Reasonable Faith Newsletter - September 2009

Dear Friends of Reasonable Faith,

Good things are happening in all facets of our ministry!

Local Chapters

Last month we launched our new initiative of establishing local Reasonable Faith chapters on college campuses and in local churches. We have been thrilled with the response! As of this writing we have applications from 28 states across the country, as well as from thirteen different nations, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Ghana, India, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, South Korea, Sweden, Thailand, United Arab Emirates and the U. K. Our national director in charge of local chapters Chris Shannon is going to have his hands full processing them all!

Writing

Meanwhile, I continue work on a couple of book projects. Chad Meister and my book God Is Great, God Is Good, which is a wide-ranging response to the so-called New Atheism represented by the likes of Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins, is currently in press and should be out very soon with Inter-Varsity Press. I’m also working with the editors and designers at David C. Cook on my On Guard, which will be a training manual for laymen in defending their faith. Because there are so many graphics in this book in the form of pictures, side bars, boxes, and so on, Cook is taking the unusual step of asking their designers to design every single page in the book to ensure an attractive and engaging appearance. So I’m very pleased at the efforts they’re putting into this book.

My scholarly research continued to advance this month. Prof. Ken Perzyck, who organized the conference I spoke at in New Zealand last year (see the July 2008 newsletter), directed me to an article by a Swedish philosopher who provided just the insight I needed to solve a problem I’ve been working on for some time now. I think it was a real breakthrough moment in my research, and I feel confident to move forward on it.

Speaking

I just returned this past week from Talbot School of Theology in southern California, where I spoke to the incoming students in M. A. program in philosophy and attended the new student reception. It was amazing to hear how many of them had come to Talbot to study as a result of being awakened to the need of sound apologetics through our Reasonable Faith website and ministry.

Podcasts

Did you see that our podcast “Reasonable Faith” was just ranked by the popular Apologetics315 blog as the #1 apologetics podcast available? (See it here: http://apologetics315.blogspot.com/2007/10/16-best-apologetics-podcasts.html.) Thanks to Kevin Harris for his great work! The same blogsite also listed our “Defenders” podcast at #11, for which I’m grateful.

Website

We continue to add new articles to www.ReasonableFaith.org, as well as new translations into other languages, such as Turkish and Portuguese. We’ve also updated the calendar of speaking engagements, so check it out to see if we’ll be in your area! We look forward to meeting you!

Finally, let me say how surprised and touched I was by all of the birthday wishes that came into our Open Forum and Facebook page. I even received wishes for a happy birthday from a couple of my atheist detractors! At our home church our Defenders class threw a surprise birthday party complete with potluck lunch. My heartfelt thanks to all of you who were so kind to remember me!

For Christ and His Kingdom, Bill & Jan

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