“Embrace the chaos” and doing hard things for the Kingdom
How Paul seeks the Lord when making decisions for his city, how to be relational before we’re confrontational at work, and why Christians should “embrace the chaos” of this world.
Links Mentioned:
[00:00:05] JR: Hey, friend. Welcome to the Mere Christians Podcast. I’m Jordan Raynor. How does the gospel influence the work of mere Christians? Those of us who aren’t pastors, or religious professionals, but who work as political consultants, pilots, and warehouse workers. That's the question we explore every week. Today, I'm posing it to Paul TenHaken. He's the mayor of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, reelected in April 2022. Get this, 73% of the vote in a very purple city. This is a record of course for any mayoral race in the history of Sioux Falls.
Prior to serving as mayor, Paul was the founder and CEO of the digital marketing firm Click Rain, the only company in South Dakota that was included in the Inc. 5000 for five consecutive years. Paul and I recently sat down to talk about how he seeks the Lord when making decisions for the city, how we can all be relational before we're confrontational at work, and why we Christians should embrace the chaos of this world for the glory of God and the good of others. I think you guys are going to love this conversation with my new friend, Paul TenHaken.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:28] JR: Paul TenHaken, welcome to the Mere Christians podcast.
[00:01:32] PTH: Jordan, I'm glad to be on, man. Thanks for the invite.
[00:01:34] JR: So, we were talking about our mutual friend Adam Weber, before we hopped on. For our listeners who don't know, Adam is a pastor. He's in Sioux Falls, correct?
[00:01:43] PTH: He's in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Yes, he's a South Dakota boy like me. He has a church called Embrace Church that got multiple campuses in this region. I think they have one up in Minneapolis. An incredible dude, just the most genuine guy you're ever going to meet and I think he said, “Jordan, you should talk to my buddy Paul sometime.” So, that's why we're doing this, man.
[00:02:03] JR: So, I was on Adam's podcast and we're doing like standard pre-recording, small talk, whatever. I was asking Adam where he lived and Adam just went off. He gave me this five-minute monologue on how great Sioux Falls, South Dakota is. And basically, he gives you all of the credits. What the heck is the deal here? Why are people now raving fans of Sioux Falls?
[00:02:28] PTH: Well, Adam speaks the truth. He's a good man. For those of your listeners who like Sioux Falls? Where is that? Sioux Falls is in South Dakota. We’re the largest city in South Dakota. South Dakota, about 900,000 people only, the whole state, and the MSA, here's about 250, 270. As Sioux Falls goes, kind of the state goes. It's one of the fastest-growing cities in the country right now. In the 2021 census data, there were six or seven cities that grew faster than us, percentage-wise in the country. And they were all in Florida and Texas.
[00:03:00] JR: Including my home, Tampa.
[00:03:02] PTH: Including your home Tampa, which is Florida, I think Florida had three or four of the fastest growing cities. Tampa is growing like crazy and Fort Myers and all that.
So, Sioux Falls is on the Silicon Prairie, we call it, and we had 210,000 people in the city limits. But during COVID, during the pandemic, we had, what I'll just call a lot of political refugees come to the state. We didn't have a lot of mandates. It was a little bit of a — kind of let freedom ring approach that our state leaders took and for good, bad, or otherwise, that resonated with a lot of people. So, we've seen a ton of people that have moved here for those reasons. They wanted their kids to be in school. They weren't fans of mandates.
As an elected leader, and maybe we'll talk about this, COVID just put elected people in the crosshairs because we were supposed to stop a pandemic and this airborne virus, which of course, we can't do.
[00:03:54] JR: You're telling me you can't do that? I don't understand.
[00:03:56] PTH: I know. Anyway, it's a great city. It's Sioux Falls because we're on the falls. The falls of the Sioux River are kind of our namesake kind of tourist attraction.
[00:04:07] JR: Okay, cool. If I brought my three young daughters to Sioux Falls, they're eight, six, and three, my wife and I brought them up there. What are the things we absolutely would have to do?
[00:04:16] PTH: Well, I'll show them the mayor's office first. You have a headlight, but the falls park. It's a mini Niagara Falls. I'll call it that. It kind of runs through the middle of the city. That's great. We have an incredible downtown to experience. It's a little kind of Mayberry-ess, we just got a really great downtown with shops and eateries, and if you're into the food scene, you’ll really love it here. We have an incredible, incredible zoo that really a lot of people when they come to our community, are blown away by what we offer the zoo. So, kids that age — they would absolutely love our zoo.
I just wouldn't come between November and March or April.
[00:04:51] JR: That's when Adam told me. It’s like do not come, do not come until July.
[00:04:55] PTH: Yes. I would echo that too. That’s where we weed out the riffraffs — is during those four or five months.
[00:05:02] JR: Right. I love it. Hey, so you're relatively new to politics. Share your backstory with our listeners, if you will.
