Personal & Pastoral Updates, Prayer Requests

February 5, 2020 Nate Holdridge

February Update

Thanks

Thank you for reading my writings and listening to my teachings. Your support and encouragement mean so much to me. It spurs me on when I hear of ways God is using the words from the Word to impact your life. So thank you for your prayers and support.

Update

For me, the new decade got off to a great start. Though January was a busy month, there was much fruit. Our Tuesday Night Church service at Calvary Monterey successfully launched, and I consider it a great joy to teach Genesis in that format. We started the gospel of Mark on Sundays, and I am excited to spend an extended time observing and studying the life of Christ. Our men's conference weekend was powerful and stirring. And both the Middle School and High School camps, held on subsequent weekends at Camp Ponderosa in the Santa Cruz mountains, were amazing times where God worked in the lives of hundreds of teens. I also had a little ministry travel mixed in, so when you put it all together, it was a full month.

But I have been reflecting lately on how much I enjoy doing this. Though tiring and filled with challenges, I wouldn't change anything. I rejoice at the open doors God has set before us.

This next month will be more of the same. I will continue the Genesis teaching on Tuesdays (with others teaching Galatians). We will get deeper into Mark. And, hopefully, my Ephesians book, Christ Unites, will get released. We are putting the finishing touches on it right now and will be sure to alert you when it's available.

Life Groups

One major push in February will be Life Group signups at Calvary Monterey. Christian fellowship is of utmost importance, and this month we will put the finishing touches on new groups before announcing and inviting people to register for them mid-February.

Life Groups have been an essential part of our church family, and Christina and I have rejoiced to be in one over the years. The connections we've made and the opportunities we've gotten to love others in Life Group have been abundant. We look forward to another semester discussing Mark, praying for one another and God's mission, and hanging out together.

nateholdridge.com

This month, we will continue our posting schedule. I am still trying to determine if the posts are too frequent, both for me to write and you to read, but at this point, we will stick with the structure I told you about last month. As a refresher, here's the plan:

Monday: Archived Post -- this is a way for me to reintroduce an older piece to you. For most of you, it will be just like receiving a new post.
Tuesday: New Post + Tuesday Night Church teaching notes.
Wednesday: longer post -- new book chapters, old book excerpts, or articles I've written for calvarychapel.com.
Thursday: New Post
Friday: Archived Post
Saturday: none
Sunday: My Sunday teaching notes.

I know many of you subscribe to my posts via email. Thank you!

I apologize because, over the last couple of months, we've had some issues with our email service. At a couple of intervals, it shut down the emails. Additionally, they changed their formatting, making it impossible for us to send you the full post to your inbox. Instead, it's only the first paragraph, an abbreviated post. We are working on it to see if there's a way to go back to sending you the post in its entirety, enabling you to skip visiting the site.

Book Recommendation

This month, I would like to recommend a great book. Perhaps I'll give a recommendation each month. We'll see. But for February, I urge you to read Rebecca McLaughlin's Confronting Christianity: 12 Hard Questions For The World's Largest Religion. I have quoted from it a few times in recent sermons, but it is a masterpiece. I discovered it through The Gospel Coalition website last year, only to find it won Christianity Today's 2020 Book Of The Year: Evangelism/Apologetics for 2019!

Each chapter of Confronting Christianity deals with assertions our society often makes about Christianity. McLaughlin's research is, as you'd expend from a Cambridge University Ph.D., impeccable. She builds solid arguments and defenses for questions moderns raise against Christianity.

Here is a sample of some of the questions:

Doesn't Christianity crush diversity?
Doesn't religion cause violence?
How can you take the Bible literally?
Hasn't science disproved Christianity?
Doesn't Christianity denigrate women?
How could a loving God send people to hell?

She says:

If you resonate with these questions, this book is for you. I feel their weight. If I give smug, simplistic answers, I have failed. I have spent decades of my life engaging with brilliant friends who have principled reasons for dismissing Christianity. But I have also spent years working with Christian professors at leading secular universities in fields ranging from physics to philosophy. Some grew up in the church. Others encountered Christianity later. All have found that their faith has stood the test of their research and left them more convinced that Christianity represents our tightest grasp on truth and our best hope for the world. This book aims to look closely at important questions through the lenses these friends have given me, and to share that experience with you.

McLaughlin, Rebecca. Confronting Christianity (Kindle Locations 195-200). Crossway. Kindle Edition.

Prayer Requests

Continued grace on the Tuesday Night Church gatherings
The raising up of fresh Life Group leaders and groups
The successful release of Christ Unites (my Ephesians book)
For Christina's back, as it still is not completely healed