Archive for the ‘Interviews’ Category
Q&A with Brett Glover, author of Grace V Self–Esteem
December 8th, 2009 by Nick Ciske
Q 1. Why did you write Grace V Self-Esteem?
A 1. Firstly, let me say I am the last person who would write a book. I had no ambition to write and in fact I had nothing to write about until I had an encounter with God. (You can watch it on in2grace.com) I was called to write but had to wait on God for the message. In the months afterwards I travelled up and down the east Coast of Australia on business. I would pray about the call to write. Then as I travelled, a word would come to mind then a parable expanded from that one word. I wrote down the parable. The experience happened over and over again. So I collected the parables and found that each parable was interconnected and all of them showed me a big picture. I studied the parables, looking at the Bible, social trends and my personal life experiences.
Q2. Who is the book written for?
A 2. The book is for everyone but especially for the Western World. I would say it is extremely important for Pastors, Teachers and Counselors and Doctors to read. Anyone interested in modern life and society.
Q 3. Tell us some more about the parables?
A 3. As I have mentioned God called me to write, but I had no idea what he wanted me to say! I have always liked stories, especially as a kid. Then as a young adult I came to faith, I liked Jesus’ parables. So it was probably natural for me. But I never thought a parable would come through me! I was just driving along the Aussie countryside either early in the morning or late at night. One key word would enter my mind and before I knew it a parable came to life. Even now I look at those parables and learn something new. They are incredibly simple on one level but incredibly deep on another level. They speak to the heart. The meaning is easy to grasp yet the spiritual truths go deep. I am just an ordinary guy nothing special but these parables are special! I am humbled they were given to me.
Q 4. Grace V Self-Esteem is an interesting title, does the title suggests there is a struggle or battle between the two?
A 4. Yes, there is a spiritual struggle between the Grace of God and modern Self-esteem teaching. Most people these days think that high self esteem creates happy, successful and self actualized citizens. Most Psychologist, Counselors and Teachers and even some Preachers have encouraged the pursuit of high self-esteem as a desired goal. However, the grace of God affirms everyone as valuable. The cross is God’s love in action for everyone. In chapter 5 you can see the spiritual struggle; it shows how the Self-esteem teaching in practice creates arrogant and self serving personalities. While grace esteems and humbles us allowing us to love God, and others.
Q 5. What is the core message of your book?
A 5. The core message of the book is that self-esteem teaching is a counterfeit of grace. Both grace and self esteem gives us a sense of value. Grace is a divine attitude found in the generosity of God. That all of life is an unmerited grace gift and Jesus death on the cross is the greatest display of love declaring our value. While self –esteem in practice has become praise hunger and praise hunting in self worship.
Q 6. How did the modern praise game start?
A 6. The emphasis is upon modern! The desire for praise and status has been with us since Adam was a boy but there has been some major social changes that forces us in the West to hunger and hunt for praise. I call this the praise game. Around the mid 1950’s teachers adopt positive reinforcement methods in teaching or in other words using praise to motive children to learn and achieve. Unfortunately praise was used to socialize children, conditioning children to hunger for praise and to seek praise in the class room. While it started in the class room it grew out of control. The prize of the game is to win praise to assert one’s own personal value. You can read about this in Grace V Self Esteem Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
Q 7. You mentioned that self-esteem is a modern invention?
A 7. Yes absolutely modern. Around the mid 1950’s the teaching profession introduced the practice of positive reinforcement into the school system, first in the US then in other countries. It was seem as a great advancement for educating children. Young children learned that praise was good as they sat and listened to the teacher. Then teachers would use praise to motivate and before long competitive praise entered the class room. Praise also became addictive as it created a pleasure praise biological response. Unfortunately hunting praise has become the main heart motivation for our generation. You can read more in Chapter 1 and 2.
Q 8. How wide spread is the praise game?
A 8. The praise game has gone global or at least the effect of it has! Teachers in the western world have adopted the use of praise as a teaching method starting in the US then to England, Canada, Australia and many other countries. On one level this teaching method worked brilliantly but it ignored the spiritual and social impacts on culture.
Q 9. Is the praise game about self-worship?
A9. Yes absolutely, to worship is a strong instinct just like eating, drinking and reproduction. Everyone is given the ability by God to worship or praise him. The gift allows us to love God but unfortunately when we use praise to gain our own sense of worth we worship ourselves. When we do this we disregard the second of the Ten Commandments. As a consequence we suffer the horrid side effects. I have traced the trail of human suffering from Chapter 1 to Chapter 14.
Q 10. What was Jesus’ attitude to praise hunting?
