Episode Transcript

Rusty Rueff: Welcome back, everyone, to the Faith Driven Entrepreneur podcast. We just want to stop here for a second and thank you for continuing to download and listen each week. We so sincerely appreciate you. Our guests today are Peter Greer and Chris Horst. Peter and Chris have been a part of Hope International for more than 15 years. Together, they have given voice to the role of the church and Christians within culture. Peter serves today as the President and CEO of Hope International. Prior to that, he was a microfinance advisor in Cambodia and Zimbabwe and also the managing director for Urwego Bank in Rwanda. Chris is the Chief Advancement Officer of Hope International and serves on the boards of Denver Institute for Faith and Work and the Mile High Workshop. Peter Chris have coauthored the books Mission Drift and Rooting for Rivals. And just this year, Peter and Chris published their latest book, The Gift of Disillusionment Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades. Based on stories of Christians around the world, this book reframes disillusionment as an invitation to dependance on God in those difficult circumstances that we all face. In this episode of The Faith Driven Entrepreneur, we discuss with Peter and Chris the reality of circumstances that may lead to disillusionment for entrepreneurs and the choices they have in how to respond. If you’re struggling with a jaded view of the world and honestly, who is it right now? We hope this conversation brings you some comfort and encouragement. Let’s listen in.

Rusty Rueff: All right, William, we’re back at it.

William Norvel: We are here. We are here. Two of three, 66% of our team is here. But we have two guest today, which makes up for that.

Rusty Rueff: That’s true. That’s true. So there’s a multiplying effect if if we get that.

William Norvel: That’s the game plan.

Rusty Rueff: This this could be really quite an episode. It’s always good to be here with you. Henry’s out on the road and missing us all. But I know he’ll be listening. And we wish him very well in all of his travels. So let’s welcome in our guest today. And we’re going to talk about something really interesting. We’re gonna talk about disillusionment. Disillusionment. So we’re going to start.

William Norvel: With the definition of that word, because I’m from Alabama and I don’t know, it.

Rusty Rueff: Has got a lot of syllables. I understand that. And we have to be careful with you. We understand.

William Norvel: We’re ACT people, not SAT people.

Rusty Rueff: All right. Let’s welcome in Peter Greer and Chris Horst. Welcome, guys. Thanks for being on the podcast today.

Peter Greer: Thanks for having us. Great to be with you.

Christ Horst: Yeah, excited for the conversation.

Rusty Rueff: So we want to spend the majority of our time talking about your new book, The Gift of Disillusionment. And it’s got a subtitle there, Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades. And, you know, entrepreneurs we’re full of idealism. So you’re going to have to take us through when does it fade and how do we know it’s fading and all of that stuff? But I think William’s right. You got to start with disillusionment. What’s it mean? And then how did you get to this book?

Christ Horst: Well, it’s interesting. We wrote this book. I began writing it over three years ago. So it started prior to COVID being part of our glossary. It was a project that we began working on because we knew that we needed kind of an injection of hope in our own lives, in our own work. And then the world turned upside down. And the last few years, I think it’s not been hard to find discouragement, disillusionment, confusion. And so this book comes at a time when I think the world has really been turned on its head. And so it’s unfortunately good timing to have a book on disillusionment. We wish it wasn’t the case. But as we really began to dig in to this idea, really, our search was for like, how do leaders sustain when everything goes poorly and things don’t go as we would plan it to go. And we were just inspired as we went about our research, as we met leaders from around the world who really found their hope outside of themselves. So that’s kind of the premise of the book.

Rusty Rueff: So when does idealism fade?

Peter Greer: You know, Rusty there is not a specific timeline on that, but I have yet to find a leader that gets involved in whether it’s launching a new enterprise or joining a different organization. I’ve yet to meet someone that says, Man, that was easier than I thought it was going to be. There were not the challenges that I thought, and I know, William, we spent enough time together, and I have so appreciated your willingness, your candor to speak what a lot of us have experienced is this is difficult work and very few people have the words of Jesus as their favorite Bible verse when he says, you know, in this world you will have troubles. There will be difficulty. Very few people have that on their wall with inspirational pictures behind it. But it is the reality. This is difficult work, whether you’re launching a venture, whether you’re working for a nonprofit. This is difficult work. And the moment of disillusionment, I think, is when our expectations and reality collide, expectations of what it was going to be like, of the success that we were going to have, and reality that this is far more complicated, far more difficult than we initially thought. And so, Chris, as he mentioned, we have been through an incredibly challenging season with Ukraine where Hope was founded. What we’ve been working on there, but also in our personal lives. I’ve been involved in foster care and I hit that wall of disillusionment. I hit it or it hits me. But it hits hard in that. And those questions of how do you sustain service when it feels really, really difficult? So that really was the premise. What is it that sustains service? When we realize that idealism, it collides with reality and we recognize this is really, really hard.