[00:05:10] PTH: First off, never had a desire to get into politics. Quite honestly, I don't enjoy politics. But 45 years old, grew up in Minnesota, I went to college in Iowa for graphic design, actually, and graduated in 2000. So, if you remember 2000 –
[00:05:25] JR: Hold on. Timeout, timeout, timeout. You went to school for graphic design. What did you think you wanted to do when you got older?
[00:05:29] PTH: I graduated in 2000, and that was the height of the dotcom boom, and I was going to get rich on this Internet thing. Pets.com and groceries.com, and to get into the web world, you went as a web designer. I mean, that was kind of the thing. We're making websites and Adobe PageMill and Macromedia Flash and all that jazz.
I did that for several years, and moved to Sioux Falls. I chased a girl here. That's how I landed in Sioux Falls and we got married, and I've been married for 23 years to her. I did that for the first six, seven, eight years of life here. Then, in 2008, Obama won the White House, and he used digital media to win the White House like no one had ever seen before. He used MySpace. He was active on Twitter, which was only about a year old at that point when he won the White House. He used A/B testing with email drops, and just things that were very new to the digital space.
So, I decided, I said, I think this social media thing is going to be a thing, and I started a company in 2008. A social media marketing, digital marketing agency, and I rode that wave for 10 years and just loved it, man. I loved every second of it.
[00:06:38] JR: Okay, so timeout. We're new friends. We don't know, our backstories very well. I have an almost identical story.
[00:06:44] PTH: You do?
[00:06:45] JR: So, 2008, Obama wins. See the same opportunity. The first company I founded and sold was a digital agency working primarily with political campaigns on the right side of the political aisle. Did you read – it's one of my favorite books of all time. Did you ever read The Audacity to Win?
[00:07:02] PTH: Oh, yes, I did. Right when it came out.
[00:07:05] JR: Right when it came out. So, this is like the story of the Obama campaign. It's like this huge focus on the Internet. It's like this remarkable book. Sorry, I interrupted you. Did you start this company? This is Click Rain, right?
[00:07:15] PTH: Yes, it was called Click Rain. I did a lot of political work as well during that time. I worked with US Senate candidates. I worked in Mississippi, Kentucky, South Dakota.
[00:07:27] JR: How did we not know each other? I was doing the exact same work at the exact same time. Wild, small world.
[00:07:32] PTH: Yes, I loved it. So, that was my exposure to politics was I was the digital guy at the table. My first client was helping US Senator John Thune set up a MySpace page.
[00:07:45] JR: That is a very old sentence.
[00:07:47] PTH: Yes. He's still a US senator. Great guy. But I don't think he uses his MySpace page anymore.
[00:07:52] JR: Probably not.
[00:07:54] PTH: But about six, seven years into that journey, I just felt a tug on my heart to do more, and God was calling me in a different direction. I didn't know what that meant, other than my business had kind of become, not an idol per se, but I just started to question why am I doing this. What's it for? Why am I just grinding and trying to build websites and get politicians elected, and help people get more traffic to their websites? If I die today, how am I going to be eulogized?
The true answer was, I was probably going to be eulogized as maybe a good entrepreneur and a good business guy. I'm like, “Well, those people are a dime a dozen. I don't think that's what God really wants from me. I think he's calling me to something else.” So, I always thought of my company as a mission field, and not in a way that I was always trying to get my employees to read Scripture and bring faith into the work. But I felt like God entrusted me with these 35 people, their families, their kids, they rely on me, and I'm supposed to make them the best versions of themselves they can be. Not just as employees, but as dads, wives, husbands, and children of God.
So, after I had done so much with my company, we put God in our mission statement, and I paid for my employees to go on mission trips and did things like that. I really loved that. But I kind of conquered that mission field. I'm like, “Okay, God, where do you want me to go next?” A lot of things were pointing towards a bigger calling in Sioux Falls, specifically, and running for office. I, like Jonah, ran from that as fast as I could, because who would want to do that?
[00:09:30] JR: By the way, you hear politicians say this all the time. I never wanted to be a politician and I never believed it. I actually believe it with you. So, what turned you around and made you run?
[00:09:41] PTH: Well, I felt – a few things. One, I read a book. Lots of things start with the book. It either starts with a girl or a book, usually.
[00:09:47] JR: That's what I tell people all the time. Life-changing situations are always connected to a book or a person.
[00:09:52] PTH: Yes. So, what a powerful book for me is Bob Buford’s Halftime. I was in my late 30s and I read Halftime by Bob Buford. That book really challenges you to move from success to significance, and how are you going to live your second half of life. The first half of life, we're chasing career, and money, and purpose, and power, and maybe stuff, houses, cars, the material things that you think life's all about. Then when you attain some of those, you're like, “Well, this is really hollow. People have been chasing this for forever. I'm sure there's more to life.”
So, for me, I felt that I was supposed to serve the Lord and serve this city in a way that wasn't in the business space. Read that book, really hit me hard, and I was waffling on running. And we had a sermon series in our church on Jonah, and the last verse of Jonah in the whole book, and I'm going to paraphrase it because I don't have it memorized exactly word for word. But it's Jonah's running from the Lord and he doesn't want to go to Nineveh. And the Lord says to him in the last verse, “But what about the people of Nineveh, where, there's 120,000 people who don't know the right hand from their left, and I need you to go there.” And it's 120,000. I'm like, “Wow, that's such a specific number.”
