Eric Says Please in the third and final instalment in the epic ‘Eric’ trilogy, now found on Christian bookstalls across the nation, probably best aimed at 3-8 year olds. (Actually, maybe I’m wrongly assuming it’s the final instalment?! Who knows, maybe Hankey’s gonna complete the ACTS prayer mnemonic and have an Eric Says Wow! for Adoration?!)
If you’re familiar with Eric Says Sorry and Eric Says Thanks (my review of the latter is here), then you’ll know what to expect. If not, think fun, cheery, contemporary rhyming prose as we follow the escapades of little lad Eric, with Xavier Bonet providing bright, stylised illustrations. Each story doubles up as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of prayer, or more generally how we can relate to God. And whereas the first two books focus in on gratitude and forgiveness respectively, this latest book focuses on our need to depend on God.
But that’s what I love about Dai’s stories: they’re not simply a case of being told to pray more, or in this case ‘say please…‘ more. As Good Book Company editorial director Carol Laferton has explained, they’re not simply about morals and manners, where ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ are simply ‘magic words’ that unlock the door to happy parents. They dig a bit deeper and raise more fundamental questions. In this case, Eric is learning that we’ve been created as dependent beings. Whereas self-sufficiency is often the modus operandi of our culture (“you can do it… follow your dreams… if you put you’re mind to it, you can be who you want to be…”), Eric’s adventure offers an alternative narrative. As he goes through an average day at school, Eric faces various moments where he’s faced with the choice of either ‘going it alone’ or asking for help. And Hankey has a brilliant way of gently showing that actually how we make this choice is often driven by pride.
Of course, this raises the important connection that ‘saying please’, i.e. depending upon God in prayer, is actually about us growing in humility, as we learn to see that we’re not independent. Ultimately this is not just about needing each other, but about being dependent on our Creator and Father in heaven. And indeed towards the end of the story, Eric’s Grandpa plays the wise mentor role and takes Eric to James 4:6, “Pride will always make us humble, but God gives grace to the truly humble”.
The story then finishes with Eric’s Grandpa helping him to pray a short prayer as they walk home from school (“you don’t need words that are big and smart; just be yourself and speak your heart”), in which Eric asks for God to sort out a conflict with one of his friends that has arisen during the day. In a lovely closing moment, Eric is amazed as God answers the prayer, with Eric playing his part in that answer. It’s a great example of prayer as something natural and ‘everyday’, rather than something just for church or ‘before bed’.
It’s worth noting that these books aren’t ‘intense’, and would make great presents, even if a child is not from a Christian family. They introduce Christian prayer as something attractive, dismantling a few unhealthy stereotypes along the way, and I imagine would start conversations and ponderings amongst non-Christian kids and their parents/guardians alike.
When was the last time you picked up a decent kids’ book about the Church? And what about a kids’ book that celebrated God-given difference within the church?
Yeah, I’m struggling too.
Part of that scarcity is perhaps because we instinctively think that Church is hardly going to make riveting subject matter for a children’s book. Maybe it’s hard enough to get the kids reading Christian books, but Christian books about the Church…
That’s why I was so delighted to get our family’s hands on God’s Very Good Idea, one of the Good Book Company’s latest releases, written by Trillia Newbell and illustrated by Catalina Echeverri.
The delicious subtitle is “A true story about God’s delightfully different family”, which underlines that this ‘very good idea’ is all about God making lots of different people who would “all enjoy loving him and all enjoy loving each other”.
And it’s brilliant. The book is aimed at 3-6 year olds, and I think that’s about right. Our oldest is nearly 4, and she loves following along.
Here’s a few things I particularly appreciated:
Enjoying difference and treasuring sameness. One of Trillia’s phrases that sticks is that “everyone you see is different than you, and the same as you”. I love that. I think that kids get a lot of input about difference in school, and yet that’s rarely rooted in the idea that there is also a sameness: we’re all made in the image of God, and so we’re all valuable. The book really brings out the richness of this difference, and you see how precious the church is in bringing humanity back together through Christ.
Jesus is at the heart of God’s very good idea. As well as articulating how we’re all made in the image of God, the book also explains how God had to rescue his very good idea through Jesus. This gives the opportunity to show how, because we choose not to love God, we are not therefore able to love each other like we should. Trillia deftly points out that this often shows itself in treating others badly because they are different. Trillia then presents Jesus as someone who embodied loving those who were different to him. Jesus dies so that we can be forgiven, but he also exemplifies how we enjoy loving each other amidst difference.
