you are going to trample on others, especially as leaders, right? Like, that's our natural, like, let's bulldoze, you know? - Well, you get rewarded for it, right? You get promoted if you start to just trample on other people and use people as a means to an end. I mean, that's a way of getting ahead in this one. - Exactly. - Or, and sometimes in the church, which is not good. So, talk to me a little bit. Like, is it the same thing? Prayer and meditation. Can you meditate as a Christian? What's your take on that? - Yeah, like, I mean, it totally depends on what your goal is, right? Like, if meditation is a means to an end and the end is success or getting God to do what you want, it's gonna be a dismal failure and it's selfish and it's empty anyways. At Teze, when they spend times in silence, and this is in a room with thousands of other people, 100,000 young people visit Teze every year, it's huge. And the point of that time is not to ask God for things. It's not to repeat success mantras to yourself. It's simply to focus on Jesus. And Brother Roger knew that we get distracted very easily. You know, we live in the age of Snapchat and Netflix and soccer practice work. He said, "See every distraction "as a clarion call back to Christ." So every time you're sitting in silence and you get distracted by all the projects we're working on, you see that as a call back to Jesus. So we're not asking for anything, we're just hanging out with Dad. And I think the story that really drilled that home for me was having breakfast with the Greek. He told me about a friend of his who has a son who every day his son comes home from school and he flops down on the couch in his dad's office. And for the first 10 minutes, he doesn't say anything. Eventually he asks for car keys and money for the mall, but for the first 10 minutes, he just hangs out with his dad. This guy told Pete that that was his absolute favorite time with his son. For me, before this pilgrimage, I was just asking for car keys and money for the mall. It wasn't hanging out with Dad. So meditation, if we are contemplating scripture or if we're just trying to spend time in the presence of God, I think it's a powerful, missing piece of our prayer life. But if it's just to achieve emptiness or nothingness or to have success, that's so fleeting, it's not worth our time. - Well, and I can see that. Christian meditation, Christian contemplation, if you wanna use a different word to describe it, is just the mindfulness, practicing the mindfulness of Christ, taking your thoughts captive and focusing off of ourselves. That's why the Lord's prayer starts with our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom. I mean, we're in the middle of the prayer by the time we get to anything to do with us. - That's right. - That's right. - Okay, this is super helpful. So Teze, and then you moved on from there. - Well, yes, it's actually interesting that you say, like just practicing the mindfulness of Christ, because the next thing I did was to explore the world of brother Lawrence, the author of the practice of the presence of God. So for any of you listening who don't know, brother Lawrence was a monk living with 300 years ago, and he was a cook and a dishwasher. And he just decided that rather than only pray during the time set aside for prayer that he was gonna pray all the time, he was gonna practice the presence of God. He became so famous for this that they actually wrote in a small book about it, and it hasn't been out of print in over 300 years, over 20 million copies in English alone, hundreds of languages influenced people like John Wesley, crazy leaders, but the kitchen, the place where he lived and served kind of disappeared from Protestant Christianity, and I wanted to find it. So through many months of research and hard work, I actually found brother Lawrence's kitchen, the place where he lived and prayed and served and died. Yeah, it's in Paris, France. It's just a few steps from the Luxembourg Gardens. It was actually built by Catherine Medici, one of the Medici, like banking family dynasty. - Wow. - Yeah, so that was super cool. That's an amazing prayer tradition, practicing the presence of God. Brother Lawrence said, "If you don't wander too far "from God in the rest of the day, "it's very easy to connect with them "during the times of prayer. "It's just better to always be close to God." So that was a beautiful discovery. - Hmm, and is that one of the insights too? 