The sermon by Paul Carrington discusses a long-term and costly mission operation by the church, focusing on spreading the gospel through audio resources due to declining reading rates globally. The church has developed a Turkish app, potentially used by a significant portion of Christians in Turkey, and aims to translate Christian literature into multiple languages. The mission requires various professionals, including translators, programmers, and designers. The sermon highlights the historical significance of publishing in spreading the gospel, referencing ancient communication methods and technological advancements like the printing press, radio, and digital media. The mission also involves challenges such as translation rights, licensing, and the need for good foundational materials in countries lacking sound Christian teaching. The church collaborates with global organizations and seeks to play a role in a reformation movement by producing quality Christian materials and translations. The sermon concludes with a call to prayer for the mission's success and the advancement of God's kingdom.

So Paul and I are here, I'm here to really try to explain what is and will be a very long-term, very expensive missions operation for our church and it's you know part of our vision to spread the gospel. And what I'd like to do is try to cast a vision for this. Paul's going to come up and give us an update, and then the elders are going to gather up here to pray. So that's how it'll flow. You're already familiar with the Turkish app that Paul began to develop.

Our church financed it. And the proposition of that app, the primary original proposition of that app, was that people are continuously moving toward auditory learning, not in print. People aren't reading books. It's true in Turkey. It's true in every country in the world.

And So the transmission of the gospel into audio resources is critical while you find reading rates are continually falling in the culture. Of course the media revolutions are a big part of that. We believe that it's possible that half the Christians in Turkey are on this app. It's hard to know, but it's quite possible. There aren't very many Christians in Turkey, so that's another data point.

I just want our church to understand what we are doing and what we have done. We've launched a very long-term, very expensive mission operation that's gonna require translators, it's gonna require technology people to maintain the sites and all kinds of things like that. It's not small and it's not short term. And I just wanted our church to really understand that many laborers will need to be paid in order to do the work that we really want to do because you can't do the kind of work, the kind of publishing work that we want to do without engaging people in a significant share of their time. It's not going to be done by volunteers, primarily.

And, you know, this involves creative people to do designs, it involves programmers, it involves translators, and even more. Programmers are a strange mix of engineer and artist and they are carving bits and bytes. They're carving digital data in order to transmit. In order to transmit. Bits, you know what bits are, bits determine how fast data goes.

Bytes determine the letters of the alphabet and they represent the quantity of information. That's what programmers do. They write code of bits and bytes in order to communicate, either print communication or video or pictures. What a programmer does is they create information by creating a set of instructions, strangely enough, in X's and O's. And it all comes out where you can hear it and see it.

It's remarkable. It's just one of those miraculous natural capabilities that God put in the world as we've just continued to discover more and more ways. I wanna talk about just how critical publishing is and really the history of publishing. I want us to understand, this is a publishing ministry. Publishing has always been very important in the spread of the gospel.

Maybe one of the most common forms of publishing to us would be the Ten Commandments when God wrote on tablets of stone. God was carving rock. Now programmers are carving bits and bytes. It's the same thing. It's just a different kind of media.

You know, ancient communication was conducted on tablets of stone. You've heard of the black obelisk. You've heard of the Rosetta stone. This is the way that communication took place. And you find these ancient artifacts, particularly in the Middle East, even the writings of Hammurabi and others.

There was a, And people have always carried their books to communicate a message. One of my favorite stories was the Grand Vizier of Persia. His name was Abdul Qassem. And he carried with him 117, 000 books on 400 trained camels. My son always criticizes me because I take too many books with me.

He hasn't seen Abdul. He took 117, 000 volumes wherever he went on these camels. These camels were trained according to the alphabet. And there are 32 letters in the Persian alphabet. And he trained each group of camels to walk according to their alphabetical order.

Okay? People go to great lengths to communicate information and to keep their information with them and to make sure that it's not destroyed. Then you know fast forward, you know, God gave wisdom for the publication of material through the printing press. The most dramatic innovation was the Gutenberg printing press. It changed everything.

It fomented the Reformation. And then in the early part of the 20th century, God gave men the ability to discover radio waves. And so we started communicating on radio waves and then images over television onto screens, absolutely miraculous in that sense. God has given a world that is astounding. We keep discovering things that are really remarkable.

Then came shortwave radio. You can communicate all the way around the world. My father-in-law was in the early infancy of the shortwave radio movement in missions, and he was helping missionaries communicate all around the globe through shortwave radio, and he's still involved in shortwave radio. And it was miraculous, too. You know, you could talk, you could be in LA and talk to somebody in Peru, and that person could talk to somebody in Africa.

