A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today's World

Here on BreakPoint John Stonestreet and I talk about culture all the time. And we talk about it, we hope, in a way that’s challenging but still easy to understand. Because in these days of cultural upheaval, Christians need to be able to think clearly about what’s happening in the world, how it influences us, and how we are to live in it.

I know Chuck Colson sought to bring that clarity to believers, and it is something John and I try to do every day on BreakPoint.

And now, John is taking that effort to another level with his new book, “A Practical Guide to Culture: Helping the Next Generation Navigate Today’s World.”

John, along with his co-author, Brett Kunkle, have worked with thousands of students and their parents across the country. Parents, of all people, understand the rapid pace of change and moral decline in the culture: headlines about schools secretly giving children hormones to change genders without parental consent, same-sex “marriage,” the ubiquity of pornography, drug addiction, social media, and on and on.

So John and Brett wrote “A Practical Guide to Culture” to help parents, as well as grandparents, teachers and mentors, help the students in their life survive and even flourish in this cultural moment.

Now what makes “A Practical Guide to Culture” so valuable is that even beyond the obvious challenges facing young people today, which they talk about with a rare practical clarity, this book also identifies the unseen undercurrents in the culture that parents often miss—messages about wisdom and virtue, extended adolescence, consumerism, and identity in the midst of the ongoing sexual revolution.

This book is ideal for anyone who cares about and is willing to invest in the next generation: teachers, youth pastors, mentors, folks who need a handbook to walk kids through the challenges they’re going to face.

And “A Practical Guide to Culture” lives up to its billing. It really is practical. How do we talk to kids about LGBT issues? How can we steer them away from substance abuse and other addictions? And how do we ground them in the biblical story—the story of God’s grand work of redemption in Christ?

“We didn’t want to stay in the clouds,” John said on the BreakPoint podcast. The book is worldview and theory applied—something you can pick up and start helping your kids right away.

That’s why each chapter contains both specific strategies and discussion questions. And in part 3 of the book, where John and Brett deal with specific challenges young people face—technology, pornography, consumerism, etc.—each chapter also contains sections on exposing cultural lies, recapturing the wonder of God’s story, action steps parents can take with their children, and what John and Brett call “hopecasting,” pointing us to the truth that “God’s story continues to play out all around us.”

Now, you may be thinking, “Sure, Eric, of course you like your BreakPoint buddy’s book.” But folks, you don’t have to take my word for it. I loved what Christian mom and blogger Alisa Childers had to say about it: “Every once in a while, a book comes along that makes me want to buy a whole case and give a copy to everyone I meet. “A Practical Guide to Culture” is that book . . .  John Stonestreet and Brett Kunkle pull no punches and shy away from no topics in their effort to help parents walk their kids through a secular culture that has become empty of meaning.”

Then she goes on to say: “This is a perfect book to read and discuss with your teen or young adult. In fact, I would say it’s imperative.”

Look, it’s tough being a Christian parent in these rough cultural waters. I know. That’s why I’m so glad John and Brett have produced this wonderful guide to help us.

Please, check out “A Practical Guide to Culture” at BreakPoint.org. For yourself, and for your kids.

BreakPoint is a Christian worldview ministry that seeks to build and resource a movement of Christians committed to living and defending Christian worldview in all areas of life. Begun by Chuck Colson in 1991 as a daily radio broadcast, BreakPoint provides a Christian perspective on today’s news and trends via radio, interactive media, and print. Today BreakPoint commentaries, co-hosted by Eric Metaxas and John Stonestreet, air daily on more than 1,200 outlets with an estimated weekly listening audience of eight million people. Feel free to contact us at BreakPoint.org where you can read and search answers to common questions.

Eric Metaxas is a co-host of BreakPoint Radio and a best-selling author whose biographies, children's books, and popular apologetics have been translated into more than a dozen languages.

Publication date: June 29, 2017