'Cause a lot of people say, "Well, I don't really have much of a structured prayer time, "but I try to be mindful of Christ all day long." And I think sometimes that means, you're driving along and you think about it for two minutes, but is that sort of a constant awareness that can really help people in their prayer life say a little bit more about that? And what's the key to practicing the mindfulness of Christ? - Yeah, I mean, I think it can be as long as we don't get lazy about it, right? Like, I still need to go on a date night with my wife, I still need to call my mom and dad, right? Like, you still need to have those hinge pieces, you know, you still have to have dinner with your family or you're not gonna, you know, connect with your kids very well. Like, there needs to be those hinge points, but yeah, I think having a greater mindfulness, especially like our work, right? Like as leaders, we just, we zone in on our work and we just crush it for eight or 10 hours. And we don't think about God once in that time, whereas that's probably when we need to be thinking the most about God because that's what's gonna give our work, it's real spiritual power. - And ironically, for church leaders, which is a good chunk of the audience for this podcast, we're actually doing God's work and sometimes we do it without him. - Totally, totally. - Yeah, okay, so Tayzay and then we're next. - So then from Italy, Spain, France, then we explored the outer limits. So we couldn't write a book on prayer without exploring some of the weird uncles and crazy cousins. So did a couple of things in the weird chapter. One of them was we went to Westboro Baptist Church. - Right, in the United States. - That's right, the Quran burning, picketing, Phelps family. So they actually didn't let me in the building. - Why not? - I went there for church, but they wouldn't let me in. But I ended up-- - Did they know what you were doing or what happened? - No, like I had emailed them ahead of time and all that stuff, but they just never got back to me. So I ended up spending two hours in the founder's daughter's kitchen with her and her husband who's an elder at the church. And I said, I was like, okay, so what's your prayer for the world? And they were like, the God would destroy the wicked. Like, okay, so much for grace, you know, need to-- - Wow. - And I asked them, I said, okay, so these signs that you carry, these like horrible picketing signs, are you sure that's the best way to spread the gospel? And they were like, you know, we prayerfully consider what we write on all our signs. Signs like fags die, God laughs. Pray for more dead soldiers. Like just these-- - They pray over that. - Oh my goodness. - They pray over that. So I walked away from Westboro and I was angry. Like, I was so mad that there's a group of people who call themselves Christians who treat other people with such horrible vitriol and hatred. And I was filled with the same hatred that fills the people at Westboro. And I remember an old quote by Dorothy Day. She was a missionary and missionary worker. And she said, I love God as much as the person. I love the least. So I started-- - Oh, wow. - Yeah, I love God. - That's super challenging. - That's the person I love, please. So I started using an old Quaker tradition. Michelle and I had visited the oldest church building in North America. It's a Quaker meeting house in Maryland. They have a tradition called holding in the light. So let's say you've been praying for someone for a long time and you've run out of things to say. You like have nothing else to say. Quakers just picture holding that person in the light of God's grace. And they say, God, help me to see them as you see them. Help me to love them as you love them. Do the work that only you can do. And then they just hold them day after day in the light of God's grace. So I started doing that with Westboro. And now when I think about Westboro, I kind of get giddy because like God could do an incredible work in their life. Like if they experience grace and love, it could change everything. So when I see them on television, people are like, oh, Westboro. And I'm like, oh, Westboro, it's totally different. It's totally different. That is incredible. And that's a transformation in your heart. And I mean, you know, most of us are never gonna go to Westboro Baptist, but I think it's not gonna take a lot of thought for most of us to think of somebody that we're not particularly fond of. And again, yeah, it's very easy to get that quote righteous indignation to say, well, I'm right and you're wrong and you should be expunged or whatever. And oh boy, hold them up in the light of Christ grace. Hey, just curious, why didn't they let you into the church? Like they're just policing it. - It's, you know, like they just blocked you at the door. - Yeah, yeah, it's like, well, it's locked, right? They have like video cameras on the whole block. They've bought up an entire neighborhood and busted down the fences in between. So you never see them on the street. They scurry in between the buildings behind the scene. Like it's, it's a, it's so creepy. Like