And that capability never was before. In fact, my mother and father were in a remote village in Alaska in the first few years of their marriage. And all their communication was on shortwave radio. I mean, this was a remote Eskimo village. They had to have their food flown in.

You know, we're talking about under 100 people. And my mother was the nurse. So she would get on shortwave radio and a nurse in Anchorage would tell her what to do, what to cut, what shot to give, and things like that. Then there were more discoveries, landline telephones, everybody's familiar with that. Well, probably everybody's not familiar with that.

How many of you have ever picked up a handset bolted through the wall on a landline telephone? Well, probably a few of you haven't, because we don't communicate that way very much. Landline telephones were revolutionary in the missions movement because people could now talk through telephone, but it was extremely expensive. You could have a 15 minute phone call and it would cost you $100. And that's why you would have lovers spend enormous amounts of money not even thinking what they are doing and end up with these massive bills.

Some of you probably did that. Smuggling Bibles across borders was all the rage in the mid-20th, mid and late 20th century, particularly in Russia. But you know, these advances continued, you know, into fax machines and pagers. Now you could send images through a fax machine all around the world. And there were alphanumeric receivers, mobile phones, and then email.

These are just astonishing advances in technology. And now you can talk to missionaries anywhere in the world for free. Isn't that amazing? We could call up Mala right now and talk to him, and it wouldn't cost us anything. And so the cost factors of communication in missions has dropped tremendously.

But We've gone from carvings of stone to papyrus to the transmission of words over facts and then email and now we have developers, programmers who can create apps, applications to carry anything. And so that's what this is all about but we want to translate Christian literature into many many languages too under our belt now But there's more actually to develop on those two as well. Programmers are carvers and bits and bytes to shape the souls of people in the world. And so, you know, what God put in Paul's heart, we don't think it should stop in Turkey, in Turkish. And so we're going to keep going.

And we have adequate funds for the short term. I think we have about $150, 000 or something like that. But that's just the short term. It takes quite a bit of resource to keep things working and to keep translations going. So anyway, with that, I just wanna say, I wanted our church to understand this is a long-term publishing mission for the languages of the world.

And Paul's done a great job doing all this stuff and coordinating lots of people. He's a great administrator but it can't just run on his administrative ability either so I'll just let Paul come up. Why don't you come on up and give us an update on what's going on. Yeah, so the elders asked that I would just give a Quick update of some of the things that we've been doing. I guess a couple of weeks ago, I was invited down to Florida with HeartCry, and we met.

I didn't really quite know what to expect, but there was this meeting. It was called GRTI, which stands for Global Resource Training Initiative. And when we got there, it was really interesting. There's only about 50, 60 men there. But the publishers that were there were Ligonier, TMAI, which is the Masters Academy International from John MacArthur.

You had Reformation Heritage, a banner of truth flew someone over from the UK, cross way, Truth for Life with Alistair Begg, and then you had nine marks and desiring God. So these were some of the publishers that were there and then we had people that were flown in from different parts of the world, publishers, pastors, and they came in from Egypt and Cambodia, Russia, quite a few from Africa. And then we had some from Europe, South America, Canada, and the US. So it was kind of an interesting group and very just small talking about how can the, the whole idea is how can publishing be a force for advancing the kingdom of God and one of the one of the main organizers he's with John MacArthur was really closely with him his name is Mark Tadlock and one of the things he said that really stuck with me he said we should take an aggressive posture to advance God Christ cause in the earth And this idea of this aggressive posture was kind of really what encapsulated the few days that we were there. And so one of the things, Just kind of taking off on what Scott said, the other week we were watching a short, well not a short, I guess a documentary by Joel Beeke called Revival, which was fascinating and he goes back all the way to pre-Reformation.

But one of the things he does in that is he quotes Martin Luther. And Martin Luther, he was famous for saying that we need to throw the ink well at the devil. This was the idea of doing all that we can to produce material that exalt Christ, whether it's printing of actual Bibles, but also materials that explain the Gospel, and all that kind of thing. And so this was kind of the idea there. There was a gentleman, Chris Larson, you might know.

He runs Ligonier now. And one of the things he said is that we need to recognize that print can increase your meager labors by 100 times. If you think of just putting a booklet and distributing it, who knows where the Lord would lead and that fall into someone's hands and the Lord will do what he always does. And so just as we as we think about all these different things, you know, what I was what I was seeing is almost like what Scott was just mentioning. Just think of how the Reformation really impacted Europe and then not only Europe but impacted the rest of the world.

