50% off Discipleship Explored DVD's!

The DVD makes Discipleship Explored so easy to run that often lots of different groups want to run the course at the same time. Brilliant! We've heard many churches running it with Mums & Tots groups, in peoples homes with friends and neighbours, as a whole church and in small groups to name a few.

However what if the only copy of the church DVD gets lost? Nightmare situation! So for the next 7 days we're offering an amazing 50% off the price of the DVD so you can get a few copies and not have that panic of wondering where the DVD is. You can now run multiple courses and not worry about the talks.

Simply use the code de50 at checkout on both the UK and US websites and it will automatically be discounted.

Christianity Explored goes Hindi

You may have read it. You might have given it away. We hope you’ve heard of it: One Life – What’s it all about, the great paperback by Rico Tice and Barry Cooper. It’s been used to help many people understand the gospel better in English-speaking countries for years. Now it’s at work in India, the Hindi translation of the original Christianity Explored paperback having just been launched in Delhi.

But it’s not only the book that’s been translated into Hindi. The second edition of the main course has as well. Recently 142 Christianity Explored leaders were trained in Uttarakhand. In Delhi, 183 people attended a course held at the Bible Bhavan Christian Fellowship. It’s an exciting privilege to be a small part of gospel growth in India!

The Hindi version of the course is also available in the UK. The paperback will be available in the next few months. Please do pray with us that the material will be used to God’s glory among Hindi speakers across the globe.

Christianity in the News

A few snippets of faith in the news this week...

'Bible belt' lives up to its name as study shows southern states are most religious (and New England is least godly region)

Doctor claims he was dismissed for emailing prayer to colleagues

Gay marriage: Anglican vicar resigns over 'homophobia'

Bishop criticises BBC over 'sidelining' of religion

John Sentamu attacks 'aggressive atheism'

Tim Tebow and the UK/US Media Difference

If you live east of the Atlantic, you may not have heard of Tim Tebow. He was last season's quarterback for the Denver Broncos (American football, if this sentence is losing you), leading them to the NFL play-offs. He has more than a million Twitter followers and landed an endorsement deal with Nike. Last week, he was traded (transferred, in UK English) to the New York Jets.

Oh, and he's a Christian, who prays before games and uses media interviews to share the gospel.

On the other hand, in the US Tebow's faith is more than just cannon-fodder for journalists who want to look clever. And his beliefs are mentioned, and commented on, in a pretty respectful way—see here in the New York Times, not exactly a bastion of Biblical viewpoints.

I don't want to make too much of it. But it does point up a difference between the UK and US media. In the US, Christian faith is more mainstream, more respected, more understood. If a Christian pastor writes a book, he's far more likely to have it picked up and discussed in the secular media. Talkshows are far more likely to give a hearing to a proper, biblical Christian voice.

In the UK, the secular media doesn't really understand Christianity; doesn't bother to get to grips with it and discuss it in the same way as the Budget is, or the Champions League is. Public displays of faith are usually quickly watered down (my favourite was at the 2003 World Cup, when the commentator said of the South African and Samoan teams praying together after they'd played one another: "Ah, the unifying power of sport").

This isn't to say "it's better in the US" (though in many ways their church scene has much to teach us). It is to say "it's different in the US". The great things that are happening in UK churches—the gospel transforming deprived areas one person at a time, the Bible being gently brought to bear on people facing agonising, life-changing decisions, and so on—go unreported, or are only spoken of to be undermined. The pastors who preach with conviction, faithfulness and passion go unnoticed. The growing churches remain unmentioned.

That doesn't mean they're not happening. It just means that we'll have to look harder. And that we won't hear about them in our secular media.

Discipleship Explored: A pre-emptive strike

Barry Cooper explains who Discipleship Explored is for: “It’s intended for Christians, whether they’ve just started the Christian life, or have been on the road for a number of years.” And how has the series been received? “We’ve been thrilled to see the way God’s been using it. It was nominated for media product of the year at the CBC awards, which made our friends in the marketing department very happy! But for me, the real joy comes from the personal emails with stories of how lives have been changed. I remember hearing from Tim Chester in Sheffield and he said: ‘We should watch that ten-minute episode [“Righteous in Christ”] at least once a year because it encapsulates the truth of justification so well and applies it so powerfully.’ Our aim with Discipleship Explored is to get out of the way and just let God’s Word speak for itself, so it was lovely to hear that.”