Rusty Rueff: I remember back, I don’t know if you guys would remember the cartoon series Bloom County, remember with Opus the Penguin and Milo, the characters. It was a syndicated comic strip back in the day. And Milo goes to the lost and found at a store, and he’s talking about all the things he’s lost. And he says, You know, I’ve lost my youthful idealism. Can you tell me where to find it? And so some of it, I think, you know, as you say, as we grow up, as we mature, as we go that idealism that maybe we had as children starts to dissipate, and then then the challenges of life we have. Right. That hit us. That set us back. And in the book, of course, there’s no lack of instability and challenges that we have right now. I mean, it seems like the world sort of teetering on that instability. In the book, you decide to weave in the study of Jeremiah. So as you said, there’s really nobody this disillusionment or loss of eye on their wall. But Jeremiah, he’s a poster child for that. I mean, if you can go wrong, it goes wrong. Is that why you chose him for the story?

Christ Horst: You know, I would say and I’m not trying to be cute about this, but I wouldn’t say we chose Jeremiah. I’d say Jeremiah chose us as we got into this book. We didn’t plan to write on Jeremiah, but as we began interviewing these leaders in Haiti and Zimbabwe and listening to their stories of how they’ve gone through coups and they’ve experienced earthquakes and they’ve had betrayals, they all pointed to Jeremiah. And so Jeremiah was not in the initial book proposal. Jeremiah came to us through our conversations with these leaders. And yeah, you’re exactly right, Rusty. He is a poster child for disillusionment. Barbara Brown Taylor is a theologian. She has this powerful quote where she says, we should take apart the word disillusionment and really look at it. And it’s really disillusionment, like the loss of an illusion. And I think wITH Jeremiah why Jeremiah was such an inspiring leader to the individuals that we talked to in the book is because he wasn’t buying the lies that his life, his work, his teaching and preaching, his leadership was going to play out the way that he would have hoped to it play out. And as you know, like he got betrayed. He was thrown in the pit to die. He was made fun of by everyone. You think about the ark of israel, where they were in slavery for 400 years, and then the 40 years in the wilderness and then 800 years so twice as long as they were in slavery, they experienced being in the promised land, having the walls of Jerusalem standing and being able to worship God in the temple. And Jeremiah presides over all of that collapsing. So he is the bearer of all bad news in many ways to the people of Israel, and he’s hated for it. And yet we have more words written by Jeremiah than any other author of any of the biblical text. Jeremiah is the longest book in the Bible. He’s author of one of the most popular verses in the Bible, which we talk about a lot. Jeremiah 29:17 So yeah, it’s a curious person to feature, not someone we would have chosen. I think both Peter and I would admit we weren’t like Jeremiah aficionados prior to starting this project, but we both are now. What an amazingly important prophet for us to be listening to in this moment.

Rusty Rueff: So you took a very global perspective in this book. You have stories of Christian leaders from many places around the globe Zimbabwe, Haiti, Guatemala, Poland, Palestine, Philippines, India, Zambia, Lebanon. You went out and you found these stories and you brought them to us in the book. Why did you feel the need for this to be a global message? And the reason I ask the question is because sometimes people who don’t understand other parts of the world can either begin to romanticize it or not understand the dire nature of it, or are just not have a personal empathy to that versus, you know, some things that are happening closer to home. So talk a little bit about that global influence and then how those stories came to you guys.

Peter Greer: And we do feature stories from our own country, and there are absolutely individuals that have really demonstrated that, as Eugene Peterson says, that long obedience in the same direction. But we also know that some of our heroes are those individuals that do serve around the world, stories that probably most of the readers have never heard of the individuals that we profiled. But often times we think about going and serving and what can we give to these other countries? And we wanted to go with a posture of and what can we learn from these individuals that have been living in situations where lack of certainty, where unpredictability, where challenge is far more common in their daily experience than perhaps what we have in our day to day experience. There’s a lot that we can learn from our global brothers and sisters. And so we reached out to our network and asked, who are those individuals that have served not four days, not four years, but for decades? And those individuals that perhaps are not as well known as others that might be on the speaking tour, individuals that have never yet been featured at an FDI or FDE conference, and individuals that we have so much to learn from in their long obedience in the same direction. And so that really was it. We wanted to flip the script a little bit. What can we learn from those individuals that serve in places of instability and as Chris said, that have overcome incredible challenges and that has every reason to perhaps grow cynical, every reason to lose hope. But like Jeremiah, have continued to faithfully follow what it is that God has put in front of them to do. And we were profoundly impacted by these individuals, by their stories and by their friendship.