I reached out to our city clerk the next day, I’m like, “How many registered voters are there and in the City of Sioux Falls?” It's like, “Well, at that time was 118,942.” I'm like, man, so God's calling Jonah, like, you got to go back to Nineveh. There are 120,000 people there who need you. That really cemented it to me, like, sometimes God really makes things very clear to you. I think he doesn't do that often, and a lot of people want him to be crystal clear, and he's not. But in that moment, in that stage of life, I just really knew that, okay, I think this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm probably going to lose this race, but I'm going to run. I'm going to do it with integrity. I'm going to honor God through it. I'll lose and then I'll figure out what's next. Well, I ran, didn't lose, and now I'm five years in an eight-year sentence, as I say.
[00:12:00] JR: That's an eight-year sentence. I love it so much. Yes, it's often not that clear. But when it is, you got to go, even if it makes no sense.
[00:12:07] PTH: You got to go. God calls us to do hard things. I think a lot of times we get maybe confused or mistaken that God wants us to be comfortable, and he wants us to be happy, and he wants us to live peaceful lives, and I think he does. But if you show me in Scripture, anyone who lived a peaceful, easy life, and had significance, they don't exist. I mean, they were called to do the hard stuff, whether it was Jonah, or David, or Saul, or Stephen. Pick your person. Pick any of the disciples, they had to answer, a call to, “I'm going to do this, and it's probably going to suck. But I know that this is what the Lord wants of me and is requiring of me and who am I to say no to this?”
[00:12:52] JR: Yes. Paul David Tripp has said, “God calls unable people to do important things. Because ultimately what he's working on is not your immediate success, but that you would come to know him to love him to rest in His grace, and deliver His glory.” It takes me back to your story with Click Rain.
So, you fired yourself as CEO in 2017, and I found this like really old LinkedIn article where you explained why. You hit on it earlier. I want you to go deeper. One of the reasons that you pointed to was that you felt that your job had become too intertwined with your identity. Talk more about that. What was going on inside of your heart?
[00:13:31] PTH: Well, I think, and I'll speak as a man and not in a sexist way. But I know how men think because I am one, and I think men, a lot of times, get so caught up in our business card and as our identity. You've heard this a million times. You meet someone for the first time. “Hi, Jordan. I'm Paul.” “Oh, hi Paul, what do you do?” And we go right to, “Oh, my profession is this and this is where I find purpose, and this is how I fill my days.”
I had a few experiences where I had some friends pass away at a younger age, or they had heart attacks. I'm just like, “Man, my purpose and my identity right now is so tied up in being this founder of this company, and this entrepreneur, that I don't think if I would pass today, I would go meet the Lord.” And I would say, “God, I was a great entrepreneur, and I made some really great money.” That he would say, “Okay, well done. Enter.” I think he would say, “Great, what did you do with that, Paul? And how did you use that as a platform for the kingdom, and to bring others to the gospel, and bring others to Christ?” I don't think I was doing that. Not that I was a bad person. I just was very singularly focused on my career.
So, left, just felt the desire to exit the business without really a plan, per se. But the business had become an idol for me. I was so focused on just growing it and I knew there was more for me. I tell you, Jordan, there's not a day that goes by. I sold my company at the end of 2017. I've exited it, and I miss it every day. I mean, there's not a day that goes by that I don't miss it. But I'm also – I've never been more confirmed that I'm doing God's will in what I'm doing now, even though I long for what I was doing previously, a lot of times. So, I think that's where a disconnect sometimes happens, where we think we have to be comfortable. Like, “Oh, I don't enjoy this job. So, this must not be my calling.” No, you don't have to enjoy it. But you have to be assured and reassured that God's got you where he wants you. I know he has me there. It doesn't mean it's not very, very hard and very, very challenging.
[00:15:35] JR: Yes. God calls us to do hard things. But he also calls us into the unknown. Christians drive me crazy when they're just sitting around for months and years waiting for a sign from the heavens to do something. I'm like, listen like God might make it as clear as 120,000 people in Nineveh, but he might not. Sometimes we just know the next right thing. We know that it's right to sell my company, even though I don't know what's coming next. It sounds like that’s where you were at. You were like Abraham going out from this homeland, not knowing where you were going and trusting that God would show the way as you went, right?
[00:16:11] PTH: Took a tremendous amount of trust. Let me tell you something that happened. So, in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the mayor's race is – we're the biggest city in the state. So, it gets some attention, and it gets some profile. This was the height of the Me Too movement when I was running in 2018. I sold my company, I get into this race, and 10 days before the election, which is May of 2018, I get a call from the Sheriff's Office, and the Department of Criminal Investigation. A lady, a younger lady that I had been running against said that I had been hacking into her bank accounts or social media accounts because I was this tech wizard that could just do all this stuff. I got deposed, man. The tape recorded the table with the investigator, asking me if I'd done this. This was front-page story in the paper. “TenHaken accused of hacking”, and I'm like, “God, why did you call me to do this? I had this peaceful great life with a good income and a company I loved, and now I'm getting smeared publicly for something I didn't do.”
