Alive: Gospel Sexuality for Students Book Review

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When New Growth Press reached out to me with the opportunity to read and review Alive: Gospel Sexuality for Students, I was ecstatic! This may seem a strange admission considering the book deals with a touchy topic but with over five years of experience serving in youth ministry, I knew this book would be timely and much needed. Part of the Vision of the book states, “We want to talk about the issues that are part of our everyday world. But we also want to lead you toward robust, deep, and strengthening theological content that will help you follow Jesus in the area of sexuality. As you hopefully identify with the content, our prayer is that the content will in turn challenge you to grow further in your Christian walk,” (pg. 1). 

Alive isn’t necessarily a chapter book but rather a 10 week study for groups of students to go through together. Each week provides a different topic for discussion and each topic relates in some way to sexuality. The book is divided into two sections. The first section is for students and the second section is a leaders guide. I appreciate the thoughtfulness that went into this aspect of the book because youth ministries don’t often have large budgets in which money can be spent on books for students and separate guides for leaders.

This book is a great resource for youth ministry leaders because many of the questions require students to critically think about the scenarios and thoughtfully respond. As a former youth ministry leader, I really appreciate that the questions are set up in such a way to allow for discussion rather than just a fill in the blank option with only one “right” answer. The questions are also faithful to point students to what Scripture says about each of the ten topics. There are sections of the book that create opportunities for larger group discussions and sections also designed for guys and girls to separate and talk. I feel that having the questions crafted in this manner will really aid youth leaders in fostering discussions about sensitive subjects. I really appreciated that the questions for the separate group discussions did not change based on gender. I believe this is so important because it is generally assumed that sexual sins are primarily a struggle only with men. Having experience serving in youth ministry, I know that this is not the case. While the outward action may be the same, the heart intention behind it can often be different and Alive does a great job of allowing students opportunities to discuss that and look to Christ as their only hope for conquering sin, sexual or otherwise. Alive also encourages students to use their sexuality to bring Christ glory – a rare, yet much needed point that is imperative for students to consider.

I really enjoyed reading Alive and highly recommend it. I have never seen quite a resource before and am thankful to have received this book prior to parenting teens as I feel it will greatly aid in that too. I received Alive compliments of New Growth Press in exchange for my honest review.