Warner Wallace has tackled some of the toughest issues for Christians today and he has done it in a way that helps kids understand the Christian worldview in Cold Case Christianity for Kids.

In his story the reader is addressed directly and invited to imagine they are a character in the story. The plot has several youth going through a detective course.

Wallace leads the kids through some evidence for God, including the complexity of our bodies, fine-tuning and moral values or truth. He concludes, “God is the best explanation for all this evidence.”

He also teaches kids to answer some of the most common claims against Jesus including whether he is a legend. I like how he tackles the arguments against the resurrection by leading kids through them and shows how the evidence only fits the claim that Jesus rose from the dead.

He also gives the kids a lesson on how to trust eyewitness testimony. He gets the reader to look at the missing historical information from Acts, namely the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem and the death of Peter, Paul and James. The detective instructor points out that those elements were left out because they had not happened when the book was written. By showing that Luke wrote his Gospel before the book of Acts, Wallace shows that the Gospel of Luke is reliable because it was written relatively close to Jesus’ death.

An extra element that makes this book outstanding is how he introduces the concept of chain of custody. The chain of custody is based on the writings of the students of the apostles. Following Jesus’ death and resurrection, the apostles began teaching what they knew. The writings of the students of the apostles can verify if what they were taught are the same things written in the New Testament. Through examining how the writings developed we can see that nothing was added to the original work about Jesus’ life, Wallace concludes.

I particularly like how he explains the difference between believing that Jesus lived and believing in him for salvation.

He also lists CSI assignments throughout the book that challenge kids to pull out their Bibles to answer.

There is also an online interactive element to the book, with each chapter having an online component. Once the reader has completed all the chapters they are awarded with a certificate, which is something the kids can be proud of.

A must have for the kids in your life. Wallace’s goal of teaching kids how to think rather than what to think was executed well.