William Norvel: Hmm. That’s amazing. I want to ask you about both of you. Maybe pick one of your favorite stories. Pick one of those leaders from the book. Because while we hope our entire audience purchases and reads every written word, there is a small, slight chance that one of them may be disobedient. There’s a chance. So if you would both highlight a story from one of those leaders, and just maybe in a couple of minutes tell their story and what you learned from it?

Christ Horst: Well, the one that comes to mind for me right now is simply because I’ve been interacting with them a lot recently as a leader from Poland named Merrick […]. Merrick, self-described hooligan. Growing up, he got in trouble with the law a lot. Had some really serious encounters with gangs in his community. Was a part of one, tremendous amount of alcohol abuse. Drug abuse, which he describes in detail and met the Lord, like as a young teenager, turned his life around. And then he was like, This is a place where I’m called. God’s called me to be in Poland, even though there’s a very small percentage of his neighbors that would call themselves Christians. He’s like, I’m called to serve in this place. So he began going to seminary, became a pastor, and then he was actually hired on to the seminary where he went and eventually got promoted to lead that seminary. But the part of his story that’s so powerful, we were very careful in the book to not write stories with just happy endings. Like we’re not in this book writing stories like any Follow Jesus. You put your hope in God and everything works out. Merrick was just really honest about the own challenges that he had to walk through and the crisis of faith that he navigated. Even as he was leading a seminary and even as he was faithfully following Christ, he describes the pain of taking one of his sons to an inpatient drug recovery program because his son was facing a really serious drug addiction. And as he’s there, finds out that his younger son also needed to be checked in because of his own drug addiction and drug abuse issues. And Merrick was driving back with his wife from dropping off both of their sons and just weeping with like, God, I’m following you like I’m serving you in this place where so few people know the name of Jesus. And in the midst of all that, you would allow, like my sons, to be trapped in this terrible, terrible condition. And as you said, you describe hope for him as like being on a boat in a storm. And so he, like, is in a boat. The storm is raging and every once in a while he can see land. But a lot of the time he can’t. And he felt like that was how God showed up to him in those moments where there was a lot of times when he had no hope at all and then a friend would stop by or a family member would touch base with him and ask how they could help and how they could encourage him. But yeah, in the midst of the Ukraine invasion and dealing with all the refugees in Poland, interacting with Merrick recently and like seeing the way God is powerfully using him in his community to help provide support and care for other refugees who are hurting in the midst of this terrible time in Eastern Europe. It’s just been really inspiring to all of us. So Merrick story is one that really sticks with me because I think as someone who’s in leadership at a Christian faith based nonprofit, one of the lies that we can believe, these illusions that we can hold on to is that if we do really good work, then our personal life will kind of sort itself out and our family and everything will be great and Merrick’s story, I think, is one that, we, a lot of us relate to because you can show up at work and put on a happy face and do the right things. But there’s no guarantees that, like, just because we’re doing this work, the rest of our life is going to work out the way we’d hoped it would. That’s not a promise that we have from Jesus as Peter’s, that the one promise we do have that relates is that in this life we have trouble, which again is not the most comforting always, but it’s something Jesus told us was going to be true.

Peter Greer: Yeah. And William, I mean, choose just one. That’s tough. There are so many amazing ones. The one that I was thinking about just a couple of days ago was the story of Joanne Lyon. And I was thinking of her because our friend was just talking about feeling like their local church was just not active in some of the challenges and not rising to this moment and feeling really disillusioned with their local church and with their local body of believers. And I thought of Joanne Lyon because she had absolutely experienced that. She talked about growing up and seeing the civil rights movement and not just having inaction from her local church, but seeing apathy. And then she ended up going to Ethiopia when there was the Ethiopian famine and coming back and really being met with a callousness of the church turning away from any sort of response and just feeling like, is this the church? Like, where are we in issues of of loving justice and mercy? Where is the church right now? And she was married to a pastor, her husband, and they are still married today. But but she begged him to get out of full time pastoral ministry, begged him. And she describes this moment, though, where she was in the hospital with an issue. And that to her was a moment where she got invaded by the Holy Spirit and her life was changed. And instead of judgment and cynicism, love flooded her life and then out of her into her community. And she has spent her life being a reformer, trying to bring the church into issues of justice and mercy and gospel proclamation. And she’s been involved in founding an organization called the World Hope International, but also being a leader within her denomination. And for me, that just was so hopeful for someone who felt that the siren call of cynicism that tugged to say, well, let’s just get out. And she didn’t say yes to that. And instead God put a call, infused her with love for her church, for her community, and then empowered by the Holy Spirit, she became a wonderful reformer within that. So to me that was just a hopeful story. But again, she to she pointed to Jeremiah and to this unlikely Old Testament prophet that figured out a different way of responding to incredible pain and challenge and yet still proclaiming a message of hope and a future.

