July 2022 Supporter Update

Welcome to the Media Gratia Supporter Update. Every quarter we try to just bring you up to speed on what's been going on, and the last quarter has been pretty busy. In particular, there are things that have happened that we're really happy to report.

So let me run through those quickly for you. The first is the podcast. The whole Council podcast has passed over the 400 ,000 download marker, and we're really grateful for that. It's difficult to know the impact of a podcast, but I have to say that over the last couple of years, just in my traveling and preaching, which is not that much, and in some of the emails we receive, I have been surprised to see that it's not only the Behold Your God studies that people in churches around the United States mention, but also the podcast.

It's very encouraging to think that someone actually is listening out there. It's difficult when you're stuck in the studio and you're talking together about theological topics to know whether or not it's beneficial.

Those podcasts really are aimed at those who love the Lord but have some questions about some of these issues, and not so much for the people who have an advanced seminary-level knowledge of these topics.

So we're glad that it's helpful. Also, mini-studies. You know that we have been working on a mini-study on the book of Judges, and it has finally arrived just about a week ago, and here's the physical copy.

It's called Living with the True God Lessons from Judges, and it's part of the Bible study series. We'll have two types of mini-studies. We will have Bible study series mini-studies, and then we'll have thematic mini-studies.

And I want to tell you about a couple of those that are coming up. But they are like, in some ways, they're like the Behold Your God studies, and in some ways they're distinct. They are like the Behold Your God studies in the sense that they have a video component.

And the workbook is similar in some ways to the Behold Your God study in the sense that each week there are assignments and there are questions that go along with biblical texts, opportunities for you to really wrestle with the issues that have been mentioned in the sermon, but during the week you get to dig a little deeper.

The mini-studies are distinct from the Behold Your God studies, though, in the sense that they're shorter. We design them and try to keep them between 6 and 8 weeks instead of 12 weeks. The workbook, you notice, is not just a little bit shorter, it's a lot shorter.

And each week has about half the material that you're required to do that the older Behold Your God studies had. It is designed so that you can go through it as an individual or a couple or as a family, but it's also designed really for small groups to come together and to ask questions of the book of Judges and of each other.

Are we really doing what the book of Judges calls for? Is our response to this strange Old Testament book appropriate? Is it all that God requires? So that's the Judges mini-study, and that's available now.

They're being shipped out now, and we're very glad because of the long delays, paper shortages in the market, and higher prices made that slower than we hoped it would be. There are a couple of others that are being worked on now.

Teddy and I filmed this week the first of a new mini-series called Christ Mighty to Save. And while that phrase is taken from Isaiah chapter 63, where we see that wonderful prophecy of Christ coming up from the enemy territory with the blood of the enemies of God and of Israel splattered on His clothing, coming to rescue His people, the content of the study is actually taken particularly from Matthew chapter 8 and 9, a series of very familiar miracles.

But we're asking ourselves, what is it about these miracles that we so desperately need? And so we'll be looking at that. Jordan Thomas, if you have done either of the Behold Your God studies, you will perhaps recognize that name.

Jordan was a contributor to that. He's also been on the whole Council podcast. Jordan is working now, and we hope that in the next couple of months, both filming and writing will be finished, then begins the process of editing and typesetting.

Jordan is writing on the topic of the glory of Christ in the church, and we're hoping that that is the first of about five mini-studies from Jordan where he speaks of the glory of Christ seen in different areas.

There's also a Welsh pastor, Andy Christofides, who befriended me and my family, he and his family did, when we were in Wales, a very good friend. And Andy is writing a book and filming a series on the duties of Christian fellowship.

We don't have the exact title, but that title comes from a book that he's been using as a guide, John Owen's little book. You might have seen that, published by The Banner of Truth, The Duties of Christian Fellowship.

Andy is a semi-retired pastor. And looking back over those years and borrowing from John Owen some, and using the scriptures, kind of giving a very simple picture of what does God want from us as we relate to each other.

While we are excited that those are started, they do take a long time. We're a small ministry, and so everybody has to kind of wear a number of hats. So we're asking that you would pray for us, that we would be wise with the use of our time and our financial resources, and that God would provide the wisdom and everything that we need to bring those out.

A new thing we're working on is a book that we hope to have available at the end of this year to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the first Behold Your God study. And what we're doing is we're putting together a book made up of the sermons from the videos of that first study, and we hope to follow that with the second study.

