Update for February
At the end of January, I traveled to Kiev again to teach for two weeks at Kiev Baptist Theological Seminary. This time, I actually had the opportunity to teach two courses. In the mornings, I taught the Masters of Ministry class on Issues in Church History. The focus of the seminar was a biblical/historical examination of Revivals. For the class, I had a number of resources translated into Russian for them to read. These included my article on Asahel Nettleton, Jonathan Edwards’, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” and a number of articles by Jim Elliff including “Five Resolves for Personal Revival,” “Dull Preachers,” “Serious Preaching,” and “Returning to Your First Love,” and “Gospel Preaching” by A. W. Pink. I had also scheduled for them to read sections from Jonathan Edwards, “The Distinguishing Marks of the Work of the Spirit of God,” and “Lectures on Revival,” by Charles Finney (both translated into Russian) but, for some reason, we could not find the books in the library.
The class lectures went extremely well and were full of great, practical questions. But most exciting was reading the papers that reviewed the readings. Most of the pastors were impressed with the ministry of Nettleton compared to that of Finney and they desire to change their ministries to be more like Nettleton’s. They were also impressed with Edwards’ sermon and the ways that doctrinal truth can be preached and lead to revival. All of them were personally impacted with Jim Elliff’s writings and one pastor even made copies to share with his church on Sunday. He is asking them to pray for revival and to seek personal revival and renewal in their lives. One of the pastors even preached Edwards’ sermon (with modifications) on Sunday and he said the response was very good.
This week, I will also be traveling to St. Louis to lead a conference at Rockport Baptist Church near St. Louis. I will be preaching about 6 times on Saturday and Sunday on Suffering for the Glory of God (Feb. 10-11). On Monday (Feb. 12), I will be teaching a group of pastors a four hour seminar on Suffering and the Problem of Evil. Please be praying that these lessons will be useful in helping believers trust God in all situations.
I’m also continuing to work on the next issue of Teaching Resources on the “Resurrection,” and preparing two essays on Jonathan Edwards to be presented at the Southern Baptist Founder’s Conference in St. Louis in March. Debbie has more test this Wednesday that should give us some direction as to the next stage of treatments. We certainly appreciate you all and all your prayers of us.
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