October 30, 2019 Show with Dr. Jeffrey Lee Stevenson on “Reaching Spanish-Speaking Cultures with the Gospel of Sovereign Grace in Countries Where Biblically Faithful Christianity Has Plateaued, Declined or Has Become Secularized”

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This is a radio platform in which pastors, Christian scholars, and theologians address the burning issues facing the

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Church and the world today. Proverbs chapter 27 verse 17 tells us,

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Iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another. Matthew Henry said that in this passage, we are cautioned to take heed with whom we converse and directed to have in view in conversation, to make one another wiser and better.

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It is our hope that this goal will be accomplished over the next two hours, and we hope to hear from you, the listener, with your own questions.

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And now, here's your host, Chris Arnzen. Good afternoon,

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Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, Lake City, Florida, and the rest of humanity living on the planet Earth.

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We're listening via live streaming at ironsharpensironradio .com. This is Chris Arnzen, your host of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, wishing you all a happy Wednesday on this 30th day of October 2019.

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And I'm very enthusiastic to have on the program Dr. Jeffrey Lee Stevenson, who is a first -time guest here on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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He is a ruling elder at Roslyn Presbyterian Church in Roslyn, Washington.

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A lot of my listeners who are from Long Island immediately were probably wondering why

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I was interviewing somebody from Roslyn Presbyterian Church on Long Island when it is no doubt extremely liberal.

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But this is a church, a congregation within the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination.

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And my guest today, Dr. Jeffrey Lee Stevenson, is founder and president of Proyecto Nihimaes.

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And today we are going to be addressing a theme near and dear to my heart, reaching

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Spanish -speaking cultures with the gospel of sovereign grace in countries where biblically faithful Christianity has plateaued, declined, or has become secularized.

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And the reason that this theme is near and dear to my heart is that my precious late wife,

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Julie, was born in Puerto Rico. And her family that remained there, obviously, most of those folks in her family do not speak

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English or speak it very poorly. And although this is not the area, Puerto Rico, where our guest today has a focus of ministry, it still is near and dear to my heart because of the

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Spanish language and the need for Spanish -speaking people to come to Christ, as people of all cultures and languages need to.

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But it's my honor and privilege to welcome you for the very first time ever to Iron Sharpens Iron Radio, Dr. Jeffrey Lee Stevenson.

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Hi there, and thanks for having me on the program. Well, it's great to have you on. And first of all, before we go to our theme today, there's a couple of things we need to do.

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First of all, I want you to let our listeners know something about Roslyn Presbyterian Church in Roslyn, Washington.

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Okay, so Roslyn Presbyterian Church is a congregation of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, as you said.

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By the way, brother, can I interrupt you for a second? For some reason, you are getting very muffled. I don't know if you're moving your mouth away from a microphone or telephone or whatever you're using, but you're getting very muffled there, and we were not before we went on the air.

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All right, let's try that again. Is that better? Sounds better to me.

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Okay, so Roslyn, Washington is a town of some 1 ,000 people located about an hour and a half east of Seattle.

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I say 1 ,000, I suspect that that number is actually far more than that at this point, simply because we are close enough to Seattle that, believe it or not, a lot of people are moving over from the west side, from Seattle, and living in Roslyn and commuting back and forth to work every day.

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So, we're still a small town with a small -town feel, but there are plenty of newcomers coming in.

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If you remember the TV series, Northern Exposure, that was supposed to have been filmed in Sicily, Alaska, it was actually not filmed in Sicily, Alaska.

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It was filmed in Roslyn, Washington. So, a lot of props from that show. Yes, sir.

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So, a lot of the props are still around in town, and it's a big tourist attraction in the summer in that regard.

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But, yeah, we're about an hour and a half east of Seattle, still up in the

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Cascade Mountains. So, we are surrounded by trees. We get a lot of snow in the wintertime.

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A lot of outdoor activities as well. But it's very much a mountain community.

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The church itself, we're the only evangelical church in town.

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That said, there are any number of local churches in a nearby town called

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Cle Elum, and then a little farther afield, Ellensburg. But I'd say that we have a corner of the market in our little town.

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The church itself is taking on more and more of a

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Reformed identity, both in terms of worship. I think we're becoming increasingly recognizably

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Reformed in worship, but especially in doctrine and in the style of preaching that I myself am engaged here at the church.

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Well, praise God for that. All right. And what do you take into consideration as an explanation as to why you're becoming more and more

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Reformed? Right. Go ahead. Yeah, I mean, ultimately we know that the answer to that is

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God's sovereignty. I know. Specifically in the Pacific Northwest, and again in eastern

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Washington, a recognizably Reformed church is not all that easy to find.

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So I did not get this started. There was a fellow that was in the pulpit here some two years ago.

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Paul Virtue was his name. But he was engaged in expository consecutive gospel preaching, and the congregation itself got a taste for that.

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But then as people would visit the church, they would come back specifically for that gospel -centered, line -by -line expository preaching that was happening here.

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That's how my wife and I chanced upon the church. We had been living just north of Chicago in a suburb of Chicago called

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Deerfield, but my family is from the Kittitas Valley where Roslyn is located, and this is the church that we discovered, as it were, and would take part in when we were here when

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I was on leave from my academic post back in Illinois. So I think that's it.

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People are coming out to hear the Bible taught, like a lot of places, and I'm sure that we're going to get there relatively soon in the conversation.

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Even in Latin America, when you talk to people that are coming to Reformed churches, a lot of times they really don't have a clear grasp on what that word

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Reformed means, but what they're attracted to is the way that the

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Bible is being systematically taught. So that's my twofold answer to that.

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I think in God's sovereignty, He is blessing this little church, and as we faithfully attempt to preach

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His Word, the whole council of God and people, once they've experienced that, they're coming back for it as well.

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Great, and I understand that your congregation is a fairly recent inductee, if you will, into the denomination known as the

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Evangelical Presbyterian Church, or EPC. Can you tell us about that denomination? Yeah, so the

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EPC is... A lot of people will say that the EPC can stand for Everybody's Presbyterian Church.

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The focus of the EPC, or the model that we try to live by, is unity in essentials and charity in nonessentials.

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So while the EPC is solidly Reformed, we have a single confessional document, the

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Westminster Confession of Faith, it probably allows for a little bit more leeway on some of the secondary issues that other

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Reformed denominations take a clearer stand on.

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So for a variety of reasons, I think given the history of the Church and the fact that we are literally the only

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Evangelical Church in town, the EPC was a good fit for us, and also in my own seminary studies at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando.

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My primary mentor, my primary contact in terms of discussing pastoral ministry there was with Professor Mike Glodo, and he was stated clerk of the

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EPC, so this whole conversation around the EPC is something that I've been having for any number of years now.

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Well, since you're a new inductee to that denomination, you might not know a friend of mine who you should get to know.

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His name is Mitch Tepper. He is a member of the Evangelical Presbyterian Church denomination in the

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Pittsburgh area, and he is also a North American representative for Christian Witness to Israel, which is the

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Reformed ministry and outreach to the Jewish people. He's a great guy.

