Book Review: The Life Book by Carl Blunt

Bible Smuggling 101
Legally Saturating High Schools with God’s Word

In today’s divisive culture-war society, when news stories about separation of church and state thrive with controversy, one cutting-edge Christian ministry is having remarkable success spreading the Word of God. What makes it remarkable? They are doing it by distributing Bibles in public schools—legally.

Carl Blunt is the president and CEO of The Life Book Movement, a Christian mission centered on Blunt’s own contemporary, youth-oriented edition of a portion of the Bible called The Life Book, a unique presentation of Scripture designed to engage high school students with the truth of God’s Word. The Life Book presents a brief overview of the Old Testament and the Book of John using an interactive format with honest student comments and real-life questions in the margins. Readers are drawn into the only story that can change their lives forever.

Founded by The Gideons International as an innovative strategy to reach high school students with God’s Word, The Life Book Movement works in collaboration with churches throughout the country to provide the books for free to high school students. Blunt’s organization brilliantly threads a separation-of-church-and-state loophole by getting his publication into the hands of Christian high school students and having them pass the books out to classmates at school—a practice that is entirely legal, as long as the books are not distributed by school staff or other adults. Blunt says, “It’s like we’re helping students smuggle God’s Word into a closed country (public high schools) to reach an unreached people group because studies show that only 4% of today’s teenagers are Bible-believing Christians.” The goal is to ensure that every student in every high school in the United States has an opportunity to receive the gift of The Life Book. This approach presents a phenomenal opportunity to impact a generation with the good news of Jesus Christ.

The Life Book Movement is best described to students as a week-long mission trip to their local high school. Local churches work together in targeted areas to ensure The Life Book is offered to every student in each chosen high school. All churches involved receive the books at no cost from The Life Book Movement and provide the books, along with some evangelism training, to the students in their youth groups. The students then spend a week passing them out to their friends and classmates at school. One student who received the book said, “I got one today. I read it in almost every class today. I like it. It’s pretty neat and other people asked to look at it and then asked where to get one.”

Flying under the radar since its inception last fall, The Life Book Movement is rapidly closing in on distribution of more than 300,000 copies in public high schools across 21 states and even the British Virgin Islands. A quiet success, indeed, but extremely ambitious, The Life Book Movement has an ultimate goal of distributing The Life Book to nearly 18 million high school students when all is said and done. And, so far, the outlook is extremely promising.

Become a fan at www.facebook.com/carlblunt and follow the movement at www.twitter.com/carlblunt.
~The press release above was provided by Audra Jennings.


MY THOUGHTS AND REVIEW:
You may not think of public high schools as mission fields but they are. Your church's youth group can help with Bible-smuggling legally by using The Life Book.  The Life Book starts with the story of God and people in the Old Testament in a nutshell summary (Part 1).  Part 2 covers 21 chapters of John: the story of Jesus coming to earth.  The third part of the book asks readers to ponder who they think Jesus is and to decide whether they want to follow Him or not.  The last part offers help from the Bible for troubles that students may face such as relationships, peer pressure, self-esteem, depression, and worry.  Throughout the whole book, there are comments/questions here and there from 4 students (2 boys, 2 girls) and 1 adult.  Some of these notes are insightful while others are humorous.  A modern translation of the Bible (the Holman Christian Standard Bible version) is used for easy understanding.  The spoken words of the Lord Jesus Christ are in red letters.  I enjoyed reading this book and I think it's a clever way to get kids in public schools to read God's Word without realizing they're reading God's Word.  I encourage you/your church to get involved and share with others about this wonderful evangelism movement.


~I was given a copy of this book by the B&B Media Group for an exchange of my honest review.