William Norvel: Amen. So I find myself thinking right now, okay, I’m listening to this. This sounds good. But also, gosh, don’t entrepreneurs need this unbridled hope to push through everything? And don’t they need this illusion a little bit because that’s what keeps you going when things aren’t working. What am I missing there? How can an entrepreneur benefit? And what’s that? Especially a Christ following entrepreneur. What’s the true hope we should be hanging on to? That’s actually more motivating and sustaining than maybe the false, you know, thing you see in the media of how the entrepreneur wins at the end of the day. How does that dichotomy work?

Christ Horst: I think part of it is recognizing both the full hope and the full vulnerability of our ventures and our leadership. And I think where we get into trouble is when we just choose to embrace the full hope or the full possibility. Right. So I love Hope International. I’ve been at Hope for 16 years. I believe fully in our mission. I’ve seen it countless places around the world. Like, it’s amazing. And also, if I’m only sharing that story with our team and with our donors or about myself, like I know, like my gifts and my strengths that I’m just leading and sharing just those things. I think we run the danger of when we reach that point of disillusionment, that everything implodes and everything collapses. I think when we hold that full possibility alongside full vulnerability, where we can say, yes, this work is amazing and we’re dealing with issues of fraud right now within Hope, an organization that we love and we have staff that we care for who are actually taking money from Hope International, and we have to navigate that as an organization that’s just honest. And we have staffing issues, we’ve got personnel challenges, we’ve got board difficulties to work through and we’ve got fundraising and donor complications like these are real things that are happening. And so as leaders, I think we do have to be in some cases, like we have to be illusioned by what could be. But I think what keeps us grounded and keeps this work growing in a healthy way and us growing as leaders in a healthy way, when we hold alongside that the full possibility of all the things that could go wrong or are going wrong. And I think that’s where you see in these leaders that we feature in the book and in Jeremiah, it’s not just doomsday. Jeremiah And then these leaders like it is, yeah, this is God’s judgment. It’s coming upon us. And yet, you see, sprinkled throughout Jeremiah and through Lamentations, which we believe he also wrote incredible hope, incredible confidence in God’s provision and God’s goodness. And that, I think, is the recipe is to kind of hold both of those in tension.

Rusty Rueff: Yeah, that’s a hard thing to hold in tention, though, but you’re exactly right. I mean, we have to I want to talk more about Hope International in just a moment. But before we leave this segment that we’re on, can you give some advice on how to dig out of the hole of cynicism? So let’s say you’ve lost that idealism. You haven’t been able to work yourself through it. And I’ve got to tell you, cynics and complainers, you want people to reinforce your problem. They will do it right. I mean, cynics love hanging with cynics and complainers love hanging with complainers. And all of a sudden you’re surrounded by it and then it’s reinforcing the problems to yourself. Any good advice to how to dig out of the hole of cynicism?

Peter Greer: I think that you’re exactly right. And I think the challenge right now is what is it that we are consuming? If you look at the headlines, we are barraged by bad news. The overwhelming majority of messages that we are consuming is what is wrong of this rise and fall, of this organization, of this failure, of this particular leader, of this is what’s wrong in this place. And if that is the diet that we are consuming, we are going to be people who have a malnourished hope. And I think one of the incredible gifts that we were given was starting to think about some of these issues and having a different area of focus. We did not want to focus individuals that have lost hope. We did not want to focus on the cynics. We wanted to find those individuals that had charted a different path and had that hopefulness, even though they had been through some incredible challenges. And I would say on a very practical basis, you want to get out of cynicism. You want to get out of that level of discouragement, disillusionment. You got to start listening to different stories and in a very practical way, find those individuals that you know, that you love, that you respect, and say what has sustained your service. In essence, that’s the fundamental question that we started. This project is what sustains your service? And then listen to the response. And again, this Jeremiah 17, it gives this powerful story of contrast, but it says this. It says talking about those. There’s two responses. You can find those individuals that try to draw strength from mere flesh, try to say, I’m going to grit it out. I am going to figure this out. It said, Those are the ones whose heart turns away from the Lord. So you try to just grit it out, use your own skill, your own ability. We believe that is what eventually leads to discouragement, disillusionment and cynicism. And then it goes on, though, and it gives a story of contrast. But blessed are those who trust in the Lord who’s confident is not from one’s abilities but confidence that comes from who God is. And I think that’s really the story of contrast. So find those stories of hope. Listen. Well, and then the ultimate story, a story that is it is not about your strength, your ability, but about what Christ has done on the cross. That is why we have hope. And that’s why the rest of the verses in this life you have trouble. But take heart. I have overcome the world, have hope because we know the end of the story and then get to work and the difficult work that God has called you to and be ready because it is not going to be easy. It is going to be difficult plan, prepare for it and have hope because the end of the story is so good.

