Claiborne vs Esquire Mag

Here is a weird collaboration. Shane Claiborne in Esquire mag. Read Article here

Merry Christmas

Instead of writing a Christmas post I decided to let an old master do all the talking. Merry Christmas everyone.

Rockstar addictions to….technology

From Today’s Herald Sun

LILY Allen, who became a star when millions found her quirky pop tunes on MySpace, is taking two years off to beat her addiction to . . . technology.

Allen has recorded frequently on Facebook, Twitter and her blog.

But, after releasing her second album -It’s Not Me, It’s You – the 24-year-old ditched Twitter with a final message: “I am a neo-Luddite, goodbye.”

She said: “I just had this revelation that Facebook, blogging, all those things were becoming a total addiction.

“I’d be with my boyfriend or my Mum and they’d have just got half of me.

“So I put my BlackBerry, my laptop, my iPod in a box and that’s the end.

“I won’t use email. I play records on vinyl. I don’t blog. I’ve got more time, more privacy. We’ve ended up in this world of unreal communication and I don’t want that. I want real life back.”

Read Full article here

What I am Reading

For sometime people have been asking me to put up on this blog what I am reading. So finally after all of this time I have worked out how to do so. If you scroll down and take a look at the right hand column of this blog you will find what books I am currently trawling through.

Desire

I used to desire many, many things, but now I have just one desire, and that’s to get rid of all my other desires”

                                                                                                                                                                                                           John Cleese

In my new book the Vertical Self I wanted to tackle some topics that were vital to us as human beings yet that are either ignored by our culture or by the church or by both. One of these topics was desire. On one hand our culture tells us to run after our desires, to pursue our dreams, to break the rules in order to satiate our wants. Yet on the other hand our culture also tells us to be disciplined, to follow the rules, to put the other person first. 

Advertisements and movie plots goad us into giving into our desires, yet as a culture we ferociously turn on a character like Tiger woods when he submits to his desires. We are given mixed messages. We are given no coherent framework with which to deal with the powerful inner impulses we call desires.

Often the believer is told that the best way to deal with human desires is to simply repel them, to resist them at all costs. To take a step out of everyday life and to become the mystic who seems spiritual but somehow also less human because they seemingly have no desires.

So as I looked at all of this I began to ask hard questions. Are all of our desires evil? Why do humans wish for so much? Why do we posses these powerful forces within us? Why do these forces have the potential to move us towards greatness but also the capacity to destroy us?

The more I delved into the Bible, the more I discovered that scripture outlines a fascinating approach to dealing with our desires. As I read I discovered characters which were not otherworldly semi-human saints devoid of human desire, instead I discovered real flesh and blood people, battling with the impulses that we face everyday.

I also discovered that the more I dug the more I discovered a unique approach to dealing with our desires. An approach that encourages us not to destroy, repress or eliminate our desires, but rather one that encourages us to bring them into the light, to partner with God in wrestling them into becoming redemptive forces in our lives. I found that the bible does not call us to become desire-less and less human. Instead it offers us a robust, earthy framework with which to transform our desires, a framework which intriguingly makes us more human.

Women More Attached to Shoes Than to Lovers

A new study reveals that women are more likely to remember the first pair of shoes they bought than who they shared their first kiss with. In a poll of 1,000 women, 92 percent remembered the first pair of shoes they bought with their own money, but less than two in three could remember the name of the first person they kissed. While 96 percent felt remorse for throwing away a pair of shoes, only 15 percent felt bad about dumping a boyfriend.

From NY mag. Read full article here

The Insect and the Buffalo

If you are a kiwi you have probably heard about this book, but if you are not you need to. The Insect and the Buffalo is a great little book that has just been put out by Roshan Allpress and Andrew Shamy. I liked it so much that I wrote one of the endorsements!

Our world is directionless and lost. Like the proverbial bull in a China shop, our culture rampages forward with seemingly no thought for consequence, cost or coherence. What we desperately lack is a story, an expansive framework of meaning which brings wholeness, purpose and life. The Insect and the Buffalo is a brilliant and concise reminder that tucked away at the back of our dusty bookshelves, is such a life breathing story. Allpress and Shamy coax us to step back, look up and drink in the grandeur the narrative arc of redemption that is found in the collection of books known as the bible. Essential reading for anyone engaged in ministry and mission in the 21st century West. 

Buy or find out more here

When Mentors Let You Down

Recently I have spoken to several young leaders who have become disillusioned with their mentors and the leaders above them. They have felt let down but also confused. At first they drank up everything that their leaders taught them, they mimicked and modelled themselves on their mentors. But then as the years passed they began to guiltily spot the flaws, they saw areas in the lives and practice of their mentors which they did not want to mimic. As even more time passed they saw themselves developing a synthesis of what they wanted to take from their mentors advise and what they wanted to leave behind.

