Simple Faith With Rusty George

0:00:00 - Rusty George
Have you ever wondered can you simplify life in three words? That's what we're gonna talk about today on Simple Faith. You know, following Jesus isn't always easy, but it's not complicated, and each week we work to try to make faith simple. I'm your host, rusty George. Thanks for joining us Today. We welcome back bestselling author and pastor Mark Batterson. He's the author of great reads like the Circle Maker and when the Day. He was on with us probably a little over a year ago to talk about when the Day and what a great, great book. And now he's got a new book out that basically sums up all you need to know about life, for how to succeed in life, in three simple words. We like simple on Simple Faith, and so I wanted to hear more about this from Mark Batterson. He's gonna talk to us about those three words and about a lot of other things as well.

I wanna thank Subsplash for sponsoring our podcast, for all the work they do to help out so many churches and individuals. What a great, great organization. You can find out more about by checking out their website. Subsplash continues to bless people all the time. Well, today we get to hear from Mark Batterson again, so enjoy this episode of Simple Faith. Mark Batterson, thank you for joining the podcast again. I don't know if this is the second or third time, but you're a repeat offender, so thank you for being on the show. I think if we counted up to be three, that's a hat trick, so I gotta send you something for that.

0:01:34 - Mark Batterson
So I love it. Hey, the first invitation is always flattering, but if you get invited back that's a little bit better.

0:01:41 - Rusty George
So that means you did a decent job? I guess so, or I just got slots to fill, you know.

0:01:48 - Mark Batterson
Who can we get Call up?

0:01:50 - Rusty George
Batterson, I love it. Hey, what have you been up to over the last couple of years? Last time we talked you were launching Win the Day, which was a great book. I handed that out to a lot of people and I know it did well for you. So obviously you've been writing a book. But what else has been going on over the last couple of years?

0:02:07 - Mark Batterson
Well, we, you know we've navigated the same challenges that everybody else has, although, you know, dc was pretty unique we could not gather as a church for a year and two weeks by DC government mandate. And so we've learned to innovate and adjust and adapt, and well, and I've gotten a little bit of counseling in between there.

0:02:35 - Rusty George
Didn't we all.

0:02:38 - Mark Batterson
But that said, just it's fun. The two big things we have begun hosting the Easter sunrise at the Lincoln Memorial, and that is a profound honor and privilege. It's been happening for 43 years and, rusty, we drink from wells we did not dig. We eat from fields we didn't plant. We live in houses we didn't build, and so grateful for Pastor Amos. Dodge Capital Church started that gathering in 1979. This year probably close to 10,000 people gathered there and declared Christ is risen on the National Mall, and so that's a piece of our puzzle now. It's a part of our annual rhythm to host that gathering. And then we have a city block, about 100,000 square feet, a mile from the Capitol that we are beginning to build out and develop and is our DC campus, and that's we're having some fun with that. That's a labor of love. So those are kind of two big things that are keeping us busy these days.

0:03:54 - Rusty George
Well, man, that's so great. So many things I could ask about. I wanna go back to COVID for a second, because we all experienced it in a very unique and yet similar way, and I know what it was like in California, which was crazy, but I can't imagine what it was like in DC. I mean, you had a government mandate to not meet, but how did you fight that battle? Cause I'm sure there were people in your church that were like nope, we're not bowing to Caesar, we're gonna meet anyway, right? So how did you navigate all that and where did you guys come down with all those things?

0:04:28 - Mark Batterson
Well, that is no easy challenge, cause you and I both know you can please all the people some of the time, some of the people all the time, but you can't please all the people all the time. And the catch 22 for us, rusty, is we're not just trying to build a church, we're trying to bless a city. I mean, we wanna make a difference 70 years from now, and we wanna do things that when we opened our DC dream center, which was a $5 million vision, we're basically saying, hey, we wanna do things that typically the government would do, but we believe, as those who are part of the kingdom God, we wanna do it. And so we're trying to end homelessness, we're trying to help refugees who resettle to the DC area. Even our children's ministry we turned into a child development center here in DC, and so we're trying to do things to bless our city. So, honestly, to take them to court would feel a little counterproductive and be a challenge that we didn't feel led to take on. And so what we did is we turned our DC dream center into the only place in the city that was a food distribution site for ward seven and eight, and instead of an in-person prayer meeting, we launched something called the upper zoom, which is a fun little play on words there, and we tried to get creative.