The irony for Barry was that the opportunity to present an eight-part DVD series on the so-called “New Testament letter of joy” came at a time when he was struggling with profound grief. “There were some personal issues at that point in my life which left me feeling isolated and extremely lonely, and so to be in front of camera every day was a huge challenge for me. At the same time, I was immensely grateful for the things that God was teaching me as I wrote the series. I needed those lessons about contentment. Still do! And I think the fact that I was suffering probably helped me to get under the skin of Philippians a bit better than I would have done otherwise.”

And for Barry, there couldn’t be a better time to rediscover the truths taught in Discipleship Explored: “D. A. Carson says at the start of How Long, O Lord that it’s not much use trying to sort out our theology of suffering when we’re right in the middle of it. You can’t put up storm defences as the waves are crashing against you. So for me, Philippians is a pre-emptive strike. It’s a defence against the storm that is coming.”

The Discipleship Explored DVD

Discipleship Explored is supported by a DVD written and presented by Barry Cooper. Each episode is beautifully shot on location around the UK, with settings as diverse as Highgate’s gothic cemetery, an East End boxing ring, a huge athletics stadium, a decommissioned observatory, an eerily empty underground station, and a scrapyard, filled with towering stacks of long abandoned cars.

It’s a visual treat, with a gorgeous soundtrack and a rumbling voiceover from James Cosmo, the Scottish actor perhaps best known for his work on Braveheart. The director is Steve Hughes, Cooper’s long-time friend and collaborator, who has just recently finished work on the BBC’s Dr Who. But the star of the series is the script, based firmly in God’s Word.

Barry explains his thinking behind the scripts: “I think one biblical idea clearly understood is better than three dimly grasped. With something as theologically rich as Philippians, it’s tempting to try and say everything—and end up saying nothing. So I wanted to make each episode as lean as possible, to hit one point and keep hitting that point as clearly as I could. Each episode has a single pulse that runs all the way through it, and hopefully there’s real power and clarity that comes from that.”

See the Discipleship Explored trailer here to get a feel for this DVD.

And please note: The DVD has been redesigned as part of developing the 2nd Edition of Discipleship Explored. However, the contents are unchanged from the previous version of the DVD, so you do not need to buy a new DVD if you already have an existing one.

On to a Good Thing

Andy Fenton, music leader at the London Men's Convention a couple of weeks, talks through how he played Be Thou my Vision at the conference.

6. And finally...

Introducing our video of the week, the trailer for the next evangelistic course in our Jesus and You series, Close Encounters:

Found something that you think should make it on to the On to a Good Thing weekly round-up? Send it to: ontoagoodthing@thegoodbook.co.uk

Philippians - a letter of joy?

“Philippians is a letter whose time is coming. And it’s coming soon. We’ve enjoyed an unprecedented period of ease and goodwill in recent times. But when you look at human history—and other parts of the world—you soon realise that all this comfort is just a blip. Don’t expect it to last, because it won’t. Suffering is coming.”

For Barry Cooper, hearing Dick Lucas say those words proved to be the decisive moment as he wrote and presented Discipleship Explored, an eight-part DVD series based on Paul’s letter to the Philippians. It’s the follow-up to the hugely popular Christianity Explored, a course that is now running in thousands of places and dozens of countries at any one time.

“I was sitting in this classroom in London, and Dick was saying that Philippians prepares the church to suffer well. It struck me as odd at the time, because everyone says: ‘Oh Philippians, that’s the New Testament letter of joy.’ So my job as a writer was to try and see how those two things—joy and suffering—fitted together.”

The answer, Barry says, comes in Philippians 1 v 29. “Paul makes a staggering statement which I think I’d lost sight of. He says, ‘…it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe on him, but also to suffer for him…’ So Paul is saying: ‘Just as your belief in Christ is a joy-filled gift, so is your suffering for him.’ And I remember thinking, ‘Well, is that really how I see my Christian life?’ I think we spend most of our lives trying to avoid any kind of suffering or discomfort. We certainly don’t see it as a joy-giving gift. It never occurred to me that when we try to dodge the discomfort of discipleship, we are actually denying ourselves good gifts from God’s hand.”

For these reasons Discipleship Explored prepares people for the reality of living wholeheartedly for Christ—both the joy and the suffering. New Christians need to know this, but so do those who’ve been following Christ for some time. Our hope and prayer is that Discipleship Explored will help Christians walk confidently in the footsteps of Christ.