Authors of 'One Month to Live' return with a new 30-day challenge

The New York Times best-selling authors of One Month to Live are back with another 30-day plan in Love At Last Sight: Thirty Days to Grow and Deepen Your Closest Relationships.

The new book by Senior Pastor Kerry Shook and Chris Shook, co-founders of Woodlands Church in The Woodlands, Texas, helps readers focus on their key relationships—spouse, children, close friends—with the aim of deepening each. Instead of what they call "love at first sight," the authors are encouraging a "love at last sight" mentality.

With regard to marriage, Chris Shook said: "Love at first sight is the idea that you meet that one and fall in love and that's it. As Kerry and I found out in our 26 years of marriage and in raising four children, we found that love is really what happens in the in-between times, what you do in the tough times and in the times when you aren't filled with butterflies and roses and music.

"We want the last time that we see each other, we want us to be more in love than ever before," Shook added. "Since that's our goal, it means working on that every day."

Readers are challenged "to think of three key relationships in your life—and it could be family members, friends, co-workers—and tell them they are important to you," Shook said. "Find people in your life that mean a lot to you and then really focus on those three relationships during the first 30 days, and we hope that after that month, this will become a lifestyle, a 'love at last sight' lifestyle."

The book divides the 30 days into four weeks and the four keys behind the "love at last sight" lifestyle: being all there, acting intentionally, risking awkwardness and letting go.

The first key encourages being "totally engaged in the moment," Shook said.

"Kerry and I are just normal, average people, and it's so easy to get distracted by everything that is going on around us and not being fully there for the people we love, to really give them our full attention. I think of times when our kids were little and I might be reading or looking at the computer, and they would ask a question or they needed to talk and I wasn't really all there for them. I'm just kind of giving half an answer or helping them at the same time I'm thinking about something else. Multitasking isn't the most efficient way to do relationships."

In the "Crowded" chapter related to the second key, the Shooks talk about the importance of intentionally creating space to build relationships.

"If you're not willing to make plans with intentionally scheduling your own life, there are plenty of people who would be so happy to do that for you," Shook said. "Our list gets so filled up with things that other people thought we should be doing, our responsibilities and schedules and appointments, and we really weren't doing things that were important to our relationship—because the bottom line is, our relationships are the most important things in our lives."

As with their previous book, Love At Last Sight can be used by an individual, group or whole church. Drumming up interest among churches, Shook said: "There are actually many churches who did a campaign for One Month to Live who have already expressed a lot of interest in doing this as well, so we will be launching and meeting a lot of churches this fall with churches across the country."

As one part of the book's launch, the Shooks are encouraging participation in a Facebook Fast on Aug. 25.

"We do feel like it's really important to recognize that we're becoming too dependent on social-networking sites to conduct everyday affairs of relating to each other, to the people we love," Shook said. "So we are encouraging a national Facebook Fast where for a day you don't go to social-networking sites and only use your computer for necessary things that day for work or school or whatever—not texting if possible, but calling people or seeing them face to face."

For more information, visit waterbrookmultnomah.com or www.lastsightchallenge.com. To order the book in hardcover, e-book or audiobook format, call Random House at 800-733-3000.

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