This process is very normal. In Jesus’ time disciples would have several Rabbi’s or Sages during their lives. The Jewish disciple was encouraged to move Rabbi’s occasionally so as to get a rounded education. Part of the wisdom behind this was built upon an understanding that every Rabbi would have expertise but also flaws and blindspots. God places mentors in our lives not only to teach us what to do, but also what not to do.

The Sabbath and Climate Change

I was thinking this morning about the Sabbath as I read the paper’s reports from the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Imagine for a moment if the entire world kept the Sabbath faithfully each week. Imagine the reduction in our carbon emissions and our usage of power. Sure orthodox Jews leave the light switch on for the Sabbath, but for one day a week you would have no cars on the roads, one day that the factories would not spew out pollution. The earth would be given a chance to breath for one day a week.

Imagine for a second the benefits for the world’s mental health. No email to check, no appointments to run to, no calls to make, no trawling through the mall, no money to handle. One day a week to step away from useful tools that sadly enslave us because we have no limits. One day for rest, relaxation, a day to exhale and to take stock.

Imagine for a second the benefits for our relationships. With no cars, you would be forced to interact and recreate with those in your neighbourhood, a kind of community would be created that we have not experienced for several generations. Imagine the benefits on strained marriages and disintegrating families if we spent a day having fun and giving quality time to those closest to us.

Imagine for a second the benefits for humanity if everyone of us spent a day set aside to God, to humble ourselves before him, to commune with him in prayer, to read and learn more about him. One day not to consume, not to pursue our own agenda, but one day to worship.

Why Young Adults Leave Church

One of the most common speaking requests that I get is to come and speak to church boards and leadership teams about why so many young adults are leaving our churches. About a year ago I wrote out some of my content of why this is so. I thought that it might be helpful to point them out again for newer readers of this blog who might have missed them the first time.

Your Faithclock is Ticking: Why Young Adults leave Church

Why Young Adults Leave Church: Reason 1 Choice Anxiety

Why Young Adults Leave Church: Reason 2 Post-Christian Identity

Why Young Adults Leave the Church: Reason 3 The Pornification of Christian Resources

Why Young Adults Leave Church: Reason 4 Consumerist Spirituality

Growing Up and our Culture’s Game of Chicken

Our culture is playing a particularly strange game of Chicken when it comes to adulthood and the concept of growing up. We try and put of growing off as long as possible in the mistaken belief that by doing so we will prolong the fun that we are enjoying now. It is as if we have developed an irrational phobia around the markers of adulthood namely marriage, children and responsiblity. Things which ironically the bible and pretty much every culture that ever existed bar our own tells us are sources of joy.

As someone who has sat with countless young adults and discussed their fear around growing up, I have become very adept at  cutting through the clutter and cultural catchphrases and getting to the heart of the matter. Occasionally I encounter young adults who are afraid of growing up because of dysfunctional or abusive family dynamics that have impacted them from their childhood. But from my experience the overwhelming number of young adults (particularly young men) who fear and thus delay adulthood do so because of two very simple creeds.   

I want to be able to do what I want when I want to

I want to be able to spend what I want when I want to.

At the end of the day this is radical individualism at its most robust. Relationship and responsibility are sacrificed for the myth of hedonism. But sadly this game of chicken can only have one loser, the pedestrian who decides to play chicken with a truck can stand on the road as long as his nerve lets him, but at some stage they must jump as there is only going to be one winner when flesh meets metal. My fear is that many in our culture are going to find themselves holding off too long and missing out on some of life’s true treasures. I am going to leave the last telling words to Hugh Grant who is freaking out that he is turning fifty.  

“It’s not a good number 50 and we all have age terrors sometimes in the middle of the night. I think I might have made a sort of pact with the devil in which I think I can have fun now and sort everything later. But then he comes back and says, ‘Times up and I’m taking you to hell as you’re going to be a lonely, sad old man.’”

The Trouble With Paris is…where is she?

I was recently discussing the fate of my sociological muse Paris Hilton and her amazing disappearance from the public spotlight. Then my friend sends me this article.

Loneliness is Catching

loneliness is one of the biggest issues that I seem to bump into as I minister with young adults. Fascinatingly new research is showing that loneliness spreads somewhat like a disease.

New research suggests loneliness can actually travel from person to person, spreading up to three degrees of separation. That means if your neighbor’s cousin’s friend is lonely, you may have a good chance of being lonely, too…

But it makes sense that the way a lonely person behaves could influence others, and those people could respond in kind to more friends, social scientists say.

