You may have seen the little ad in our rightmost column, for “a quick way to change someone’s life forever,” with one hand taking a tract from another. That ad is for something called The Life Book, a remarkable little evangelistic tool designed for high school evangelism.
The main thing about the Life Book is that it contains the entire Gospel of John, a book of the Bible that has proven itself to have some kind of special anointing for evangelism. The text of John is accompanied, marked up, interrogated, and explained by four or five other voices, high schoolers and one adult, whose hand-written notes carry on a running dialogue in the margins. There’s also introductory material, clear explanation of the good news in even simpler terms, and a section with answers to pressing questions that are likely to be on the minds of readers at that age. It’s a nice bundle of information, managing to be minimalist and fully-loaded at the same time.
It looks to me like a solid piece of work. But the whole point is that it’s not designed for the readers of Scriptorium Daily to ponder; it’s designed to be used in witnessing to high school students. When you’ve talked with a kid, your time is up, and you want to leave something with them, this is what you leave in their hands. The whole Gospel of John, with helpful notes.
The reason I’m writing about it is not just to promote one of our advertisers, but to tell a behind-the-scenes story that got us excited. Life Book contacted us several weeks ago about putting the ad in place. Our administrative editor checked them out, liked what he saw, and set it all up. Personally, the first I ever heard about Life Book was when I clicked on the ad here at Scriptorium Daily.
The same was true for Mark Hopson, a Biola/Torrey Honors Institute alum who is now regional director for the California School Project. The California School Project is an evangelism project that is truly visionary: it equips Christian college students to partner with Christian students in California’s public schools, giving them the training, support, and encouragement they need to reach their peers with the gospel. Click on through to their web site to see some of what they are accomplishing.
Mark was reading Scriptorium Daily, saw the Life Book ad the first week it was online, clicked through to see what it was about, and recognized right away that it was perfect for CSP’s work. CSP and Life Book are now in cahoots, and before long there will be tens of thousands of copies of the Gospel of John in the hands of California high school students, placed there by their peers and supported by student-initiated Christian clubs and evangelistic events. Life Book and CSP are both evangelistic networks that are right on the verge of being movements.
From my point of view, it’s what you could call a match made in heaven: A providential meeting of two groups with a lot in common, who met each other right here at Scriptorium Daily. If you’re interested in supporting high school evangelism, consider one or both of these ministries.
