Reflection and Gratitude for 2021

Welcome to Media Gratiae, end of the year update. I'm John Snyder, I'm the director and if you're not familiar with Media Gratiae, it's a strange term, it's Latin, it just means the means of grace and what that is, it's just the tools that God has placed in our hands to grow and God has given us these tools and the proper use of them is that we would give energy of soul to give time and focus to them while really depending on the Lord to make them effective.

Media Gratiae is a small not-for-profit ministry. We tend to focus in our teachings, our multimedia teachings, documentaries on the experiential aspects of the Christian life. There are many healthy, very helpful ministries out there but we limit our focus to those aspects of Christian history which have emphasized the experiential.

So the Puritans, the Great Awakening, the Evangelical Revival, if you are familiar with our material, you'll know that we often go back and borrow from the older writers to help us. 2021 has been an unusual year.

It is the year that I took over work as a director and Stephen McCaskill, our previous director, went to work for Ligonier Ministries. Stephen is really a film guy and has gone there to work on film. That means that there's been some transition with Media Gratiae.

We have turned our focus from documentaries more to the multimedia Bible studies that we've done in the past. With this transition, one difference this year is that we've been able to give all of our time focusing on writing new Bible study materials for children and for adults and so we really appreciated that opportunity.

Now since we have not hired ourselves out to larger ministries as we have done in years past and done documentaries for them, our support has come primarily from donors, from individuals and small churches and we are very appreciative of that.

We do sell Bible study materials but the sales of the materials really just give us enough to start to work on the next thing. But the day-to-day kind of operation of Media Gratiae is carried forward by donors, so thank you.

During the year 2021, we were able to work on a number of projects and we've mentioned some of these in the past. We have been working on a children's edition of the material in the Behold Your God studies.

This is called Behold Your God, Seeking Him Early and this is primarily designed for Sunday schools or small groups, even homeschool groups or Christian schools. Taking 26 weeks of material on the character of God and placing it on the children's level and we have three different age groups for that.

Some of that material is about ready to go to the typesetter. It's very involved to get material like that ready. You have editors and then you have double-checking your editors and then you have typesetter and proofreading your typesetter before it goes to the printer.

It's just a lot of work. We also have been working on a mini-study, a multimedia study for adults on the book of Judges, where we show how the drifting heart of God's people is dealt with by the Lord.

How to understand that and what is the appropriate response and we feel that that was a book that's particularly important for the Western Church today. And that will be headed to the typesetters soon.

Also, a friend of ours, Andy Christofides, a pastor in Wales who's recently retired, and Andy's going to be putting together a small study on the nature of the Church, particularly the role of Church members.

And we are starting, again, work on a new mini-study on Ephesians 6. What is it to put on the armor of Christ? And we all have ideas of that. I remember growing up in church and, you know, the pictures of the Roman soldier and you would think of the helmet and the breastplate.

But when Paul says to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and later he says to put on the armor of Christ, how do we take those together? How do we understand that in the context of Ephesians 6? And we're coming to the last stages of editing a series of Christological books, small devotional books on Christ that are very hard to find today, and we're putting together that set and hope to have that ready in the first quarter of the next year.

All of these are pretty close to being completed, and as the Lord provides, we hope that they will be out soon. We've also been able to add to our podcast. Now, normally we have two podcasts. We have what's called The Whole Council, was called Behold Your God, and also A Word in Season.

The three podcasts that we started in 2021 are The Heart of Spurgeon by Jeremy Walker, where Jeremy Walker covers a Spurgeon sermon a week, Ransom for Many by Andrew Christofides. As I mentioned, Andy is recently retired, so he's taking a little sabbatical and then he'll return, Walking Through the Book of Mark, and then Hymn Stories by Ryan Bush.

We've been thankful to see how the podcasts have been responded to. The Whole Council has been downloaded. It's reached its 300 ,000th download this year, just recently, so that's good. We have an average of 2 ,500 people listening to each episode.

Jeremy Walker in From the Heart of Spurgeon is actually walking through every sermon that we have published by Charles Spurgeon. Now, if you are new to the podcast and you think that you don't want to jump in midstream, the sermons are not connected in any particular way, and so you don't have to worry that you needed to start at the very beginning.

Just jump in where Jeremy is now, and I think you'll find that really helpful. Spurgeon is always helpful. Also, A Word in Season by Jeremy is increasing. It's near its 100 ,000th download, but we have seen, particularly in Asia, Hong Kong, Singapore, the Philippines, that it's being downloaded there, and so really, we are very grateful for the way the Lord has allowed us to reach out.

Other than the normal way to download our podcast, we have a YouTube channel, and we have 6 ,300 subscribers now, and over 180 ,000 views in 2021. So again, very thankful for that. One of the things that we're going to be facing in the coming weeks is we are going to be replacing one of our employees.

Courtney Brewer is leaving us, and so we're glad for her, for new opportunities she has, but sad to see her go. Now, you may not know that you know something about Courtney. Courtney is the one that puts together all of our emails, and our sales, and, you know, and takes care of the phone apps, and the MediGratia store online in our website.

So if you've been getting weekly emails with Puritan devotionals, Courtney is the one that does that every week. So you can pray for us as we are in the process of finding a replacement for Courtney, our Director of Marketing, Donor Relations, and Graphic Design.

So at the end of the year, we really want to leave you with a verse that we find very encouraging, taken from Malachi chapter 1, and it's found in the 11th verse, and the same theme is then, that we find in verse 11, is repeated again in verse 14.

But let me just read verse 11. God says to the nation, from the rising of the Sun even to its setting, my name will be great among the nations, and in every place incense is going to be offered to my name, and a grain offering that is pure.

For my name will be great among the nations, says the Lord of Hosts. I think we all find it helpful to step back from ourselves occasionally, back from the tasks of the present moment, or the day, or the week, or even what we've done in this year, and to see all of that in the bigger context of what God is doing in that wonderful unfolding of his redemptive plan, and the multi-faceted display of his wisdom that Paul speaks about in Ephesians 3, in a way that it cannot be seen anywhere else than how God is working through his church.

It can be a very discouraging thing to look into the mirror. It can be very discouraging to just look at your life in the present moment, but if we back up and see our labors in light of the great context that God's name will be great among the nations, that he will be worshipped in every nation, among every people, until we see Christ face to face, that great reality fuels our simple acts of obedience today, and in the coming year.

Thank you for all that you do to help Media Gratiae. Do pray for us that we will give God our hearts daily in the coming months.