J.D. Bridges
Appearances
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
It's just good to be with you all. It's good to be on the ground. This year, we've been on five different continents, and the opportunities everywhere we've gone have just really been overwhelming at times to see the response to Ligonier Resources and also the great need. And we just continue to come back with this consistent theme of urgency. Could you please send resources soon?
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And I'm just pleased to report that there are so many needs. And at the same time, there's so many great examples of where those needs are being met and where Ligonier is able to provide assistance. And that's really in large part due to our ministry partners.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And so we see ourselves, Nathan and Chris, I know we've talked about this a lot, that we are really a supply line to the front lines of the Great Commission. And that means that we are partnering with people around the world, people who are actually boots on the ground doing the work.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
and we are enabling what they do and to do it better and hopefully biblically and in a way that is trustworthy and consistent with the ancient creeds and confessions that we all adore and cling to so desperately. And I'll give you one example of a report we just received from a partner in Kenya. We have been working with them on providing resources to a hospital And it's been a pilot program.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And Chris, we've talked about this many times. We've provided study Bibles for them, for their staff, and even for the local pastors that are connected to this hospital. And at the same time, for the patients, we've been providing resources such as teaching series. Imagine sitting in a waiting room. It's not a great experience.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
But what Ligonier has been able to do is to provide teaching series clips for all those people in the waiting room. And it lasts for 90 minutes and it continues to loop through. But they get great gospel content and they get to see that and listen to that while they're waiting for their loved one to be cared for. And so that's just one example.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
That's right. Yeah, I think the total number of hospitals is something close to 60 when you actually think about all the different facilities that they have. And it's in multiple countries and multiple continents.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
That's right. Yeah, and earlier this year, actually just a couple months ago, Chris, you and I were in Southeast Asia. We had an opportunity to meet with pastors in South Korea and a very similar interaction and engagement with them.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
I think we were probably more blessed by that time with them than even what they were in just hearing the reports and the affection and appreciation they have for Ligonier and for Dr. Sproul and the teaching content that we produce. Yeah, our ministry partners –
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Yeah, and on that trip, was also able to go to Singapore. And what was so encouraging for me was that a brother from mainland China who has been a partner of ours for many years, was able to legally get into Singapore to spend some time with me and just to talk about opportunities we have to serve pastors in a very difficult country, as we all are, I'm sure, well aware.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Brothers who are persecuted, brothers who are operating underneath the radar of the Chinese government. And so part of what that conversation was addressing was the opportunity we have to serve them through an upcoming regional conference, Chris, in Singapore.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
It's actually close to 50% of the world's population is accessible within a six-hour flight from Singapore. And then, Nathan, I'll also just mention a really special event that Chris and I were able to participate in, which was the launch of the Reformation Study Bible in French. We were able to go to Paris and spend some significant time with brothers there.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And probably the highlight of the trip for me was just being able to share that moment. And Chris, what did you think?
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Today, the number is quite large. I think it's something to the tune of maybe 300 million, three to 400 million people that speak French either as a first, second, or even a third language. But as we look forward over the next 30 to 50 years,
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Because of the growth in Africa, especially in Central and Western Africa, those numbers are going to climb significantly to close to three-quarters of a billion people that will be speaking French. It'll actually be, presuming that trends will stay consistent, it'll be close to, like I said, three-quarters of a billion, but that'll be the number three spoken language around the world.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
It's about $25 per Bible, and that includes everything from the warehousing to the shipping. Imagine it going on a boat somewhere to a port, and then it's got to be trucked somewhere, and then it's got to be trucked again to the next destination, usually into the hands of the pastors. So all that cost. It goes into – it's roughly $25 a Bible.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
So we actually have study Bible translation in Arabic. Bulgarian, Russian, and also in Polish. And we actually have some other proposals that we are evaluating even currently, and that number could grow more substantially in the weeks and even months ahead. So it's an amazing time to be at Ligonier to see the body of work that's happening around the world.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
We know that, like you were saying, it's multiple decades. But I really feel like with all of the projects that we have in front of us, it would be well within reason that we could spend a million dollars a year translating, dubbing content in video forms, printing, and seeing those books produced and then distributed to pastors. A million dollars per language per year.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
Yeah, we realize we can't reach everyone, but we do know that we have significant distribution abilities. We have already distributed, Chris, as I was sharing with you, we've already distributed in the last decade over a half million Bibles. Now, imagine taking that same energy and knowledge to focus just on pastors.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
and being able to, Lord willing, provide a study Bible for 10% of the world's pastors. We know we can't reach them all, but Lord willing, if we could do that over the next 10 years, we believe that our ministry partners are going to play a significant role in that.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
That's right. The Study Bible notes exceed a million words, and it would not be uncommon to equate that to approximately a 20-volume commentary set. And so having that in a single volume with God's word is so significant and really crucial for a lot of pastors around the world who have access to so little.
Renewing Your Mind
Advancing the Truth of God’s Holiness
And often commentaries are not available in the languages or even in those places where we want to reach.