We've always been a church of small groups and so those could continue to gather and didn't affect us. It was the large gatherings that we had to suspend for a season and then, rusty I would describe it as 52 card pickup. It's like taking the deck of cards, throwing on the ground, reshuffle it and it felt like starting over. It's the closest I felt to being a church planner all over again. It felt like 1996 when we were starting with a core group of 19 people and we were starting with a lot more people than that. But a lot of people went MIA, because when you don't gather that long, it's all the challenges.

0:06:57 - Rusty George
Yeah. Yeah, I totally resonate with that. I mean, I felt like we lost a third of our congregation, some of which they were mad and they went to churches that were open, some of which just never returned they were just never with us completely to begin with and some that moved. We were here in California and had the great exodus, so a lot of people moved. I'm sure there are people from DC that moved as well to more of the Plain States. So back to where we're from, right, yeah back in the Midwest.

0:07:29 - Mark Batterson
I think everybody just moved to Nashville, I think.

0:07:34 - Rusty George
There's a reason they call it the third coast. Now it is very diverse of people from our cities, so all right, so you navigate through COVID and then, over the course of the last couple of years, if I'm not mistaken, your wife goes through cancer twice. Is that right? What can you tell us about walking through that difficult season?

0:07:56 - Mark Batterson
Well, it was two bouts with cancer and you know, when we got that first diagnosis, this just felt like God's providence that Laura was reading a poem that posed the question and the question was what have you come to teach me? And and so we went into that bout with cancer just very humbly, with a learning posture and man. It changed our lives and I and I would say rusty it changed our lives for the better, like we didn't want to go through it at once, let alone twice. But you know, we just made some lifestyle changes, realize how important laughter is. We started hitting comedy clubs as a form of therapy, which sounds ridiculous.

But the writer of Proverbs was on to something laughter do it good like a medicine. And so you know, charles Spurgeon said I've learned to kiss the wave. That throws me against a rock of ages. And so you have to kiss the wave in situations like that. And I'll tell you what we don't take each other for granted. You know the. You just don't walk through that and not love each other a little bit more. And I'll just share one little little thing. Laura and I start our weekly Sabbath by sharing our gratitudes with each other, our gratitude journals, and it's become kind of a sacred habit for us. It keeps us focused on what we're thankful for, and occasionally Laura will just write in her journal I'm still here and.

I mean it makes me cry when she says it because I'm like just so grateful that she is still here and you know she rang the bell. We think we're on the other side and trusting the Lord that we got a clean bill of health. But you know, you got to cultivate gratitude when you walk through those kinds of challenges wow, what did you learn about your friends during that time?

0:10:14 - Rusty George
and here's why I ask when, when you get a diagnosis of cancer and other people hear that, you immediately get a flood of text messages with the praying hands and I'm praying for you and all of that what separated the friends from the? You're in my thoughts and prayers? You know what I mean yeah, yeah, there were.

0:10:36 - Mark Batterson
There were a handful of people that just really rallied around us and that made all the difference in the world. I would also say, rusty, that we had tremendous grace for those who didn't know how to respond, and so they're.

They're not knowing how to respond sometimes created a little bit of distance yeah because we probably see that in ourselves, looking back, that sometimes we didn't know what to say or what to do. And you know what we've learned now just don't be afraid of what's messy, don't be afraid of what's awkward, don't be afraid of what's hard, don't even be afraid of saying the wrong thing, like lean in, lean in and just let people know hey, I'm here, I care, um, you know. But most of us feel like we need to somehow like solve it or say the perfect thing and make sense of it yeah yeah, yeah, can't be done.

0:11:42 - Rusty George
Yeah, I had a buddy of mine well, I hesitate to say buddy. He was a mentor, uh that I worked with at a church in Kentucky and he gave me the best advice for doing hospital calls. He said, rusty, no one will remember what you say. Wow, they'll only remember presence and prayer. You showed up and you prayed, that's it mm-hmm.

