[This DVD review was originally published at Knowledgehouse.info]
My family just finished watching The Way of the Master: Mission Europe series on DVD (in which Ray Comfort and his faithful team travel through Europe preaching open-air), followed by ROOTS, which is a youth evangelism DVD series based on Mission Europe. I had been wondering how these two programs would compare, and now that I’ve seen both of them in their entirety back-to-back, I will describe the differences and similarities while they’re still fresh in my mind.
ROOTS contains footage from just six of the Mission Europe episodes, while the complete Mission Europe series contains thirteen episodes. ROOTS is a good introduction to the longer Mission Europe series for someone who may not be familiar with The Way of the Master program. This way they can “try it out” before investing in the complete series. It’s also a less expensive alternative for anyone who likes The Way of the Master and wants to have a sample of their work on DVD.
ROOTS would be a great six-week evangelism training program for Christian youth groups. Each episode ends with a “homework” assignment in which the viewer is challenged to do something, ranging from the simple “Greet a stranger” to the more advanced “Go out and street preach.” A group of evangelism-minded students could hold each other accountable and even have fun doing this together, as opposed to an individual viewer being on their own.
With homeschool quizzes and printable discussion guides, this six-session, video-driven course is perfect for homeschoolers and family devotions too. To access the curriculum resources, simply insert the DVD-ROM into your computer and open it as you would a data disc. ROOTS also contains a Bonus Video, “The Science of Evolution,” from an earlier season of The Way of the Master. “The Science of Evolution” is quite entertaining and will appeal to younger kids as well.
As advertised, ROOTS “includes special interviews with the Duggars from TLC’s ’19 Kids & Counting.'” However, each episode only contains one tiny little Duggar clip that doesn’t add anything of importance. It’s almost as if they put those clips in there as an afterthought just to be able to market ROOTS to Duggar fans. Kirk Cameron, on the other hand, is featured prominently as the host of the program even though he didn’t actually go to Europe with the rest of the team.
Overall, ROOTS is a nice overview of Mission: Europe with much of the same European footage (from six of the thirteen countries anyway), some new footage, as well as additional educational bonus features. Even though they promote ROOTS as being geared to youth, the full-length Mission Europe series is just as appealing to a youthful audience. My husband and I watched all of the episodes with our 17-year-old and 12-year-old sons.
For more information, please visit LivingWaters.com.
~Teri