The Seven Checkpoints: Student Journal

Rating:
Summary: A Volunteer Youth Sponsor looks at "The Seven Checkpoints"
Review: I am a volunteer youth sponsor for our small church and youth group. Recently, and coincidentally, our full-time youth pastor and our only other youth resource person resigned. Without full time leadership we sponsors were feeling mighty inadequate. I heard Andy Stanley on a radio talk show doing a promotion for his new book. I bought the book and found it to be not only an easy read but clearly delineated and organized for even those of us in part-time volunteer ministry. Stanley and Hall offer some unorthodox but very sensible approaches to planning and maintaining a youth group over a long period of time with a specific goal in mind. The book is so easy to follow, we have decided to adapt our curriculum to their philosophy of these seven pivotal checkpoints. I recommend this book for any struggling youth volunteers like me and for any of those in full-time ministry.

Rating:
Summary: A Volunteer Youth Sponsor looks at "The Seven Checkpoints"
Review: Kids face so many difficult challenges in today's chaotic culture. Andy Stanley talks practically and from the heart to help teens to live victoriously in the middle of this generation. One especially helpful checkpoint is encouraging teens to make wise choices and showing them how. Rather than telling kids that they're making wrong choices, they can consider making the wisest choice in any situation. This builds them up rather than cutting them down. It nourishes the spirit rather than stifling them.

Rating:
Summary: A wise choice
Review: Kids face so many difficult challenges in today's chaotic culture. Andy Stanley talks practically and from the heart to help teens to live victoriously in the middle of this generation. One especially helpful checkpoint is encouraging teens to make wise choices and showing them how. Rather than telling kids that they're making wrong choices, they can consider making the wisest choice in any situation. This builds them up rather than cutting them down. It nourishes the spirit rather than stifling them.

Rating:
Summary: A Helpful Resource - Content over Gimmicks!
Review: The Seven Checkpoints is written primarily for youth leaders and outlines a strategy for effectively teaching students over the course of their time in school. Stanley and Hall identify seven "checkpoints" that are the most important and critical issues facing teens:

Authentic Faith
Spiritual Disciplines
Moral Boundaries (this section deals primarily with issues of sexual purity and dating)
Healthy Friendships
Wise Choices
Ultimate Authority
Others First

These seven categories are obviously pretty broad, but they do cover a lot of ground, and are all certainly critical and relevant issues for teens. (The trick, of course, is that these are also critical and relevant issues for youth leaders, and everybody else for that matter...). The book is an easy/quick read and full of practical advice and anecdotes that will be useful for those working with students.

I don't know that I'm totally 100% on board with the Seven Checkpoints methodology though. Hall and Stanley recommend orienting basically all of one's teaching and content around one of these seven principles, and planning a calendar around them accordingly. My only hesitation here is that it does not leave as much room for studies through particular books of the Bible or character studies. I think these kinds of studies are important because they will provide a better foundation in terms of doctrine and will also hopefully model for the students how they can get into Scripture themselves. But the model presented is certainly better than not having a plan or direction; one could do much much worse.

That being said, the Seven Checkpoints is definitely worth reading and learning from. The seven areas they outline certainly need to be emphasized often. It's refreshing to see a book on youth ministry that is more concerned with content than events and gimmicks. I think it's a great book to hand youth workers.




Rating:
Summary: A changed teen
Review: this devotional book is amazing! my youth group is currently working through this book. i can already see the amazing things God is doing. Being part of a youth group with out a youth pastor or youth leader is hard. When a young adult stepped up with this book i was hestitant, but i can see God working through this and in us.

Rating:
Summary: A changed teen
Review: This is one of the best devotinal books I ever read. It helped me to see what God wanted for me in my life. It really turned my life around.
I was so glad I bought it at my youth camp. That's where I met Stuart Hall himself (awesome goddly man to meet). He mentioned this book at the camp for those who wanted to learn more about what he talked about. (I surly did!)
This book covers everthing from the Basics to Moral Boundries, Friends, and Choices.
God really worked on me through this Book and his very own word.
I hope any and all who read this book will be abel to see God more clearly as I did.

Rating:
Summary: Life Changing
Review: This is one of the best devotinal books I ever read. It helped me to see what God wanted for me in my life. It really turned my life around.
I was so glad I bought it at my youth camp. That's where I met Stuart Hall himself (awesome goddly man to meet). He mentioned this book at the camp for those who wanted to learn more about what he talked about. (I surly did!)
This book covers everthing from the Basics to Moral Boundries, Friends, and Choices.
God really worked on me through this Book and his very own word.
I hope any and all who read this book will be abel to see God more clearly as I did.