Catalina’s illustrations bring colour and life to every page. If you’ve read any of the other books in TGBC’s Tales that Tell the Truth series, then you’ll be familiar with Catalina’s style. She’s got a great eye for detail, and our kids love going through and spotting these. There’s one double-spread page that shows a park scene with loads of different people playing/talking/having fun, to illustrate the goodness of living in God’s world with difference. Then you turn over and there’s the same scene, but with lots of these relationships gone wrong. It was great to go through and ask, “what’s happened… what’s gone wrong here… what about there?” Similarly, there’s some great illustrations to help kids identify with how they treat others badly, and some really fun ‘church community’ scenes that help make the idea of living out ‘God’s very good idea’ a practical reality: people having fun, talking, praying together, weeping together, etc. We enjoyed drawing the parallels with our church situation, and the illustrations really serve the text.
The best kids book are probably those that get adults excited too – and perhaps even teaching us a thing or two along the way. And by referencing the differences we should expect and encourage in our churches: skin colour, sex, languages, disability, hobbies, etc, Trillia has created a resource that will bless kids and grown-ups alike, helping us to have our eyes open to God’s very good idea.
The last page has the simple invitation, “And, with your church family, you can enjoy being part of it right now!” And would you believe it, by that point I reckon you’ll really want to!
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Why not enjoy this teaser trailer:
You can pick up God’s Very Good Idea from the publisher, The Good Book Company, here.
Disclaimer: The publisher sent me a free copy of this book, but I hope it is still a fair review.
Written by Barry Cooper & Nate Morgan-Locke, and presented by Barry, Nate, and Rico Tice, Life Explored is a seven session DVD-based series that seeks to “show how our deepest desires for happiness can only be satisfied in one person, Jesus Christ”. It is suitable to run in a small group, one-to-one, or even in a bigger setting, like a whole church gathering. When LE first came out I had the opportunity to talk with Nate about his hopes for the course, as well as the process and rationale behind it. You can read that interview here.
Each session features two films, two Bible readings, and one Bible-study: the first film is a ten-minute story piece (albeit with no dialogue or narrative), intended to gently and thoughtfully raise the session’s theme. This is a noticeable development from the format of LE’s older brother Christianity Explored, which I’ll pick up on later.
The quality of these films is second to none; each story is beautifully and elaborately shot, ranging from the dramatic account of a prospector risking his life in the Californian gold rush, to an emotional snapshot of a geisha and her family in Edo-period Japan. Most are fairly intense, although the middle episode provides some light relief as we dive into suburbia and glimpse a tragi-comic account of materialism’s never-ending lure. The other film in each session is a teaching film, with the three presenters taking it in turns to engagingly open up the Bible for about twelve minutes, speaking into the issues raised by the session’s theme – and more on that later too.
Drawing You In
My impression is that quite a lot of UK churches have already begun using LE since its release in September 2016. Some of these would already have been using Christianity Explored – in other words, they’re at home with CE Ministries and The Good Book Company – but my sense is that LE is also drawing in a wider circle of churches.
Key to understanding LE is knowing that it sees itself not as an alternative to CE, but as an additional resource that can be used before someone has done CE. I think it’s fair to say that LE feels like an easier invite than CE – in other words, I can see how someone might give LE a go before they’re willing to commit to CE. That’s probably a result of a combination of factors: on one level the name itself comes across as less exclusive; an invitation to explore the meaning of life feels like less of a commitment than seven weeks studying ‘Christianity’. This is then backed up by the publicity, which asks the non-threatening and invitational question, ‘What’s the best gift God could give you?’ But there’s also the fact that one of the major elements of LE are the ‘story’ films. Though they don’t hold back in terms of intensity of emotion, they certainly change the mood of the session; you almost feel like you’re getting a visit to the cinema together each time!
Good for Everyone
And yet LE is certainly not superficial, basic or merely introductory. That’s because the questions and issues raised are engaging, universal, and soul-searching: What, if you lost it, would make you feel that life wasn’t worth living? What keeps you going in difficult situations? What comes to mind when you hear the word “God”? Actually, I was pleasantly surprised by how quickly our conversations became ‘deep’ and personal. We weren’t just sharing knowledge or learning new facts; we were persuasively being encouraged to reflect together on how we were choosing to live our lives.
And that’s where we come to what LE is trying to do, if I can put it like that. Three things to mention here:
Firstly, the angle LE takes is to ask the question of where we’re looking for lasting happiness. Boom. We all want to be happy, right? I’m engaged straight away. The films and Bible interaction then work together to provoke us to consider whether the things we’re living for are bringing us what we want, or whether actually – and quite strikingly – they might be imprisoning us. The ‘story’ films especially expose this by getting under our skin and positing that we’re each like the different characters in our own ways. And the claim LE gradually then makes is that it is only the triune God of the Bible who can bring us this happiness that we crave. Without realising it, we’re essentially introduced to the Bible’s category of idolatry: the claim that we’re captivated and captured by counterfeit gods, good things that have become ‘god things’. This is adeptly done, and is a perceptive way to connect with those who might freely acknowledge that they effectively ‘worship’ something or someone, but who perhaps may struggle to grasp the idea of breaking God’s commands.
