He Is Faithful

On Renewing Your Mind Today, Celebrating the Faithfulness of God. Recently we hosted a special call with our ministry partners to share with them how the Lord has used their support in 2020 and to celebrate the Lord's faithfulness. And we'd like to share with you highlights from that call to encourage you and to let you know how this regular support of Renewing Your Mind is helping reach millions of people, especially during what has to be one of the most challenging years in recent memory.

We begin with our president and CEO, Chris Larson, talking to the chairman of Ligonier's board, Dr. Robert Godfrey. Dr. Godfrey, I know a lot of people have been aware of so many of the different challenges that churches have faced over the past few months. It seems that in California in particular, there has been an acute need for the church to think through how they should continue to honor the government and yet still strive to obey God. It's been challenging for so many Christians the world over. What word of encouragement or even focus would you have for us as we think through how to glorify God and live faithfully in these challenging times? You know, it's so important to have a historical perspective that these are hard times for many people, but a lot of people in the history of mankind have lived through much harder times. And it made me think about how important it is to be prepared, to be prepared particularly theologically to face the times in which God may place us.

And I thought what a blessing Ligonier has been to so many people in helping them prepare maybe when we didn't even know we needed to prepare. You know, the crucial things at this time are to remember the sovereignty of God. Our God is in charge of all things. Our God has not forgotten us or forsaken us. Our God has a purpose in what he's doing. And that's so crucial that we hold on to that confidence that God is in charge and he does all things well and he'll bring all things together for good for us.

And we know that, we can be assured of that, particularly when we think about how he displayed his love for us in his Son. And it's to Jesus again and again that we turn. Jesus our Savior, Jesus our Assurer, our Comforter, that he is with us, that he cares for us, that he'll never let us go. And these are the great truths that we need to be ready to speak to the many around us who don't have that confidence, who don't know that Savior. So in these times, it's so important to hold on to the sovereignty of God, to the love of Christ, and to our hope for the future. Having that assurance that we don't live just for the present, but wonderful things are promised to us in Christ when he returns to make all things new. So we need to keep our eye on the future that Christ has promised for us, that this present evil age, this present time of suffering cannot be compared to the glory that will be revealed.

That's our hope and that's our confidence, and that's what we need to hold on to in these difficult days. Dr. Parsons, we know that Christ continues to build his church. And as the senior pastor at St. Andrew's Chapel, what do you think the Church is learning through these trials that we've been facing? You know, throughout the Bible, we have just beautiful examples of how the Church cares for itself. And I think that that is one of the things that the Church most desperately needs in our country and throughout the world.

And so I think that what we've been learning is how we can care for one another, how we can love one another. And that's not been easy because I can speak for many pastors and elders throughout our country that largely what we've been trying to do is just keep people loving each other and caring for each other and praying for each other. And we have to constantly remind ourselves that our God is faithful, that we can trust Him, and that we as God's people are His people and that He will sustain us, that He will preserve us, and that He won't let us go. Really, it's into this tumultuous time that God's Word has gone abroad. In God's timing and providence, He has raised up Ligonier Ministries to serve in this season. And we have stepped forward into it. We've leaned into it to try and see whatever we could do through all of our broadcasting and publishing and even some new online activities to help God's people, because it's really just trying to get people anchored to His Word, because His Word never fails, because He's the God who makes promises. And His character is such that He cannot lie.

And He has pledged covenant faithfulness towards His people. And what a joy and comfort that is. It gives us great confidence.

Chris, it really does. I'm astounded. I mean, looking back 20, 25 years, we were a pretty small ministry. And all that we've done by Dr. Sproul's leading an example, all we've done is given people the Word of God, and God has blessed us.

There's really nothing novel or innovative that we're doing here, because R.C. really wanted us to stay focused, to stay focused on the gospel, to be rooted to the history of Christian theology. You know, Lee, we're getting ready to turn the page to our 50th year of the ministry's anniversary.

And a few years ago, I think it was around the 40th anniversary, 2011, I sat down with R.C. and I asked him where he wanted to see Ligonier be in 25 years or so. The vast majority of people overestimate what they can accomplish in one year, when they have their one-year plan and all that.