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I'm going to give our listeners our email address right now. If they want to join us on the air with a question of your own, it's chrisarnzen at gmail .com,

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c -h -r -i -s -a -r -n -z -e -n at gmail .com. And please, as always, give us your first name, at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence if you live outside of the good old

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USA. Please only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal and private matter. One of the things that we do here,

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Dr. Stevenson, is that whenever we have a first -time guest on Iron Sherpa's Iron Radio, especially if we have a full two -hour time frame to interview that person, and if that person is indeed a

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Christian, because there are rare occasions when I do interview non -Christians, but for the most part I interview

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Bible -believing brothers and sisters in Christ, I have them, when they are first -time guests, give a summary of their salvation testimony, including the kind of religious atmosphere in which they were raised, if any, and how our

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Sovereign Lord raised up providential circumstances in their lives that drew them to Himself and saved them.

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So I'd like you to do that now. Okay, and how long do I have for this? You could basically go on as long as you wish.

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We could always have you back to discuss everything else. It's a very long story. Anyway, I was born on a

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Sunday morning many, many years ago, a few years ago, if you want to be exact. And my parents were and still are part of a

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Church of Christ in the local town of Ellensburg. So I went to church with them until the time

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I became a teenager, and I basically started winning the fights on Sunday morning as to why

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I didn't want to go to church with them. But all that to say, my parents laid a very important early foundation.

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By taking me to church, some of my fondest memories as a child are not actually going to the

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AM service, but for some reason I really enjoyed the PM service on Sundays. In fact, the

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Church of Christ was the very first fellowship of believers that I ever regularly attended after, or should

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I say, I didn't officially leave the Roman Catholic Church at that time.

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I was born and raised Roman Catholic, and my brother Bob had become a born -again believer and joined a

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Church of Christ congregation, and he used to drag me there on occasion.

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And I can tell you, even as an unbeliever at the time, I love and still do the acapella worship.

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Uh -huh. Yeah. Yeah, and we're still singing a lot of those hymns that I grew up singing as well.

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Well, anyway, when I was 18, shortly after I turned 18,

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I came to what I call true conversion or authentic faith.

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And interestingly, it was through somebody who was part of an

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American Baptist church. And you have to remember, this is the mid-'80s. This is 1986. It was an

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American Baptist church, very much influenced by the vineyard and John Wimber and power evangelism and that movement, which was really at its peak in the mid-'80s.

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And so I was a part of that church, and I began college at Central Washington University.

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And while I was in college, I was part of a Chi Alpha student fellowship.

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And the fellow that ran that Chi Alpha group, Chi Alpha is affiliated with the Ascension of God, he,

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I think his theory was that he had access to students for four years, and his emphasis was clearly world mission.

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So the way I describe this is, it wasn't a matter of if you were going into missions, it was when, what country, and since most of us were single, it would probably be a good idea to figure out with whom to go into missions.

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So anyway, I was just really caught up and part of a university group where missions, international missions, was front and center.

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I was listening to Keith Green and his calls to go into the nations as well.

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So in college, I studied two undergraduate degrees, one in Spanish and the other in community health education, thinking that I would go into community development,

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Christian community development in Latin America. Well, anyway, after a brief stint with Food for the

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Hungry in La Paz, Bolivia, that's a Christian religion development organization, I ended up going to Chile in December of 1990 with a mission.

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And while I was in Chile, I was a part of a vineyard church in Chile.

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I believe it was the first vineyard church in Latin America, if I'm not mistaken. But because of the parachurch nature of YWAM, I was also frequently in and asked to speak in Pentecostal churches throughout

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Latin America and specifically what's called the Southern Cone, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay.

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But anyway, historically, evangelical Christianity in Latin America since the turn of the 20th century has largely been of the

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Pentecostal variety. So I got a firsthand, almost an anthropologist inside view of what that phenomenon was at that point in time.

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So this is the early 90s. And I eventually, after living in Japan for three years, my first time in Chile, I lived there for three years,

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I held a licensed preach in the Assemblies of God and went back to Chile and was part again of that vineyard church that I've been a part of for many, many years and I'm still in contact with those folks today.

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But it was living in Chile, I think this was probably about 2005,

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I started listening to the Alistair Begg Truth for Life podcast. Santiago, Chile.

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And it basically rocked my boat. I'd never heard that kind of preaching.

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So if you had told me that what Alistair Begg is doing is consecutive expository preaching, it wouldn't have made a whole lot of sense to me.

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But once I got a feel for that, that is, I guess, that's what

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I was looking for in terms of what I wanted to be doing and what I wanted to be a part of, especially in terms of gathered worship.

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So, in Chile, probably the most recognizably

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Reformed denomination in Chile, the largest, would be the

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Anglican Church in Chile. That's a local Anglican denomination in Chile.

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So that's where I spent the rest of my years in Chile after that moment, up until about 2016.

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And as I said, because at the same time I was in Chile, I would fly up and take classes at Reformed Theological Seminary, and RTS definitely has a

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Presbyterian connection, both PCA and EPC, RPC, ARP specifically.

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When I came back to the United States with my family in 2016, we were part of a local

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PCA church in the suburbs of Chicago, and then once we moved out here, the church that I'm now working for, we transitioned into the

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EPC. So I think I've been across the denominational spectrum. I've left a few out, but not many. That's why

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I asked how much time I had for that question, Chris. By the way, was the

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Anglican, or is the Anglican Church of Chile a 39 articles group?

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It is. And I think the Anglican Church in Chile, so the acronym is

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IACH, Iglesia Anglicana de Chile, is very much informed theologically by more college

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Sydney. Oh, yeah. Yeah, Sydney Anglicanism, and it actually has a very strong full -time three -year seminary in Santiago.

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It's called the Center for Pastoral Studies, but the majority of those professors in the seminary are coming informed by Sydney Anglicanism, so that's what's being taught, and that's what the pastors are being trained in as well.

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Great. Well, we do have listeners who are Sydney Anglicans, including one of my friends who has also been a guest on Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio, David Old, O -U -L -D, and those are quite a fine and biblically faithful group of folks.

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Typically very low church Anglican and very Calvinistic. Mm -hmm.

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And so now, if you could, start to let us know about the forming of Proyecto Niemeyes, and first of all, why don't you tell us about this ministry.

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Yeah, okay. So, I went back to Chile after being in Chile for an initial five years from 1990 into 1995.

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So I went back to Chile in 2007 in what's called a tent -making capacity.

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So I was working for a U .S. university that had operations literally around the world, and I was directing their study abroad programs in Latin America, but I was stationed in Chile.

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So I had that employment, and before I went back to Chile in 2007,

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I had been very much involved with what was then, it's still functioning, but it was

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Crown Financial Ministries under the leadership of Howard Dayton. Howard later left

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Crown and started Compass Finances God's Way. So when

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I first went to Chile, while I was working for this secular institution, I developed the curriculum, the small group curriculum that Howard Dayton had developed and got that up and running throughout

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Chile. So the reason I mention that is that Chile, like a lot of countries of the

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Southern Cone, you can probably put Argentina in the same category as well, there are significant sectors of Chile that are financially probably in what is called a middle -income economy.

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So there's a certain amount of wealth being generated in Chile, but the levels of personal indebtedness are very, very high.

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They're unsustainable, there's very easy access to consumer credit. So I was doing that sort of parachurch ministry at the same time that I was working for this university.

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That in part is where the idea of Proyecto Nehemias came from, so Nehemiah Project.

