The following is excerpted from an interview with Michigan pastor, Rev. John Bookshaw, available on tape from Crossways International (Changing Ministry, Changing Lives). The tape contains many other practical recommendations for using Crossways International's materials in the parish.

"In 1983 I was at a pastoral conference. Dr. Harry Wendt was doing the seminar. And as he went through the material, I was so impressed because I had never heard any of that at seminary. I went back to my congregation and I told at that time my senior pastor — I was his associate — I need to go to this seminar because we need to institute adult educational materials. I went to my first seminar in 1983, in the fall, to Chicago, and from that point on, I've been sold and hooked on Crossways as really the best material to teach the Christian faith through the Scriptures to anyone.

"Normally I teach Crossways. I will teach as many as possible all the time and I encourage everyone to get through that.  Crossways is the staple and I tell them to go through once and most of them, probably 75 or 80 percent, go through another time so they're in Crossways probably four years.  I've also taught Divine Drama ;I use it for my new members' class. So if I have people who are interested in joining my congregation, they go through a year of instruction in The Divine Drama®.  I've also taught See Through the Scriptures® ; I've enjoyed that as a basic introduction.  I'm also using new material, The Bible's Big Story: Our Story. I use it for individual counseling; I use it for premarital counseling. I use it in so many different ways, because — one thing that's interesting — when people finally come to me, most of the time they're interested in spiritual issues, even if they're getting married or  having marital problems, there's some spiritual issue going on.  I can begin to work them through the entire timeline of what the Scriptures are about, and all of a sudden, they find themselves intimately part of the biblical narrative and we have this incredible opportunity to talk about what's going on in their life, what the Lord wants for them.   They're marvelous tools.  I would never use anything else.  I've seen other things, I've tried other things, but I always come back to Crossways.

"About four and a half months ago, five months ago, around there, I came in contact with this man, a gentleman, 52 years old, never been in a church in his life, not to weddings, funerals, he had never stepped foot in a church. The only thing he knew about Jesus was it was "shop talk" — you know what I mean by that. He came to me, his marriage was crumbling, his life was falling apart.  His wife had just told him that she was leaving him after 19 years and basically said he was a bum; [she] wanted nothing more to do with him.  He came to me and he told me about his marriage and his life collapsing. I listened to him for a while and I realized the real issue he had in his life was not his marriage collapsing.  That was a symptom of a greater problem.  It was a spiritual issue [about] his relationship to God — a God he didn't know or understand.  So I told him, I do no counseling.  But what I will do is offer you an opportunity to walk through what the Word of God has to say to you where you are in your life.

"So we started with The Bible's Big Story: Our Story —that book and and the timeline. We worked through that for over three months.  We met two times a week for about two hours each meeting, so about four hours a week we meet — every week, every week.  We went through the entire biblical story.  This man's life changed before my very eyes. Someone else who also knows him says it is incredible what has happened to this man. 

"He, at one point after about three months of meeting —we came to the point of talking about Jesus, who Jesus of Nazareth truly is and this man looked at me, and here's a 52-year-old man who works at GM, in the shop, in the plant, [that] type of crusty individual many plant workers are, he had tears running down his cheeks and he said there is no one else I want to follow except Jesus.  It was a dramatic change in his life, because of the Word of God, the Word of God as we worked it through that timeline.  His wife told him that she was going to leave him, but she would stay in the home until their daughter graduated, and that was this past June.  The mother and the daughter were going on a trip to Europe right after graduation and he went up to the room where his wife was packing and said, 'Is there anything I can do for you?'  And she said to him, 'I really don't want to go on this trip.'  And he said, 'Why? You've been planning it forever.'  And she said, 'I know, but I would rather stay here and work on our marriage together.'  This woman has seen a dramatic change in his life. The only thing she's afraid of —because I have heard from her —is that she's wondering if he might revert back. But it's been four months now, and she's never seen anything like what's going on. He is close now, to being baptized in the Christian faith.

"It has been a marvelous occurrence. This individual will tell you that working through that timeline, working through that material and seeing the way it's all laid out has literally changed his life, because the Word of God came alive to him in a dramatic and powerful way. And that's just one instance. I have two or three others I could tell you about also . . . same thing, same thing. If there is a pastor out there or laymen who wants to teach the Scripture, then there's no better material."

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