And unlike the US, think about this, that a lot of these countries, unfortunately the problem is, is that they've got this extreme lack of sound teaching. This is the great, great problem. When you think of a country like Iran, for example, the number one best selling Christian resources by Joyce Meyer as an example. You know, you look around and there's no lack of materials when it comes to prosperity ministries and all these other things, charismatic, heretical material, it's just unhindered and it's spread. But what was so nice about this group is that you had just a small group of, really the reform publishing world is tiny when you think about it.

I mean it was kind of represented in that room and if you think about it. And so what happens is believers in those nations are really hard pressed to find reliable, good material that they could say, here, go listen to this or go read this as a pastor, for example, talking to his congregation. And so there's a lot of challenges in these countries. I think one of the things that really came out when you think about the challenges and some of the things we faced is you've got problems with translation rights. So one of the problems we're running into right now, we're not only doing the app work but translating the Turkish Bible and taking Joel Beeke's study notes.

So some of you might even have his Reformation study Bible. Well there's the Word of God and then you have Dr. Beeke's notes and then his family worship guide and so on. But the people that own the Bible, if you can believe that, own the Bible, they won't let us use it to actually marry his notes together because they fear, you know, there's all sorts of politics and how will this reflect in other people, like for example Catholics and Orthodox and other groups. So you've got all of these things, you've got licensing challenges, printing hurdles, all these different things.

But a lot of times what you find too is that the best books aren't really the ones that are gonna be the most profitable. So that was one of the things that came out during our time. Like for example, you're not gonna make a killing printing a systematic theology. You're just not going to, but that could be one of the most impactful books if it's a good systematic theology or a good commentary Bible, right? So these are things that are a problem.

And that was the challenge. One of the men said that where there is no financial benefit whatsoever, will you still produce these materials, these solid materials? And so good books are essential. Yes, that came out really strongly, but one of the things Brother Paul Washter really, really hammered home, he had a chance to address everybody, and He talked about this idea of you don't want to have an inverted pyramid meaning you've got books on how to raise kids and how To do this and you know all that but you lack the actual Foundation which is the word of God and so a lot of these countries They don't have a good translation of the Bible. Turkish would be an example, Farsi would be another example, but there's hundreds of languages.

So the focus also is not only on producing good books, but also you know we need to get the Word of God and a systematic theology and maybe a commentary Bible into the hands of these people and it was good to see some of these different brothers from say Egypt and Africa other parts where that is their greatest greatest need because just we take it for granted but a study Bible that explains in a very simple way what verses mean or what you have at the beginning of your, say, the book of Genesis, and it tells you what Genesis is kind of about, and it gives you a synopsis of Here's how the flow kind of goes almost like what Scott did with walking through the Bible It's that thing that we kind of take for granted that is invaluable to give people with a limited knowledge a good foundation In the Word of God so they can accurately Handle the Word of God and so what's exciting about I think what's exciting behind all of this and what should excite us all is that we as a church can play a role, a small role in really a reformation movement in spreading the gospel.

And not just in terms of a reformation, though, but I think just the power of what Christ said when he talked about the Great Commission, and just being a part of that and producing materials that focus on making disciples. Now, we're not physically there, but working with people on the ground that are really intent who think the same way, who value the same things and so on. I think these things are just absolutely critical. So with that I just wanted to give an update on a couple of the things that we're doing. I think the thing to me that's been most important even from before we launched was my greatest prayer was, oh Lord would you just own the undertaking?

Would you do what you do and get glory for your name. And there's this beautiful passage in Habakkuk chapter 2. It says, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. And it seems like an impossible task but to spread the gospel with whatever little energy he gives us as a people to play a part in that role. There's nothing like being incarnational, being on the ground.

We're not trying to, I think, blow it up beyond its, exaggerate the power of what we're doing, but if there's a small role that we can play to advance God's kingdom, let's do that. You know, one thing that Brother Paul, I think he said to me and to Scott when we were up there last time, he said, why is it, Why can't the next John Knox come from Papua New Guinea or from some other part of Africa? Like who's to say God can't do these things for the advancing of his cause in the earth? And so in terms of where we're at right now, all the apps that we have now and the ones that we're going to be doing, they're currently being published under HeartCry. HeartCry is giving us $5, 000 a month, thanks to Al for coordinating and managing all of that.

Just by way of update on the Turkish app, we've got about 110 resources. So those are spanning from short resources, like for example, Steve Lawson gives an eight minute gospel presentation, something very short that if I'm a Turkish Christian, I could just click and share that with maybe an unbelieving friend or family member. And then we have bigger books like J.I. Packer's kind of the, he has one like for example, An Introduction to Theology, which would be a much longer book but broken out into different chapters. So there's about 110 of those.