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Nehemiah was able to bless the people of God in part because of the position that he had in secular government, and he was given favor by the secular rulers in order to travel and be a blessing to the people back in Jerusalem.

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So the ministry got started, first of all, to create a similar experience like the one that I had had listening to Alistair Begg 6 ,000 miles away, or however long that was in Chile.

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So, you know, Chris, as you know, this podcast, I'm assuming, is free of charge. There are any number of resources in English that you can access and be informed.

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You can learn about Reformed theology. You can hear solid preaching, and there is just a dearth of that sort of resource in Spanish.

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So that experience of having access to the

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Alistair Begg Truth for Life podcast, not only that, but at that time,

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RTS, Reformed Theological Seminary, had all of their online seminary courses, all of the audio courses, free of charge, available on iTunes

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U. So I thought, okay, I am here. I'm working in a tent -making capacity, and I want to do something in order to make this sort of resource, these resources that I was able to access free of charge, largely free of charge as a native

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English speaker, I want to start to make more and more of those resources available in Spanish.

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So our initial ministry partner in that regard was

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Ligonier Ministries in Orlando, Florida. And I put in place, first of all, one person to get started.

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We started a translation company in Chile and hired an excellent translator half -time.

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He eventually worked full -time. But anyway, how we got started is Ligonier had, and still has, a series of booklets that are called the

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Crucial Questions series booklets. I think there are 25, maybe 30 of them now.

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So when it got started, I approached John Cobb at Ligonier Ministries in Orlando, and I said,

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John, you know, this resource that you have made available free of charge in English, there's not even something remotely similar to this available in Spanish.

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So how about we work together to make those resources available in Spanish?

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So we did the initial professional translation of those resources, and they are now free of charge on Kindle and also available in print through Poema Publicaciones.

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We don't handle the distribution of those books. But we've had similar partnerships not only with Ligonier, we've had a very fruitful partnership with the

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Gospel Coalition, and we've done translation work with other like -minded ministries.

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And that's probably about 50 % of where our energies are directed when a like -minded ministry wants to collaborate in order to take their content into professional

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Spanish translation. And I really want to emphasize that professional piece. We partner with them to help them do that, and then we take on publishing projects of our own.

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So we take a lot of crossway titles into Spanish translation. And again, a lot of these resources we are able to make available either free of charge or at cost.

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We're working with Latimer Trust as well. That's a conservative Anglican publishing house in the

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UK. So in the case of those resources, we're making them available in Spanish, and those are now being used in the

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Anglican seminary that I mentioned earlier. But that's how we got started.

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And again, we are in the process of creating a standalone app so all of our digital content will be available in a standalone app in order, in part, to mirror that initial experience that really got

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Proyecto Miami started, which was creating these resources, first of all, making them available, but also we really have a heart for people that are involved in bivocational ministry.

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It's still the case in Latin America, especially amongst Pentecostal pastors, that most of them are bivocational.

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And even if you're talking about church leaders, elders, performed congregations, the time that they have for theological study is minimal, so we try to make our content available in digital format so we can take advantage of bus rides, subway rides, and things like that.

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We would like to take more and more of our content into audiobook as well, again, just to maximize those 25 -minute commute times, or for some people, an hour and a half if they're living in the city, you know, just trying to get the best content available into their ears and their hearts, making use, being good stewards of the time that they do have available for theological study.

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I already know someone who is probably going to be very interested in getting to know you,

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Joe Jackowitz, who is the founder of First Love Radio, who livestreams many wonderful theologically -reformed broadcasts, including

29:06

Iron Sherpa and Zion Radio. He is also the founder of First Love Publications, and everything they bring into print is absolutely free, and they travel all over the world giving away mountains of free books, especially to pastors, and their website is firstlovepublications .org,

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firstlovepublications .org, but I will make sure that you and Joe Jackowitz become acquainted with each other, because I think that you could be of great help to one another.

29:39

Wonderful. That sounds great. And we are going to our first break right now. If anybody wants to join us on the air with a question of your own, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com, chrisarnson at gmail dot com.

29:52

Please give us your first name at least, your city and state of residence, and your country of residence, if you live outside the

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USA. Only remain anonymous if your question involves a personal or private matter. Don't go away.

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We'll be right back with more of Proyecto Nihimaeus after these messages from our sponsors.

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Hi, this is John Sampson, pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona. Taking a moment of your day to talk about Chris Arnson and the

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Iron Sharpens Iron podcast. I consider Chris a true friend and a man of high integrity. He's a skilled interviewer who's not afraid to ask the big penetrating questions while always defending the key doctrines of the

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Christian faith. I've always been happy to point people to this podcast knowing it's one of the very few safe places on the

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Internet where folk won't be led astray. I believe this podcast needs to be heard far and wide.

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This is a day of great spiritual compromise, and yet God has raised Chris up for just such a time.

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And knowing this, it's up to us as members of the body of Christ to stand with such a ministry in prayer and in finances.

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I'm pleased to do so, and would like to ask you to prayerfully consider joining me in supporting

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Iron Sharpens Iron financially. Would you consider sending either a one -time gift, or even becoming a regular monthly partner with this ministry?

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I know it would be a huge encouragement to Chris, if you would. All the details can be found at ironsharpensironradio .com

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where you can click support. That's ironsharpensironradio .com Iron Sharpens Iron Radio depends upon the financial support of fine

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Christian organizations to remain on the air, like the Historical Bible Society. The Historical Bible Society maintains a collection of Christian books, manuscripts, and Bibles of historical significance spanning nearly a thousand years.

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The mission of HBS is the preservation and public display of ancient scripture, dissemination of scripture, to provide tools equipping believers and Christian apologetics with evidence for the

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today. Thank you, Daniel P. Buttafuoco, attorney at law, for your faithful support of Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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I'm Pastor Bill Shishko, host of a visit to the pastor's study, and I am so thankful to be part of the advertising family right here on Iron Sharpens Iron.

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We are now back with our guest today. Our guest is Dr. Jeffrey Lee Stevenson and not only is he a ruling elder and soon to be pastor at Roslyn Presbyterian Church in Roslyn, Washington but he is also the founder and president of Proyecto Nehemias and if you care to join us on the air with a question of your own our email address is chrisarnson at gmail dot com chrisarnson at gmail dot com and before we go to one of our listener questions

43:45

Dr. Stevenson if you could tell us who are these

43:51

Spanish -speaking people and where are these Spanish -speaking cultures that you and your ministry have determined have plateaued or declined in regard to their growth and even have become secularized?

44:06

Yeah so first of all I think there are two ways to approach the question so first of all let me just mention that there really is an awakening in terms of interest and embracing reform theology in Latin America and that is throughout the whole continent from Mexico Puerto Rico all the way down to the tip of Chile and just let me take my hat off to certain ministries that like us are trying to make quality resources available in Spanish, any number of publishing houses, but again

44:47

Ligonier Ministries has just been positively aggressive with investing a lot of resources into making their content available in Spanish the same is true of the

45:00

Gospel Coalition and again there are any number of people engaged in the same sort of work that we're doing

45:07

Gospel for Columbia is one that I've heard of exactly yeah and the publishing house, several publishing houses that are dedicated to the same thing as we are.