A10. In the gospels Jesus’ displays a distain for hunting praise. It’s without doubt his main criticism of the leaders of Israel; he called it hypocrisy, speaking out against their hunger for praise and status. This attitude allowed the leaders of Israel to oppose Jesus’ ministry and his teachings about the grace of God. You can read about this in Grace V Self Esteem Chapter 7 & 8
Q 11. What are the effects of the praise game on us?
A 11. Let me just say self worship is false worship and idolatry which creates a wide range of horrible side effects; it creates and promotes violence, depression, greed, abuse of the poor and also leads to hatred towards God. The praise game creates this! In Chapter 2 you can see how the praise game makes us abusive and violent. Chapter 6 shows how it creates depression; Chapter 9 shows how praise hunting creates abusive relationship patterns. Chapter 10 shows how praise distorts our sexuality and causes sexual crime, abuse and suffering. Then in Chapter 11 it shows how the hunt for praise abuses the poor and exploits the earth.
Q 12. Grace v Self-esteem looks at how everything is interconnected?
A 12. Yes everything is interconnected; small seemly harmless activities form part of the bigger picture. On the website The Big Picture page you can see how everything is joined together, for either our blessing or cursing it’s like one big social and spiritual map. The way of grace leads to paradise the other to the spiritual garbage dump. You can read more about the spiritual garbage dump in Chapter 13
Q 13. What does Jesus teach about grace?
A 13. If there was one word to describe Jesus life, teaching and mission it would be grace. No other word best described the attitude and lifestyle of Jesus. By this I mean that everything comes from a generous loving God, and we are all valued by grace, the goodness of God. Jesus claimed to be God’s son and freely offered his life to pay for our sins. You can read about this in Grace V Self Esteem Chapter 4 and Chapter 8
Q 14. When will the book be released?
A 14: It is available for sale in the US, Canada and Mexico now. In Australia–1st of February 2010. The UK–March/April 2010.
Q 15. How does the praise game make us depressed and even suicidal?
A 15: Every kid at school knows it’s better to be cool than not cool, these words describe the praise game. As children we are taught to hunger and hunt for praise, unfortunately some kids are deprived, conditioned to hunger for praise, taught to seek it to achieve esteem. They will feel insignificant or in some cases depressed. Depression is the main characteristic symptom for suicide. You can read more about how the praise game creates depression and leads to suicide in Chapter 6.
Q 16. How does the praise game make us mistreat and abuse others?
A 16: The praise game makes us self focused and self absorbed but on a deep psychological and spiritual level it makes us more concerned with the outer appearance or our self image. This creates socially acceptable “show case images” of ourselves. It lets us hide any negatives behind the image. Hiding sin and nasty attitudes rather than correcting them, they tend to grow! Jesus criticized the Pharisees for cleaning the outside of the cup or dish and leaving the inside unclean. When the image is challenged aggression and resentment will surface.
Q 17: How does the praise game affect our sexuality?
A 17: In Chapter 10 you will learn how the hunger for praise has distorted our biology and makes us hunger for praise in sexual attractiveness. The chapter highlights the sad outcome of sex without love, which keeps us fixated on the mirror and leads many to seek meaning in sexual desirability.
Q 18 Tell us a little about your interests?
A 18: I am married to Connie and have two teenage children Elijah 19 and Hannah 16. I love exploring the Ocean: fishing, diving, sailing, walking the dog along the beach or just enjoying the waves. You might say when I am around the ocean I feel close to God. I can’t help but praise him. I am sure the Ocean is God’s entertainment theme park. One of my all time best worship experiences occurred while scuba diving with Grey Nurse sharks, fifty or so eagle rays and a giant Queensland grouper big enough to eat you whole. I felt so close to God. I just kept on praising him for his full on awesomeness!
Q 19: How would you describe your ministry?
A 19: I feel like an ordinary guy carrying and extraordinary message. As I have said I felt called by God to write and the parables just blew my mind. I left full time ministry some years ago. I had once served as a pastor, a manager of a Baptist residential Youth and Family therapy program. But when called was selling fishing tackle, to my surprise God wanted me to write, go figure! So I stepped out in faith to start In2grace. This extraordinary revelation about grace has rocked my world! I have a prophetic responsibility to spread the word and show everyone what stops the grace of God coming alive in people’s lives and society as a whole. This message holds the key to revival. So I feel compelled to wake the sleeping members of God’s family.
Q20: what is your educational qualification?