my wife, we had driven eight hours. We had got up at 2.30 in the morning to drive there. And my wife was asleep in the car, the next street over. And when I met with them, they're like, is that your wife is sleeping in the car around the corner? We were like, oh, that's so creepy. - Goodness, wow. - But pray for the people at West Broad, they need Jesus just as much as I do, so. - Yes. - Yeah, I say do. - Yeah, so then other things that happened in the weird chapter, I visited, I interviewed the pastor of a nudist church. It was called Whitetail Chapel of all places. - Whitetail Chapel. - Yeah, we went in the winter and not on a Sunday, so everyone was mercifully clothed. But that was an interesting story. And then speaking of meditation. - Okay, well, back up, what does it deal with that, a nudist church? - You know, we walked away after being there for a couple of hours and we were like, well, I don't think it's wise, but they have a gospel mission to reach people on the fringes. And they emailed me later and they said, you know, Jay, we're not Christians, trying to convince other Christians to become nudists. We're trying to lead nudists to Jesus. - Okay. - Who else is reaching nudists? I was like, that's a good question, not me. - So really good point. - Yeah, and it's not on my list of things to do with my life. - Nope. - It's a Genesis one and two church, not Genesis three church, right? - Okay, that's fascinating, next. - So speaking of meditation, the next thing we did in the weird chapter was I went to a Tony Robbins fire-walking event and walked across a blazing hot bed of hot colds. - Wow. - And what was that like? I mean, that's mythic. Tony Robbins does those several times a year. And I mean, he is just incredible. - Yeah, so Carrie, this was crazy. There's 6,000 people in the room paying anywhere from $700 to $3,500 a ticket. And I was blown away by the fact that every single person out of the room was looking for a touch from God. - Really, it's just a spiritual hunger that's not being addressed by the church. - Sad. They're looking for mission, meaning, purpose, sense of community and hope. And there were people like laid out on the floor, like laughing in the spirit, worshiping with their hands in the air to the sound of like the Titanic theme song and like the soundtrack from "Chariots of Fire." Like, it's about discovering the power within, right? As if we can save ourselves. As if we have anything inside that can, you know, who can save us from this lifetime, right? Like only God. And so I just, I had thought that maybe it would take prayer to walk across a bed of hot colds, but no, it was just, you know, like a flaky mantra or whatnot. - Yeah, that was an interesting, it went in the weird chapter for a reason. - Okay, okay, so, yeah, like Tony Robbins, to the best of my knowledge, not a Christian, he's just like a, like a humanist. He brings out the best in people, right? - Yeah, yeah, like he calls himself a Christian and I interviewed someone. - Oh, I didn't know that. - And I interviewed someone on his staff and they said they always have like a prayer meeting beforehand and stuff, but like, you know, like, Tony's like no question a certified genius, but I just think that what he was spitting was too much for the audience that it attracts, right? - Like, which is really interesting because you say you're in there with thousands of people and it's got all the marks of a church service in some respects and yet no Christ at the center of it, at least not specifically. - Yeah. - And then you go to some churches and it just seems dead in anemic by comparison. - So, like what are we doing spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to gather in this expensive space that's clearly a cemetery? Like, it's crazy. - Right. And then I've had the same thought at concerts I've been to. I don't go to a lot of shows these days, but basically concerts are modern worship then. - Hold like ants in the air. - Absolutely. I mean, I saw you two years ago and it is like a religious experience. - Well, careful. That does count as a worship service. - It does. It really, well, Bono does love Jesus. - You do it as a Christian band of, yeah. - But it is. I mean, you've got, you've got 40,000 people at really at church and that's very interesting. Okay, so tell us about the fire walking. So you did it. - Yeah, yeah. - And now you have no feet. - What happened? - It's 2,000 degrees of blazing hot, chasm of hot coals, 12 feet long. Basically they teach you ahead of time to like, you've got to like amp up your testosterone. So they say, make your move. So you like make a full body flex. So like a giant hulk, like, whoa, right? And then you get in the zone. So you just get really chill, like kind of meditate zone out. And then you say