Scott Sauls
13 min read ⭑
“I’m trying to convince the already-loved to believe how loved they already are. You tend to live really well when you’re convinced of that.”
Scott Sauls uses his more than 30 years of leadership experience to help leaders and public influencers build a strong, Christ-centered foundation for their work, ministry and private life. He’s the founder of Healthy Leaders Inc. and its expanded project, the Sycamore Leaders Community, in Nashville. He’s also the author of several books, his latest of which is The Mercy King. Before becoming a leadership coach, Scott pastored several large churches, including Redeemer Presbyterian in New York City.
In his interview, Scott gives us an insider’s look at his love for multicultural community, navigating the line between righteous and unrighteous anger, and why he’s not afraid to use AI for study and research.
The following is a transcript of a live interview. Responses have been edited and condensed for brevity and clarity.
QUESTION #1: ACQUAINT
Food is always about more than food; it’s also about home and people and love. So how does a go-to meal at your favorite hometown restaurant reveal the true you behind your web bio?
I could answer this question a thousand different ways because my wife and I love a good Chipotle or fast food option. We’re also foodies who like to splurge from time to time, but I think that a visit to one of our favorite restaurants would reveal our appreciation for the international and global community. We like to go to Indian, Thai and authentic Chinese restaurants that remind us of the diversity of our city, which we love.
However, although Nashville is one of the top five most internationally diverse cities in the country, it’s hard to experience this diversity because the city is fairly segregated. Dining in with the authentic ethnic expression of someone from another country who has decided to plant themselves here in our hometown is an enriching experience for us. Our enjoyment stems partly from the five years we spent in New York City, where we heard 12 different languages spoken on the subways every day. It’s hard to leave that behind. We enjoy a good cross-cultural experience, and dining is certainly one of those expressions.
Alexander Andrews; Unsplash
QUESTION #2: REVEAL
What “nonspiritual” activity have you found to be quite spiritual, after all? What quirky proclivity, out-of-the-way interest or unexpected pursuit refreshes your soul?
I don’t mean to be contrarian, but I don’t think there’s such a thing as a “nonspiritual” activity. I suspect that’s what you’re getting at with the way you framed the question. When it comes to faith and work, I’m sold out on Steven Garber’s false church model, which was customized for New York City through the Center for Faith and Work and the church that I was part of there for several years, as put together by my mentor, Tim Keller. We brought a similar model here to a church that I pastored for 11 years in Nashville.
Those who are in ministry leadership have an incredible opportunity to use Scripture to awaken people to how significant the contribution they make in any sector is, whether the arts and entertainment, business, leadership, middle management, professional sports or any other endeavor that taps into creative, restorative energy.
In other words, if you’re creatively putting something into the world to contribute to human flourishing, to make the world a little bit better, or you’re discovering that you have an opportunity to repair a broken person, place or thing, you are doing God’s work. One of the things that I’ve preached ever since I was awakened to these realities about 20 years ago is that any professional who is doing creative or restorative work is just as much doing God’s work as a pastor. I get to preach and teach the Scriptures, and everybody who’s a working person has the opportunity to apply it.
That’s where the biblical imagination comes into play. What kind of vocation did Jesus choose for himself? He chose blue-collar work. He chose to be last place instead of first in all the pecking orders of his life, including vocationally, and chose to hail from a town that wasn’t known for crushing it or being on the innovative front edge of creativity and restorative work. I think there’s a message there — that the person who doubles his one talent faithfully gets the same reward as the person who doubles his 10 talents. Scale is a factor, but in the kingdom of God, volume is not. The Lord wants us to multiply what’s been given to us, and some people’s capacity is different from others’. The professional landscaper or lawnmower guy will, in many cases, get a much better reward than a lot of CEOs and pastors. We’re going to be surprised when we get to heaven and see the upside-down nature of God’s kingdom.
QUESTION #3: CONFESS
Every superhero has a weakness; every human, too. We’re just good at faking it. But who are we kidding? We’re all broken and in this thing together. So what’s your kryptonite, and how do you confront its power?
