“The Worldview Course is a 13-session video series we wrote and cohosted for a target audience that includes both small groups and families,” explains Mark. We purposely staged it like a giant Apple commercial, and gave the whole project a fun and slightly irreverent tone.”

The course includes both DVD and online video, a sleek 145-page study guide with wide margins for journaling, online testing and more. “We’re both communicators: a writer and a web designer,” says James, “and we share a passion to connect the dots between God’s word and John Q. Public’s world.”

“Most biblical worldview teaching is long on philosophy and short on application,” adds Mark. “In The Worldview Course we concentrate on the latter, showing how the Bible applies to five key categories of everyday life: politics, economics, education, religion and social issues.”

Mark and James were first introduced by Dan Smithwick, founder of Nehemiah Institute, whose acclaimed worldview assessment tool, The PEERS Test, drew the interest of both men. James, an author and Christian missions statesman with extensive experience in cross-cultural communication and worldview studies, was quickly becoming Nehemiah Institute’s go-to instructor in educational settings. Mark, a successful “entreprenerd” whose expertise in Internet programming and design is rivaled only by his knowledge of church history and Koine Greek, had come to Smithwick with a plan to transfer The PEERS Test from its 20th-Century paper format to a 21st-Century home online. The result? PEERS is now an integral part of The Worldview Course.

The two men are odd bookends. Mark, a Millennial, quotes the early church Fathers with ease, while James, a preacher’s son born in the 1950s, is quicker to draw from today’s news, a Star Trek rerun or his latest mission to Cuba or Iraq. Together, these two form a sum greater than its parts. And they’re just getting started.

Click the title to learn more about The Worldview Course.