And at the same time, vastly underestimate what can be accomplished in five years. And so the trajectory that Ligonier is on if the Lord tarries, 25 years from now, if Ligonier is faithful to its foundations, and I believe it will be, that we should have ourselves in the middle of a worldwide renewal of the Reformed faith that we can't even begin to anticipate from this perspective today. So for 2020, the update for you, our beloved ministry partners, is just to be able to say that it's just been a year of doing what we've always done, what our beloved founder, Dr. Sproul, set out for us to do way back in 1971, to unashamedly proclaim the gospel of grace and the whole counsel of God. And the Lord over the years has blessed that tight focus, and he has continued to do so in this past year. And we saw expansive growth for this ministry. Exponential outreach happened, and so much demand for this ministry's teaching. And in a day and age where I think a lot of Christians have a hard time finding who it is they can trust.

It's been R.C. 's faithfulness over the years and our desire to continue that mission and that focus that the Lord has allowed us to continue to reach many people. In fact, last year, we've reached over 25 million people around the world. And so it's been remarkable to see through all of the all of the hours that we've broadcasted through our radio broadcasts, through the podcasts, through the thousands of pages that we've published, the millions of resources that have gone out over the internet this past year. It's really been with one focus to lift up the glory of God above all else as we strive to serve God's people and to help them to grow to be faithful disciples no matter what age or season they live in.

A few of them, Lee wrote in and just expressed their appreciation. And I share it with you, our ministry partners, because you really share in this ministry. This is your ministry that you enable. Your prayers, and we mean that, you're praying for the word as it goes out, and your faithful financial support is what makes ministry happen.

Just listen to this. There's an administrator from a prep school, Dr. Godfrey, out there in California who wrote to inform us that they've been using for their 11th and 12th graders Dr. Sproul's teaching series Foundations, which is an overview of systematic theology, and reading Dr. Sproul in their Christian theology class. Fiona is someone who attended our conference in the UK over in London last year, and there she picked up Tabletalk magazine and began receiving that. And she just wrote in to express her heartfelt gratitude for the ministry, and she said, I cannot even begin to explain how the Lord has used it to enrich my soul. It's overwhelmingly, I'd like to say that these are unique testimonies, but we get these every single day, people writing in. And again, we share this with you, our ministry partners, with just our gratitude for you and how you have come alongside of us this year, and really enabled us to step forward with strength.

And we praise God for you. It produced some challenges this year, and then the quarantine and the virus. In terms of how we did ministry, we had to do some pivots along the way, including way back in March with the national conference, Chris. We did, and that national conference, within a week's time, we had to reconfigure it to an online event, and we didn't exactly know how that would go. Well, the Lord did.

He's not been surprised by quarantines, of course, and the gospel is not quarantined. And so we focused on creating an eight-hour teaching event, and we reached over 100,000 people around the world, just within a few hours after broadcasting that. And so stunning to be able to see the multiplying effect of technology. And so we've continued to use that. We've done an apologetics training event for high schoolers, and we streamed that around the world.

In the Spanish-speaking world and Portuguese-speaking world, we did a full seminar on Romans 8, going verse by verse through Romans 8, and that was just a few weeks ago. And then we've had several video calls and things that we've streamed online with our teaching fellows, just checking in with God's people around the world, and just like we're doing tonight, just encouraging God's people to stay the course. And then the decision was made early on to open up our teaching series library, too. It really was, and I'd love for Nathan Bingham, who heads up so many of our internet outreaches.

He's our director of communications. Nathan, fill our friends in just on kind of that moment. And it was very exciting for us to think there's a new way to serve.

Yes, Chris. When we made that decision, really in faith, to open up our teaching series library and make many of our resources free, to serve God's people in that time of need and uncertainty in those early days, it was a decision made in faith, trusting the Lord to be able to provide that we could serve in that capacity. So I really do want to thank our ministry partners and friends listening.

You enabled us to do that, and the Lord blessed your faithfulness, your giving, your prayerfulness. And as Chris said, we reached over 25 million people this year. More new people contacted Ligonier Ministries this year than any year in our history. And as a result of making so many of our resources available for free online video views across all of our online platforms increased two and a half times, whether that's on ligonier.org or Amazon Prime or YouTube, we made our study guides available free to download. And over 660,000 study guides have been downloaded this year.

And then I'm really encouraged by this. Ligonier Connect, our online learning platform, has a group study feature. And knowing that the church couldn't get together for Sunday school and Bible studies, we make that group study feature free. And almost 25,000 Bible study groups were created, and people were using that to be able to gather around God's Word virtually and online. But we're talking about this growth and increased reach. I want you to know that this reach is not just getting wider. It's getting deeper. People are more and more engaged with these resources around God's Word. Time on Ligonier's website doubled this year. So it's not just that we're reaching more people.

