Mission Accomplished

Mission Accomplished, Scott James

It's been some time since I have reviewed any of the books sent to me by New Growth Press.  The only reason is not having time to read them - I hope to rectify that very soon!

This one however seemed worth putting time aside for now and indeed it was.   

This family devotional by Scott James is designed to be started on Palm Sunday (the Sunday before Easter) and continued through Easter for two weeks.

I love the format: one week is spent "Walking with Jesus to the Cross" and the second week looking at "The Risen King" and our response to him.

When I first began looking into Easter material many years ago, the only things available focussed heavily on the Passion Week, with details that I did not think needed dwelling on, especially for families of young children.  So as regular readers of this blog will know, I wrote my own material   (accessible via here) that our family has used for the last 6 years. 

James done a similar thing, with even more emphasis on the risen Jesus.  Each study (mainly from Luke's gospel), has a 1-2 page explanation, some questions to discuss, things to pray about, and then either a song to sing or an activity to do.  Each could easily be done in 10 minutes, but some of the things to talk about could take longer if there was time and everyone was interested! 

I think this will appeal to families with school-aged children.  James has pitched the explanations at a reasonable level of understanding, which could be simplified if needed for younger children, or used to stretch older children and teenagers.  

As our family has a tradition of doing our own material, we will stick with that, as well as the other things we do to celebrate Easter. 

However, I think Mr (almost) 12 would really benefit from this material.  I will give it to him to work through for his own devotional time though Easter and then talk about with him.  It will be good to stretch him a little further and I think this book will do that.  Because of this, the only thing I wish was different was that the answers to the questions were at at the back of the book (if you needed to look them up) rather than alongside the questions themselves.

New Growth Press are trying to get this to Australian distributors in time for Easter.  If it doesn't make it in time, perhaps look out for it over the next few months and save it for next year!