45:22

Now when I talk about secularization I'm really speaking specifically to my own previous content in the context of what's called the

45:31

Southern Cone, so this is specifically Chile, Argentina and Uruguay so when

45:38

I went to Chile in the early 90's this really was a time, I was involved in YWAM as I mentioned earlier this was a time where we were engaged in open air preaching and people would stop and listen they would engage in conversation these were the years of the well documented numerical growth in Protestant Christianity and Evangelical Christianity in Latin America.

46:04

Now in the case of Chile it's experienced over my tenure in Chile from 1990 until today

46:15

I try to go back every year at least once it has experienced marked economic growth and within the whole academic study of secularization one of the questions that people tend to discuss is is there a one to one correlation with economic progress and secularization and people come down on different sides of that question so I think like the

46:47

United States you see at the same time you see alternative spiritualities things like New Age and things like that so you're seeing some of that in Chile as well but what is happening is in the case of Chile the data that people are collecting when they are doing surveys of what religion do you profess or what religion do you adhere to the numbers that report

47:19

Protestant or Evangelical they basically plateaued the numbers that self -report

47:27

Roman Catholic are declining by about 2 % each year so if you do the math there's a downward curve a downward line but the category that is growing the most is the religiously unaffiliated or what is known in the academic literature as the nuts, people who are in effect they would self -describe as agnostic or atheist.

47:57

In the case of Chile that percentage while the Catholic Church is going down by 2 % that percentage is going up by 2 % each year so one of the things that we are trying to do, and again

48:09

I mentioned my previous ministry experience in Latin America and largely in the context of the majority

48:18

Pentecostal churches that have historically been the representatives of Evangelical Christianity in Latin America.

48:26

When I went to Chile in the early 90s most of those churches were made up of working class folks.

48:34

Very few of them had gone to college, but what's happening now is that the children of some of those people that I knew in the early 90s they have gone to college.

48:48

They have gone to the university and a very interesting thing happens many are either eaten alive by secular humanism in the university system, or some of them are discovering embracing quality biblical instruction, systematic theology, and oftentimes it really does have a distinctly

49:14

Reformed bent to it. So, we do have this trend towards secularization in society across the board.

49:26

In terms of people professing any form of Protestant or Evangelical Christianity it would seem that in our ministry context in the

49:36

Southern Column those numbers have kind of leveled out. But at the same time we do have, we do see very, very encouraging signs that there is this embracing of solid theology and oftentimes primarily informed by the

49:52

Reformed tradition. So, there's reason for concern but there's also reason for hope and encouragement at the same time.

50:02

And again, I'm sure that you're very much aware that many of the countries of Latin America are places where the prosperity gospel is alive.

50:14

I don't want to say well, but it's alive, and if you go into some

50:19

Christian bookstores that is the content because of the size of the print runs that they're able to do.

50:28

That's what people, if they're going to a Christian bookstore, oftentimes that's what they're going to find. So, what we are trying to do is to make our resources as affordable as possible so that we can make those resources available, and again we want to win out on those choices when people choose what material to expose themselves to, what material to consume with their discretionary reading time.

50:54

We want that content to be quality content. You know, before I forget, and I hope to repeat this towards the end of the program, but I don't want to forget about your 50 -50 campaign.

51:09

Can you please explain that? Yeah, so when I was in Chile I was in a wonderful position of working for a

51:20

U .S. university. This was a semi -elite liberal arts college, and I was earning a

51:28

U .S. salary living in a middle -income country, and my wife and I were able to get

51:35

Proyecto Miamias or Project Miamias off the ground and largely financially.

51:42

We didn't rely on external donors. Now that I have transitioned into full -time ministry, that is no longer the case that we are able to subsidize the ministry as much as we were able to in the past, but basically what we're trying to do with this 50 -50 campaign, and you can read about this on our website.

52:05

Probably the easiest place to get to it is on our Facebook page, which is at Project Miamias U .S.

52:13

So what we're looking for is 50 people who will commit to giving $50 a month, if you do the math, that's $2 ,500, and what that enables us to do is to cover our fixed translation costs.

52:32

We've got a full -time translator in Chile. We've got a part -time translator in Argentina, and both of these men depend on that income for their livelihoods.

52:45

So we're looking for 50 people that would donate $50 a month. It could also be at church, simply to cover our fixed translation costs.

52:54

Of those 50, we have one, which is my wife and I. So we've got skin in the game as well, but we're looking for 49 others that would join us now.

53:05

Again, as I am spending more and more of my day at the church, invested in our ministry of outreach here where we are now, we're just in a position where we need to bring other people on board.

53:18

So, again, on our Facebook page, Project Miamias U .S., you can find us, but it's really easy.

53:27

All you do is you send a text message to 52014.

53:34

52014. You put at give PNM. PNM is short for Project Miamias, so at give

53:44

PNM, and then you write give 50, and the app will walk you through the rest of the process.

53:51

But anyway, if anybody is out there and would like to be a ministry partner with us, your contribution would be very much appreciated at this point in time as we, as a family, transition into spending most of our time in pastoral ministry, rather than working full -time on the nonprofit side of things.

54:13

Well, we'll have you repeat that toward the end of our program. Now we're going to our midway break right now.

54:19

It's a longer than normal break, because Grace Life Radio, 90 .1 FM in Lake City, Florida, requires of us a longer break in the middle of our show so that they can obey the

54:29

FCC and localize Iron Sharpens Iron Radio to Lake City, Florida. So please be patient with us as this break is longer than normal, but please use the time wisely by writing down the information that our advertisers provide so that you can more frequently patronize them.

54:46

Keep in mind, folks, that we cannot remain on the air without our advertisers. The finances that come from their advertising campaigns are essential.

54:56

They're absolutely essential for our survival on the airwaves. And if you love the show, not only donate to us as frequently and as generously as you can, but also patronize our advertisers because that will further ensure that they will more than likely stick around as our advertisers and also subsequently that we will stick around because we are being supported by them.

55:18

So write down their information and also send in questions to our guest today, Jeffrey Lee Stevenson at ChrisArnzen at gmail .com

55:26

ChrisArnzen at gmail .com. Don't go away, God willing, we'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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I'm Dr. Tony Costa, professor of apologetics and Islam at Toronto Baptist Seminary.

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I'm thrilled to introduce to you a church where I've been invited to speak and have grown to love.

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Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, Long Island, New York, pastored by Rich Jansen and Christopher McDowell.

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It's such a joy to witness and experience fellowship with people of God, like the dear saints at Hope Reformed Baptist Church in Coram, who have an intensely passionate desire to continue digging deeper and deeper into the unfathomable riches of Christ in his holy word, and to enthusiastically proclaim

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Chris Arnzen and I are excited to be attending another G3 conference together in Atlanta, Georgia, Thursday, January 16th, through Saturday, January 18th, on a theme that is vitally important to all of us,

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Worship Matters. I'll be on the speaking lineup with Eric Thomas, Joel Beakey, Paul Washer, Steve Lawson, Phil Johnson, Tom Askel, Bodhi Balcom, and the world -renowned preacher, teacher, and author,

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John MacArthur. A fascinating new addition to the roster is Kosti Hinn, nephew of the notorious false teacher,

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Benny Hinn. Kosti has repented of the word -faith heresies of his youth and is now a Reformed Baptist pastor and cessationist in California.

