Chris Larson
Appearances
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
I'm so thankful to stop by and to mark this occasion of 30 years. It was soon after Renewing Your Mind started to air that I first heard Dr. Sproul's broadcast driving home from college class one night here in Orlando. And so this takes me right back to those early days. So I am enjoying this week's broadcast just as much, I'm sure, as our listeners are.
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
And I thought it'd be interesting to turn the tables on you, Nathan, a little bit. You're the one usually asking the questions here as the host. But I don't know how many of those listening are know that you're approaching 13 years serving here at Ligonier and your journey to come to Ligonier, it was a little circuitous. It was a little different.
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
And I'd love for you to tell a little bit of that story.
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
And not only did he bring himself and his family in suitcases, but he brought me a special gift, a boomerang. That's right.
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
That's a great story. Listeners will have heard that you didn't grow up as a Christian. Can you tell our listeners how the Lord brought you to faith?
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
It's an amazing story. It's beautiful. What's your favorite part of hosting Renewing Your Mind?
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
Well, you're doing it so well, and we're grateful for this season at Renewing Your Mind, and we're grateful for your stewardship of the program. So you've been hosting now for about a year and a half, and this was a transition that we had planned and discussed for many months, but there was something that happened in your life where you almost did not become the next host of Renewing Your Mind.
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
That testimony of God's sovereignty and His grace and His goodness in your life is something I'm sure that all of our listeners can relate to. It's where we understand that theology is not a dry and dusty academic pursuit. Theology leads us to life, which leads us to worship.
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
And the way that you express that, I think this is exactly why we exist, is to help more Christians to discover the God of the Bible, so that they can be born up during these seasons of challenge and adversity. So if there is one thing that you think listeners of Renewing Your Mind need to know, what would that be?
Renewing Your Mind
Reading the Bible Existentially
Well, press on, brother, and I look forward to tuning in tomorrow. Thank you, Chris.
Renewing Your Mind
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
So do you advocate for children to be able to have this nighttime habit of prayer? Oh, yes. And so should the parents allow their children to pray these prayers, as you say, maybe not verbatim? Right.
Renewing Your Mind
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
So for children to be able to hide God's Word in their heart, and this is something that you would advocate. Very much so. How deep should parents go in their explanation of terms like Protestant Reformation?
Renewing Your Mind
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
How important is it to teach children about posture in prayer?
Renewing Your Mind
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
And so what can we as parents or even grandparents be doing to teach children to pray beyond reading this story?
Renewing Your Mind
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
Thank you so much for the gift you've given here in this retelling of this story.
Renewing Your Mind
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
Thank you, R.C., for reading that story today. Tell us, where did you first hear the story of Master Peter and Martin Luther?
Renewing Your Mind
The Barber Who Wanted to Pray
So what made you decide to write a children's book about Master Peter and Martin Luther?
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
It's good to be with you, Nathan, and all of our dear ministry partners. I've been looking forward to this call for some time now. I really am so encouraged by all that the Lord is doing through this ministry, and it is a privilege to be able to report back to the ministry partners to thank them for their ongoing support.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Well, yeah, just about an hour ago, Dr. Godfrey and I were in the board meeting. for Reformation Bible College and heard a wonderful report from Dr. Stephen Nichols, who is reporting on their largest class ever. And it is amazing to see the campus buzzing with life and to see students coming from all across the country here, from Canada, but even international students as well.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
We heard about the growth of the online education program for the foundation year. And really, the school has achieved that size mark that Dr. Sproul set for it. And he had a very intentional focus when he wanted to say, let's not just keep growing and growing. Let's stay small.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
and faithful and that was his focus by just intentionally focusing on a particular student body size and that allows us to have just the right faculty with the students and they're able to have that life on life discipleship as we love to see and nathan you know one of those rbc students quite well don't you
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Every single week seems to bring new milestones that affirm that now really is the time for Ligonier to press forward, to seize new ground for the kingdom of God. And we'll get into all of that a little bit later. Nathan, you're usually in the studio, but last week we took Renewing Your Mind on the road. And we did a Renewing Your Mind Live. And you're going to be doing this in many more cities.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
The report on that pilot program has been outstanding, and we can't wait to scale that even farther. I mean, there are so many people that this particular hospital network can touch.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Providing training for chaplains and other ways that we can come alongside them.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
You know this because you are beneficiaries of this ministry's teaching, and you've been helped by it over the years, of course. But Ligonier is synonymous around the world because of Dr. Sproul's faithful ministry with benediction. Bible teaching you can trust. And it's amazing, the doors, just the name of Ligonier is opening for us.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And so it doesn't matter where we are, people are eager to work with Ligonier. And in many cases, they're seeking us out rather than us going to them. That's right.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
That's right. Our ministry partners can be praying for the conference that we intend to hold next September in Singapore. And some of you may not realize, but within a six-hour plane flight around Singapore, there's something like two billion souls who live in that radius. That's right.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Well, we had Dr. Ferguson there, and he brought a wonderful message of encouragement. And as we've seen the church in Europe struggle for the past several decades, what our ministry partners should be encouraged to hear is that the Spirit is bringing life back to the continent. And we're seeing good, faithful churches grow. Now, it's not spectacular growth, but it is steady growth.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And these are pastors there that are committed to laboring in difficult contexts. But also what's so amazing is to see how so much of Africa has come to Europe as well, and in many ways, bringing the gospel with them. And so you go to a number of these churches, particularly in France, the ones that we're aware of, and you'll regularly see brothers and sisters from French-speaking Africa there.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And that's a big impetus behind why we did the French Reformation Study Bible Project. Of course, not just for France, but for the French-speaking world. J.D., give us some perspective on how many people are speaking French today and millions more in the coming decades ahead.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And so to deliver one of these Reformation study Bibles, we've been able to send approaching 80,000 study Bibles to Africa. How much does it cost?