your mantra. So the mantra that he told us to do was, just repeat, cool moss, cool moss, cool moss that you walk across this place. So like, that was the kind of the process that he taught us, right? So it was an 11 hour day, no breaks at all. No bathroom breaks, no lunch breaks. Nothing, just 11 hours straight. Like, it's like an African church. And-- - Yeah, it is. So we go outside, it's past midnight. There's about 300 volunteers and they're all chanting. Yes, yes, yes, like just so creepy. And so I take my shoes off and I socks off and I just see this blazing bed of black coals. And I'm like in line and people are going across. And I get to the front and the deal was you'd get to this like little box and you'd make your move, get in the zone, start chanting and then you'd like walk across. I get up to the box and a volunteer goes, head up and go and pushes me. I wasn't in the zone. You didn't even get in the zone. There's no cool boss, there's nothing. - Nothing. And my foot hits the bed and I get a hot cool lodged between the ball of my foot and my big toe. And it was hot. - Oh my goodness. - So that was my first step. My second step, equally blazing hot. My wife took video of it and we played it back afterwards. I literally high stepped like drummer boyed across the bed of a hot cold. And I marched so fast that at the end, volunteers had to catch me and spray my feet off. So I had blisters for a couple of months, but grateful. - Oh my goodness. I was going to ask him, my question is going to be sitting. Anyone actually get burnt? Well, yes, he did. - That would be me. So, but nothing too bad. But yeah, I just walked away with this great sense of like, church has so much work to do because everyone is looking for a touch for God. Let's never forget that for a second as leaders. - Wow. Any other weird relatives he visited? - I went to a Benny Hinn convention in England. Night of miracles, five hours long. He still hadn't talked about healing, but he did do an hour long altar call for offerings. That was, I unpack that in my mind. - Man. - An hour for offerings. - Yeah, in the altar call, yeah. - So that was the weird chapter. And then I moved on to North Korea. - What did you find there? Christian's getting up at 3 a.m. to pray. - No, yeah. So North Korea has been rated the most dangerous place on Earth for Christians, 12 years in a row. There's over 50,000 Christians in concentration camps in North Korea, like Nazi-style work blogs. And I wasn't there to smuggle in Bibles or evangelize. I was just there to bear witness to the suffering and then pray in the most dangerous place on Earth for Christians. So I went there for New Year's last year. Our plane landed. They took away my passport at the border. I was assigned a guard that was with me 24/7. Our hotel was on an island, so we couldn't get away. And we were basically on the propaganda tour for five days, but on New Year's Day, there's a tradition in North Korea that you will go and you'll bow before the dead stuffed bodies of the dead emperors. They're in glass coffins. So we go to this palace. They've spent over $100 million on it in the last 10 years, despite the fact that a million citizens have starved to that in the last 30. - Oh my. - And we go in with like tens of thousands of other Koreans and they're all in their outfits with their medals and their badges and all this stuff. And I had tried to stay in the hotel. I had tried to stay on the bus. 'Cause like, if I was just chadwracking me, checking to bed and they go, I would-- - Right, right, right, right. - There are some parallels here. I see the analogy. - Yeah, so, but they're like, no, it's very disrespectful. You have to go, you have to go. So we go in and we actually went through this tunnel and it blew the dust off us 'cause we were entering Holy Globe ground. Like, pfft. So we go in and there's about 200 Korean soldiers in the room. And the deal was we go up in fours and we bow. And it's not like a head knot. It's a full Korean half bow at the waist. We bow once at his feet, once at his left side, once there's right side. And we go into a second room with Kim Jong-Eel's body, his son, his feet, his side, and then a third room with a statue of them and we bow, so seven bows and all. So we go into the first rooms and everyone else bows and I didn't even know I had a state standing and I just whispered the large parrot his feet and I whispered the large parrot his side. So I whispered seven Lord's prayers and all. And I like to say that I planted seven prayer bombs in the heart of North Korea. - That's amazing. - And they didn't pull you aside or? - Our guard was like, our guard was like very, very like angry afterwards, but I told him ahead of time. Like I can't politically morally or spiritually do this. Greatfully, I'm a