Rusty Rueff: Amen. Amen

Christ Horst: I want to just quickly add, I heard a wise friend over the weekend sharing about the importance of finding the slivers of hope and glimmers of hope that they’re always there. And we’ve got to look for them and find them and hold on to them. And to connect back to your question, William, which I think really the two questions are interconnected. I think one of the ways that we can sustain our idealism and sustain our hope in a healthy way is to think about how we’re surrounding yourself as leaders and as organizations. And one of the biggest gifts at Hope is intern season. So every summer, we host 20 college interns. They join us at our office in the US and all over the world. And one of the things that I’ve found is that I start believing more in hopes mission like June 1st every year, because I start to hear them say back to me the things that they see at Hope and they’re coming in and they’re bringing all of their idealism. And part of me wants to say, what’s not that good? Like, there are some challenges and we talk about those things, but we need that. And I think as leaders we can think about how we’re hiring, how restructuring our organizations practically to ensure that we have a mix of those that have been through it. And then to have that sort of rugged idealism that’s been kind of refined through disillusionment. But we also just need those pure idealists that are just there and ready to get behind the mission and say, This is unbelievable. Do you know what you get to wake up every day and get paid to do? This is amazing. Like, yeah, you’re right. I haven’t thought about that in a bit, but you’re absolutely right. I’ve been so focused on how I can catch up in my inbox and get expense reports approved and all the other stuff that builds up organizational life. So I think that’s one of the other pragmatic ways that we can navigate cynicism is thinking through kind of how we’re arranging the team around us.

Rusty Rueff: That’s great advice. So back in 2014, the two of you decided you’re going to write a book together. I’m curious about what made you think you should do that, and then you decided you’re going to write more books together. And then I’m curious about how you sustained that. And you both have, you know, full time jobs. How do you fit that writing responsibility in?

Peter Greer: Yeah. So, Chris, I wanna hear your answer on this as well. But just personally, I think if you want to be an effective leader, you have to be a learner. And so we’ve never approach to any of the writing projects claiming to be subject to experts. We’ve claimed to say we want to research issues that we care deeply about. And then, thankfully, through our network, in our friendships, we’re going to go find the smartest people that we can find and we’re going to learn from them and the habit and discipline of starting with a question and a concern and then going and finding individuals that graciously share their expertize and their experience with us. That really has been our model. So starting with Mission Drift, when we wrote that together, it really was with this belief and conviction that when we look around that it is very possible that hope could lose our Christ centered DNA. We see other organizations that have lost what matters most, and so we wanted to go find those organizations that had scaled and professionalized and yet had retained the vitality of their core Christ centered mission and then rooting for rivals. Looking at this question about why is there not more collaboration? Why is there that spirit of scarcity and competition within organizations that seem like they should be on the same team, if not on the same page? And so, again, trying to find those ridiculously open handed, generous leaders and saying, how do you think, how do you act and how have you maintain this rooting for rivals posture and approach? So I would say with this one, it was the same piece of how do we sustain hope? So that really has been the process. Rusty And I sometimes feel like I might have a little bit more of an appetite for books than Chris. But Chris, publicly, I want to go on the record and say thank you for saying yes to this project. Thank you. Every project is better when I get to work with Chris. And so I couldn’t imagine a wiser, just true, true friend in the writing process as we explore these big questions together.

Christ Horst: Well, every book project I’ve worked on with Peter, there’s been a moment of disillusionment for me where I’m like, This really should just be your book. I think I’ll help you out, but I’m going to opt out. So we need to reinforce each other, even within a coauthor team occasionally. But yeah, the power of working as a team, I think has been really good. For both of us, where there are times and seasons where Peter’s carrying that kind of a lion’s share of the work and seasons where I am, a lot of people ask that question of like, Oh, Chris, are you doing all the work? And Peter’s putting his name out like, No, we’re like full team, full team. And it’s not just the two of us on the front cover of the book, we have Jill Heisey and Brianna Lapp name because they are invaluable partners that worked with us on this book and it’s been a journey. But yeah, we’ve now done three kind of full books together and it’s been great fun to really kind of push back on this idea that that we’ve got these topics figured out. And I think nothing like pushes me closer to vomit faster than when I hear someone describe us as thought leaders. Like we are trying to learn how we can be better as an organization and as leaders. And we wrote: rooting for rivals, and mission drift and the gift of disillusionment, because we want these things to be true for us, not because they are all the time.

Rusty Rueff: Well, we want to finish this podcast, so we’re going to William strike that question about thought leadership. Okay, just strike that.

William Norvel: Yeah. Yeah. Well, it’s tough with all those books behind Chris. I mean, he looks like a thought leader, right? I mean, when you see that picture, which we’ll post in the show notes, just a picture of Chris and all of these, I’m sure hundreds of read books behind him.

Christ Horst: It’s mostly comic books, but yeah. Thank you.

