A 30-Minute Overview of A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World

By John Stonestreet

You’re busy with work, family, and life; but with the new Faith Blueprints series from David C Cook, there is still time to learn from some of the world’s best thinkers on the subjects of faith and culture. Faith Blueprints are executive summaries, designed to quickly and efficiently provide you with the main concepts and highlights from some of David C Cook’s best books. These blueprints are most effective when used alongside the original book as a quick reference or outline, but they can also be used by themselves.

We don’t have to lose the next generation to culture. In A Practical Guide to Culture, John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle explore questions including:
 

• What unseen undercurrents are shaping twenty-first-century youth culture?
• Why do so many kids struggle with identity?
• How do we talk to kids about same-sex marriage and transgenderism?
• How can leaders steer kids away from substance abuse and other addictions?
• How can we ground students in the biblical story and empower them to change the world? 

 
With biblical clarity, this is the practical go-to manual to equip kids to rise above the culture.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: David C Cook
• Release date: Dec 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9780830778324

John Stonestreet

John Stonestreet is the president of the Colson Center for Christian Worldview, the co-host of BreakPoint Radio, the co-author of several books, and a public speaker who addresses tens of thousands of students, teachers, parents, and pastors each year. He lives with his family in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Book preview

A 30-MINUTE OVERVIEW OF A PRACTICAL GUIDE TO CULTURE

Published by David C Cook

4050 Lee Vance Drive

Colorado Springs, CO 80918 U.S.A.

Integrity Music Limited, a Division of David C Cook

Eastbourne, East Sussex BN23 6NT, England

The graphic circle C logo is a registered trademark of David C Cook.

All rights reserved. Except for brief excerpts for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form without written permission from the publisher.

Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are taken from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked THE MESSAGE are taken from THE MESSAGE. Copyright © by Eugene H. Peterson 1993, 2002. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

The content included in this overview has been adapted from John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle, A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World (Colorado Springs: David C Cook, 2013).

eISBN 978-0-8307-7832-4

© 2017 John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle

First Edition 2018

A 30-Minute Overview of A Practical Guide to Culture

Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World

Contents

Main Idea

Introduction

Part 1: Why Culture Matters

Chapter 1: What Culture Is and What It Does to Us

Chapter 2: Keeping the Moment and the Story Straight

Chapter 3: A Vision of Success

Part 2: A Read of the Cultural Waters

Chapter 4: The Information Age

Chapter 5: Identity after Christianity

Chapter 6: Being Alone Together

Chapter 7: Castrated Geldings and Perpetual Adolescence

Part 3: Pounding Cultural Waves

Chapter 8: Pornography

Chapter 9: The Hookup Culture

Chapter 10: Sexual Orientation

Chapter 11: Gender Identity

Chapter 12: Affluence and Consumerism

Chapter 13: Addiction

Chapter 14: Entertainment

Chapter 15: Racial Tension

Part 4: Christian Worldview Essentials

Chapter 16: How to Read the Bible

Chapter 17: Why to Trust the Bible

Chapter 18: The Right Kind of Pluralism

Chapter 19: Taking the Gospel to the Culture

Main Idea

Fish don’t know what water is because it’s all around them. They don’t even know they’re swimming in it. In a similar way, we may not recognize the impact, currents, or changes in our culture because we live and move in it every day. Authors John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle bring their combined decades of Christian youth work to bear on the issue of the worldview, beliefs, and trends inside modern Western culture, especially as it seeks to influence Christian children and teens. They ground all their observations in the idea that our current day and culture are occurring at a specific location on God’s grand time line and Story. As we remember who God is and what He’s doing in this universe, we can see how our culture is trying to move us in wrong directions, we can evaluate specific crises in our culture (such as gender identity and the hookup culture), and we can gain the tools to construct a biblical worldview in the midst of the cultural waters in which we swim.

Introduction

As Christian dads, John and I [Brett] both dream of the day our kids will wade out into the culture and impact the world for Christ. But like ocean