Videos That Teach 2

Rating:
Summary: Not very deep but an excellent concept
Review: As a youth pastor I really like the idea of using videos as topic starters when teaching to today's generation of visual learners. Fields and James (both well known speakers and curriculum writers in youth ministry circles) do a great job of introducing the concept of videos as todays parables. They have collected thought-provoking clips from a wide variety of videos in this volumne. They also offer suggestions for discussion and relevant verses to get the discussion of on the right track. Using their VHS "counter" statistics for each clip it is very easy to cue up videos to the right spot.

Although I think they did a great job selecting appropriate video segments for discussion, I have found their exegesis and discussion questions to be fairly shallow. While the verses are appropriate to their topics, I believe that their suggested topics area little out of date and not deep enough for the post-modern kids that make up our youth groups in the oughts.

However I still recommend this book as it will give you some ideas of how to use popular videos in lessons. I like the clips they choose and simply prepare my own scriptures and discussion questions to match the needs of my kids. If you are a teacher with enough grasp of the Bible to prepare your own lessons, than this book is valuable especially if you are not a movie buff, or if you aren't up on the movies that appeal to today's youth. If on the other hand, you are a youth teacher who sticks to your preprepared curriculum, than this book is probably not deep enough to generate good discussion in your groups.