They're actually more and more engaged with the content and are taking time to study God's Word. Video views on our YouTube channel tripled this year. So just such encouraging growth. Dr. Stephen Nichols, the president of RBC, is here with us. If you will, Steve, give us an update on what's going on on campus and how you all are doing over there. I'd be glad to, Lee. I love talking about the college, but I especially enjoy talking about the college to you, dear folks, our ministry partners.

As everyone has said, we can't do here at Ligonier what we do without you. And that is especially true of what we do over at RBC. One of the things that this was a catalyst for, Lee, was back in March and April, we were able to launch our Foundation Year Online Program. And that was quite an endeavor. And we were able to roll that out. And we started in August.

We weren't sure what we would get. We had 89 students join us from across the country. And this just enabled us to extend our footprint to provide that theological higher education. And I hope you all know this, this curriculum over there at RBC, this was designed, a curriculum designed by RC. And so we were able to serve the students here in our campus, but also now to extend our footprint.

So that was very exciting. Meanwhile, back at the ranch on the campus, we had our highest head count this year. We had 141 on our campus. And one really exciting piece of news, in addition to be able to have our international students join us in the Foundation Year Program, we just received notice that we have our SEVP approval. What that means is we can now have international students come and join us on campus and earn our four-year Bachelor of Arts in Theology degree.

So starting in the fall of 2021, we will be welcoming internationals alongside of our students here on campus. We are really grateful for God's blessing. We're brim full of God's blessing over there at RBC. And we just serve as a beachhead.

I see us as a beachhead. We've got students, we're training them, we're grounding them in theology and the Word of God. And we just want to send them out for a lifetime of service. And you, our ministry partners, you're doing this.

It's you that is standing with us and helping us educate and disciple this next generation. If some of you might recall, one of our big initiatives that we were able to launch last January was being able to broadcast Dr. Sproul's teaching series into Iran over satellite television. And so people were seeing Arsi and hearing him in Farsi. And this was on at prime time and it has continued to bear great fruit in the testimonies coming from people in Iran. There are some missiologists who believe that the fastest growing evangelical church in the world is in Iran. And so being able to reach these ancient Persian peoples with the message of God's grace has been something that we believe is going to bear great fruit. And truly, after darkness, there will be light.

Just listen to two testimonies that came in. Afsana wrote to tell us, it is hard to find good biblical and theological teaching in Farsi. I'm very happy to see this marvelous study guides and teachings now. I am really blessed by using the Farsi website and I shared it with my friends. Thank you Ligonier for all you do for God's kingdom and God bless you all. And another, Arsham also is glad to have reformed resources in Now in Farsi, saying that he's so blessed that he can learn from the best reformed teachers of God's word and share these with his family and friends.

These resources can prepare the next generation of Farsi speaking ministers. And this is the multiplication of the word of God as it goes out. God is building his church and Jesus Christ is continuing to raise up more and more of his people to serve the next generation. It was so neat to be able to bring some of these international updates to Dr. Sproul in the years before he died and went to be with the Lord. And he would just light up when he would think about these resources, really finding new life in new lands, reaching people who've never heard these things before. And of course, R.C.

wasn't trying to do anything new. He was trying to introduce people to the ancient truth of the church, that the church has always believed and taught. But more and more, we just recognized and R.C. was able to see it that we're no longer an English only ministry. In fact, even now today, we have websites in five languages, Spanish, Arabic, French, Farsi, like I mentioned, and most recently Chinese. And just launching that, we had prayed for many years so that we could have a dedicated Ligonier website in Mandarin Chinese. And by God's grace, it is here. And if you want to dial it up on your web browser, you can go to zh.ligonier.org.

That's zh.ligonier.org. And it contains a wealth of dubbed video teaching articles, digital books, historic creeds and confessions, and a lot more is coming. So just imagining now reaching well over a billion Chinese speakers around the world, inside and outside of China. Work is getting underway on editions of the Reformation Study Bible in French and Arabic.

Both of these languages are strategic languages because they are spoken throughout Africa, North Africa, West Africa. And our vision is really to blanket the entire continent of Africa with a Reformation Study Bible in the native language that is spoken in each country. It's a huge task in front of us, but we're well underway and so encouraged. I'd like our friends just to hear from Matt McGee. Matt heads up not just the French language outreach, but his primary focus has been reaching Spanish speakers throughout the world.