Canadian. So we actually, you know, we have one of the strongest passports in the world. And so that was probably one of the saving graces, but. - Yeah, so that was North Korea. - It's just so broken for the people of the city. Like it was so. - Any other highlights from the trip that you want to share? - There's just so much. Like I went to the biggest, biggest trips in the world. Yodo, one million members. They have a 12 story children's building, like Sunday school building. - 12 stories. - Is this guy so skyscraper for kids? - For kids, great. - And they have a mountain dedicated to prayer called Prayer Mountain. That was crazy. And then I basically added my trip by exploring the revivals. I went to the site where Phoebe Palmer started the third grade awakening. I got to pray in John Wesley's prayer closet. - Wow. - There was so many things. Jeremiah Lampier's Fulton Street Revival in New York City. John Edwards in Boston, I think. Like just explored the revivals Azusa Street in California. Yeah, my hope is that our generation. - Did you find a commonality with the revivals? - Yeah, a great, great humility and an absolute call to prayer. It wasn't to preaching. It wasn't to writing more books or getting media attention. It was prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer. My hope is that our generation, that in our lifetime, we will see a revival of prayer. Because here's the cool thing that I've learned this year. When you spend time with someone, you become more like them. So if you have breakfast every day with Bill Gates, you'll get better at managing your money. If you have lunch every day with Steven Spielberg, you'll watch more movies. If you spend more time with Jesus in prayer, you become more like Christ. So not only is he answering your prayers, you're becoming more like him. And the power of those two things in unison is what changes the world. So I just want that for our generation. - So tell me, you've been back for how long now since your trip ended? - Well, so the year of living prayer I've really ran from Passover of 2013 to Passover of 2014. - Okay, so just over a year. And how are you different and how is your prayer life different for the last 12, 14 months? - So like, I mean, as I said earlier, it's a lot more quiet now. There's a lot more silence. There's a lot more trying to listen. The second thing I would say is it's a lot more active. I'm trying to make my days, my writing, my, you know, our charity. We're trying to make everything we do an offering. Even this book, you know, we saw so much commercialism, like in Jerusalem, you can rent a cross and drag it down the Via Dolorosa. There's so much like commercialism in Christianity that we just decided, we actually set up a second nonprofit that owns this book. So all of my author royalties are going to Missions and Ministry. What's really cool is my publisher, Tindale, is also owned by a nonprofit. So they're giving me all their profits as well. So we're really proud that people like grab this book, love it and share it because we want to do a double goodness world. We would love for people to connect with Christ of prayer and then be able to give to Kingdom things. So yeah, the reviews have been amazing so far. People are just loving it because it's fun, right? We try to bring the joy of the Lord back in the prayer. Yeah, so it's a lot more quiet. It's a lot more active. We pray a lot more with our friends now. You know, we have people over almost every night and it always ends with the time of prayer. Praying together is just so, so powerful. And then, and then act-- What makes it different when you pray together than when you pray individually? I mean, we're two or three are gathered there, am I in the midst, right? Like, I guess the Holy Spirit shows up. Like, yeah, sure, sure. And we take that on faith. I was like, it's all a faith journey, right? But I don't know, I think there's something about bearing each other's burdens. That's beautiful. Jewish people have this prayer called a minion prayer. They pray in groups of 10 and they try to be their answer to their own prayers. So they help each other get jobs. They help each other find apartments. They, we're just so individualistic, right? Like, you know this, you're working as a church leader. Like, you see, it doesn't work when we're isolated. But when we get together, when we are a family, we can help each other so much. So that, I think, was a big thing. It was just like doing prayer with friends. Right. Yeah, so praying through scripture, John Wesley, always prayed with the Bible open. He's always looking for a word from God and the things he was praying about. So if you see a verse, if I see a verse that kind of looks like a prayer, I'll pray it back as a prayer to God. Attaching physicality to