Da Vinci Code Resource

Willow Creek has published some small group resources on The Da Vinci Code. You can find out more here. I have not personally read it (the book in question or the Willow Creek curriculum), so I am not necessarily endorsing the materials. What I am endorsing is that we recognize this window of opportunity and be prepared to harness the renewed discussions in spiritual things that are bound to happen as a result of this movie.

In my former life, I worked on Capitol Hill. When The Da Vinci Code was released, people came up to me every day asking my opinions about something in the book. It was a wide open door every day to share my faith.

I think we will see a similar phenomenon when The Da Vinci Code movie is released. Everyone will be seeing it. Everyone will be talking about it. And it may give us a window of opportunity to talk about our faith.

When The Passion of the Christ was released, we launched some movie discussion small groups. We showed the movie one Sunday morning. And then we started discussion groups the next Sunday morning before church. They did not work as we had hoped. Why? Because that's not where people were talking about the movie. Rather, people were talking about the movie in their normal every day lives. They were talking about it where they lived. They were talking about the movie around the water coolers at work. That's where they wanted to talk about it. Not in some artificially constructed set of relationships.

If I could travel back in time, I would do something differently. Either I would have focused more on equipping all of our NCCers to engage in these water cooler conversations. Or I would have focused on launching our discussion groups in the marketplace. I probably would have done both.

I think the Da Vinci Code may offer us another unique opportunity to talk about the truth of God's word. There will be a momentum and energy generated by it, and people will be talking about spiritual things. It's not about us endorsing the movie. It's about us being ready to give an answer to people who ask the reason for the hope that we have (I Peter 3:15).