EA Essential - engaging young people with biblical truth

Review

Quest is a gritty, engaging, challenging, hard-hitting, culturally relevant evangelistic tool that’s worth every dollar it costs!

The seven sessions are designed to get young people thinking, talking and asking more questions. The films, which are creatively shot, contain an excellent blend of stories, questions, challenges, illustrations, testimonies and interviews. Each session contains approximately 30 minutes of film with three pauses for group discussion.

The series is accompanied by background information for leaders, handouts for young people and two training films for leaders. Whatever you do make sure you watch the training films. They explain the thinking behind the Quest, enable you to think through some issues before you launch into the series and will generally make sure you get the most out of Quest.

The training films talk a lot about the need for new methods of evangelism, how young people need to ‘see the message’ not just ‘hear the message’, and how it’s important it is that we don’t just ‘sell Christ as an eternal insurance policy’. I was therefore quite surprised that the main thrust of several of the latter sessions seemed to be about making sure we avoid hell.

However, despite some of my concerns with this approach, I actually, in many respects, found it refreshing. Quest is a cutting edge evangelistic tool which deals with the difficult subjects, such as sin and hell, head on. It’s doesn’t avoid them or the surround issues but instead deals with them in an engaging way, which makes sense and is hard to ignore. Quest is not a ‘new way’ of doing evangelism; it’s just the ‘old way’ packaged in a culturally relevant and engaging way.

I agree with what Andy Harrington, Executive director of Greater Vancouver Youth for Christ: “Quest is dynamite, the best tool I’ve seen in the last 10 years for reaching teens in their own language. The video moves at warp speed and is a visual feast of imagery, sound bites, thrilling stunts and fascinating stories that you can’t help but be drawn into. It propels us headlong on a cultural journey of discovery into the world young people in habit, whilst challenging them to hear the good news in a way that blows apart Christian stereotypes.”

Go to www.quest-series.com for more information and sample film clips.

Contents

Session 1 - Wake Up & Smell the Concrete - Why should we bother discusing spiritual issues?

Session 2 - Bored at Excite.com - Is there an image problem facing the church today?

Session 3 - Superstar - Who is Jesus?  Does His existence make any difference?

Session 4 - Here Comes Trouble - Are there lasting consequences to our choices?

Session 5 - Something for Nothing - What is the ultimate gift...could it be for real?

Session 6 - Read the Small Print - Is following Jesus really worth it?

Session 7 - Truth or Dare - How can we continue our quest for truth?