A 20:
- A Bachelor Degree from the Sydney College of Divinity, a BTh, 1995
- Diploma in Theology – Morling College – Baptist 1987
- A Social Welfare Work Certification- Southern Sydney Institute,TAFE (3 years Part time) 1985
- One year Family Therapy Training Programme- Eastwood Family Therapy Centre, Epping 1990
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What it takes from YOU in order to publicize your book – Part II
November 9th, 2009 by Tina JacobsonLast week, we offered a few thoughts to consider as you are publicizing your new book. It’s not easy work, and sometimes requires sacrifices to get the word out. This week, we will focus specifically on radio interviews, which are still one of the best ways you can get your message out about your book.
If you haven’t read part one, please go back and take a look at the introduction.
A fact: Most authors are not morning people. (And truth be told, some publicists aren’t either and are sympathetic.) However, morning drive time is the best time to reach a large number of listeners. That’s when most people are driving to work and listening to the radio. Morning shows are where you want to be.
And yes, if the program is on the east coast, that’s really early for the rest of the country. It is a sacrifice that you need to be willing to make if you want your book to sell. You didn’t spend all that time working on your book for your book not to sell, did you?
We promise that you will not have to get up every morning to do early morning interviews. Even if it may not seem like it if you live in California, anything after 5 AM is reasonable from time to time. We’ll try to get you the latest time that we can, but it’s just a sacrifice you have to make for having the beaches, palm trees and nice weather year round.
We’ve had authors tell us, “If I have to do an interview at 5:30, it really messes up my schedule and my whole day.” We just ask you to consider, will it really mess up your entire day, and if so, does it really outweigh the opportunity to share your message?
Now that many people have iPhones and BlackBerrys, there is a trend to not having a land line at home. If you work from home and do not have an office to go into, you really need to get a land line, even if it is just for three months.
Radio stations need the clearest connection possible. Think of how many times you’ve gotten disconnected or had to tell the person on the other end “I don’t have a very good connection.” Think of trying to work through that for 30 minutes. Would you want to listen to the radio and try to decipher someone talking on a bad connection for 30 minutes? You would probably change the station.
Here is a true story witnessed first hand. One time an author was in Dallas for media, and a member of our staff was escorting the author to her interviews. The author was also a music artist and had a representative of her publishing company with her. The author insisted on a little shopping trip around the time of a phone interview. Our staff member was not in a position to demand the author be in her hotel room for a radio interview that had been scheduled by phone. Instead, we were at the mall shopping for shoes. If you’ve ever been in the downstairs of a Macy’s at the mall, you know you aren’t going to have any reception. So, we ran out of Macy’s and headed towards the parking lot as the station called the author’s cell phone.
All was ok for a little while until we got on the highway and lost connection right in the middle of the interview. The station and author had a really hard time reconnecting while the host is on the air floundering to fill time while they reconnected.
Normally, when that happens, the show goes on and you don’t get to end with the program with your best lasting impression.
A member of our staff was recently encouraged when she received the following email from an author who had been doing a lot of traveling and had not had much time open for interviews:
“Here is a little story from this past Monday. You had lined up the radio interview for 6:08 AM EDT and at about 10 PM [the night before] I figured out that with us being in a new city it was going to happen at 5:08 AM, and I thought ‘Oh Happy Day!’ So I set my alarm for 5 AM – and went to bed at about midnight.
“When I woke up I complained as I stumbled out of bed, and then God whispered, ‘just thank me for this opportunity to share my heart through your story.’ I did, and God really energized me! It was a VERY good interview. Then later on (when I couldn’t go back to sleep) I got a song idea and spent about 1 1/2 hours working on it (which is always very energizing for me no matter what happens with the idea).”
Your publicist will do all that they can to help you in spreading the word about your book, but we can’t do it alone. Do you remember the movie Jerry Maguire? In the movie, Jerry is an agent and tells one of his clients, “help me, help you.” If you are able to help your publicist help you, you won’t regret it!
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What it takes from YOU in order to publicize your book – Part I
November 2nd, 2009 by Tina JacobsonIf you want your book to sell, you are going to have to make some sacrifices
You’ve poured your blood, sweat and tears into your book; it’s your baby. It’s finally finished. It’s finally been published. It’s finally available to the public.
Now the real work begins. (And you just thought you had it all done!)
Now that your book is available, you have to let the public know about it. The first step is hiring a publicity agency to get you where you need to be. But, even at that, your job is not over. You have to be ready and willing for whatever opportunity your publicist throws at you.
In the most simple and basic way, it is best to view each interview request from a media venue as a generous favor. The cost of this interview, which is free, is much better than you buying 15 minutes of advertising on a radio station, half page advertising in a magazine, or a 30 second ad on television. For that, you would be paying a hefty price. And you are actually getting a value better than the advertising because you get to talk about your “baby”; you get to share your heart, and you get to engage the listener or reader in a way that an advertisement can’t. Also remember that of all the books and all the experts out there, this host or journalist sees something special in you. They have asked to talk to you.
