Ambassador Families: Equipping Your Kids To Engage Popular Culture

Mitali Perkins

Brazos Press

www.brazospress.com

"From movies to music, children are inundated with the values of popular culture. How should Christian parents react?"

Mitali Perkins has written a book about following Jesus. If that doesn't interest you, I suggest that you stop here.

Still with me? This is a great topic to write about. I mean, I used to watch a lot of TV as a kid, but that was when there were only three networks. I was teaching a first year university class two years ago, and made the mistake of mentioning that I got my degree in 1994, a full year before I surfed the web for the first time - (thanks, Tony Shore). The gasp that filled the room was horrific. I mean, how did I survive without the internet?

Words have been added to our lexicon just in the last nine years since my son was born: ipod, MP3, Tamagochi, Digimon, etc. This book acts as a guide to navigating your kids through the maze of choices that the culture provides, but also to prepare them to observe and interact pop culture to find truth for themselves and others.

A Bengali immigrant and a former missionary, the author uses the imagery of the modern missionary to emphasize the role that we have the privilege to play in the 21st century.

"The best preparation we can give them is to travel into popular culture with them, just as Jesus did with his 'children'" p. 26

She begins with Following Jesus:
Into Uncharted Territory
Into Hostile Places
To Hunt For Treasure
To Find The Outsider
To Speak The Language
When Others Judge You

In each chapter, she lays out tangible examples and practical applications for you and your family to not only see the media choices, but also to process them together. The Put It Into Practice and Bringing It Home sections serve this purpose very well. And I like the way she encourages us as parents not to "use" popular culture, but to "engage" it. Big difference.

Like Jen Abbas' Generation Ex, Perkins provides a necessary resource at a time when there are few like it.

Buy the Book at Blessing.com

- Ryan Richardson