spirituality is another big one of course. The idea of, you know, like, so I try to do a lot more prayer walking now. That's a good one for me. Is that like Mark Batterson? Like, he does a lot of prayer walking, that sort of thing, maybe you haven't read that. Oh yeah, no, I love Mark Batterson. He's like the most quotable author alive today and such great storyteller. He's definitely a hero of mine for sure. I think you've had him on the butt yesterday. Yeah, yeah, yeah. By the time this airs, Mark's episode will have aired as well. So we'll link to that in the show notes. And let me just say, okay, so leaders who are stuck in their prayer life, they're like, okay, this is super challenging. You know, they're probably not going to be able to do a 37,000 mile journey. That's an incredible story. Where do you start? Like, if you're like, I just want to make my prayer life better today. Where do you start? Well, you can read the book. No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you know what's so interesting, I get to the end of this book and people are like, okay, so you're a prayer expert now, right? And I'm like, not even close. Like, if you find a prayer expert, just run. Just run. (laughing) There's some truth to that, you know, when you think back over your life, it's like, yeah. So I come to the end of this pilgrimage and I'm like, I'm like a first year university student. I now know all the things that I don't know. And I really do feel like a prayer program on a long, long journey. So I'm just another one on the journey. And if my story helps people, awesome. But I end the book with a quote. I think it's by Toser Spurgeon. It's just one of the epic bearded greats. And he said, you can write a book on prayer, but you can put no prayer in it for it is too sacred a thing to be penned on a page. I was like, that's so true. Like when the disciples ask Jesus, Lord teaches to pray, what does he say? He goes, okay, let's talk about the ideological points of prayer. No, he starts praying, our Father who art in heaven. And I've been to the spot where traditionally Jesus taught his disciples that prayer. And that was so powerful. And you're like, they ask him to pray. He doesn't teach them a thing. He just starts praying. So for the leaders listening, and it's especially important for us as leaders, just stop working and just pray. Just it's like talking to, it's like your first date with your eventual spouse. It starts with just talking. And eventually it grows into a buffet of different ways of communication. But you just start by having that conversation by hanging out with Dad. Hmm, that's a great word. Jared, I know people are going to want to get the books and again, that will do the book. That'll be in the show notes. But where can people connect with you? Website is livingpreferfully.com. That's got links to my contact page. You can see a book trailer. We made like a video trailer of the book. And you can grab the first two chapters for free online there. And that'll connect you to my Facebook and my email, it's not cool. Hey, Jared, thanks so much. Thanks for having me. So I am so grateful for being able to have just an honest conversation with Jared about prayer. And what a fascinating story. If you want more, pick up his book, A Year of Living Prayerfully. It's by Jared Brock. Links are in the show notes. You can go right there. It's just caringnewhough.com/episode38. And you will find everything you need to know and everything we talked about in the show. And in the meantime, we're back next Tuesday with a brand new episode. It is episode 39. And we are talking to my friend, Chris Lemma. And Chris is just one of those guys. Like he has done more in his 40 years than most leaders would have done in about 160, I think. He's just super bright, well-known in the WordPress community. So if you're like into WordPress, you probably know who he is. He also was involved in his local church. And he's just a leadership guru. And he's gonna be talking about how to build a high-performing team from scratch. It is just one of those leadership on steroid episodes. My goodness, you're gonna love it. You're not gonna wanna miss it. It's episode 39. And it comes at you next Tuesday. We'll be back for that. And the best way to not miss it is to subscribe. It's still free. You can do it. And thanks so much for listening. And I really do hope that this episode has helped you lead like never before. And maybe it's helped your prayer life. And if that's true, I'm incredibly grateful. Thanks for tuning in. (upbeat music) - You've been listening to the "Carry Newhough Leadership" podcast. Join us next time for more insights on leadership, change and personal growth to help you lead like never before. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)