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Come join me and Chris Arnzen at G3 2020, January 16th through the 18th in Atlanta by registering at G3conference .com.

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That's G3conference .com. See you there. I'm so grateful to our sovereign

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God that while manning an exhibitor's booth for Iron, Sharp, and Zion, a major Bible conference, I providentially met

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John's County. Andrew is certainly the kind of pastor that is a perfect match for my radio show and has already proven to be an ideal guest.

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Visit citizenpriest .com today. Hi, I'm Buzz Taylor, frequent co -host with Chris Arnzen on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio.

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Let Todd and Patty know that you heard about them on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And remember, folks, you can always call 800 -656 -0231.

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800 -656 -0231. Actually, that's incorrect. You can't always call that number. If you want to actually speak to somebody, you can only call that number

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Make sure you tell the folks at cvbbs .com that you heard about them from Chris Orms and on Iron Sharpens Iron Radio. And one more suggestion.

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I have a request. Since Solid Ground Christian Books is a publisher and cvbbs .com

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So remember, go to solid -ground -books .com. Make a long list of titles that you want to purchase. Then go to cvbbs .com

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and actually order them there. Before we return to our interview today with Jeffrey Lee Stevenson, we just have a couple of very important announcements to make regarding events that I hope you attend with me.

01:13:18

First of all, this weekend, Friday and Saturday, November 1st and 2nd, I will be,

01:13:24

God willing, attending the Doctrines of Grace Conference at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York.

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This will feature speakers who are pastors in different parts of Long Island who are all members of the

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Long Island Spurgeon Fellowship. These are pastors who firmly believe in the doctrines of sovereign grace, which have been nicknamed

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Calvinism and Reformed theology. All of these men who are speaking at the sessions include topics such as God's sovereignty and the five points of Calvinism.

01:14:01

There's a session on total depravity, one on unconditional election, there's one on limited atonement, there's one on perseverance of the saints.

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There's also a session on is Calvinism biblical, and there will be a Q &A roundtable with the speakers where those in the audience can participate.

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If you want to join me there this Friday and Saturday, November 1st and 2nd, at Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, New York.

01:14:23

Get more details at reformedrookie .com, reformedrookie .com,

01:14:29

that's reformedrookie .com, and you can also get directions at hopereformedli .net,

01:14:36

that's the website for Hope Reform Baptist Church in Corham, Long Island, hopereformedli .net,

01:14:42

and I hope to see you there. Oh yeah, you could also call 631 -696 -5711, 631 -696 -5711 if you prefer calling to find out directions and other details.

01:14:55

Then in December, which is coming up right around the corner, Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th,

01:15:02

I will be, God willing, in attendance at the Foundations Conference in Manhattan, right in the heart of the

01:15:07

Christmas season. There's no better place on the planet Earth, as far as I'm concerned, to spend at least a part of the

01:15:14

Christmas season than New York City, and that's when the Foundations Conference will be held in Manhattan, December 19th and 20th,

01:15:22

Thursday and Friday. This is a conference of sermonaudio .com, and this is a conference also only for men in ministry leadership.

01:15:30

They have a very small venue, they can only fit less than 200 people, so they have restricted their attendance to men in ministry leadership.

01:15:43

So the speakers include Dr. Stephen J. Lawson, Paul Washer, Rev. Jeff Thomas, Rev. Ormond Tomassian, Richard Colwell Jr.,

01:15:50

and Andrew Quigley. If you'd like to join me there, Thursday and Friday, December 19th and 20th, in New York City at the

01:15:55

Foundations Conference, go to thefoundationsconference .com, thefoundationsconference .com. Then coming up in January, from Thursday, January 16th, through Saturday, January 18th,

01:16:05

I will be, God willing, once again attending the G3 Conference, the conference that stands for gospel, grace, and glory.

01:16:14

This is held every year at the Georgia International Convention Center in College Park, Georgia, a suburb of Atlanta, and this

01:16:21

January's theme is Worship Matters, and I am always so thrilled to man an exhibitor's booth at this conference.

01:16:30

This will be my fourth year in a row manning an exhibitor's booth for Iron Trump and Zion Radio at the G3 Conference.

01:16:35

The speakers include, once again, we have Dr. Stephen J. Lawson. We have Dr. James R.

01:16:41

White of Alpha and Omega Ministries. We have Phil Johnson, the Executive Director of John MacArthur's Ministry.

01:16:48

Grace to you. Phil Johnson is the most frequently interviewed guest in the history of Iron Trump and Zion Radio.

01:16:55

We have my friend Todd Friel of Wretched TV and Wretched Radio, whose ads you hear on this program every day.

01:17:02

We have Dr. Tom Askell, the Executive Director of Founders Ministries, which is the

01:17:09

Calvinistic ministry in the Southern Baptist Convention. Stephen J. Lawson, the President of Reformation Bible College, the college founded by the late

01:17:17

R .C. Sproul and Ligonier Ministries. Kosti Hinn, the nephew of the notorious heretic and charlatan

01:17:23

Benny Hinn, and Kosti has renounced his uncle and his heresies and has become a

01:17:29

Reformed Baptist pastor and a cessationist. And there are many more on this lineup and, of course, you've heard the news,

01:17:35

I'm sure, that the latest addition is John MacArthur himself. That makes the conference worthwhile, just on that important fact.

01:17:44

I would go if it was only Dr. MacArthur speaking. If you want to join me there, Thursday through Saturday, January 16th through the 18th in the

01:17:54

College Park, Georgia area at the Georgia International Convention Center right near the Atlanta airport, go to g3conference .com,

01:18:01

g3conference .com. I strongly urge you, if you have a business or a parachurch organization,

01:18:07

I strongly urge you to register also for an exhibitor's booth, just like I will be manning, because they always have, every year, over 5 ,000 people there.

01:18:17

So with the addition of John MacArthur on the lineup, I think they're going to have over 6 ,000 people, making an exhibitor's booth even more of a wise business decision or financial decision to register for one to represent your business or your parachurch organization.

01:18:34

So you can register to attend and also for an exhibitor's booth at g3conference .com, g3conference .com.

01:18:40

Please tell them that you heard about this conference from Chris Arns and Iron Sherpins Iron Radio. Last but not least, if you love my show, you don't want it to disappear, please go to ironsherpinsironradio .com,

01:18:51

click support, then click click to donate now. You can donate instantly with a debit or credit card in that fashion.

01:18:57

You can also mail in a check the old -fashioned way via snail mail. When you click support at ironsherpinsironradio .com,

01:19:06

an address will appear where you can mail that check. Folks, we are facing a very scary month of November.

01:19:13

We really do urgently need your support. We used to have a fairly generous and healthy stream, steady stream of donations coming in every month.

01:19:24

They have dwindled down to a trickle. I'm not saying that the individuals donating are not very generous.

01:19:30

Sometimes we get very large donations, but the number of people doing that has dwindled down to a trickle, a handful of faithful and loyal listeners to this program.

01:19:41

Please, if you haven't yet donated to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio and you listen to the show every day and you love it and you can afford to donate to us, please donate to us at ironsherpinsironradio .com,

01:19:52

click support, then click click to donate now. You can also advertise with us as long as whatever it is you're promoting is compatible with what we believe.