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
All right. So before we leave talking about study Bibles, let's just talk about some of the languages that we've already done. But you've just rattled off to me this week in the office several other languages that are in the works. That's right.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
We talk of Ligonier as having the most extensive library of discipleship resources that are faithful to the historic Christian faith. And it is amazing to see you and the Global Outreach team growing and taking this truth to the nations. We want to scale up the work, but we're really going to be working on taking this library to the nations for decades, if the Lord allows.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And just from a round figure, how much could we spend on some of these other languages? We talk about reaching the world's most spoken languages, the top 20 languages. Of course, we're not including English in this, but how much could we spend per year Well, the work is so large.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
We know what those projects are. Let me just put some of this into context. Recently, JD, you or one of your team members shared with me a shocking stat, a statistic that there's about 5 million pastors around the world. And this was put out by some other independent party who had done this study. And of those, maybe 95% have no formal theological training. That's terrifying. That's right.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And you have a goal of being able to take the study Bible and all of these resources and over the next 10 years, striving to reach 10% of that number.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Absolutely. Ministry partners, pray for this. Dr. Schroll was so clear in trying to help us to set goals, and we love exceeding those goals. So we're getting to work. We are at work, but your support helps us to get there faster. So thank you.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
We love bringing these updates to you, our dear ministry partners, because you get sort of the insider access. We've thrown a lot of numbers at you today, but it's because we want to be accountable and we want you to know exactly what we're up to. And so when we come to you with these facts and figures, these are attached to real initiatives.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And so even now, as we look over the next six, seven weeks up until year's end, we're We have a $7 million fundraising goal, and that's a daunting number. It's a sizable sum, but the work is vast. It's immense. And so, you know, this is part of our annual budget need and a goal that we've set. And so we do need to hear from many of you. And many of you, thankfully, have stepped up in years past.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And by God's grace, we will continue to be able to move forward into a new year of ministry together. It's our pledge. to steward these resources effectively, ultimately knowing that our stewardship is to be held accountable by the Lord. We want to be accountable to you, our ministry partners, but we know that ultimately we must give an account to the Lord.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And so it is our pledge to deploy every dollar as efficiently and as effectively and that, God willing, we will stay faithful for the decades and decades to come. This is no time to tap the brakes, as you all have heard. We really want to press into this moment of opportunity. Your gifts, I really believe, are directly strengthening believers worldwide.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And every dollar fuels this movement of getting the historic Christian faith to the church throughout the world, ensuring that every tribe and tongue will hear the life-giving truth of Christ.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
I really think that there's a moment where we have open for us. As we've expressed before, there are more opportunities that the Lord has laid before us, really, than we can take advantage of. And so we're trying to press into this moment. And I do get a sense in which there is a peace dividend.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
If you all recall when the world came out of World War II, and here in these United States, you look at the late 40s and 50s, and there really was a peace dividend where the country was able to grow and to expand. Well, in a different context... We certainly see that we have room to operate, room to move, room to move forward.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And Dr. Godfrey, we were just in California together, and I was meeting with several other ministry partners, and they're expressing a confidence as well for the church to be able to move forward. Because we pray for peace. We pray for kings and rulers and all those who are in authority, just as Paul exhorted Timothy to instruct.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
But we pray for that so that the church could do its work and be about the work of the Great Commission and so that we can run unhindered. And so we pray for the Lord's blessing and we really want to get to work. And we see so much opportunity.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
We really are looking forward to serving families and churches and seeing what this can do, not just for churches here in these United States and Canada, but also as we're trying to now put this into hands of our global outreach partners and get it translated into other languages as well. It feels like we're just approaching the start line, waiting for the gun to fire.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And we're going to announce a little bit more at our national conference coming up here in April. And then we'll have some pre-orders and try and get it in your hands so that you can start to see it this summer coming up. And we really want to hear from you. How can we serve you better?
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And take a look at this curriculum, and if it's something that you believe that you can use or your church can use, recommend it to them, and we'd love to be able to find ways to serve you all even more. So thank you so much, Dr. Parsons, for your leadership of the editorial team. Thank you, Chris.