So, I was just struggling with God, “Why are you putting me through this wringer to do this work?” Ultimately, I was cleared of that and no wrongdoing was found. But when I got elected, the day I just got sworn in office, I was just like, “What have I done? The campaign was that hard and now I have to serve in this role? If campaigning stunk that bad, this is really going to stink.”
[00:17:42] JR: Winning is easy, young man. Governing is harder.
[00:17:44] PTH: Bingo. Bingo. I think a lot of people in politics period. We like to cast stones. Joe Biden and Donald Trump and Ted Cruz, pick your politicians, say, “Well, what a clown. Why wouldn't he do this?” Or, “Joe Biden is ruining the border and all this stuff.” Until you get into the arena and know what goes on with governing and leading and how difficult and complicated the decisions are, and how many facets you have to manage. It's very easy to cast stones. I used to be a stone thrower, man. You know this from being in the political world. I mean, there are just armchair quarterbacks everywhere. But I have much more kind of empathy for elected leaders, even ones I totally disagree with from a partisan standpoint, because it's very challenging, and there's much more than meets the eye when you have to lead.
[00:18:30] JR: Go back to this accusation. Romans 8:28-29 promises us the God's working everything for our good, ultimately for our sanctification. Can you see now on the other side, the good that God did with that crisis?
[00:18:43] PTH: Oh, totally, 110%. That's why that and maybe we'll chat about COVID here like when we're in the trenches, and in the valley of the shadow of death with some of these things, it's hard to see the other side of the mountain. But what happened with that accusation was 10 days before the election, with the hopes that this would just smear me and my reputation would be ruined, and the investigation wouldn't get completed, and I would lose the election.
Well, I reached out to the AG’s office. I said you guys have to fast-track this and clear my name because you know why this is being done. This is purely a political move in the snap. And they did, and they issued a statement. Attorney Generals never issue statements to say, “This person is in the clear.” They only issue statements when they say we're filing charges. Well, they, in this case, made an exception, and issued a statement that said, “We found no evidence that Mr. TenHaken was involved in any of this, nor was his persons accounts even ever compromised by anyone, Paul, or anyone else.” I won the mayor's race by the largest margin in the history of the city.
God used that for good. But at the time, when I was in that, I'm like, “This is terrible. Why am I doing this?” He did use it for – because I just took the high road. I didn't respond to it. I wasn't going to fight back and swing low. I'm like, “I just got to let this play out. The truth will set you free and it's going to come out eventually. I just have to keep my head down and keep WWJD in here.” Like, “Okay, what would Jesus do in this situation?” That's what I did and then that's what happened.
[00:20:13] JR: You mentioned COVID a couple of times. Go back a couple of years. Go back to 2020. How did the gospel shape your leadership of the city during this time?
[00:20:21] PTH: Oh, I tell you what, Jordan. Being an elected leader during COVID, and I know it was hard for everybody. It's hard for teachers, and school board folks, and nurses, and health care people. But in the elected role, we had all these people that were looking to us to stop COVID. You can go into a restaurant, keep your mask on when you sit down, you can take it off, and then use your table should be 10 feet apart. In hindsight, all the stupid silly stuff, that we put these mandates in place that we'd like, this will stop this airborne virus. So much anger and tension in that year. I call it the year of CPR because we had COVID, we had political tensions, we had racial tensions with George Floyd's murder, all in that same year, just erupt and it created anger, and vitriol that I guess has always lived in people. But it just took that trifecta of bad things, to kind of unearth it and unleash it on people.
I had to lean into my faith, man, more than I ever have in my life. My faith had to get so strong and my skin had to get so thick, so quick because I just had to trust that, God, you are using this for your glory. Something good will come from this. It's hard at the moment to know what that is. But I'm going to trust you. I'm going to trust the guidance that you've given me on the mandates that you do or do not want me to put in place. The guidance that you want me to, and the demeanor that you want me to lead with, with compassion. I learned a ton of empathy. So, I had to continually put on this empathetic hat and say, “They're not mad at me. They're mad at the uncertainty of our world right now. During, this time, I need to be the scapegoat for this.”
Just like during Scripture, there were people who had to be the fall guy, or who had to take stones for whatever reason, sometimes literally, for the Kingdom. I felt that way, and I'm not trying to overly compare myself to like a religious leader from the Bible times. But it's just, I wanted to fight back so bad during that time, and I had to just keep asking, “What would Jesus do?” I know I said that earlier, but I use those simple bracelets we wore back in the nineties and 2000s, WWJD. Lord, how would you lead through this time? What decisions would you make, and help me to lead like you would lead with an empathetic heart for people who are really struggling during this credible time of uncertainty?
[00:22:49] JR: What spiritual disciplines did you start, double down on? Or just, I don't know, just became totally non-negotiable for you during this time, just because you knew you couldn’t survive without them?