01:20:00

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01:20:07

Just send an email to chrisarns at gmail .com and put advertising in the subject line. If you are not a member of a

01:20:16

Bible -believing church and you're not even prayerfully looking for one, you are living in rebellion against God.

01:20:21

Please rectify that situation. I have lists of biblically faithful churches all over the world and I've already helped quite a number of people find churches near where they live.

01:20:32

So if you are one of those folks that needs help finding a church, please send me an email to chrisarns at gmail .com,

01:20:39

chrisarns at gmail .com and put I NEED A CHURCH in the subject line. Oh, I forgot to tell you, as I do every day, uh, try to remember to tell you every day, uh, please never when donating to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio, please never siphon money away from your regular giving to your local church in order to support us.

01:20:56

Never do that. Never put your family in financial jeopardy in order to give to Iron Sherpins Iron Radio if you are having a very difficult time making ends meet.

01:21:05

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01:21:22

I'm urging you, don't let us go off the air. Please send in donations as frequently as you can and be as generous as you can.

01:21:28

Go to ironsherpinsironradio .com, click support, then click, click to donate now. If you'd like to join us now with a question for our guest,

01:21:37

Jeffrey Lee Stevenson, our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com, chrisarnson at gmail .com.

01:21:43

We are discussing reaching Spanish -speaking cultures with the gospel of sovereign grace in countries where biblically faithful Christianity has plateaued, declined, or has become secularized.

01:21:53

That's chrisarnson at gmail .com. And we have a listener, uh, who has a question for you,

01:22:00

Dr. Stevenson, and this is a listener who providentially, as it turns out, has also been a guest on this program.

01:22:10

We have Flip Michaels with a question for you. Flip Michaels has written a wonderful book,

01:22:20

Five Half Truths Addressing the Most Common Misconceptions of Christianity, and in fact, uh,

01:22:27

Brother Michaels has also given us the good news fairly recently that this book is now also available in Spanish.

01:22:37

So, uh, Flip Michaels has a question which is, do you see any discernment issues unique to the

01:22:46

Spanish -speaking culture? And he, uh, offers, uh, in parentheses something that you've already mentioned,

01:22:52

Pentecostal, Word of Faith, Outreaches, etc. Yeah, I mean,

01:22:58

I think that any, um, Chris, am I good to go to answer the question?

01:23:03

Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, I think that anybody that is doing ministry from a Reform perspective in Latin America has to decide how they are going to approach our brothers and sisters in the

01:23:19

Pentecostal tradition. Obviously, my take on this is that we need to winsomely interact, winsomely engage with Pentecostal pastors and congregations.

01:23:37

Now again, I say that because I ran around Pentecostal circles in the early 90s, and the zeal, the enthusiasm for the

01:23:46

Lord that existed, and still exists in many circles, if you can, you know,

01:23:53

I don't think the correct word is to reign that in, but if you can give the theological underpinnings for people that, you know,

01:24:04

I'm going to say in the majority of cases, love the

01:24:10

Lord. And you have to realize that most of these pastors are bivocational.

01:24:18

They are working full -time jobs, and in Chile, that's not 40 hours a week.

01:24:23

That's 45 hours a week, plus commuted times. So a lot of these men are pastoring churches at the same time that they are involved in entry -level positions that don't pay well.

01:24:38

And in my own experience, if we can get resources into these men's hands,

01:24:45

I'm thinking specifically of pastors, they take them, they run with them, they end up showing up in their sermons.

01:24:53

Again, the doctrines of grace, if we believe that they are, in fact, what the

01:25:00

Bible teaches, and we can get resources into people that are coming from a Pentecostal tradition, we can get these resources into their hands, but I think we have to trust that the

01:25:11

Holy Spirit will make use of those resources and speak to the hearts and minds of the people that read them.

01:25:17

Again, it's important to remember that in many contexts in Latin America, especially in rural contexts, the

01:25:24

Pentecostal church may be the only local church that people have within a 20 -mile radius.

01:25:31

Now, obviously, there are doctrinal distinctives, and yes, probably doctrinal error at work in many of these congregations, but the reason is oftentimes that the pastors have not had access to quality materials.

01:25:52

But if we believe that these men are regenerate, that they love the Lord, I think we also have to trust that the

01:26:00

Holy Spirit, if we can get resources into their hands, will also work in their hearts to increasingly embrace the doctrines of faith.

01:26:09

And again, in my own experience, very much limited to Chile, a lot of this has to do with the assurance of salvation, the assurance that we find

01:26:20

God's sovereignty over salvation that we find in the Reformed tradition. Once people that are coming from a more

01:26:28

Pentecostal background embrace that as truth, it's incredibly freeing, it's incredibly motivating to them.

01:26:38

And just a final comment on this whole issue. In my own experience in Chile, I ran around primarily in Reformed circles.

01:26:47

So, as I said, this was the Anglican community, PCA churches, things like that.

01:26:54

But I remember one case in particular that there was a traveling choral group that these were people that were coming out of local

01:27:03

Pentecostal churches, but they offered to come and sing at a local

01:27:09

PCA church where we were living. They came and sang, and then

01:27:15

I was surprised that it was either the next week or a couple weeks later, several of the people that were in that choir were actually in Sunday morning worship.

01:27:25

And I asked one of them in particular, I asked him, so why did you come back? Are you interested in Reformed theology?

01:27:32

And his answer to that was, I don't know what Reformed theology is, but this guy is preaching the Bible. So if we can take that approach of winsomely engaging the majority population that is within the

01:27:47

Pentecostal tradition in Latin America, that is the approach that we have opted to take at a ministerial level.

01:27:55

We maintain very cordial relationships with our

01:28:03

Pentecostal brothers in Chile. And again, the material that we are producing is from a markedly

01:28:10

Reformed perspective, but our goal is to just get the material out there and in the hearts and minds of people that can have access to it.

01:28:20

I hope I answered your question, Chris. Actually, it was Flip Michael's question.

01:28:28

Okay, yeah. And I think Flip Michael and I are now friends on Facebook, so congratulations

01:28:34

Flip on your new book being available in Spanish as well.

01:28:41

And let me, whenever I hear a question from a listener who also happens to be the pastor of a biblically faithful church,

01:28:48

I like to plug that church as often as possible, as often as I remember. The church where Flip serves as associate pastor is

01:28:59

Grace Life Church of Anvil, Pennsylvania. Grace Life Church of Anvil, Pennsylvania.

01:29:05

And their website is gracelifepa .org. Gracelifepa .org.

01:29:11

Thanks a lot, Pastor Flip, for contributing to the discussion today. We have a question that is very similar to this.

01:29:20

And by the way, before I ask that question, I just want to remind you that, or remind myself to tell you,

01:29:28

I should say, that I want to get you also hooked up and become acquainted with two friends of mine, one of which you just heard promoted, who is speaking at the

01:29:41

G3 conference. I think that you need to have Kosti Hinn come join you at one of your evangelistic endeavors in the

01:29:51

Spanish -speaking countries where Proyecto Niha Maya visits and evangelizes.

01:29:58

Kosti Hinn, the nephew of Benny Hinn, who has repented of those word -of -faith heresies and is a

01:30:05

Reformed Baptist pastor. And also my friend John Sampson, who is the pastor of King's Church in Peoria, Arizona.