William Norvel: There’s wisdom in there. There’s wisdom in there. But okay, so hearing the perspective, I actually have never heard either one of you talk about that perspective of how you come in to the books with a path of learning and trying to understand things. And that’s where the books come from. I actually never heard either one of you say that. So I want to ask, what’s one thing you learned through this project that you’ve taken with you? I’m sure you learned a ton and sort of like, what’s one thing you take from this project that you’ve I don’t know if applied the right word, but has reframed your work that you’re doing, reframed your personal life and just how it sustains you as you’re both leading an organization.

Christ Horst: Well, I learned fairly early in the process of one of the illusions, the sort of top illusions that I’ve believed for a long time, and that was that I could figure my way out of any problem or challenge. And, you know, in March 2020, as we started working on this book, probably in mid 2019, the March 2020 hits, and like I’ve never known a deeper valley in my own life and professional journey, I hated my job for most of 2020. All these perspectives on how should we respond to the pandemic? This is what organizations should do. And there are often times conflicting advice from trusted advisers and friends, and everyone had a different perspective on how this crisis was going to unfold and how organizations like Hope International should respond. And that just became like this unsolvable problem that I kept trying to solve. And so I just I mean, I was like a chronic doom scholar. I mean, like, literally waking up early every morning and reading and reading and reading and reading and responding and thinking and, you know, trying to, like, pin down this challenge. And I think it was probably at some point in, you know, sometime late spring, early summer when my wife Alli just said to me, she’s like, hey, you’re a mess. Like, I don’t know what’s going on, but, like, something needs to change. Yeah, the world is upside down right now. Like, this isn’t sustainable and you’re not in a good place. And it was like the word of truth I needed in that moment. And I was like writing a book on disillusionment. But like in the midst of it, myself and I recognized like over the course of kind of experiencing that, that I really idolized certainty and predictability and like my own ability to kind of see my way through when things were challenging or confusing. And this is one of those seasons when they’re just born easy answers. There was nothing that was simple or straightforward. There was not anything that was predictable or certain. And like listening to leaders from around the world on these phone calls, like, I finally began to hear them say, Welcome to the party. This is normal for all of the world. This is normal for all of human history. To have certainty and predictability and reliability is like things that are normal for you is crazy. Like that is not normal. And that was a huge wake up call for me and helped me to to really anchor my hope outside of myself. And I think in some ways it was a gift in disguise to really experience that valley and that like a long stretch of time where I was in a bad place as it allowed me to discover like, where my hope live in this place? That’s definitely a lesson that I’m grateful for, even though it was extraordinarily difficult.

Two real practical ones for me. But the first is, even though we profile individuals in the book when we were having conversations with them, these are never individual stories. They were very quick to point to others that were on this journey with them and maybe related to their previous question. But even working on this with Chris, life is not a solo sport. So the question of who is it that we are walking with? Who is it that can, in those moments of discouragement, can get you out? And the converse who are those that in the moments of when you need a little more grounding, can give you that as well. So who are we doing life with? Because life is not a solo sport. And then the second piece is, as we talk to these individuals, there was this Tim Keller wrote, you know, the freedom of self forgetfulness, I believe. And in many ways, the message that we heard was these individuals had received the gift of getting over themselves. The focus was unmistakably not inward. It was not a question of how does this make me feel? How does this make me.. No! It was an upward and then an outward focus. And I think that’s the other really key piece. What leads to cynicism and discouragement and inward focus accelerates that are real quickly. So that path out often times is a path up and then extending the gaze beyond yourself to others as well.

William Norvel: Gosh, that’s so good. That sounds so good and so hard. I don’t want to pass by that because I just gosh, I just say I want to say amen and move on. And like, that’s just something so easy to do, but it’s just so difficult for me. It’s like, Yeah, I agree, but gosh, letting go of myself, letting go of my own ambitions, letting go of my own pride sounds really hard. Thanks for bringing that. And I, I feel like we can do that sometimes in the gift of storytelling, and you’ve both brought that to us. When we hear others, I feel like God is and God was a storyteller. When you talked about Jeremiah still telling stories from 2000 years of Jeremiah 4000 years ago. Right. How do you see that manifesting itself? How do you see God’s hand in storytelling and how does that change people when they hear them?

Christ Horst: I think one of the temptations perhaps is, as Peter mentioned earlier, like to only kind of tune our ears to the crisis and kind of sensational news stories and now myths, all the everyday saints who are going about their work in a really faithful way. I think another danger is to just look at highlight reels and solely see kind of the stories of leaders that everything has worked out perfectly for them. And so I think that that’s one of the things that when we approached this book and how we were going to share the stories of these leaders, we wanted to do that with also a mind to like how did God tell stories in Scripture? And when you really rewind a little bit and think about it, it’s insane. The people that are featured in the Bible, I mean, as me personally growing up in the church, Christian school like these stories are kind of wrote to me a little bit. But these stories are nuts. I mean, these individuals, whether it’s Jeremiah’s or Noah’s or David’s or Peter’s, like the details that we get of their lives and their doubts, their shortcomings and their sin. I mean, it is unlike any storytelling that we see often. You know, it’s so complete and we get this full vision of the whole story of the mountaintop moments and the valleys know we see that with Moses, we see it with all of our, you know, the heroes of our faith. And I think that’s to me, those are the most powerful stories, are not the highlight reels and not the, you know, crash and burn stories, but the ones where we see the full thing from beginning to end.