[00:23:01] PTH: Scripture, for sure. I mean, I've always been a Bible guy. I read the Bible, but I'll tell you that my job is very intense, and the schedule gets kind of wonky. There'll be days where I'd miss my devotional time for a day or two, and then I pick it up at you know, the third day, and I was religious with diving in and just absorbing the word every morning because I needed it so bad. Because of the emails that had come in overnight, and the press conference, I knew I had to have that day that showed our hospital counts were increasing, and we were setting up temporary spaces for COVID beds. I'm like, “Lord, how am I going to stand in front of the media today and talk about this?” I needed Scripture so badly, and I needed a quiet time in prayer with Lord so badly, that I think my acts, my spiritual acts really got sharper during that time.
Now, with the benefit of hindsight, so glad God took me through that time. So glad he took me through 2020. Because I'm a stronger husband, I'm a stronger leader of the city, I'm a stronger man of faith, and it's because of COVID. I can say that hands down, and I would have to remind some of my leadership team too. I said, “Hey, just quit with the woe-is-me stuff. It is what it is. There's Barnes and Noble, and amazon.com has books and books and books about leadership and leading through trials. We can live it right now. We can put this stuff into action, like what an honor, what an honor that we are in the chairs during this time. God knew this was coming and he put us in these chairs. And this is a privilege. We should be – this is the Super Bowl of leadership we’re in. It's awesome. So, let's take advantage of it.”
[00:24:40] JR: I mentioned that LinkedIn article from 2017 when you left Click Rain. You say in there, “I feel called to encourage people to be bold in their faith in the workplace.” Probably easier to do as the CEO of a for-profit company than as a public official. What does it look like for you today, to be bold in your faith in your work?
[00:25:03] PTH: Well, great question, and we live in a day and age when separation of church and state, and people don't want you to be outspoken on your faith because I'm a mayor for a city that has Muslims, and atheists, and all kinds of faiths, and Buddhists in the city. So, when I talk about my God, and I talk about prayer, and I talk about Scripture, some people will say, “Hey, leave that at home. You're the mayor for a very diverse community.” It's like, “Well, I am, and your right there.” But my faith is an intricate part of my DNA. And when I ran for this office, people knew I was a man of faith. I talked about my faith very openly, and I talked about God very openly, and I prayed before campaign events very openly.
So, the people elected someone that they knew what they were getting. Just because now I sit inside City Hall, I'm supposed to shut that off. It's just, I can't do that.
[00:25:56] JR: It's not possible.
[00:25:57] PTH: It's not possible.
[00:25:58] JR: In any faith background.
[00:26:01] PTH: But it does, however, become a problem when I force my faith onto other people because that's not what God calls us to do. That's not what – Jesus didn't force a belief system, onto people. But he did speak the truth in love, and get people to follow, and get people to say, “Hey, there's something different about that guy. There's something different about the way he treats the poor, the outcast, the downtrodden, the immigrants, and the people in prisons. I want to know what that's about.” I just feel that Jesus sent such a great example during his time on Earth, for elected leaders, on how we're supposed to treat people around us in our communities, and how we're supposed to encourage people and the type of people we're supposed to care for. So, I tried to do that. Hopefully, the Scripture and in Christianity manifests itself through those actions and through the way I lead them.
[00:26:51] JR: How does the example of Christ shape how you think about success for the city? And like what it looks like for the City of Sioux Falls to be flourishing in a truly biblical way?
[00:27:04] PTH: To me, in this day and age, success for a city looks like a minimal amount of culture wars.
[00:27:14] JR: Yes, that's a win.
[00:27:16] PTH: And that we are told right now, Jordan, to be chronically mad about everything. I mean, be mad about the books in your kid’s library. You need to be mad about Roe v. Wade. You need to be mad about what's going on at the southern border. You need to be mad about guns, and they're everywhere, and kids are dying because of them. We're just chronically told to be mad, and those things manifest themselves locally, in small divisions, in culture wars in communities that get greater and greater and greater. So, I see my role is to model away for civility and say, “Hey, don't let that – that's not what we do here. Don't let that seep in. That's maybe what they do in this city or that city or in Capitol Hill, but we don't do that here.”
So, I'll give you a real example. We talked about this really early before we got on air today is we're moving into Pride Month here. And Pride Month, every year is a hard month, because there are people who want you to absolutely celebrate that month with vigor and march and parades, and then there are people who call on me that you need to be there. But you need to be protesting Paul, and you need to be holding signs. You need to be condemning.
[00:28:23] JR: Lose-lose for a Christian Mayor.
[00:28:24] PTH: Lose-lose for a Christian Mayor, big time. So, I tried to just hit it down the middle of the fairway and say, “Hey, I need to respect and love all people in this community, even if they have maybe belief systems that I don't necessarily align with. I won't celebrate those. But I'm not going to condemn them. But I am going to speak truth in love and I am going to try and show what I think a unified city can look like, despite the fact that we have multiple different opinions on this topic in this community.” So, it's a very fine line to walk, because of the culture war society, we are in says, you pick a side and you go all in on that side. Don't be lukewarm. Milk toasts in the middle. There’s no room for that.