01:30:12

He is a former word -of -faith Pentecostal pastor and even a former Trinity Broadcasting Network talk show host.

01:30:20

The Trinity Broadcasting Network, well known for being affiliated with the word -of -faith movement. He has also repudiated and repented of those teachings and is a

01:30:29

Reformed Baptist pastor now. So I got to get you hooked up with those guys. That would be wonderful.

01:30:37

Okay, let's see here. Oh yeah, I was just about to read a question. We have from Christian in Amityville, Long Island, New York.

01:30:49

Actually, I used to live there. I was born and raised in Amityville. Christian in Amityville, Long Island, New York says, do you agree with me that one of the appeals of Pentecostalism to a culture that previously was predominantly

01:31:03

Roman Catholic is that there are very sensual things about both religious systems, even though at first glance they may seem as polar opposite forms of religion because Roman Catholicism is typically very stoic and reserved and quiet.

01:31:24

But at the same time, they are both very focused on the miraculous and very often connected to superstition.

01:31:31

I was wondering if you agreed with that assessment of mine. Yeah, it's a great question.

01:31:41

Michael Horton does a good job, I think, of explaining pneumatology or the understanding of the

01:31:50

Holy Spirit across different traditions in his book on the Holy Spirit, including Roman Catholicism.

01:31:57

My own academic background is more in the social sciences and sociology in particular, and I think what makes the most sense to me in terms of explaining from a strictly sociological viewpoint the expansion and growth of Pentecostalism, which, again, that does seem to have tapered off.

01:32:21

But I think it is this notion of empowerment in societies where the people that were embracing

01:32:31

Pentecostalism and Pentecostal theology were very much the underclass, very much disempowered, very much exploited both economically and socially.

01:32:42

So I think that's a big part of the explanation. There's a sociological analysis that Pentecostalism held out the possibility of having power in a context where outside of the

01:32:56

Church doors they were not afforded any sense of power.

01:33:02

In terms of the more animated forms of Pentecostalism, and if that is part of what the draw is, yeah,

01:33:16

I think that probably there is an issue of cultural affinity with some of the more expressive forms of worship that you see in Pentecostal circles.

01:33:28

That said, a lot of the people that I know in Reformed circles in Chile, not necessarily within the

01:33:37

Anglican context, but people that were previously in Pentecostal churches and ended up in more

01:33:46

Reformed churches, while they have embraced Reformed theology, there is still a vibrancy in worship that is unmistakably...

01:33:59

I think there's a cultural element to that as well. All that to say,

01:34:05

I think it's a combination of empowerment. That's what was behind a lot of Pentecostalism, and at the same time, once these guys embraced the

01:34:17

Reformed faith, the worship is oftentimes very recognizably

01:34:24

Reformed, as you might have experienced it in majority -world

01:34:29

Western countries—United States, Australia, etc. But again, there are still cultural elements that people will hold on to, even in the

01:34:41

Reformed church context. Great, thank you, Christian in Amityville, Long Island, New York.

01:34:48

Keep listening to the program. Let's see here, we have Harrison in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, has the apostasy of Pope Francis, who has been becoming increasingly more and more liberal and left -wing and abominably crazy, has that contributed to the predominant

01:35:16

Roman Catholic cultures that you are acquainted with turning to the

01:35:21

Reformed faith and abandoning Roman Catholicism? I would say

01:35:27

I don't think the current pope has been the source of many people leaving

01:35:39

Roman Catholicism. And in fact, in some contexts, it might even be seen as a badge of pride.

01:35:47

So he's from Argentina, so the fact that the pope is one of, quote, one of us, he's one of our guys, that has played in the

01:35:59

Roman Catholic Church's favor. You know, again, the ministry context that I'm most familiar with is

01:36:05

Chile, and there have, sadly enough, been a series of scandals within the

01:36:10

Roman Catholic Church within Chile that have led to, have contributed to, defections from the

01:36:22

Roman Catholic Church. But again, at the same time, there is just this generalized tendency away from established religion.

01:36:35

That's part of that process of secularization that we talked about at the beginning of the program.

01:36:42

I would like you to address models of ministry and pastoral expectations.

01:36:48

I know that there are three major models of ministry, traditional, contemporary, and missional.

01:36:54

If you could go through a brief summary of those and let us know what you endorse through pro -yekta and nege -mine.

01:37:01

Yeah, yeah, very good. Yeah, so this is an area of personal interest of mine.

01:37:09

I, to my wife's chagrin in 2016, decided I would like to do a second

01:37:15

PhD in intercultural studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. So, intercultural studies is mission and evangelism.

01:37:23

And one of the things that I am looking at in those studies is the appropriateness of traditional models of pastoral ministry.

01:37:35

And this would be true of any context. This would be true of the United States or of anywhere where there's the formal training of men for gospel ministry going on.

01:37:51

And I'm informed from several sources, but that three -way distinction that you mentioned, that three -way dichotomy,

01:38:03

I guess, is something that I have discussed at length with Professor Phil Sell at Trinity.

01:38:11

He is a professor of pastoral theology at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. And so, basically, he has come up with this three -way distinction of pastoral ministry and expectations for pastors, depending on what a given congregation's expectations for the pastor might be.

01:38:37

So, in that traditional model, you've got the parish priest, who is largely responsible primarily—and there's nothing inherently bad with this—primarily responsible for the preaching of the

01:38:54

Word, the administration of the sacraments, but there's also... it tends to be very pastor -centric.

01:39:05

It tends to be very much limited to the activities of the local church, the activities that take place within the local church.

01:39:14

So, that's the traditional model, I guess, of pastor as parish priest.

01:39:20

The second model would be pastor as leader, pastor as almost

01:39:25

CEO, where an MBA degree might be as appealing as an

01:39:32

MBA degree. That's the contemporary model. That's right, that's right. So, it's, you know, in a lot of the secret churches, this is what pastors were trained in and trained to do.

01:39:46

Again, my wife and I spent two and a half years in Illinois, right?

01:39:53

So, we have some examples of large secret churches in the

01:39:58

Midwest. But then again, there's this third model, which is pastor as missions mobilizer.

01:40:07

And when I say mission mobilizer, I'm not referring to mobilizing people within the local congregation for international, cross -cultural mission.

01:40:16

That's great if that happens. But it is, first of all, it's pastor as equipper, pastor as mobilizer, simply because in some of the contexts where we minister, my own, for example, in the

01:40:34

Pacific Northwest, very, very secular. Local church attendance is not,

01:40:40

I can't imagine it being over 10 % in many of the cities out here on a

01:40:46

Sunday morning. So, it's a model of pastor ministry where the pastor is trained to equip men and women for ministry in the workplace.

01:41:00

So, we do a lot of publications related to faith and work.

01:41:08

In fact, if you could pick up right where you left off, because we have to go to our final break.

01:41:14

And then you could pick up right where you left off. And if anybody wants to... Yeah. Okay, go ahead.

01:41:20

We're going to our final break. So, you could pick up right where you left off there. And if anybody wants to join us, do it now, because we're rapidly running out of time.

01:41:28

Our email address is chrisarnson at gmail .com. chrisarnson at gmail .com. Don't go away. We'll be right back after these messages from our sponsors.

