Finding Your Way Back to God DVD. Dave and Jon Ferguson. Multnomah Books, 2015.
Not too long ago I received a copy of Dave and Jon Ferguson’s DVD for their book Finding Your Way Back to God. Now I’ll be honest – I love the stuff the Fergusons put out, especially anything related to Exponential. In fact, Exponential is one of my favorite ministry books of all time, I recommend it to so many people! But on the other hand I’m not a huge fan of DVD small group material. Most of it seems cheesy or misses the mark or just doesn’t live up to the hype. Having said that let me give you a quick overview of the DVD.
The DVD is broken down into 5 really short videos – maybe like 5 or 6 minutes each. And each of videos follows along one of their “five awakenings.” These awakenings include:
1-Awakening to Longing This is the feeling that “there’s got to be more.” We all feel the longing for love, purpose and meaning.
2-Awakening to Regret Regret finds us saying, I wish I could start over. Many people get stuck repeating these first two awakenings.
3-Awakening to Help After repeating what they call they “sorry cycle” of trying to fulfill these longings without God and ending up with regret over and over again, we acknowledge that something has to change.
4-Awakening to Love Jesus is the one who leads us back to God. As we come back to God, we’re ambushed by grace and discover God, loves me deeply after all.
5-Awakening to Life Through following Jesus, we discover “life and have it to the full.” When Jesus offers to His followers, “life and have it to the full,” He uses the word zoe.
Each video explains these longings and has a testimony that goes along with it as well. Here’s a sample of the type of video you will watch (though this is sort of a “trailer” for the videos, it gives you an idea of what each video is like).
So what did I think of the DVD? Its good. Will I end up using it for small groups? Honestly I probably won’t. That is not because the quality is bad or the content is weak, but rather because I’m not sure who this is really created for. Christians won’t find this content too helpful (unless it’s a model for the types of discussions they should have with non-Christians). Non-believers won’t find it too helpful because its overly Christian. The only people that it seems it would be targeting is people who are seekers and may have been going to church for a long time but are not yet Christians. This doesn’t seem like a very large audience – so I’m left a bit confused as who they are really creating this content for.
Nevertheless if this is who you are going to be watching these videos with – then go for it! But I do recommend having the book and the participant guide as well. Discussion will definitely be hard without those resources.
Note: I received this DVD courtesy of the publisher in exchange for an impartial review.
CWoznicki Think Out Loud 