I am very excited to see this movie when it comes out! The book was amazing.

What I appreciate most about this book is that DeVries isn’t a youth worker who had some success and decided to write a book about it. He’s a youth worker who has helped many youth ministries discover how to become healthy and functional. The biggest problems are usually hidden within the youth ministry more than caused by outside factors.

Stop what you’re doing and order this book today! It will set you free from what keeps your youth ministry ineffective!

If you’ve already seen this movie, check out Vince Parker’s post about it. He’s started a conversation that you’ll want to be part of.

Caution: There are spoilers in his post (which he states up front). Don’t read his post if you haven’t watched the movie.

I saw The Book of Eli with a little hesitation. I was sure Hollywood was up to something. Maybe they were pulling out an ancient manuscript to try to put the Bible in a bad light or question its authority. I was very happy to be incredibly wrong on that point.

This movie is an amazingly creative way to touch on some deep spiritual truths and disciplines. It’s a great call to faith in action, as well. There are a few scenes in the movie where everything falls apart from our perspective, but God’s plan (we find out later) moves the story on to the outcome he had in mind all along. (That could be seen as a spoiler, but what point would there be in the story if it didn’t come to the right resolution?)

I highly recommend seeing this movie.

Caution: It’s clean, but does have some bad language and violence. I recommend this for high school age and older. Of course, as with just about any movie, you should screen it first before suggesting it to your students.

We screened this movie at Saddleback Church. It’s got a little bit of bad language and the party scenes are a little uncomfortable in the church setting. However, the message of the movie is great. I recommend seeing it before taking your students just to make sure it isn’t too over the top for your setting.

Andrew Burden wrote a very well-thought-out review of To Save a Life. Click here to read his thoughts

Tim Schmoyer has a full review, too. Check it out here

The To Save a Life soundtrack is now available for download at
http://www.tosavealifemovie.com

I rode a roller coaster all week through this book. Lucado takes his readers through many legitimate fears that people can have outside of God’s design. Any fear, however, turns to faith as we gain God’s perspective about life’s issues. A phrase repeated a few times toward the end of the book becomes the mantra of the otherwise fear-ridden child of God. Lucado writes, “Everything will work out in the end. If it’s not working out, it’s not the end.” The end, Lucado assures us, may happen in this life or in the next. Either way, we have nothing to fear in light of God’s faithfulness. I highly recommend reading this book and keeping it handy as a lifeline for when we fall back to a stance of fear. Fear is as inevitable as God’s ability to resolve it. Lucado has condensed great promises of God, paired it with nuggets of wisdom and fleshes out the message through illustrations. This 3-corded masterpiece will banish fear while boosting faith.

I’m reading Max Lucado’s book called Fearless. There are many great quotable comments in this book. This one stuck out to me from chapter 8 today. It’s in reference to Jesus experience on the cross…

“Heaven’s best took hell’s worst and turned it into hope.”

I look forward to finishing this book and will post a review shortly after.

I got invited to see this movie I’d never heard of. Now that I’ve seen it, I want to tell everybody to go see it!

Reviewing this movie would be difficult without spoiling the story line. Instead, I’ll write why I’m so excited about it from a youth ministry point of view. Depending on your bent toward youth ministry or ecology, you may have a different reason to be happy with what you see. You can be passionate about either (or both) and have reason to be excited about how the content promotes your cause.

From my vantage point as a youth worker, I spent the entire movie drawing parallels between the story line and God’s desire to do a new thing through us. The plot of 9 illustrates our rescue us from a certain destruction of our own creation. In 9, you’ll see obvious references to David and Goliath, Israel taking the Promised Land, Jesus’ rebuke of the religious leaders and the ultimate sacrifice Jesus made through his death on the cross.

This is a movie for leaders to see with their small group students. A great idea is to prepare students ahead of time by telling them to look for the biblical themes. Following the movie, leaders can have an amazing discussion with students about how it illustrates the biblical truths so boldly portrayed throughout the movie.