Welcome to the 21st century where you can now purchase and exchange personalities, depending on mood and circumstance; where you are told that you can be anyone you want to be, and identity is no longer based in a sense of self but rather in the imagery you choose at that moment.
The Bible contains a radically different way of understanding our identity. The path that God has chosen for us to discover who we really are is the path of holiness. The most exciting thing is that this path is not for otherworldy saints, rather it is a path of earthy, gutsy holiness. It’s a path that is not about basing your life on this world or of shunning your desires. Instead, it is about bringing your hopes, your dreams, your brokenness, your desires, your humanness under the Lordship of Christ. By doing this we don’t just discover a new way of living out our faith, we discover a liberating, revolutionary, life-embracing way of being truly human.
“…a brilliant corrective …to a society that is self-absorbed, narcissistic and aching for transcendence.”
Shane Claiborne | Author | The Irresistible Revolution
“…rare cultural savvy combined with genuine theological insight. A unique read.”
Alan Hirsch| Author | The Forgotten Ways
“This is the most helpful book I have read in the last year and one of the most important I have read in the last decade.”
Cheryl Catford | President | Evangelical Alliance Australia
“Revolutionary Christian thinking, so necessary in an age like ours, is a trademark of Sayers, and ‘The Vertical Self’ is not merely relevant, but hightly urgent.”
Dr. Gregory J. Laughery | Author | Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path
and teacher with L’Abri Fellowship | Switzerland
“This is culturally-informed, well-written, biblically-rich, and practically-helpful book makes holiness both imperative and attractive.”
Douglas Groothius| Author | The Soul in Cyberspace
Doesn’t everyone want the good life these days? Our shopping mall world offers us a never-ending array of pleasures to explore. Consumerism promises us a vision of heaven on earth-a reality that’s hyper-real. We’ve all experienced hyperreality: a candy so ‘grape-ey’ it doesn’t taste like grapes any more; a model’s photo so manipulated that it doesn’t even look like her; a theme park version of life that tells us we can have something better than the real thing. But what if this reality is not all that it’s cracked up to be? Admit it, we’ve been ripped off by our culture and its version of reality that leaves us lonely, bored, and trapped. But what’s the alternative?
In The Trouble With Paris, pastor Mark Sayers shows us how the lifestyles of most young adults (19-35) actually work against a life of meaning and happiness to sabotage their faith. Sayers shows how a fresh understanding of God’s intention for our world is the true path to happiness, fulfillment, and meaning.
“These are great tools for everyone trying to find the Way, the Truth, and the Life in a world of shortcuts, deception, and death. Amid the noise and seductions of our culture, may Mark’s work help us to be both relevant and peculiar to this chaotic world. May we raise up a generation of radical nonconformists with everything that is wrong in the world, a generation that turns the world upside down so that it aligns with the Kingdom of God”.
Shane Claiborne | Author | The Irresistible Revolution
“Mark Sayers is something of a spiritual genius who is able to both name and diagnose the angst of an entire generation caught up in the web of consumerism and hyperreality. This book is laced with the kind of wise and prophetic insights that take the reader to the heart of some of the most important issues of our age. Nothing less than a clue to the spiritual healing of a generation lies hidden in the pages of this book”.
Alan Hirsch | Author | The Forgotten Ways | Co-Author (with Michael Frost) The Shaping of Things To Come. Alan is founding director of Forge Mission Training Network.
“Mark has something fresh to say about what can kill your soul
and who can salvage it”.
John Ortberg | Pastor & Author | Menlo Park Presbyterian Church.
“Mark Sayers’ new book The Trouble with Paris is outstanding. Well informed, insightful, articulate, and down to earth are just a few thoughts that come to mind when describing this tour de force. Sayers has a unique ability to put his finger on the pulse of contemporary culture and Christianity, and he proves to be a capable guide through the thickets of that which is counterfeit and fake. Today we’re submersed in the media driven and publicity shaped hollow promises of hyperreality, which are driving us to embrace the unreal and consequently an impoverished spirituality. Reading this powerful book will help us get back to the real and lead us to a rediscovery of our spiritual bearings for the present and the future.
In working with Swiss L’Abri for over twenty years now, my take on this book is that it’s exactly what we need to get our priorities aligned with living in God’s reality, instead of trying and failing to make it up as we go along. Hyperreality is deceptively addictive, and if we are to touch a generation of people for the sake of Christ, it is books like Sayers’ The Trouble with Paris that will help pave the way. Highly recommended”.
Dr. Gregory J. Laughery | Author | Living Spirituality: Illuminating the Path | Teacher | L’Abri Fellowship | Switzerland
“Anyone who knows that it is important to study our social context–or, perhaps, those that don’t–should be aware of this fun and interesting, alarming yet hopeful new book, It is fabulous, and that’s no hype.
…it is more generally about ultra-hip postmodern culture and the downward spiral of a life that buys into the superficial pleasures of Hollywood endings and media-promoted consumerism but ends with very little authenticity or joy…it is about you and me and nearly every single young person you know. From our obsessions with reality TV to internet addictions, from media-drenched teenage materialists to aging boomers thinking of church leadership in terms of celebrity, from the glamour of magazine ads to the impact of photo-shopping and computer-enhanced images, we are all stuck in a world that is… increasingly surreal, what Sayers called hyper-real.
Mark Sayers isn’t a curmudgeon or naysayer, though, nor is he an overly pious prude. He’s taken with the joys and blessings of pop culture, aware of ways modern technologies and contemporary trends have enhanced our lives. Still, he’s a cultural critic of the first order, well-read in everything from Postman to Baudrillard, citing Vincent Miller and John Kavanaugh against consumerism and David Myers and Barney Schwartz on the paradoxes of choice. How many evangelical authors cite Jurgen Moltmann and John Piper, Jeremy Rifkin and Julian of Norwich, Ravi Zacharias and Leslie Newbigin ? How many postmodern scholars cite Zygmunt Bauman and Abraham Heschel?
… this a culturally aware work …it is theologically rich, Biblically grounded, evangelically spirited…missional, creative, energetic, wholisitic – the big ending to this, the last few chapters, are about living redemptively in the real world in ways that I believe are really right on, down to Earth, thank God.
The Trouble With Paris by Mark Sayers is a very approachable and interesting study of the false realities of our age; indeed, it exposes how we’ve been ripped off by our culture’s version of reality”.
Hearts and Minds Books
“This is a GREAT book. One of my favorites for 2008. I think his cultural analysis is brilliant. I think he sees some things that a number of emergent authors miss and gets some things right that I think some PoMos are confused on. This is the kind of “discerning the times” books leaders MUST READ.”
Leadership ConneXtions