Come on okay, mark, I want to talk about, uh, your building project, because I'm fascinated by this. You and I both talked and worked with some Frank Beeler and uh, phase center and all that they're doing. Did you work with phase center on what you're doing now, or were they kind of a catalyst to get you to what you're doing now? But tell us a little bit about the city block that you bought and what it is that you're trying to accomplish there yeah, well, we want to meet real needs in real time, mm-hmm.

0:12:35 - Mark Batterson
And the mayor happened to say as we began building out our building that there weren't enough child care spots. And so most people in DC it's double income and you got two people working, husband and wife, and and so we thought why keep that ministry space, uh, dark Monday to Friday and just use it on the weekend when it could double as a child development center? So, uh, I love Frank Bieler and Face Family is our provider, and so they run that child development center Monday to Friday and then we flip it. We use it on the weekend at National Community Church and then they flip it and use it Monday to Friday.

0:13:24 - Rusty George
That's incredible. So is this a you know? Is it one building and you've kind of just started taking over floors and developing as you go. What's the process? Look there.

0:13:35 - Mark Batterson
Yeah, it's a 130 year old building but it's built in two parts. They're kind of two sides with 130 year old brick right down the middle of the building. So we did a phase one auditorium and, by the way, we host events there all the time. Amazon used it a few weeks ago, axios used it for a conference, dc government uses it for some of their events, so we get to have people circulating through our space really seven days a week and then at revenue streams as well, which is a double blessing. And so phase one is that auditorium and then phase two was the kids space that we just described, and then phase three is sort of next level. We're going to do a mixed use marketplace.

Oh and so we'll have a sit down restaurant. We will have pop up restaurants and kind of like an armature works in Tampa or an Anaheim packing house in LA or a Punt City market in Atlanta. These food halls, they're kind of places to gather, so we want to be in the middle of the marketplace and so we'll. We'll end up with a space where you can work and eat and pray and play at the same time.

0:15:12 - Rusty George
That's awesome. You know you've been there for is it 16 years now? The church is rusty.

0:15:19 - Mark Batterson
I'm older than that brother 27 years, 27 years.

0:15:26 - Rusty George
You planted the church 27 years ago.

0:15:28 - Mark Batterson
Yes, with a core group of 19 people. Holy cow, let's be honest, the first five or 10 years, I don't even know if they count so well it maybe it is maybe 16 years counts, but it's 27 if you add it all up.

0:15:42 - Rusty George
Okay, okay. So you've been there that long, you've had this much of an impact in the city. But also, you know, I remember when you started out in blogging which was a big thing for you. I remember somebody asked you one time what takes up most of your time and you said, unfortunately it's blogging. And I thought, wow, that's, that is a labor of love, which you kind of parlayed that into now writing books, which you're a very successful author, I would imagine. By this stage in your career you're well known in the city. You're obviously beloved in your church. I want to ask you how do you fight against the cult of personality in your church so that they're not highly dependent on you, and how do you fight that in your own heart?

0:16:31 - Mark Batterson
That's a that's a great question. And those two, it's like fighting a war on two fronts. It is, you know. The first one is I want to be famous in my home. Success has nothing to do with how many books I sell or how many people I've passed, or successes when those who know me best respect me most, and that's my wife and my kids, and somehow I think I've been able to stay pretty centered on that. I have an allergic reaction to any kind of. There's just no place for any sort of celebrity culture. Let's just live for the applause of Nailsguard hands and at the end of the day, you know, let's make his name famous.

So I think you know you, you have to find a way. Well, first of all, maybe you have to recognize that every pastor is an interim pastor. So, even even having done this for 27 years, the day will come. I think. I think it was Tony Camp Polo who, way back, said at some point you're going to die, they're going to throw dirt in your face, they're going to go back to the church and eat potato salad and you know, quesara, I, we're all an interim pastor, and the kingdom of God goes on without us.

So I Rusty, this is gonna sound weird, but I never use the, the personal pronoun, to describe national community church. I will never call it my church. You just won't hear that come out of my mouth, because I feel like Internally that crosses a line for me. I love it when people who volunteer or lead Call it my church, but I'm an under shepherd and I think one thing that's helped us has probably been having a teaching team. Yeah, so I only teach half of the weekends, and that allows the church not to revolve around a single personality.