Keeping this in mind, as an author, you will need to do everything that you can, within reason, to accommodate the media– whether it is the dates they offer, the times they offer, or the fact that you need to be on a land line.
We would like to share with you a few things you may not have thought about; a few situations that we have run into along the way.
Please do not take a two week vacation to Hawaii to celebrate the release of your book (or other big life events) the week that your book releases, especially without planning ahead and telling your publicist. Ideally, you want your interviews to start the week your book hits the shelves. You need to be available to be able to do these interviews. If your publicist starts pitching your book to the media, and then finds out you aren’t available for the first couple of weeks, it reflects badly for everyone if your publicist has to tell a producer, “oh, yes, we want to set an interview with you, but you are going to have to wait as the author is not available right now.”
You can always take the vacation in a few months to celebrate the success and great reviews your book has received in the media.
We do everything we can to work around your calendar and things like weekly staff meetings. We understand your time is limited and valuable. However, we do have to work within the guidelines that a program gives us. One author’s office asked, “Is the time (9:40) set in stone? If so, I can look for another couple of day options, otherwise, 8:00 works best for Mary.”
In this case, it was a national interview, and well, yes, it really had to be at 9:40 AM. Even if a program is taping the interview, they are often stuck with a small window of available taping times. If a host comes into the station at 5 AM, he’s probably not going to be hanging around the station until 2 PM to be able to tape. You also have to remember that there aren’t always extra studios at the stations, so they can only do interviews when the studio is available and other hosts aren’t on the air.
Something you may not realize is that many radio hosts only work part time at the station, especially Christian stations where hosts are involved in other ministries.
Be as flexible as you can. The more times your publicist has to go back and forth with a station to make one interview work, the less time your publicist has to pursue new opportunities for you.
Take advantage of the opportunities that you have while they are available. The most important time for your book is within the first few months after release. For example, most publicity campaigns that we conduct only last for three months. This won’t last forever. A few sacrifices now will certainly be worth it.
We’ll share with you more thoughts on this subject next week.
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Interview with Publishing Titans Jane Friedman and Larry Kirshbaum
August 13th, 2009 by Nick CiskeA candid and varied look at publishing’s past and future from the former CEOs of two of the largest publishers (HarperCollins and TimeWarner respectively). Well worth a watch!
Some highlights:
Larry Kirshbaum:
More and more authors are finding that even if they are published by a brand name big publisher they still have to an awful lot of the work themselves.
You have to come with your own publicity ideas, and often your own publicist, you have to do your own marketing, you have to go out and meet bookstores.
We used to look down on [vanity publishing] … now the dividing line … is getting blurrier and blurrier…
Jane Friedman:
… I’m very bullish on self-publishing today …
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I got an interview! Now what?
July 27th, 2009 by Tina JacobsonYour publicity strategy is beginning to pay off, and the interview requests are rolling in.
Before you take your message to the airwaves, here are some things to consider:
- Review the contents of your book, making note of the specific passages that support your messaging points.
- Your main message should be simple, short and memorable. Be prepared to present both a 30-second and a 60-second version.
- Look over your list of suggested questions so you won’t be caught by surprise.
- Tailor your message to the specific audience. For Christian markets, you need not traffic in “God Talk.” Most in the audience are Christians, so you are “preaching to the choir.” Those listening who aren’t Christians will appreciate hearing what you are saying without being beaten over the head.
- Whether the host is serious and hard-nosed or laid-back, take your cues from his or her tone.
- Match the personality of the people to whom you are talking. (The listeners’ personalities are probably similar.) Studies show that sales increase if listenerscan relate to the person who is talking to them.
- If your interview will be conducted via phone, you will need to use a landline—no cell phones or cordless phones. Choose a quiet room, and turn off call waiting (*70) before the interview.
- If the interview will occur on television, choose attire that is mid-tone or dark SOLID in color (i.e. purples, greens or blues). Pastels also work well on camera.
Some general things to avoid in any interview include:
- Do not constantly “sell” the message of your book or ministry. Make the interview interesting by providing usable or encouraging information about your ministry.
- Do not say “my ministry” or “my book,” but refer to the ministry name or book title. This helps the audience to remember who you are or what you have written.
- Do not cancel confirmed interviews unless it’s an emergency. Keep in mind that the station is graciously giving you time to promote your ministry and message, so you want to make the most of the given opportunity.
Think of each interview as a conversation. The more interesting you are, the more interesting the subject becomes, the more interested the audience is in the book, and the more books you sell in the end.
Perhaps most importantly, be relaxed, be prepared, and BE YOURSELF!
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