I could give you seven different versions of kryptonite in my life, and that’s not false humility. I think that’s realizing I’m just as unfinished at 58 years old as I was at 18, when I first became a follower of Christ. God has this way of expanding our self-awareness to keep us humble. My kryptonite is misinformation, that is, when people lie to diminish others. I’ve been on the receiving end and have also witnessed it.
Recently, I received a text from a dear friend who’s a public figure. She was grieving about some ways she had been slandered, things I know are not true because I was there. That really chaps me. My anger starts virtuously because I think we should all be zealous for truth-telling and for the ninth commandment — not bearing false witness and not diminishing our neighbor with our words. But that anger can also lead me to a dark place of unhealthy anger that is not righteous, and I essentially participate in the very thing that I’m upset about.
A lot of people reading this may struggle with anger and be susceptible, like I am, to confusing righteous anger with unrighteous anger. There are some things worth getting angry about. We should harness that anger in the service of what’s good and true and beautiful and right and just. The problem is when my righteous anger meanders into the world of unrighteousness.
That’s an easy one to answer — but a hard one to live out.
QUESTION #4: FIRE UP
Tell us about your toil. How are you investing your professional time right now? What’s your current obsession? And why should it be ours?
I’m involved with essentially three things. I started a coaching business, which is also a ministry where I work with predominantly high-capacity, high-responsibility leaders and public influencers here in the Nashville area. I’m working on a project called the Sycamore Community that will expand what we do nationally and make it accessible to leaders outside our area. That’s my main pastoral work these days.
Secondly, I travel and speak at different churches and do staff training for churches and ministries, all in the service of organizational and institutional health, especially at the leadership level. That’s become a real passion of mine coming out of a season of unhealth in my own life and ministry. Part of my amends, as they say in the 12-step community, is to help foster healthy leadership to whatever degree that I can in the lives of other leaders. So I have the unspeakable privilege of getting to do that with some amazing leaders here in Nashville. I’m about to enter my third year of this work.
Third, I write books. My seventh book, which is being released on June 2, is “The Mercy King.” It’s about the applied work of Christ in the lives of all people who follow him or are curious about him. The main point is to convince readers that God really does love them to the degree that he says he does. I’m trying to convince the already-loved to believe how loved they already are. You tend to live really well when you’re convinced of that. This is my effort to convince.
“The Ragamuffin Gospel” was the inspiration. I wanted to write a Protestant version of what Brennan Manning wrote as a Catholic priest, because I learned more about grace from an alcoholic pastor than nearly anyone else. Most people don’t know he was still on the bottle when he wrote that book. To that, some people would say, “Well, dismiss the book.” For me, that’s all the more reason to derive encouragement from it, knowing he was still struggling. He didn’t win the battle until the Lord took him home.
There are some very well-written Protestant books that attempt to embody the spirit of “The Ragamuffin Gospel,” but I felt like I had an opportunity to write the book I’ve always wanted to write, and Zondervan has invited me to do that. I don’t presume to have an audience as big as Brennan Manning, and I would encourage you to read his book before you read mine, but I hope that whoever gets their hands on the book will walk away with a similar taste of the Lord’s love for them.
QUESTION #5: BOOST
Whether we’re cashiers or CEOs, contractors or customer service reps, we all need God’s love flowing into us and back out into the world. How does the Holy Spirit invigorate your work? And how do you know it’s God when it happens?
I’m a Presbyterian, so the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak directly to me, except through the Scriptures. But one thing I’ve always told my Presbyterian friends is that there’s a lot to be learned from our charismatic and Pentecostal brothers and sisters about the truth that we celebrate and seek to understand deeply. It’s just sitting there dormant until it gets ignited in our hearts and then flows out into our lives.
I was taught and still embrace the reality that the Holy Spirit works by and with the Scriptures and by and with what is obvious about a Creator in his creation. The Holy Spirit especially works by and with exposure to the life, death, burial, resurrection and good work of Christ when he was here on the earth. So anything that resembles and amplifies that, I believe the Holy Spirit is in it. Anywhere there’s love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Anywhere that grumpy religion is defeated by those things and self-righteous religion is defeated by those things. Anywhere where there is humility enough to apologize and grace and forbearance enough to forgive, the Holy Spirit’s at work.