Farsi we launched, I guess it was a week and a half ago. That's launched with about 85 resources. So Poojan, who many of you know, he's been great working with him and his team. And so we're just going to continue to add more and more resources to that. But as I said, we're not just doing the app.

So the next app that we might do is Arabic, or I've got one guy that I met in Florida. He's from Kazakhstan, and he's banging down the door to get a Russian app, because there's a lot of Russian speakers and he has a lot of connections there. So we might do one or the other of both. I'll talk to the elders and deacons and we'll figure out what the best path would be there. But as I mentioned, beyond just the apps is the the Turkish Bible.

So we did start in Genesis, obviously, and we're going through in terms of translating all Dr. Beeke's notes. And we're all the way up to Ezra right now. So we, I think, have the best translators, honestly, in Turkey. We've got three of them working on this project and they're all of them are excellent.

Three of them really are pastors and they just do a phenomenal job. Super careful and more than anything is they're like they're bought in just as much. They they want to see their people outfitted with a study Bible. Now you're saying, well why would you do a study Bible if you don't have access to the Turkish Bible? Well, we're actually translating, re-translating the Bible.

So we're in Exodus. So we start in Genesis and in Exodus. So they won't give us permission. It's not a great translation anyway. We're like, well, why not just start a whole new translation?

So just pray for that, that the Lord would really help in that undertaking. So a Turkish new Bible and then again married with Dr. Beeke's notes is really the hope. And then on the Farsi side, we're doing the same thing, working with Dr. Biki.

And we started in the New Testament. So Matthew is now completely done, both in terms of a new Farsi Bible, and also Dr. Biki's notes to go along with that. So these are long, long-term projects like Scott mentioned. These aren't gonna be done in a year, maybe two years.

It's gonna take a long time because you want it done properly. Just to think about, when I was talking to Puyon, we were trying to figure out How do we even get the right teams involved? And we started off by offering three cents per word. So every single word of the Bible, three cents. And it was too troublesome because people would be diverted to different projects.

So we increased it to six cents a word. And now you've got people that are going to be with you for the long term. It's just you're constantly playing around trying to figure out what the best way is. But at the end of the day, you want the word of God really properly done. And so the bigger prayers right now as we think about Arabic is we've got access to like somewhere around 250 resources.

But if you know anything about Arabic, there's like nine flavors of Arabic. So Egyptian Arabic, like colloquial Arabic, is probably, it may not be understood in other parts of the Arabic speaking world. So there's like 300 million Arabic speaking people, but you know there's variations on that. So one of the things you could just pray for there is wisdom how to think that through. And then also one of the things I think I came out of this conference with is the importance of having country owners, meaning you've got someone who's just as heavily invested and wants the gospel to spread and has a vision for good material in their country.

And so just being in prayer for that, I have a few connections in Egypt and Lebanon that we're going down the path there and seeing what the Lord would do. And then the Russian part as well, we've got about 50 resources already to go if we decide to go down that path. So just be in prayer for these things and have a vision that perhaps the Lord would use it for his own glory. We may never know some of the ways that this spreads and is used, but that really doesn't matter. It's just publishing the word of God for the glory of his name.

So that's really it. But so thankful for the church, the elders, deacons, just for really coming behind this and being an encouragement as well. So may the Lord be glorified in all of this. I'm just going to ask, is Trent here as well? Scott and Trent?

I don't know if Trent's here. Is he out there? Oh, okay. Can someone call him in and we'll just pray. There he is.

I'm sure Trent was out taking care of some of his incorrigible children. Father we're so thankful that you've given us your word. It's beautiful. It's life changing. It saves.

It purifies. Lord, we pray that you would use all these efforts for all those things, that the sweetness of your word would spread through the labors that we have here and with Paul and all the other people involved. Lord, we pray your great blessing upon it, amen. Father, we do thank you and Lord, this just brings to my mind the The bigness of our prayers that we need to be praying It's anything impossible with God And so father I just pray for this work Lord. It is it's bigger than we even can think right now.

But Lord, you're a great God. And Lord, you have demonstrated your love to the world in sending your son. And Lord, I pray that you would use this to reach every tongue, tribe, and nation. And Lord, you work in wonderful and mysterious ways and I just pray father that you would help us Lord to connect all of the dots that need to be connected I pray Lord for the for the salvation of souls around this world. And Lord, I pray that each of these believers would receive such solid teaching, Lord, that they would grow in grace and knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so Father, would you help us to think bigger than we are and to pray bigger than we do and Lord to trust that you will accomplish great things for your name. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen.

Okay, we are dismissed. Thank you.