TED and Theology

I created this 7-week small group curriculum in the winter of 2017 and used it with the young adult group at our church. Each session has discussion questions for a popular TED talk and an audio devotion between 6-10 minutes long reflecting on intersections between the TED talk and a scripture passage (or two). I migrated the content to this site in 2020, without the original comments from my participants.

The TED talks and scripture passages featured are:

• AJ Jacobs: My Year of Living Biblically (Galatians 3:19-29)

• Tom Honey: Why Would God Create a Tsunami? (Job 38, Psalm 88, and John 1)

• Dan Gilbert: The Surprising Science of Happiness (James 1:2-4)

• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The Danger of a Single Story (Ecclesiastes - selected verses)

• Bryan Stevenson: We Need to Talk About an Injustice (John 14)

• Brene Brown: The Power of Vulnerability (Ephesians 3)

• Lesley Hazelton: The Doubt Essential to Faith (John 3)

I started charging for this material in January 2021. I intended to take this blog offline at that time, but recently realized that many folks were still accessing them through old links. I’m so glad they’re so popular, and I wrestled with whether I should just leave them up for free. That didn’t feel fair though, to the folks who have paid for them since January, and to me, who is trying to offer helpful free materials in addition to paid materials to cover the costs of running this site and related tech. The devotions and discussion questions are available for purchase ($25 buys you a license to use them with a group in your church or community). You can also see/hear a sample by clicking on the button below.

If you’ve come here as part of a group using this material under the direction of your group leader, or in search of one particular devotion for a group or project, please email me at jen@jenkidwell.com and let me know what you’re looking for!