QUESTION #6: inspire
Scripture and tradition beckon us into the rich and varied habits that open our hearts to the presence of God. So let us in. Which spiritual practice is working best for you in this season?
The traditional straight-up Bible study and prayer. I’ve brought Anglican liturgy into my devotional life in my older years because I’ve had a growing appreciation for all the time-tested stuff that benefits multigenerational believers all over the world. There’s nothing quite like opening the Bible and letting God speak directly to you through that and then journaling it out.
I’m a pencil guy. For your pencil-loving readers, Blackwing Palomino is great. I have every version under the sun, and I use manual pencil sharpeners. I love the tactile experience as well. Something about the analog devotional experience where I have a paper, the Bible, a journal, a pencil and a manual sharpener activates something spiritually in me.
Doing things digitally and on apps just isn’t for me. There’s something about the digital medium that gets lost for me as opposed to the old school way of doing things. So I’m a little bit old fashioned in that way, but I basically take my time reading through the Bible. Some days, I’ll read a chapter; other days I’ll read five or six. It really depends on what kind of mood I’m in and how much time I’ve got. I’ll typically take a half-hour to an hour on any given morning to do that first thing. It’s worked for me for thirtysomething years, so as the saying goes, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” I’m probably a little old fashioned in that regard.
QUESTION #7: FOCUS
Looking backward, considering the full sweep of your unique faith journey and all you encountered along the way, what top three resources stand out to you? What changed reality and changed your heart?
Next to the Bible, “The Ragamuffin Gospel” and an Anglican liturgy have been incredibly formative, along with the entire Tim Keller sermon archive.
The next resource is movies, especially “Napoleon Dynamite.” Perhaps that answer catches you off guard, but that movie activated something in me to see how quirky the fearfully, wonderfully made human being can be. I love that God made room for quirky and for small-town life, right? “Napoleon Dynamite” is set right in the middle of nowhere, Idaho. They all have lives, and their prom is our Bridgestone Arena event. They experience that prom in a similar way that we experience Bridgestone, and I love the fact that an awkward dude like Napoleon can help his nonwhite buddy Pedro become class president. I just love those kinds of stories because they’re meant to be humorous and funny, but I think those Brigham Young University students who created that story tapped into some stuff that we all really need to understand about God. That’s how much God loves and works in the ordinary. He loves to elevate those who get overlooked, and he loves to put Summer Wheatley, the homecoming queen who lost the class presidency to Pedro, in her place. He humbles the proud.
There are so many good podcasts I could list, like “Hidden Brain.” I love the podcasts that aren’t expressly Christian but still express the truth and beauty and goodness of God in how they tell stories. I love the “Honestly with Bari Weiss” podcast as well. I love that there is a non-Christian, progressive version of what Tim Keller did as a Christian, not casting shade or buying into polarization. I think Bari Weiss,in a different way, has paid a price for not landing hard on one side or another. So, I’d say I really appreciate her too.
Certain things can be godsends, helping us survive, even thrive, in our fast-paced world. Does technology ever help you this way? Has an app ever boosted your spiritual growth? If so, how?
One hundred percent. I shared with you a little bit about my devotional practice. It is not uncommon for me, after I’ve spent time reading Scripture and journaling, to move on to the next chapter of my day. That often means hopping onto ChatGPT and asking it to act as a combination of my favorite Bible scholars, teachers and pastors. For example, I might say, “Tell me more about Hebrews 12:1-3 as applied to X, Y or Z.”
I know the subject of AI is polarizing, but it will spit out the most incredible version of what you ask it to if you prompt it well. I remember listening to a podcast featuring an interview with a well-known pastor. He asked ChatGPT to write a 150-word devotional in his own voice. He said, “ChatGPT did me better than I do me.” He used that as an example of why we should flee from AI.