[00:29:07] JR: Yes, but let's go deeper in here, right? Because this is the topic du jour of the moment, probably of the decade, and how we deal with gender issues. Because like on the one hand, listen, the apostle Paul is super clear in First Corinthians 5. “We do not judge those outside the church.” It doesn't mean we don't confront sin, but we don't condemn it publicly, right? We are relational before we are confrontational, right? So, there's a tension here, of yes, sticking to orthodox Christian truth on gender. But also, I said this before we started the podcast. I think if Jesus were the pastor of a church today, he'd have more transgender congregants than any other church, and he would call out the sin, no doubt. He would tell them to repent, just as he would tell me to repent my pride and arrogance. But man, I think they'd be drawn to Christ, they'd be drawn to Jesus. Do you agree?
[00:30:01] PTH: I totally agree. I totally agree. Another example, I mean, we're finishing up Ramadan, the Muslim holy month, and the Muslim community asked me to go to their mosque, and just observe Ramadan. I did that. I went and I observed, and I talked with them, and do I agree with the Muslim faith? Of course, I don't on a lot of levels. But are they people in this community who have the right to worship and have the right to practice their Muslim faith in Sioux Falls? Yes. Do I have a better relationship now though, because I went there? I do.
So, I have an audience with these folks that I've shown that I'm at least trying to understand before, they will listen to me. If I just totally reject a group in the community, whether it's the LGBTQ community, the Muslim community, or whatever it is, if you reject them from the start, your ability to witness and to get to know them, and to serve them is drastically diminished. So, we first have to show some level of acceptance. It doesn't mean we celebrate, but we accept.
Then, we have an audience, and we have a way to continue to witness and to pour into people now that they know, hey, Paul is just not some crazy Republican, like we see on TV that's willing to just be part of these culture wars. He actually does care about people. And he actually wants to get to know us and get to learn about our culture and our belief system. And then maybe they'll want to know about mine. And maybe that door is reciprocated and we can have some real conversations.
[00:31:29] JR: I love that. Go back to the Ramadan example. That's a really good one. How do you participate in an event like that, but not compromise truth? Not give the appearance that you are subscribing to this belief system? What does that look like? To be engaged? To be a friend? To be loving, but not to give an appearance that you're accepting of that belief system?
[00:31:54] PTH: Well, it's hard Jordan, because there will be people who will say, by you even darkening the door of a mosque, you are giving credence to a belief system that's in direct conflict with Christianity. I will say that I darkened the door of the mosque, but when they go to prayer time, and they do the actual symbolic rituals and the prayers to Allah, I'm not participating in that, and they see that and they know that. But I am seeking to understand, I mean, in good, bad or otherwise, the reverence of the Muslim faith, praying six times a day, and dedication is a lot that Christians could learn from, to be totally honest with you. I mean, the fasting and the other things.
For me to like, understand that and understand that dedication to that faith, while not subscribing to it, but understand what makes them tick, and what parts of their faith are so non-negotiable to them, that I could maybe someday have the opportunity to translate that over to the Christian faith if the door would open. I know you practice this way for Ramadan, have you ever thought about a fast, a Christian fast, or during Lent or whatever it is?
So, there will be people who will judge either way. At the end of the day, I have to know in my heart, it's between me and the Lord. He knows my heart, and He knows why I'm doing some of these things, and my intentions are strictly to serve and to show love to people in our community. I think Jesus sent a pretty good example, during his time on Earth of he hung out with, the people he would witness to, and not immediately shun out of the gate, but first get to know, get to love, and then bring to the truth.
[00:33:30] JR: Yes. I think that's the key. It's not either or, it's not we're going to be relational, or we're going to be confrontational. It's an issue of sequence, right? It's been relational before we are confrontational. It's a both, and, but the sequence there matters.
[00:33:43] PTH: Bingo, for sure.
[00:33:45] JR: Yes. Hey, I want to go back to how you make decisions. You are Mayor, you're making decisions all the time. We already talked about decisions about mask mandates, and decisions about whether or not to run. You said before that, “God is working on me to go to him on my knees with every decision.” What does that look like practically? That dance of prayer and thought and decision-making? I don't know, maybe you got a case study that you can talk through to make this a little bit more concrete for our listeners. But what does that decision-making process look like?
[00:34:13] PTH: Oh, man, that's it's a super good question, and I think Sioux Falls, South Dakota, for your listeners, is important to understand that this city is probably 50% to 55% Republican and probably 40%, 45% Democrat.
[00:34:28] JR: How the heck did you get 73% of the vote then? That's nuts.
[00:34:32] PTH: Well, good question. Low turnout, maybe? I don't know.
[00:34:37] JR: That's a great answer.
