Peak Performance Under Pressure – Lessons from a Helicopter Rescue Doctor
Stephen Hearns
Core Cognition 2022
Why on earth should a rural ‘Church Planter’ want to read a book like this?
It would be surprising if you were involved in pioneering rural churches and didn’t know what it’s like to have to perform under pressure. But when did you last read a practical and well-researched book on how to do that?
Anything I’ve read from an Evangelical author in this subject area seems to treat stress in such ministries as if it is abnormal, when, really there’s no Biblical reason to think the Apostles viewed ministry pressures uniquely in that way, and this book helps us see stress in time of crisis in quite a different light.
Why would a rural ‘Church Planter’ go to a secular book like this to learn about handling stress?
An Evangelical understanding of General Revelation means that we are happy to learn from secular advances in understanding, where these do not conflict with our Biblical understanding. In short, it is on that theological basis that (I am happy to maintain) we also do well to learn from books like this one.
What sort of experience gives rise to this book?
As a highly qualified and vastly experienced consultant in emergency medicine, lead consultant for Scotland's Emergency Medical Retrieval Service and a member of Arrochar Mountain Rescue Team, Stephen Hearns knows a thing or two about Peak Performance under Pressure.
Out of that experience and background, Hearns has founded the organisation Core Cognition that provides both courses and online training in this subject area for trauma medics, intensivists and remote area first responders … and has written this book alongside that.
The basic proposition
Hearns’s basic proposition, then, is that systems allowing us to manage pressure to attain and maintain a state of flow are the goal of high-performing organisations, and he helps us to deal with information overload, clarify pathways in decision making and maintaining a ‘State of Flow at times that require peak performance.
He is very keen on systems, guidelines, standard operating procedures and the like because these mean that there is understanding across teams of what’s done in particular situations and because he argues these also free up head to successfully complete complex tasks.
Given that complex tasks arise in pioneering rural mission … in fact in ministry in general … this makes me wonder why such approaches to managing stress specific to rural mission haven’t been developed.
The ground covered
The organisation’s website (https://corecognition.co.uk/peak-performance-book) tells us that:
“The book is based on a unique model of "Owning the Pressure".
- The Pressure Pump is your organisation's culture, leadership and selection processes
- Pressure Testing is how we train and prepare ourselves for high performance - drilling, simulating, stress inoculation, teamwork and communication
- Pressure Control is all about cognitive aids, checklists and equipment management
- Pressure relief valves are the tools we can use to regain situational control and personal composure.
The book includes examples of high performance systems and techniques used by helicopter medical professionals, mountain rescuers, search and rescue paramedics, Royal Marines and Royal Air Force pilots.”
Whilst the model is no doubt Stearns’s own work, the foundations of his thinking in this book (as he acknowledges) are laid by the ‘Arc of Performance’ based on an article by R.M. Yerkes & Dodson ‘The Relation of Strength of Stimulus to rapidity of Habit Formation in the Journal of Comparative Neurology and Psychology (1908)! This shows that performance is enhanced as pressure increases taking the subject from a state of disengagement to a peak known as ‘flow’ but that increasing pressure beyond that point leads to a decline in performance known as ‘frazzle’. This foundation is then supported by more contemporary confirmatory studies.
Hearns argues recognition of the transition and the deployment of strategies both before and after that point are necessary to manage the stress and take the subject from frazzle back to a mental state of ‘Flow’, thereby restoring them to peak performance.
Questions raised for rural church pioneers
What would be included in checklists for stress points for rural church pioneers to free up head space and pull the team together in a shared understanding of what we do when x, y or z category of crisis situation presents itself?
How do we communicate well between team members in live situations as such situations are addressed? (The sections on effective teamwork and communication under pressure, pp. 125-132 are solid gold, in my view, and the section on building a shared mental model that follow that are exceptional).
What else does this book offer outside ‘rural’?
The short chapter (Chapter 10) on Frontline Leadership holds potential, if embraced, to effectively prevent situations where people have been hurt by poor church leadership and Section 4 of the book on what Hearns calls ‘Pressure Testing’ … ongoing practice and simulation training … really needs in my view to be brought into the preparation and continuing professional development of most people in ministry.
My only real reservation about strategies suggested in this book relates to the very short section on ‘Mindfulness’ on pp. 121-122, but given the woeful silence from the twenty-first century Evangelical community in the area of contemplation and meditation on God’s Word … we might self-criticise a little at this point given the lack of alternatives we have to offer in this area of contemporary felt-need. In my view, this book might well be a useful practical resource in preparing rural church pioneering teams for ministry and warrants thoughtful consideration.
Strange Religion review
Updated: Mar 4
Simon Bowkett
Strange Religion: How the first Christians were Weird, Dangerous, and Compelling
Nijay K. Gupta
Brazos Press 2024
Here’s a book that should probably be on every serious Bible teacher’s bookshelf, and on very few Church bookstands.
Let me briefly explain.
The man
Nijay is an academic theologian of some distinction, Professor of New Testament at Northern Seminary and amongst a number of other titles is the author of both ‘Tell Her Story’ (with which I radically differ, but have unquestionably profited from) and wrote what is for my money currently the best technical commentary on 1 Thessalonians.
He lives in a very progressive part of the United States of America and he operates in a very ideologically liberal culture. And he is a really nice guy! He’s been good enough to interact personally with the questions I have put to him about this book and two of his previous ones and to engage in gracious but rigorous discussion. It would be an absolute treat to sit down and have a (probably quite long) coffee with him.
The book
So what about this latest book? Well, I honestly think it has a LOT to offer some of us.
Fundamentally the book is about how the first Christian believers were radical in their difference from their cultural context and how they set about seeking to identify with it culturally (where they could) in order to create ‘bridges’ for the Gospel message to cross.
It fulfils its objective by considering:
o the outlandishness it entailed to become a Christian in a world where maintaining the pax deorum was deemed essential
o the perceived oddity in that context of what early Christians believed, and
o the ‘weirdness’ to contemporaries of Christian worship as well as the ‘bizarre’ way Christians reckoned belief should affect conduct.
There’s a LOT of refreshing and good stuff from the Graeco-Roman background in there to inform our understanding of Scripture too.
The book’s usefulness to mission in rural Wales
‘Strange Religion’ uncovers the early believers’ approach to operating as a Christian in a culturally alien context, and it seems to me to be particularly relevant to twenty-first century mission in the West. To someone engaged in primary mission in rural Wales it rings a lot of bells for me.
In this thought world that we inhabit, where Christendom is undergoing a process of reprimalization and where believers are becoming ‘the bad guys’, this book helps us create fresh paradigms for understanding and setting about rethinking on a Biblical basis how we should conduct our God-given mission here and now.
Caution
So why wouldn’t I put it on a Church book table?