Secondly, this approach inevitably raises the question of who we think God is – and whether the God we do or don’t believe in is actually the God of the Bible. I think LE does this very powerfully. And this is why, in our limited experience, LE proved to be brilliant for Christians and non-Christians alike – and importantly – Christians and non-Christians together. It meant there was an atmosphere of Christians and unbelievers together talking about discovering who God is, and about how we can all lose sight of this. Whereas other courses can end up feeling quite ‘them and us’ (and to some extent that is obviously important), LE felt like we were all journeying together.
Thirdly, LE does all this by taking guests through a whistle-stop overview of the Bible’s plot line, beginning in Genesis 1 and ending six weeks later in Revelation 21. The idea is that because most people are pretty biblically illiterate, it’s vital to paint a broad brush-stroke sense of God’s purposes for the world – and how we fit into that. This was helpful, although I think it sometimes felt like the teaching film was quite ‘full’, because the presenters were trying to combine idolatry/character of God/Bible overview.
Leading LE well
LE is definitely worth running as a course, but it is worth being aware that people will inevitably engage differently with the opening films. I remember Nate saying that when they were trialling the LE material it was often the Christians who struggled with the ‘story’ films more than non-Christians. Perhaps that’s because some Christians will tend to want ‘the point’ to be clearer, whereas the aim of these films is more to open up the issues and provoke people. That said, depending on your group, it may be worth gently helping participants to link the stories in the films to each session’s theme. For example, one participant in our group wondered why the ‘story’ film isn’t ever referred to in the ‘teaching’ film. Footage is used, but the presenters never reference it, so that probably means it is important that the course leader does.
Also, it’s worth noting that Episode 2’s ‘story’ film (effectively the first one of the series, given Episode 1 is an introductory montage) is probably also the most confusing. I had a conversation with another church leader recently and it turns out they’d understood the film in a completely different way to how I had (for what it’s worth, I went for an Edenesque depiction of the relationship between God and humanity – amIright?!). Maybe that’s just the joy of art, but, because it’s the first one, it might help to have a little bit of reassuring explanatory input from the leader at some point in the session. There was also a slightly embarrassing moment for me in the final session (#7) when I completely failed to spot something fairly obvious in the opening film, and this was then ‘helpfully’ pointed out to me by the rest of the group. Good for the humility, anyway…
To be fair to Nate & Barry, they’ve picked up on this issue of leading and linking, and have created a really helpful set of ‘Leaders’ Commentary’ videos for each episode, freely accessible if you register your LE course. These were really useful to watch in advance, and I’d scribble a few notes down about how to orchestrate the session well. More information about these commentaries and Barry’s own ‘cheat sheet’, a handy summary version of some the key points in the commentaries, is here.
“God is offering himself to me…”
One participant on our first course put it like this: “halfway through LE the penny dropped, as I learnt that God is offering himself to me.” That’s hugely encouraging, because that’s really the heartbeat of the material: to see that the greatest gift God could give us – and has given us – is himself.
LE feels fresh, whilst being faithful, and is creative in the way it connects, whilst still being clear in the way it confronts. I suspect the more you lead it, the more you’ll become comfortable with leading it – and hopefully the more you’ll rejoice as its drip-drip-drip approach of shining the spotlight on the character of God helps others – and yourself – to find true hope and life and joy in God himself.
You can pick up Life Explored resources, including Leaders’ Packs, Participant booklets, and the DVD, from the Good Book Company here. A trailer is below:
Disclaimer: I received a review copy of Life Explored from the publisher, but I hope this is still a fair review.
Hello, my name is Robin. Welcome to That Happy Certainty, where I write and collate on Christianity, culture, and church-planting. I’m based in Barrow in South Cumbria, England, where my family & I are part of Grace Church Barrow.
If you’re familiar with Eric Says Sorry and Eric Says Thanks (my review of the latter is here), then you’ll know what to expect. If not, think fun, cheery, contemporary rhyming prose as we follow the escapades of little lad Eric, with Xavier Bonet providing bright, stylised illustrations. Each story doubles up as an opportunity to reflect on the nature of prayer, or more generally how we can relate to God. And whereas the first two books focus in on gratitude and forgiveness respectively, this latest book focuses on our need to depend on God.