[00:34:38] PTH: The point of that being, is this city is almost like a snapshot of America. If you look at how close our federal elections are and presidential elections, we are almost 50/50 Rs and Ds. So, the way that I have to lead. And I'm a Republican, for your listeners. I'm a Christian. I'm a Republican, but I also have to recognize the fact that half of my constituents are not. So, Jesus set an example for, I don't know – I honestly don't know, Jordan, if Jesus would be a Republican or a Democrat in today's society. If I look at what I know of Scripture.
[00:35:11] JR: I think he'd be a political refugee like I am.
[00:35:14] PTH: I think he would, too. I think he'd be so frustrated. It's like, because there are great people on both sides of every issue. But the pragmatist just can't seem to come together in the middle. And I see that as how Jesus wants me to lead in this community, in a way that unites and brings people together. So, I do go to him with almost every decision-making and I'll pick on the mask mandates.
You want a specific example? I'll give you one. Remember, in the end of 2020, in November of 2020, this was mask mandates were dividing our country. I mean, Satan was laughing all the way to the bank, because he said, “All I had to do was make people wear a piece of cloth over their face before they sat down at their booth at Applebee's and people are losing their minds.” Like, “Look how easy it was to divide this nation.” So, we had a vote to put in a mask mandate in Sioux Falls. Man, I prayed about this. I prayed about this because the conservative Republicans were just beating down my door like you better not do this. This is terrorism. Don't buy into the Fauci crap. I mean, it was terrible.
Then, you had the far left, like, if you don't do this, this whole city is going to die. Everyone's going to die.
[00:36:29] JR: Apocalypse, yes.
[00:36:29] PTH: Apocalypse. So, I just pray about that, like Jesus, what would you do? How can I do this and still show love to the other side, that's going to be vastly disappointed? After a lot of prayer and consideration, that ended as a four-four vote on my city council, and I'm the tie-breaking vote. So, I only vote when there's a tie. I take the roll call, there are four people on one side, four on the other, and I have to vote and I sit there, and I vote no.
The next day, the hate mail, man, and the emails were incredible, like just pouring in, from nurses, from teachers who said, “My aunt's blood is on your hands now. She's going to die and it's because” – I mean, it was incredible. But I had to go back to what we talked about earlier that, the uncertainty and fear in people right now is manifesting itself through this one issue, which is mask mandates.
And so, I'm not going to fire back on these. I'm not going to try and use stats or science or anything. I'm just going to try and be empathetic, say, “I'm sorry. I know I disappointed you. This has been a very hard and divisive topic. I pray that this will be over soon, and we can look back on this with love, and we can learn from it, and we can move forward as a community.” So, I just had to take that approach with people because there was nothing I could say that was going to make people feel better.
That's what it looks like for me is, I probably have never prayed about an issue more when I knew I was probably going to have to break a tie on that vote. I think God led me to the right decision on that. But at the time, it was very, very hard.
[00:38:02] JR: There was a really good piece in the Gospel Coalition on you. I can't remember when it was published a couple years ago. But just talked about the fact that you know that God is ultimately in control of your city, and that you're simply a vessel through which he works, removes a lot of the pressure from these decisions. Talk about that.
[00:38:21] PTH: Well, I sometimes will, when I'm speaking with different groups, will ask – I'll read off the names of five people and I'll say, “What are these five people have in common?” And no one in the room ever knows. I'll say, well, they were all mayors of the city of Sioux Falls in the last 75 years. I do that more for my good than theirs. But to tell them, “Hey, our lives are very brief and you don't even know these were all five – these are five who all served in this chair.” So, if you think you're a big deal, and you're very important in your job or in life, or you're the mayor of a big city, no one's going to remember you. What will live on is eternal things. The eternal life that you're witness to other people. How you raise your children and the legacy you're going to pass on to them of faith and family. Those are the things that are eternal.
So, I look at my role in this chair is not to build buildings, or improve the wastewater treatment plan, or create more economic development, fill potholes. Don't get me wrong, we're working hard on those things, and they're all going to get done. But any schmuck in this chair is going to work on those things. That's going to be a priority for anybody. I don't think just anybody would say, “Hey, my focus in this job is to love on people, and to show the love of Christ through the role of the mayor's office.” I take that very seriously, that my flock is 210,000 people, and God has called me just to love on them, and serve them during this chapter. And there's no greater calling that I could see myself doing right now than doing this work.
I hope that the future with the way that I'm trying to lead right now will somehow manifest itself in the next mayor, in a future mayor to say, “Hey, Paul really had a people-focused administration. And because of that, the city was more united. We didn't succumb to these culture wars like we see in other communities.” Those are good things and we have to keep that going. So hopefully, there's a precedent that our administration is setting to say, “That's a smart way to lead and we need more of that going forward.” And hopefully raising the bar for what an elected official can be, and be like, “Hey, you can be a man of faith, and you can be bold in your faith, and still get elected.” The nice thing about when you do that, then people expect that from you to be bold in your faith, because you ran on that, you got elected on that. So, keep it going.
