I’m very thankful for the amazing group of people who have endorsed the book, and a special thanks to the New York Times best selling author of Quitter, Jon Acuff for writing the foreword to the book.
If you are someone who has wrestled with anxiety, then I believe this book is for you.
I do that with satire, which is a tremendous vehicle for truth. It’s like a big mirror: You take an issue and you blow it up so it’s big enough and obvious enough for everyone to see. Then you stand next to it and ask: “Is that us? Are we OK with that?
I love that quote from Jon Acuff in his Relevant Magazine article, Three Rules of Christian Satire. Jon happens to be speaking about Christians and the Church primarily in this article, but the reality is, satire is a great article for communicating truth in all facets of life.
One of those areas for me happens to be social media. Our online behavior, social media profiles, and tangling up of our identity with them are often that mirror that makes things obvious…most often to those around us, but unfortunately not very clearly to us. Unfortunately, we often live with many blind spots.
I came across this video (HT: Marc Payan) and it was the mirror that makes things obvious to everyone, if they are already not.
The only time you might possibly see me up before 5am is if my baby daughter is sick and can’t sleep, or if I’m interviewing Jon Acuff, the writer of the uber popular blog, Stuff Christians Like. As luck would have it, I was up at 3:30am with my daughter this morning and on the phone with Jon at 5am interviewing him about the upcoming Cultivate Conference, and picking his brain on writing and the creative process behind his new book Stuff Christians Like, which is set for release on April 1, 2010 (Jon, is there an April Fool’s joke coming with your book?). I first met Jon at the Los Angeles airport on September 10 as we waited to share a car ride together to the Christian Web Conference, and it was one of the most encouraging, insightful and funny car rides I have had. I was super impressed with Jon’s combination of witty, intelligent humor, and his humbleness.
So this morning as we talked on the phone there are a few things I wanted to pick his brain about:
Rhett: “Jon, tell me a little bit about your session that you are facilitating at the Cultivate Conference?”
Jon: “I’m doing a 10 minute segment about storytelling where I hope to plant an idea that will hinge both Cultivate and Story since most people are going to both conferences. What I want to talk about is one of the biggest challenges of storytelling.”
Rhett: “In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge of storytelling?”
Jon: “Being dishonest. Writing what you think you should write versus what’s in your heart.”
This has been an exciting month for me as I have been wrapping up some details on the soon to be publication of The Anxious Christian: Can God Use Your Anxiety for Good?.
