CY — LEADER’S GUIDE
Christianity Explored Youth Edition
The Good Book Company/CE. 160 pages. £10.00
ISBN 1 90556 444 9
CY — USER GUIDE
The Good Book Company/CE. 40 pages. £2.50
ISBN 1 90556 443 0
Available from http://www.thegoodbook.co.uk
Over recent years many churches have used and many people been blessed through the Christianity Explored course. After much preparation and extensive trials — Christianity Explored has now given birth to a new evangelistic resource aimed at young people — the CY course.
CY is a seven-week course which attempts to help young people to ‘CY Jesus came’ and to ‘CY we should believe’. Like Christianity Explored, it works through Mark’s Gospel and, also in common with Christianity Explored, has a strong emphasis on teaching the seriousness of sin and the remarkable grace shown to us in Jesus. The suggested weekly format is as follows:
* Food (it’s always popular with young people!)
* Group activity (quiz or game linked to the session’s theme)
* Explore (discussion/Bible study)
* Talk/DVD
* Talkback (discussion on the themes of the talk/DVD)
Unlike Christianity Explored — there is no ‘home study’ to be complete each week.
The Leader’s Guide contains all the details of how to run each element of CY. This includes explanations of the group activities, all the questions for discussion (along with some suggested answers) and detailed talk outlines. Furthermore, it gives valuable training material and practical advice about running and leading the course.
The User Guide is to be given to each participant on the course. It contains the discussion questions, summary of the talks and leaves plenty of room to make notes. The design and style of the User Guide is youth-friendly with, for example, a number of cartoon-captions, but manages to avoid the danger of losing credibility by trying too hard to be seen as ‘youthful’.
CY doesn’t specify which age-group it is particularly targeted at — though I would suggest it would generally work best with the 14 to 18 age-group.
For me, one of strongest features of the course is that it doesn’t simply encourage participants to ‘pray the prayer’ but rather has a proper emphasis on the implications and cost of becoming a Christian.
It seems a shame, given the care with which CY has been adapted from the adult original, that it does not have its own dedicated DVD — it’s suggested that those unable to deliver ‘live talks’ should use the Christianity Explored DVD instead.
That said, the overall CY package is a superb resource which is both faithful to the gospel and clear in its presentation. Let’s pray that it will be extensively used and that many young people would come to CY Jesus matters — and find their salvation in him.
Jonathan Shulver,
Youth Minister, Farnham Baptist Church, Surrey