Rusty Rueff: So we’re going to move into a segment we call The Lightning Round, and this is where we get a chance to just give you an opportunity to answer some questions quickly, 30 seconds or less. You can repeat them back if you want, but we’re going to hit you with them. And we’d love to have you bounce back and forth so that you each answer the question. Is that cool with you guys?

Peter Greer: We’re ready.

Rusty Rueff: All right. You’re ready. The book you wish you would have written.

William Norvel: Or still could.

Christ Horst: This is a long title, but for those that spend most of their life sending emails and making PowerPoint presentations, it’s really important to spend time. Landscaping, a guide and memoir.

William Norvel: I love the concept. I think we can work on the title though, and just throw it out there. I think we can get there.

Christ Horst: I want to workshop it at some point. So that’s just kind of I’m here for getting out there.

Peter Greer: I’m going a very different direction on this one, Rusty But the one that I would love to write, I’ve become fascinated with the power of individual and corporate prayer within organizations, and I just am so convinced there is related to our topics. There is a difference when there is a corporate expression of prayer together. And yet the stats are that very few organizations really have incorporated that deep and active prayer. So that’s a topic that fascinates me.

Rusty Rueff: All right, great. We’ve now got the next two books being worked. This is going.

William Norvel: No pressure.

Rusty Rueff: And no pressure. Best time of day for you to write and be creative.

Christ Horst: For me, it’s Fridays. So that’s not a time of day, it’s the time of week. But we’ve kind of structured our organizational rhythms where Fridays are for deep work. So Fridays at a time where we can’t send emails or receive emails or text messages unless it’s an emergency at work. And so Fridays become writing days for me.

Peter Greer: And for me, I’m a little bit different. For me, it’s airplane time. I love saying hello to my neighbors and then putting the earphones on and that’s what I do. The vast majority of my writing is in that uninterrupted long term flights to really. Yeah. No distractions and really go deep in those moments.

Rusty Rueff: To be honest. Have you ever taken a flight so you could write?

Peter Greer: I mean, kind of I actually have said yes to a trip that I knew would have a long flight time, so I would have that. Yeah, but airplanes are just amazing places to be uninterruptible.

Rusty Rueff: That’s great. The gift of disillusionment. What’s one piece of advice you would give to pastors as they’re trying to help those in their congregation that are struggling?

Christ Horst: Delete your social media accounts. That was the first thing that came to mind.

William Norvel: Yeah.

Christ Horst: Yeah.

Peter Greer: The stats Rusty 38% of pastors, according to Barna, are actively considering leaving the ministry. So I would say maybe especially a subset for those 38% find a way of stepping away. Especially if you are in the low battery mode, time away and saturate yourself with whatever it is that gives you life. I think pastors need an infusion of hope right now, and maybe for the congregation members, just stop the complainer, put them in a separate room by themselves. But that just I think nothing saps up more than just too many of those voices right now.

Rusty Rueff: Great. One last one for me, and then I’ll turn it over to William. What’s the question that someone’s asked you about any one of your books that has been your favorite question?

Christ Horst: I like when individuals ask, they ask us to share the challenges of co-writing a book, because I think that that’s always a fun thing to discuss.

Peter Greer: The one for me is especially after rooting for Rivals. There have been a number of people that have used that as an excuse for. You must partner with me because you wrote, rooting for a rival. So that always makes me laugh or similar. When people use mission drift in a way that. Yeah, well, I’ll just stop there. Yeah.

Christ Horst: Bludgeon.

William Norvel: Yeah. Okay. So it like some potential unintended consequences. What’s a favorite story from some of the books you’ve written that you’ve heard of? You know, I mean, obviously, you hope it makes influence. I know personally. So there’s a chance. I don’t know if it’s bragging or just share what God did through an organization that maybe or a person that maybe you would have never expected but gives you joy. Once you heard about it.

Peter Greer: Yeah, we have heard from several individuals just in the last couple of weeks that have read the gift of disillusionment and with a lot of candor have said, I have really been struggling. I am in those stats of individuals that have lost hope. I have I have been in a difficult place. And this allowed me to refocus and to have an infusion of hope that I desperately needed. So especially for those leaders that are in a system of self-diagnosed, perhaps disillusionment or discouragement or cynicism, and that the stories that were included did what they did for us and brought a fresh infusion of hope.