You know, I'm a three on the Enneagram, I am an INFP on Myers-Briggs, and if you aren't careful, a Church will take on your number on the Enneagram or it will take on your Combination of letters on the Myers-Briggs. So one thing I love about empowering lots of leaders to communicate Campus pastors to pastor is that then it doesn't just revolve around one person, and so we've worked pretty hard at that. You know, the, the measure of success, is another question, but to me legacy is not what you accomplish. Legacy is what others accomplished because of you, and so hopefully someday when I'm out of the picture and my name is all but forgotten, the, the legacy is gonna be that that third and fourth generation that are leading and loving and living life in a way that's I've maybe had just a little bit of influence in.

0:19:49 - Rusty George
Hmm, I'm so well said. I appreciate that. Well, I always love to hear perspectives on that. I think the last couple of years have to have shown us a lot about celebrity culture in the church. It has not helped anybody out. I think we, you know, we can be Tempted by that idea of how do I leverage this in such a way to build a platform for the sake of the gospel, and it usually does not lead to the place you want to go. So, okay, last time we were talking, we were talking about winning the day, and then you start.

You launched this new book, which I want to get you to in a second. But as far as like writing rhythms, you know I've done this, not near as much as you, but just enough to know that you write when you turn it in and then there's a year before it ever comes to see the light of day. Do you start the next project before it comes out? You know what's your thought process there. Are you always writing? I know you're always collecting stories, but do you always kind of have that next project in line? And when did this one begin?

0:20:52 - Mark Batterson
Yeah, there's almost all. Every year I have a writing season is what I would call it and Usually it's November, december. In January I get myself three months to write a book, and I usually am writing a book before the the next book comes out, which is so crazy because then your headspace is in a different place. But this year was a little bit different. I am trying to maybe go to an 18 month rhythm instead of a 12 month rhythm. The problem is is I'm always playing catch-up. I always have an idea for a book. I usually have three ideas for a book. It's just which one am I gonna write?

So, yeah, by the time a book comes out rusty you you know this that You've done several rounds of edits, you've probably recorded an audio book by the time it comes out. If you aren't careful, you can be a little bit bored with that book. It's like old news because you wrote it a year ago, and so I really, I honestly need the Holy Spirit's help, because as I'm writing it, I'm like I always feel like this is the most important thing I've ever written. Yeah, and you have to kind of recapture that feeling a little bit, and so each book is a labor of love, that you write it in a season of life and and it releases at a unique cultural moment and you never totally know how that's gonna play out, but yeah.

0:22:34 - Rusty George
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Okay, back to our episode when you're writing. I mean, it's, it's such a Labor. You know it's, it's difficult, it's painful, but there comes that sweet spot when you feel like, oh man, the serotonin is flowing right, the words are flowing right. I'm not even thinking about editing, I'm just writing. How long does it take for you to get into that zone? I think it would be like when you run. It's a runner's high, it's that writing high, and and I've noticed for me sometimes that I could smell the coffee, I can hear the jazz music in the background, I'm zeroed in on the computer. It feels right, but it takes a long time to get to that moment and it doesn't always last forever, like you'd like it to. What's that look like for you?

0:23:51 - Mark Batterson
Yeah, it's. It's almost fun that it's not an exact science. Yeah, like even Even the fact you know it's 24 books now. So that's a lot of that's a lot of books. But each one is how is this one gonna play out? You wonder sometimes if you have one more in you, like you know, is it, is this one gonna be any good?

but right what I do is I begin a writing season, usually with a three-day retreat, and I begin to crystallize the ideas, I begin to frame some of my thoughts and and that gives me a little bit of a running start I spend a lot of my time on the organizing metaphor, which, to me, is that opening chapter that begins to paint the picture and and then, you know, I'll put some kind of outline together. Some are easier than others. You know. This current book, let's be honest, was pretty easy because it's gonna be three parts, please, sorry and thanks.

Other books are a little bit more challenging. You've got to figure out what framework you're gonna use. And then I, I write for three months and I have what I call writing days where nothing else is on the calendar. All I do is get up that day and I begin to to write, and I'll sometimes write for 12 hours in a day, rusty I. It's like a long, long writing day, and then I employ an 80% rule that once I feel like it's 80% of the way there, I've got to let then that chapter just Leave it alone for a minute and go on to the next chapter, and then I come back at the very end with another three-day retreat, and that allows me then to kind of tie the thing in a knot, and and then you're gonna go through four rounds of edits. And you know, it's been said that good writing is bad writing well edited. So you got to give yourself a little bit of grace and and then you're gonna work that manuscript over about three or four times Before it gets into final form.

