I have recently partnered with White Post Media to review various resources. The first resource is In Transit: What Do You Do With Your Wait? from threads, a new Lifeway imprint targeted at young adults.

In Transit is a multimedia group curriculum written by Mike Harder who describes himself as “speaker guy” for The Loop, a “large single adult Bible study gathering” at Highpoint Church in Memphis.

I’ll be completely honest and say that as a former Youth Pastor and as a current Teaching Pastor, I have often shied away from Lifeway material. In my own opinion, it has a tendency to be sometimes shallow, but every once in a while, they throw out a diamond in the rough. So it was with great interest that I dove into In Transit.

The material tries to strike a balance (and mostly suceeds) between being a group-centered curriculum with personal challenges. Prior to the material is a helpful transition section which includes an introduction to the idea of journaling. This section is brief but helpful for those who might not be familiar with the practice of journaling as part of regular personal Bible study. Journaling is encouraged as a method of internalizing and personalizing the group material.

The curriculum itself is divided up into six sessions with several discussion questions built into the sessions themselves. As you might have guessed, the theme of the material is that God rarely acts in our timing, which means that we just might spend quite a bit of time “waiting” on God. Harder traces events in the lives of David, Joseph and Jesus, examining how they handled apparent “waits” on God.

Three of the sessions (the heart of the material) flesh out the themes 1) The waiting can’t be about the wait, 2) You can’t short circuit the wait and 3) God builds into us during the wait. It goes without saying that the primary theme developed through these sessions is that God actually uses waiting to work in and through us and we must learn to develop His perspective while denying our own, which is, more often than not, self-centered and impatient. Harder does a good job through these middle sections in focing us to consider how quick we are to hold God to our standards and timelines rather than submitting to His.

From here, Harder begins to conclude by trying to take a “step back” and place the idea of waiting into the larger picture of life. Session five awkwardly handles the question of “who we truly want to be.” Here, he tries to incorporate the idea of waiting into the larger question of identity. Though it is a necessary discussion to have, it feels as though it might be better suited for a study of its own. Though the question of waiting is certainly tied to idenity, the transition feels a bit forced and awkward when we’re told to develop certain core values by examining Harders: 1) lover, 2) liver, 3) learner, 4) teacher (I guess he ran out of “L” words?), 5) missioner.

This brings us to one of the possible drawbacks of any study of this nature. It is filled with personal anecdotes from Harder’s own experiences. These anecdotes help to both personalize and apply the material, but the problem for most people trying to teach these sessions is fairly simple: they are not Mike Harder. It will take a fairly strong and creative leader to take Harder’s approach and take the additional but necessary step of further personalizing the material. Otherwise, there is a disconnect that comes from trying to apply the material through someone else’s personal stories.

The material ends where it ought to, with a reaffirmation/challenge of trusting God and his “plan for your life.” Throughout, the material has good discussion questions that often require both introspection and public discussion. This is a great balance and is hard to come by and for that Harder needs to be commended.

The material is presented as a multimedia curriculum and comes with several short DVD clips that serve as discussion starters but ultimately prove unnecessary and not entirely beneficial, though some many will appreciate the multimedia approach. The same is true for the music included. The idea is that there is a short “mix CD” which participants are encouraged to listen to while doing personal preparations. This is great in theory, but again, the problem for many people is that they are not Mike Harder and the music he finds particularly inspiring and applicable comes across as forced and contrived to others. Music is quite a subjective thing and though I commend threads for their attempt at a multi-sensory approach, but the attempt at the mix CD comes across as trying just a little to hard to be hip.

The content of the material is a bit deeper than others curriculums I’ve seen from Lifeway. There is a clear emphasis on Scripture and drawing any conclusions and applications from the Word rather than personal experience. There are also many scattered quotes from throughout church history which I found quite interesting. In the end, any personal reservations I might have about the material are drawn from its form (personal to Mike Harder) rather than its content. While this study may not be a diamond in the rough, it is certainly more than just a rock. Maybe an emerald?

• Visit the In Transit website
• Visit the threads media site
• View the promotional video featuring Mike Harder
• View the threads promotional video
• Visit Highpoint Church’s official website
• Visit The Loop’s official website