Christ Horst: I talked to an executive director of a nonprofit recently, and he said every new board member gets a copy of Rooting for Rivals and wants it to kind of frame the way that they operate as a generous nonprofit. And so that’s one that that comes to mind.

William Norvel: That’s good, that’s good what’s one thing our listeners can do to change our thinking from an inward focus to an outward focus.

Christ Horst: One thing that was really helpful for me and my own valley was to find ways to serve in really selfless ways and ways that are outside the limelight and no one’s going to observe or see. So putting ourselves in places where we are as leaders, completely giving up all of our authority and leadership on behalf of others. I think it’s just a really shaping and formative thing.

William Norvel: And I assume landscaping is implied.

Christ Horst: That can help, too. That’s and I also do think vitamin D matters. So, yeah, stay outside as much as possible.

William Norvel: Amen. Amen. Okay. So just as we go. You all have been surrounded by amazing leaders, you are amazing leaders yourselves. And then you’ve gotten to hear so many stories. What’s a bit of advice or encouragement you would give to an entrepreneur listening right now that could be about anything. What would you tell somebody who says, I just I just need some encouragement or somebody who knows hundreds of stories of people like me?

Peter Greer: William in super practical way, I would say open up your you version or wherever you read scripture and go to Jeremiah Chapter 17 verses five through eight as a very different perspective on what it is that is going to sustain your service. It’s going to give you permission to come to the end of your abilities. It’s going to give you permission to say, I don’t know exactly what to do, but I do know where to go. And I think it is that perspective that really does sustain our service and the freedom that comes from acknowledging our limits, acknowledging that we don’t always know what to do, and acknowledging that we do make a mess of things but return to the source of hope. That is not our strength. It is not our wisdom. It is a God who invites us to return. And that really is the theme that we see throughout the book of Jeremiah again and again. It says, Return to me, return to me, return to me. And I think that’s the invitation today, especially for those that are weary, especially for those that are discouraged. That is the ultimate invitation. Return to me. Return to me.

William Norvel: Amen, actually could ask you, would you mind reading those verses? Could you pull them up?

Peter Greer: Yeah, absolutely. So it’s I’ll be reading from the NIV, but here it says, it says this is what the Lord says. Cursed is the one who trusts in man who draws strength from mere flesh and his heart turns away from the Lord. That person will be like a bush in the wastelands. They will not see prosperity when it comes. They will dwell on the parched places of the desert in a salt land where no one lives. But blessed is the one who trust in the Lord whose confidence is in Him. They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out it roots by the stream. It does not fear when he comes, it’s the leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.

Rusty Rueff: Amen. Amen. You know, we usually in our segments with asking you to tell us where God’s working in your life in the Word. But I think you just nailed it. I think you just nailed it. And I don’t know. Chris, you got anything to add to that?

Christ Horst: No, that was I was ready for that question and I was excited to share those verses because of how meaningful they’ve been over the past year years. So I think it’s a perfect exclamation point.

Rusty Rueff: That’s awesome. So just to remind our listeners, the book is The Gift of Disillusionment, Enduring Hope for Leaders After Idealism Fades. And the authors are Peter Greer and Chris Horst. I know the book is available everywhere. Books are available. So let’s make sure that, you know, everyone grabs a copy. And when you’re done with books, I know one of the blessings that I feel that we can do with the book after we have read it is to give it to somebody else. And, you know, they look great on our bookshelves. And, you know, as authors, sometimes we think and I’m author too, you know, we think, oh, we’ve lost a sale. That’s not true. When someone shares that book to someone else, then they tell someone else and they may not share it, but somebody else go out and buy it. So let’s encourage our listeners to do that and thank you guys for being so open and authentic and joyful. I’m sorry our listeners couldn’t see you on Zoom like we have. I don’t think this entire time either one of you ever took a smile off your face. And that in itself is very helpful and encouraging to us. So thank you so much and blessings to you.

Christ Horst: Thanks, Rusty. Thanks, William, and thanks to Henry as well. Just in case it’s of any interest to your listeners, Henry and Peter are really good cornhole team, so I got to observe that firsthand. So just a random fact to end this one.

William Norvel: Oh, I’ve got another one. Last lightning round in honor of Henry. Favorite ice cream store in your hometown where you live.

Peter Greer: No question. Bates Farm. If anyone is in New England, you’ve got to check it out. Carlisle, Massachusetts.

Christ Horst: This is super lame, but we can walk to Sonic. And so the Sonic dollar cone, you know, vanilla cone. It’s not flashy, but for young kids, it’s good softserve. So that’s everyday ice cream shop.

William Norvel: Hey, man, it may not be sexy, but it’s everywhere. You know, we got to travel to Massachusetts for Peters, but we can all go to Sonic.