0:26:18 - Rusty George
So that's writing a book. Now, writing a message, as we both know, is like a microwave process. You got to pull this off in a few days. So what? What does that look like? Do you also do kind of a retreat to plan out the year or a series? Do you have a lot of research assistance helping you Walk us through what? What's a message writing process look like versus a book writing process?

0:26:45 - Mark Batterson
Yeah, I love that question. Now we're talking shop, aren't we?

0:26:49 - Rusty George
Let's get into it yeah you know what.

0:26:52 - Mark Batterson
Last time I checked, sunday comes once a week and so there's a, there's a deadline. For me, tuesdays are meeting days, generally speaking, where Back-to-back-to-back meetings, but that buys me Wednesday. And if I'm preaching it's a study day, if I'm writing it's a writing day, and then Thursdays is kind of a half and half day. I try to write in the morning but then in the afternoon I do meetings up through our house of prayer on Thursday nights. And then Friday's another study day, and if I'm preaching, saturday is a prep day. Monday is my Sabbath. So all of that adds up to. You know that's kind of the weekly rhythm.

We do plan out series. You know we try to get about it. We do a planning in the fall for the next year and so we've got some placeholders for the year. Only about 80% of those series make the final cut. You know by the time you get to the fall that you planned to fall before. You know life happens and things change and like we got a course corrected. Here's the direction we need to go. But you know we plan it out and you know we'll have series that are three or four weeks. This summer we'll do a series on Mark's Gospel, that's 16 weeks, which is one of the longest series that we've done in a long time. So that's kind of how we approach it. And then we do a weekend planning meeting, and then we do kind of brainstorming meetings for all of our series, that from the graphics to the titling, to the trailer, to the content. We're kind of working on all of those different dimensions.

0:28:52 - Rusty George
You're a pretty creative guy, so I would imagine it's tempting for you to be putting your toe in the water in all those areas. Have you learned over the years to stay out of some of those things and let the younger creatives have their way, as opposed to you jumping in there?

0:29:08 - Mark Batterson
Oh man, I you know it's funny. I would still say that 90% of our series do originate in either my head or heart. But that's rusty, that's because I feel like I'm still called our lead pastor. But, to be honest, our campus pastors are doing more of the pastoring than I am. They're doing more of the weddings, the hospital visits. It's not that I still don't do some of that, but I see myself as a lead teacher even more than a lead pastor at this point. So even though I'm only preaching 26 out of 52 weekends, I still am very engaged in the planning. But what I have done is delegate a series a year to our creative team and a series a year to our campus pastors and a series a year occasionally to our missions team. So what I'll do is like hey, let me hands off on a few of these series and you all have at it, have fun with it, enjoy it. And then the other series. I'm pretty hands on.

0:30:25 - Rusty George
That's good. All right, let's talk about the new book. Three words, please, sorry. Thanks, what's this about?

0:30:34 - Mark Batterson
Well, you only need to be good at three things. If you're good at please, sorry and thanks, you're good to go. I'm not worried about your marriage, not worried about your workplace, and so the premise of the book comes from this constructive conception of language. That would argue that our words don't represent the world objectively. Our words create the world subjectively, and this idea is really as old as King Solomon.

The power of life and death is in the tongue. If you wanna change the world, you have to change your words. Words create worlds, and so it really is about the power of words, but there are three words that I think carry a little bit more weight, and the funny thing is there are the three magic words that our parents taught us as kids. Like you have to say please, sorry and thanks, but I tried to turn them into a little bit more of the science and art of how do we really own these words as not just something we say, but how do we personalize the please signature, the sorry, and thumbprint the thanks and really make them a unique expression of who we are?

0:31:59 - Rusty George
Those are great words, but I'm curious Were there a few words that didn't make the cut that could have? Because when you're thinking three words, that's great, it's three point series, three point poem, prayer to poem, the whole thing. But when it comes to these three, were there a couple others you thought that could make it?