I see his point because we don’t want to ask a machine to start doing our thinking, feeling, exposition and Bible study for us. There’s something about the process of digging in and “seeking so that we will find” as opposed to lazily depending on technology. But at the same time, technology can provide a wonderful accent to the work we do and add insight and clarity in the same way an ancient biblical commentary can.
So I’m a super fan of technology used rightly and redemptively. We wouldn’t have our own copies of the Bible if Martin Luther hadn’t embraced the technology of the printing press, which was scandalous at the time, if you can imagine that. Yet Luther said, “We need to use this technology to get the Word of God out to as many people as possible. Of course, that was the biggest threat to the Catholic Church, where the only people allowed to own, interpret and read Bibles directly were clergy. That kind of messed things up. Technology can definitely be misused, but it can also be used in very life-giving ways.
QUESTION #8: dream
God’s continually stirring new things in each of us. So give us the scoop! What’s beginning to stir in you but not yet fully awakened? What can we expect from you in the future?
Right now, I’m really excited about being at a phase in my life where I want to be the backstage guy. That’s a role I want to embrace more and more. Obviously, I want people to know about my books and the things that I write — otherwise, they don’t get read. That’s just part of the price of a book doing well is that you have to be a known entity unless you write under a pseudonym.
But I don’t want to be famous. I don’t want to be a celebrity. I’ve played that game and lived in that world. There is something uniquely soul sucking about being a Christian celebrity. I don’t want to be a part of that anymore. But at the same time, I want people to read my book, and I’m starting a podcast in the fall.
In the work I’m doing here, I’m experiencing a lot more satisfaction, peace and purpose, and this is going to bear more fruit than ever before when I was pastoring megachurches. In a very concentrated way, I get to channel my pastoral energies to 30 to 40 highly networked, highly influential leaders behind the scenes in a way that helps them show up in a healthier way. Help them be salt and light in whatever God has entrusted to them to steward as authors, stage performers and organization leaders.
What I would have struggled with in the past is that I don’t get any public credit for that. And what I really love about it now is that I don’t get any public credit for that! Getting that credit comes with pressure, temptation, disillusionment and self-awareness issues. If there is one thing I don’t want to be part of my life anymore, it’s the trappings of celebrity. But I want to help others who still have that calling to do it healthfully. In a way where their spiritual lives thrive, in a way where their lives at home, their friendships and their community thrive. Where they have real friends as well as deal friends. Where they have people in their lives they know will stick with them, no matter what.
I want them to have three to four of those friends before I’m done working with them. So many successful people mistake their network for friends. They mistake the up-close people whose careers depend on their success as friends. Sometimes you can get some overlap, but usually, that’s not the case. We could come up with a lot of examples of people at the top of their game who had swarms around them, and then something happened, and the crowds disappeared like they did with Jesus. He was left with 12. The human heart is fickle in that way. People like to attach themselves to celebrity and popularity, and I want to be more about substance. I regret that it took me until my 50s for that to become a deeply held core value.
In his interview, Scott said, “Anger [over sin] can also lead me to a dark place of unhealthy anger that is not righteous, and I essentially participate in the very thing that I’m upset about.”
Can you relate? Here are some ways we can tell if our anger is sliding into an unhealthy place:
We’re focused more on how we feel than we are on how God feels about the situation.
We stew for long periods of time, allowing it to turn into bitterness.
You begin daydreaming about how you can take revenge.
You say words to hurt rather than to correct and restore.
As we process our anger with Jesus, let’s keep these words in mind: “Know this, my beloved brothers: let every person be quick to listen, slow to speak, and slow to anger, for the anger of man does not produce the righteousness of God” (James 1:19,20, ESV).
Scott Sauls is the founder and president of Healthy Leaders Inc. and the Sycamore Leaders Community in Nashville, Tennessee. Previously, he served as senior pastor of Christ Presbyterian Church (Nashville) and as a lead pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church (New York City). Scott also planted and pastored two churches in Kansas City and St. Louis. Scott is married to Patti, is dad to Abby and Ellie, and is father-in-law to Jeff and Drew. In addition to his books, Scott’s writing has been featured in multiple publications and media outlets. He also shares insights on faith, leadership and culture through his weekly blog.