It is, if you've done it, it is a study that requires quite a commitment, and a lot of times the things that are said in those sermons, which are meant to kind of get the attention of a person who's religious, but perhaps hasn't really thought through how religion has been fashioned, perhaps by our culture over the years.

And what we need to do is rethink everything, but we begin that by rethinking who God is, and let that bleed into every aspect of our life. If they are not willing to do a 12-week study, then it's the kind of thing that perhaps you could give to a person like that, and the sermons then, it would just be 12 sermons, and they could read that for themselves, and maybe it would create enough interest for them to kind of dive into that study.

And also, as a part of that, celebrating the 10th year anniversary of the first study, Teddy is putting together footage that has never been seen or heard from the original interviews of the men that contributed to the Behold Your God, Rethinking God Biblically study.

You probably would understand that of the maybe 10 minutes that each man, or 15 minutes that each man was able to contribute as a whole to those 12 weeks, behind those minutes, there were hours of footage and filming.

And so, Teddy will be putting those together, and we'll be releasing those as podcasts. Also, the Behold Your God, Seeking Him Early curriculum for children, where we take the first two Behold Your God studies, and over the last two and a half, probably three years now, we've been working on this.

It really required a much larger team, but we've had volunteers from the church, and we've just kind of continued to chip away at it. And so, all three age levels are now complete in the sense of writing and all the artwork, but the older age level has returned from the typesetter and the layout, and we have just a few things we need to tweak on that, and it would be ready to go to the printers.

And the other two age levels have already been to the editor, but are ready to go to a typesetter and layout person as well. So, we're really happy about that, but these are large things. There's just a lot of extra material that goes with children's curriculum.

You think of Sunday school material, or homeschool material, or Christian school. So, the children require very practical ways of thinking through what you're telling them, and so there are activities.

You don't just have the children's book and the activities, you have a teacher's book. So, it's a larger project than it might sound. Also, I want to tell you about different translations of the Behold Your God studies that have been going out.

Over the last couple years, it's been occurring. There's the Russian language translation of the first study, and there's a Dutch translation of both, and a German translation and Spanish translation.

A Spanish translation, which we did years ago, and we did it ourselves, has been available for a long time, but we find it difficult to make that easily available to those in South America in particular.

And so, we are really glad that we've been hooked up with a guy named Jorge Rodriguez. HeartCry Missionary Society works with him, as well as do others. Jorge is a director of a publishing ministry called Legado Bautista Confesional.

So, as a confessional Baptist, in a sense a Reformed Baptist, he is happy to help us to get our Spanish material out throughout South America. And he's also providing translators for the second one, The Weight of Majesty, so we don't have to do that ourselves.

And I asked him how they could afford to do that, and that is actually funded through churches. And so, if you want to look up Legado Bautista Confesional, we'll put that in the show notes. It would be really a great thing for a church to look at supporting.

We also have been contacted by a group of Lutherans from Finland, who formed the Finnish Lutheran Mission, and they asked if they could distribute 20 ,000 copies of the first study, translated into Russian, in Central Asia.

And so, that's something that we're not really very familiar with, how to help someone do that. When our studies are translated into other languages by other people, we have them checked by missionaries that we trust, who understand the language well, native speakers, and who understand the theology.

Usually, we use heart cry missionaries, and once they give the thumbs up, then we allow those people in that country to publish the book, and Media Gratia receives nothing from that. We just want them to use the proceeds to publish it again and again.

And so, recently, in speaking with the Russian man, who is the head of a Christian publishing ministry, we were happy to hear that the translation of that first study into Russian was doing really well.

So, when the Finnish Lutheran Missionary Society contacted us, we put them in contact with the Russian publisher, and they're working out how they can accomplish what they want to accomplish. Also, we will be having, on a different note, Jeremy Walker with us in just a couple of days, and he will be visiting Christ Church in New Albany, Mississippi.

He'll be here for a while. He will be speaking to men at a men's retreat, and we're going to ask Teddy to film that, and we'll make that available in our podcast, and he's also going to be filming some podcasts with us.

The topic of the podcast will be how to kill sin or to mortify sin. So, as I mentioned, there are quite a few things that have occurred during the last few months, and we're very grateful because at times things move slowly, and we're grateful for you for the way that you've supported the ministry.

It really would not be possible to do this ministry without the help of supporters, and so we ask that you do continue to cry out to the Lord that our hearts would be united here to do His will, to fear His name, to stand in awe of the God that we want to represent, and as John Newton prayed, that we would speak as we ought, and then we would live as we speak.