0:32:19 - Mark Batterson
I mean, if I was gonna write a sequel, I would probably throw in hello and goodbye, because how you greet people Like I'll give you an example In Zulu, the word salbona means I see you. In other words, the image of God in me greets the image of God in you. You only have one chance to make a first impression. Or in the words of some character in Jerry Maguire you had me at hello. How are we at greeting people? And then how are we at saying goodbye? Those are two that I probably would add to the mix and, on that note, to me the patron saint of hello and goodbye is Bob Goff.

No one says hello or says goodbye better than Bob. For the record, he says goodbye If I was at his lodge in Canada a few years back and the way he says goodbye is he runs down the dock waving and then jumps in the water fully clothed, which is, I think, hilarious. What a great way to say goodbye to people, wow. And he says hello in an even more convincing manner. But yeah, so I think there are a lot of words that carry a lot of weight, but I still feel like please, sorry and thanks are probably the best predictor your proficiency at those three words is the best predictor of your success in life, in love and in legacy, and that's a bold statement. But and, rusty, I didn't write it like as a marriage book, for example, but you know what Great marriages are really good at sorry, for example, like they're really good at it Great workplaces. I didn't write it necessarily as a culture book, but great workplaces are great at saying thanks. So I think it's a book that applies to about everything.

0:34:43 - Rusty George
That's really good. I wanna ask you about your intended audience, and we talk a lot about this. When we write messages, you visualize maybe one person like we have what we call real life Rick. He's the guy that we think about when we write messages. You know who is the person that you are thinking about when you write a message versus who's the person you're thinking about when you're writing a book.

0:35:09 - Mark Batterson
Well, I know that the book is gonna get into a wide swath of hands and so the funny thing is, in the early years I was pretty disciplined and I had editors that kind of forced me into a corner of identifying that audience and back in the day I was thinking it's gonna be 20-somethings and singles and that's the church I was pastoring. You know, I was thinking that's probably gonna be the, that's gonna be who's gonna read my books. But man, I just I don't know. I just did a seminar at the Cove, the Billy Graham Retreat Center in North Carolina, and it's probably one of the oldest audiences I've spoken to and it was a three day seminar and I loved every minute of it.

By the way, because I love people who have made more trips around the sun, respecting and honoring elders is ingrained in me. So I say it with great respect, but I've always been shocked by, I don't know, the books I write get into a wide variety of hands. So I don't even know that I have a distinct person in mind when I'm writing. I would say I'm more trying to listen to my inner writing voice and trusting that voice that anyone and everyone can read it. Now I would say, when I'm preaching, rusty, the greatest compliment I get is if an eighth grader is dialed in and paying attention to me and if they say something that the message impacted them. That's the highest compliment I can get. So I'm kind of targeting an eighth grader when I preach, when I write, it could be anyone.

0:37:10 - Rusty George
That's good. Okay, let me ask you about this. You've already mentioned this statement and I love this statement. I heard you say this years ago, and I think about it often I'm trying to be famous at home. I'm trying to be a hero at home. How are you doing that? Now your kids are older, You're in a different season of life. What are you doing lately? To be a hero at home or to be famous at home?

0:37:32 - Mark Batterson
I love that question. All three of our children are in their 20s. Our daughter is married, so now we have a son-in-law as well, and I would say that I still try to prioritize family, but it happens in a different way. I'm not helping with homework or coaching one of my kids' sports teams, so there are things you can do in your 20s that when your kids are in their 20s.

I had a wise mentor say two things Be enough of a student of your kids, so that you basically have to learn to love what they love. So my oldest son loves to bike. Well, I've done a 100-mile bike century the last two years with my oldest son, not because I necessarily love to bike, although it's great exercise and it keeps me in shape. I'm doing that because I love my kids, because I want to love what my kids love. And then the second piece of advice was go on vacation somewhere nice and pay for your kids, and you'll create memories together. And so we try to do an annual trip where mom and dad cover the tab and we just have a ton of fun together. So those two things have worked wonders.

0:39:06 - Rusty George
That's awesome.

0:39:08 - Mark Batterson
The last thing I would say Rusty is one of our counselors I say one of, because we have multiple counselors, but one of them is a family systems therapist and she has taught us the value of non-anxious curiosity. Instead of getting bent out of shape and all anxious about our kids and their decisions, instead of having anxiety, try to cultivate a non-anxious curiosity about your kids. Ask questions, try to get into their head space, try to understand why they're thinking what they're thinking, and maybe do it a little bit less judgmentally. As a parent, my desire is that my kids have faith with their fingerprint on it, not my fingerprint. It's got to have their fingerprint on it and that's going to be as unique for them as it was for me.

