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Rating: 
Summary: Jam Packed For Growth With Many Goodies
Review: We are up and running with this brand new book in Miami. This book is the first in a series outlining the 'Purpose-Driven' model's five purposes. While the first lesson highlights the 'Great Commandment' (Love God/Love People) as our overarching purpose, the remaining five lessons introduce the specific purposes of Connecting (Fellowship), Growing (Discipleship), Serving (Ministry), Sharing (Evangelism), and Surrendering (Worship). The remaining five books flesh out each of those purposes. Each lesson also has elements of all five purposes. For instance 'discipleship' will be the Bible Study portion, whereas 'sharing' will stimulate thought in how to reach out to the 'unconvinced' with what you have learned. If you don't believe in purpose, you're going to hate this material! Each book can be used as a tool for other group and individual growth experiences. The group can read and reread articles on 'keeping your group from becoming a clique,' how to do small group prayer, what their group covenant is (which has places for all to sign each others book) as well as have a handy reference to member's contact info. Individually they can memorize printed scripture, Keep a prayer log, journal, and much more. It almost negates the need for Fields' HABITS pack, which I ordered concurrently with this series. HABITS does offer a few extras, like the 'Bank O Blessings' and allows for more flexibility and variety on the individual disciplines. But in my opinion, except for the tithing option, you would be doing overkill by using both materials at the same time. There is more material in each lesson than you could possible do in an hour or hour and a half. While we are encouraged to 'pick out the best' and allow the repetition that is built into the whole series to do its work, our ministry has decided to try splitting each lesson into two weeks. We effectively meet for 50 minutes at church (because we operate on 'Spanish time' here in Miami!) and have found a way to split the material without overkill. Helping us are 5 surveys (on . . . what else . . . the five purposes) in the the back that we will have the youth complete and use as the basis of the discussion during the second part of each lesson. (the second week of each). Since this series is hot off the press, it remains to be seen if this will be an effective application of the series. We are hoping so, and find it helps out our small ym budget a bit too. You can also get the DVD set that covers each lesson with both teaching time (done by the pros) and training time. If you or your leaders weren't comfortable teaching to set the stage for each lesson in a large group setting (before your break into small groups, as is the method some use) then you could use the DVD to do it for you. I have only seen Doug's first lesson. Other speakers, like Efrem Smith, also teach. Doug did to a fine informational job, but the setting of the video shoot is, in my opinion, not the best to show to teens. He never looks into the camera, and he is sitting down speaking to 2 individuals that, while not cheesily over enthusiastic, are too far the other way: mildly interested. Maybe other sessions are different. The other minor weak point is that Doug mentions you can go to www.youthspecialties.com/lifetogether for more tips, etc. It doesn't exist, and YS doesn't know what is up (they are checking into it) either. Maybe it got canned post production of the DVD. In all, I highly recommend this series.
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