[00:40:39] JR: I love it. I'm thinking of Proverbs 11:10. It says, “When the righteous prosper, the city rejoices.” And Dr. Amy Sherman wrote a really great book on this called Kingdom Calling. And she explains this is an ironic verse, because when the righteous prosper in most cities, the city does not rejoice, right? Because there's great injustice, there's a great disparity. What this is talking about is when the righteous prosper, when the righteous are seeking the good of the entire city, when they're seeking to love all people, then the city rejoices. I think you've got a really great picture of that, in Sioux Falls, Paul. I think is really beautiful.
Hey, three questions we wrap up every conversation with. Number one, which books do you find yourself recommending most frequently on the whole to other people? You already mentioned Halftime. What else are you doing out these days?
[00:41:28] PTH: But Halftime is powerful. I'll tell you a book that really wrecked me was Hole in Our Gospel by Rich Stearns.
[00:41:35] JR: I have not read this.
[00:41:35] PTH: Oh, my gosh, it's so powerful and Rich Stearns started Compassion International. Is it Compassion or was it World – World Vision, sorry. World Vision. Anyway, started World Vision. And that book really challenges you as a person of faith to say, “Hey, not only are you a Christian, and not only are you living in America, but if you make more than $30,000 a year, you're in the top 2% of earners in the world. And what are you doing as a person of faith in the best country of the world, and one of the richest people in the entire world for the kingdom, and the hole in our gospel is like, what are you doing about it, man?” That's a great, great book. And anything from Patrick Lencioni on the leadership side, I just love Lencioni books. I think they're so practical. If you lead teams or looking to build culture, you'll find no one better, I think, than Lencioni.
[00:42:25] JR: Pat's great. Paul, who would you want to hear on this podcast talking about how their faith shapes the work they do in the world?
[00:42:31] PTH: Man, I'll tell you someone that I just love watching because I love watching how he leads and he gets no credit for how he leads in what he does. That's the quarterback for the Minnesota Vikings. That's Kirk Cousins. And Kirk Cousins, and I know this because he's friends with my little brother. He is such a dude of faith, and he is such a strong leader in the locker room. Kirk Cousins, if I said, “Hey, who are the best quarterbacks in the NFL?” Kirk Cousins does not get listed. But if you look at his numbers, he's considered one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, every year. He is living for the Lord and he's such a strong father, such a strong leader. His team loves him and he's living for the kingdom. So, I've heard him on some several podcasts, and every time I'm just like, “Man, that is a guy that my kids will always have his jersey on, because I just think he's just a phenomenal Christian leader.”
[00:43:22] JR: I've heard that from a number of people. So, we got to get Kirk on. That would be a good guest.
[00:43:28] PTH: You got to get him on. He's the type of guy that he would do it. He would do it, because anytime he can share his faith, he's looking to do it.
[00:43:34] JR: I love it. Hey, Paul, what's one thing from our conversation you want to reiterate to our listeners before we sign off? You're talking to an audience of Mere Christians all around the world who love Jesus, very diverse vocationally, right? Some of them are elected officials, some of them are entrepreneurs, some of them baristas. What do you want to leave them with?
[00:43:54] PTH: I will say that we talked about my calling to get into politics, which I don't particularly enjoy. I'm not going to be a lifelong politician. This isn't God's new career path for me. This is a chapter. My current purpose is as a politician, and I got three more years left, I'm term limited, and then I'll be a Walmart greeter, or I'll do something else. But I'm firm in my purpose on this Earth, and my purpose on this Earth is to impact people for Christ. I'm doing it right now as a mayor, and I'll do that something else down the road.
But the way you do that, you have to be willing to get uncomfortable, and growth comes from embracing chaos. Too many people are living in a place where we avoid chaos. We avoid being uncomfortable. I can tell you, through that election chaos I talked about, through CPR of COVID political tensions, racial tensions, that year. In the moment, they were absolutely terrible. With benefit of hindsight, man, have I grown tremendously as a person, and a child of God by embracing the chaos of those times. To your listeners, embrace that chaos, don't run from it. Mark Patterson's book, In a Pit with a Lion on a Snowy Day, great book to read if you're looking to improve chaos, because that whole book is based around jumping into that pit, tackling that lion when you could just walk around the pit and leave it behind.
[00:45:08] JR: So good. Paul, I want to commend you for the exceptional work you do in Sioux Falls every day for the glory of God and the good of others. For serving your citizens with excellence, for being bold with your faith, even though I'm sure there are lots of negative consequences to that. Man, you're an example of what Jesus called us to in the Sermon on the Mount, to let your light shine before others that they may see your good deeds and the good of the city, glorify your Father in heaven.
Guys, if you want to keep up at Paul, he's @paultenhaken on Instagram. Mayor TenHaken, thanks for hanging out with us today.
[00:45:41] PTH: Jordan, my pleasure, brother. Love you man.
[OUTRO]
[00:45:42] JR: That was a lot of fun. I know I'm having fun on an episode where I forget to take notes. That was wonderful. Hey, if you're enjoying the Mere Christians podcast, please take 30 seconds right now and go leave a review of the show on Apple Podcast, on Spotify, wherever you listen to the show. Thank you guys so much for tuning in this week. I’ll see you next time.
[END]