0:40:11 - Rusty George
I love that.

0:40:12 - Mark Batterson
So that's kind of our approach path right now.

0:40:15 - Rusty George
Okay, Last question. I'm sitting here looking at you through Squadcast and I can see stacks of books behind you, and not only are you a writer, but you're a reader. You read a lot. In fact, the stories you put in your books are like illustration manuals for me. So, thank you, I just use those all the time. But I'm always curious to ask people that love books. Narrow it down, give me a few favorites, and I know you've recently moved your office, and so that involved packing up all your books and having moved books around many times in my life Because a few. When I pick them up, man, it makes my heart skip a beat. You know is like oh man, I mean what that book did for my life. I'm so grateful for that author or the guy that told me about this book, whatever it is. Can you share with us a few that you have that kind of relationship with?

0:41:14 - Mark Batterson
Yeah, I would love to, and I would name authors instead of book titles.

0:41:21 - Rusty George
Okay, that's fair.

0:41:23 - Mark Batterson
I love the AW Tozer Knowledge of the Holy, the pursuit of God, but really about anything he wrote like just challenges me. He was a modern day mystic. I love GK Chesterton what a great writer and thinker. And then I love people like Malcolm Gladwell that cross pollinate. I love people like Adam Grant that pull a lot of studies and stories from psychology. So, yeah, I'll read about anything they write. And then I'll find different people in Arthur Brooks who wrote from strength to strength and I'll be like, oh, I like this writer and so you know. Or I'll read Bono's memoir and I'll be like, wow, that guy's a wordsmith. No wonder, you know, he wrote so many amazing lyrics to songs.

So I haven't met many books that I don't love rusty and I love reading obscure things. So the Hidden Life of Trees would be a great example, like I love that book. Or Caesar's Last Breath by Sam Keane, like it's a book all about respiration, and I just geek out on books that are on offbeat subjects and what I do is I always read with a pen and I five levels. Level one is underlined. Level two is an asterisk in the margin. Level three I circle it on the page. Level four is an upper ear, dog ear and level four is the bottom of the page dog ear. And then I can go back and find level five thoughts that I can't afford to forget these things, or even level one like just what was worth underlining, and so I can go back and recapture some of those stories or some of those thoughts.

0:43:37 - Rusty George
That's great stuff, mark. It's always a pleasure to chat with you. You're one of the most encouraging people that I know and I just am so grateful for your work and your ministry. And knowing that we went to college about the same time, just down the road from each other and I mean think about it, I mean we're I can name on a couple of hands of people that are still in the game that I went to college with, I know, and I'm sure you're in the same boat. So I just have a tremendous amount of respect for you and gratitude for you for continuing to do what you do. So so thank you for being one of the good guys.

0:44:13 - Mark Batterson
Well, rusty, the feelings mutual. Thanks for your long obedience in the same direction. Let's, let's, keep on keeping on. And what a what a joy. So pretty, pretty fun, we, we, we date all the way back to early nineties. Basketball court days, and you know it's funny. Cause leadership. I probably learned as much on the basketball court as I did in the classroom in terms of life and leadership, but hey, good, good stuff, so fun to catch up.

0:44:46 - Rusty George
All right, thank you, my friend. Talk to you soon.

0:44:48 - Mark Batterson
Take care.

0:44:50 - Rusty George
Well, that was such great stuff for Mark. I'm always blessed by him, even though he haunted me on the basketball court years and years ago when we played ball back in the middle of Missouri. But anyway, he's a great guy and a great author and a great pastor and I know you're going to be blessed by that podcast and by that book. Next week we're back with one of our favorite guests. I think this guy has been on the podcast more than anybody else. His name is Brian Dodd and he has written a new book about success post pandemic. I think you're going to really appreciate what he has to say and I ask him some of his great travel hacks, cause he travels so much and you're going to learn a few nuggets you'll need to tuck away for another time. Well, thank you for joining us and we will talk to you next week. And, as always, keep it simple.

Transcribed by https://podium.page