And many of our friends have supported the work of getting the Reformation Study Bible into Spanish. Matt, tell us how that launch has gone. It has exceeded our expectations. I can remember sitting around the same table last year and I had in my hands a copy of the proof, the typeset proofs for the book of Philippians.

And Chris, you had me read from Philippians 4.13. And six weeks later, we would send that to the printer. And then another six weeks after that, essentially, we entered into a global pandemic. And we reconfigured some things in terms of our launch. And the launch has exceeded anything I could have imagined.

I think anything that we could have imagined here at Ligonier. By the time we went to release date, we had already had to secure a second printing. So the release has gone wonderfully. To see the Bible in the hands of people via photos on social media, to receive testimonies of pastors and laypeople and Sunday school teachers using it to prepare sermons and small group Bible studies has been a wonderful experience. And I am at a loss of words to express my thanks to each and every person involved in making this possible. It has been so encouraging to hear from those in the Spanish-speaking world who have taken advantage of these resources, including the Reformation Study Bible. If you will, say in Spanish the title of the Bible. I'd be glad. Love it.

Love it. Lee, these testimonies just remind us that we have a tremendous work in front of us. Yes, we celebrate the fact that we have been able to reach more than 25 million people a year. But all of us have to realize that with 8 billion souls on this planet, there is so much work to be done.

There are so many people living in darkness. And that doesn't daunt us at all, because we know we serve a mighty and sovereign God. And so we press forward with this mission. And it is remarkable to think, you know, here we are getting ready to turn the page to the 50th anniversary year. Where might we be in another 50 years?

Where might this ministry be in another 100 years? And if the Lord should allow us to continue to serve God's people, if we are faithful, as you heard Arcee say earlier, we indeed may be able to reach well more than a billion or a couple billion people. And it's not beyond the realm of imagination for us to really think in those terms. Because we know that this is truth, that we are trying to get to as many people as possible. And that's been in our mission statement for decades now.

And as many people as possible, we have a pretty big imagination of what that might be. So we can't wait, really, to get into next year. Dr. Godfrey, as we do turn the page in 2021 to the 50th anniversary of the ministry, tell us about what you're thinking about as a church historian and what you're thinking about for the future of Ligonier Ministries. It's just amazing to me. I met Arcee a little more than 55 years ago to see how this ministry from very small beginnings has now grown most rapidly, perhaps, since Arcee went home to be with the Lord. And now, in 50 years of ministry, we see it a very short time in the whole of church history. But what a remarkable thing that for 50 years, this ministry has remained faithful, rock solid in its commitments to Christ and to His Word. And I hope that this 50th year will be a time of celebration, remembering God's great faithfulness to us, and dedication to remain faithful to Him. So I'm really excited, looking forward to next year and to the years to come. This is an important time of the year where we are making all of those important plans for how we will strive to serve, Lord willing, in the next 12 months.

And wondering even now, what updates will we be bringing to you next year at this time? Well, let me give you just some sense of some new things that are coming, just to whet your appetite a little bit. Our ministry partners will be really excited to hear about a new podcast that features the exclusive teaching of Dr. Sproul. You all can certainly hear him most days on Renewing Your Mind. But we have a new podcast that we've pulled out shorter little snippets of Dr. Sproul, and it's going to launch in January. So be looking for that. We also have in the works a new edition of the Reformation Study Bible, but this one is for high schoolers, for students, for junior hires, for college students, really trying to pass on the treasures of Reformed theology to the next generation.

It was R.C. who said that you, our ministry partners, are the backbone of this of this ministry, and he loved to champion you, because he really saw the vital link between what we seek to do as a ministry and your faithful financial support. Thank you for praying for this ministry, and we look forward to giving you future updates in the months and weeks to come. Well, we hope you've been encouraged by how the Lord has blessed this ministry over the past year, and that you share in our anticipation of even greater outreach in 2021. If so, let me encourage you to come alongside us with a generous year-end gift. You can do that online at renewingyourmind.org, and I join Chris Larson in thanking you for your continued support of this ministry. As we prepare for Christmas in just a couple of weeks, it's important for us to understand what we're really celebrating. Who is Jesus, and how are we to understand what He did for us? We will feature several messages from Dr. Sproul on the person and work of Christ, beginning Monday, here on Renewing Your Mind.