“If lonely people act out behaviors that alienate others, some others will learn to enact those same behaviors, sometimes in reaction against the lonely person,”

Read full article Here

Tiger Woods and the Media

This morning on my radio spot we discussed Tiger Wood’s latest media storm. Listen or download  here

City on a Hill

As a boy I attended Mont Albert Primary school, who can count amongst their alumni the great Australian historian Manning Clark. Another person who is a former student of Mont Albert is Guy Mason, with whom I caught up for lunch the other day. Guy is the leader of City on a Hill  church, which is doing some great stuff in the Docklands precinct of Melbourne, check out their new site and what they are up to here.

Endorsements for the Vertical Self

Well the release date is getting closer for my new book The Vertical Self. When you write a book it is a bit like submitting a giant essay, except there is not one marker but many. So when other authors take time to write endorsements for your book it is always exciting. These early endorsements have come through this week.

“Every age has a unique way of distorting our sense of Self and we often only recognize our mistakes in hindsight. Many are able to identify the pitfalls of modern  individualism, but Sayers insightfully examines the our self obsession in a timely manner and offers a biblical path to transformation. I love this book!”

Chris Seay – Pastor of Ecclesia Houston and Author of Gospel According to LOST

“Cool, as defined by postmodern culture, is an unstable and artificial construct, which is defined only horizontally by ephemeral and mercurial cultural vanities. Mark Sayers has a better idea, a biblical idea: the self should be defined and lived out vertically before the ultimate reality of God himself. This culturally-informed, well-written, biblically-rich, and practically-helpful book makes holiness both imperative and attractive.”

Douglas Groothuis, Ph.D. – Professor of Philosophy at Denver Seminary and Author of Truth Decay and The Soul in Cyberspace

“This timely and insightful book, The Vertical Self by Mark Sayers, is exceptional. Well written, remarkably wise, and brimming with sound spiritual discernment, the book is a must read if we are going to find a way out of the confusing maze of cultural icons and ideologies that are detrimental to our faith and life in Christ. Sayers’ assessment and critique of these purveyors of a false self is perceptive and fully on target, while his call and challenge to cultivate a true self is deeply grounded in the reality of God and scripture. Revolutionary Christian thinking, so necessary in an age like ours, is a trademark of Sayers, and The Vertical Self is not merely relevant, but highly urgent.

In my experience of over twenty years of teaching, advising, and wrestling through tough issues with thousands of people at Swiss L’Abri, it has become exceedingly evident to me that loads of them struggle with a devastating attachment to a cultural idolatry, all too often, and most unfortunately,powerfully mirrored inside churches. I believe that Sayers’ compelling book will have an enormous impact in helping many turn away from this deathly deception, as it points us to the living God and to the need to embrace the ways of life and truth that only the gospel can provide. Take, read, and apply The Vertical Self.”

 Dr Gregory J. Laughery - Author of several books including, Living Spiritual Rhythms For Today, and Director of L’Abri Fellowship, Switzerland.

How To Have a Rich and Meaningful Life

When you spend time with people who are in the last months and weeks of their life you notice that they gain a unique perspective on life. That which is marginal and unimportant drops away, and two things come into a sharp focus, the spiritual and their closest relationships.

Recently I saw a documentary about an Indian Christian man who survived the attacks on the World Trade Centre. He was trapped with around twenty people in a stairwell in of one of the burning towers. As the group realised that their chances of escape were minimal, people began to ring those closest to them. Parents, spouses, and children were called in order to say goodbye as the spectre of death brought that which is most important in life into perspective.

As the group began to hear the tower begin to lose its structural integrity, the man addressed the other twenty people. In his thick accent he told them that as they were seconds from death, and that if any of them wanted him to pray for them to know Jesus that he was ready. Without exception everyone asked him to pray that they would make their peace with God. As they stood on the precipice between life and death what was most important was crystal clear.

One day as you face your own death, things will also become crystal clear for you.

On your deathbed you will not wish that you spent more time playing computer games.

On your deathbed you will not wish that you had a cooler car.

On your deathbed you will not wish that you had spent more time travelling.

On your deathbed you will not wish that you had downloaded more music.

On your death you will not wish that you had watched more DVD series.

On your deathbed you will not wish that you had spent more time in front of the computer.

On you deathbed you will think of God, eternity, your family and those you are in covenantal relationship with. Why not learn from those who are close to death, those with the clearest view and change your focus, to look at your life differently? The great French novelist Marcel Proust once wrote,

“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”

So why not give up trying to make your life work by seeking new landscapes, by trying to find meaning through consuming externals? The writer Stephen Covey has taught us to begin with the end in mind, so why not learn from those who are closest to death, those who have the clearest perspective and to now begin to give your life completely over to God?

Why not now begin to cultivate and commit to the life-long covenantal relationships that will enrich your life? After you finish reading this article why not turn off your computer, find a blank piece of paper and a pencil and write down five things that you need to do now in order to follow God and to build those covenantal relationships. When you do this you will have a fantastic foundation upon which to build a rewarding and meaningful life.