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01:49:44

Spread the word about firstloveradio .org. Welcome back, and Dr.

01:49:57

Jeffrey Lee Stevenson, we were just going through the missional approach to ministry before we went to a commercial break, so if you could continue with that.

01:50:09

Yeah, so that is, it's really just related to my studies at Trinity, Evangelical Trinity School in Intercultural Studies, and I'm just exploring alternative or additional models of pastoral ministry specifically in context of increasing secularization.

01:50:33

So, you know, somebody who has thought about this in the past is theologian

01:50:39

Leslie Newbigin, so he was from the UK, he went and ministered in India for 30 years, and when he came back to the

01:50:46

UK, he came back to a country that he basically didn't recognize in terms of the changes that had happened from being at least nominally

01:50:57

Christian to a context in the UK that was characterized by pluralism.

01:51:04

So there are people that have been discussing pastoral formation in context of increasing secularization.

01:51:14

Again, where I am, the Pacific Northwest, that's one of them, and Chile and Argentina are increasingly the case as well.

01:51:23

So in that context, there is definitely a role for lay leaders, and there is also a wonderful opportunity for Gospel Witness as people live out their faith in the workplace or within the community networks that they are a part of as well.

01:51:45

Again, that is primarily an academic interest of mine, but it is something that we're trying to inform as well with some of the book projects that we've taken on.

01:51:56

Great, and I believe I just noticed you've become my Facebook friend as well. That is true.

01:52:07

We have Arnie in Perry County, Pennsylvania, who wants to know, he says, sorry

01:52:13

I tuned in late, I was wondering how you became so much in love with the

01:52:20

Spanish -speaking culture and why that is a primary focus of your ministry. Yeah, so this is a great question.

01:52:27

It's something that we discuss in the realm of missiology, this whole notion of call, right?

01:52:33

So is there a specific call for cross -cultural ministry? And I think some people would say that that is the case, and where there's the call.

01:52:44

I think we see this evidenced in the Apostle Paul. God also gives us a love, and oftentimes that is for a specific people group, and that has definitely been the case with my relationship with Chile.

01:52:58

Chile is a second home for me. My wife is Chilean. Two of my kids were born in Chile.

01:53:04

I get back there with my family, ideally, as often as possible. So that's...

01:53:10

And again, at the very beginning of the program, I mentioned the influence of this leader, Michael Mowry was his name.

01:53:17

I'm now remembering it. He was leader of a local Chi Alpha group, so it was a combination of being exposed to thinking about God's mission in the world, but also

01:53:28

I would venture to say there was an element of call there as well. And now that I'm back in the

01:53:34

United States with my family, I think the best way for me to contribute to that area of ministry now is through the work that we're doing with Project Nehemiah.

01:53:47

Great. Well, I'd like you to spend about five minutes of uninterrupted time just unburdening your heart and giving our listeners the information that you most want etched on their hearts and minds before this program is over.

01:53:59

Yeah. Yeah. So again, Chris, just thank you for the opportunity to come on your program.

01:54:08

Just in very practical terms, we are going to be present at some upcoming events.

01:54:15

So I will be going... In November, I will be going to the Evangelical Theological Society meeting in San Diego.

01:54:24

I'll be there for all three days. So if somebody would like to contact me, we won't have a booth for Project Nehemiah there, but I will be there, as well as the other two board members will be there.

01:54:35

We'll be meeting with book publishers and people looking to take their content into Spanish.

01:54:42

So if that is of interest to you, look me up either through the website or on Facebook.

01:54:48

My name is Jeff Stevenson. We will be at the Bethlehem Pastors Conference.

01:54:54

This is early February this year. This will be the third year that we have been there, and we will have booth space at the

01:55:03

Bethlehem Pastors Conference. Is that a conference of John Piper? It is. Okay. It is.

01:55:09

Yeah. And they have been very, very generous to us in the past in terms of gifting booth space. So as long as that line of generosity continues, we will continue to be there.

01:55:19

And it's been a good source for us to take our material.

01:55:25

We generally do a book giveaway. So we'll try to have 500 copies of one of our titles to give away.

01:55:31

The one that I'm hoping to have available is a book called Resilience Ministry. It's about maintaining resilience in pastoral ministry.

01:55:41

So we'll be there. I don't know if we'll make it to G3. Now that I'm full -time at church, and in good

01:55:46

Presbyterian fashion, I will have to ask session for permission if I don't want to try to get down for that. Oh, you definitely got to be there.

01:55:52

You definitely got to be there. That's right. And I guess the other thing is just to say this ministry is something that we started when

01:56:03

I was living in a tent -making capacity. I don't draw any salary from the ministry, nor do any of the board members.

01:56:11

So when we take on a translation project, one, our people are professional translators, and two, we make very, very good use of those funds.

01:56:27

So I think in terms of bang for ministry buck, I would just like to assure people that we're making the best use of their funds.

01:56:39

And finally, again, right now we are working with this campaign that we're calling 50 -50.

01:56:47

We're looking for 50 people, actually 49, because my wife and I are one of the 50. We're looking for 50 people who can commit.

01:56:54

This could be an individual. This could be a church who can commit to donating $50 a month each month to cover just our basic translation costs.

01:57:06

And again, the way you can do that is to send a text to 52014.

01:57:13

That's 52014. And then type in at give p -n -m, p -n -m, give p -n -m, and then type give 50, and it'll walk you through the giving process.

01:57:28

So that would be my call. Chris, if anybody wants to join us in making these resources available to people, we'll be meeting at the

01:57:39

Evangelical Theological Society with one ministry partner in particular to see if we can take more and more of their content online.

01:57:48

But also, if there is a book that has been particularly influential in your own

01:57:54

Christian life, and that book is not available in Spanish, one of the things that we do is partner with people, donors, that want to take a specific book into Spanish, and we help them do that.

01:58:07

So if that's the case, please be in contact as well. We would like to see more and more quality

01:58:13

Reformed content available in professional Spanish translation. Great, and I want to remind our listeners again about the website for Roslyn Presbyterian Church in Roslyn, Washington.

01:58:26

It is roslynchurch .org, and Roslyn is spelled r -o -s -l -y -n, r -o -s -l -y -n -church .org.

01:58:35

And don't forget about the Proyecto Nehemiahs, and I'm probably butchering that as far as the way it's supposed to be.

01:58:42

You're doing great. You're doing fine. Proyectonehemiahs .org, P -R -O -Y -E -C -T -O -N -E -H -E -M -I -A -S, and that's .org.

01:58:56

And you said you had a Facebook page that's a better way of contacting us. We do have a

01:59:02

Facebook page, and our webpage is actually being redone right now by your agency, so we should have a brand new webpage out shortly.

01:59:12

But yeah, the link for our old page is still live. And our Facebook handle is at Project Nehemiah U .S.

01:59:22

So there you don't need the Spanish script. You can use it at Project Nehemiah U .S.,

01:59:29

and you can find more of what we're doing there. Great. Well, I already know that I want to have you back as a guest on Iron Trip and Zion Radio, and I look forward to that.

01:59:39

And I want to thank you for being our guest today. I want to thank everybody who listened, especially those who took the time to write. And I hope all of you always remember for the rest of your lives that Jesus Christ is a far greater