Hey, Everyone!!!

Given that we're very close to Christmas time, have a merry Christmas!!! It is (or at least, should be) a celebration of God's entrance into the world to die for sinners in their place to redeem them from the curse of sin. In line with that, I have started back into work on a talk that would look at the subject of the divinity of Jesus. I will be giving two talks next month, one at Knox College on the 15th and one at Augustana College on the 26th. I will be talking about Christ's resurrection and ways in which the Christian worldview is superior to a secular worldview in light of that resurrection. I have not given much attention to developing talks lately in light of a file project that I have spent much of the last two or three months working on. When in Edinburgh, I downloaded or obtained thousands of journal articles, and even some books in electronic form, not all of which were put into a good organizational scheme given my limited time when I was in Edinburgh. This project was to organize and rename files such that I could find an article or book very quickly if I had it, and it would allow me to get future research done very quickly, whether for a book or article or talk.

On the family side, we had a gathering here at home, and many of the siblings and quite a number of neighbors were invited to come and spend time here. In this day and age, neighborhood get togethers are not a very common occurrence, and it was nice that Mom took the initiative to bring people together. Thanks in large part to Mom and Dad's generosity (and Dad's babysitting) Kim, my brothers Travis and Eric (and Jill and Eric's two oldest boys), Samdon Stanfield, and I all went to the new Star Wars movie on the 17th. Jill's Dad Gary also went. Have a merry Christmas!!!

PRAYER REQUESTS
1. Fundraising. Financially, one of the hardest seasons for a ministry is the beginning. Please pray that God would bring monthly supporters alongside Credible Faith. Credible Faith is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization and donations are accordingly tax-deductible in the US as permitted by law.

2. Ministry Opportunities. Pray that doors would be opened for ministry in churches and on campuses and for relationships to be formed that would be mutually beneficial for ministry in those places.

Have a great month!!!

Sincerely,

Paul

Monday, December 21, 2015

Quote of the Month

From an essay of Ross Douthat in the New York Times, "More Babies, Please": Beneath these policy debates, though, lie cultural forces that no legislator can really hope to change. The retreat from child rearing is, at some level, a symptom of late-modern exhaustion — a decadence that first arose in the West but now haunts rich societies around the globe. It’s a spirit that privileges the present over the future, chooses stagnation over innovation, prefers what already exists over what might be. It embraces the comforts and pleasures of modernity, while shrugging off the basic sacrifices that built our civilization in the first place. Such decadence need not be permanent, but neither can it be undone by political willpower alone. It can only be reversed by the slow accumulation of individual choices, which is how all social and cultural recoveries are ultimately made.