Third Millenium vs. Ligonier Ministries

I reference Dr. Richard L. Pratt and his Third Millenium Ministries fairly often on the blog, so I thought I'd take a post to show exactly what IIIM is. Explained by one staff member on IIIM's forums:

Though both complement the other and are Reformed, Ligonier primarily reaches through TV (Renewing Your Mind), radio, and regional conferences, Tabletalk, etc. In addition, they own Soli Deo Gloria Publishing and thus produce works — most of which are in English. If I am not mistaken they have a translation team within the Ukraine translating Sproul’s books, and a military Chaplin outreach. This is a valuable outreach and ministry (St. Andrews Chapel is not PCA, though I believe presently their elders like Burk use the South Florida Presbytery for their credentialing)! Ligonier.

IIIM on the other hand is working with more than just one author’s works and translating and producing educational materials in English, Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Spanish at present. More than just producing a Bible, IIIM is to complete a 54-hour accreditable masters curriculum consisting of 540 hours of video lessons (IIIM is not a seminary, but is producing professional curriculum). Progress report.

Ra McLaughlin, IIIM's content director, explains in the same post:

Target Audience

Historically, Ligonier has tended to target the motivated layperson. This is apparently changing with their work in Ukraine, but their focus for decades has been the American layperson.

By contrast, Third Millennium's primary goal is to educate pastors who have no other means of obtaining seminary training. And many of these pastors have less training than motivated American laypeople, so there is some natural overalp in content.

We might also describe this difference by saying that Ligonier has traditionally focused on the established and American church, whereas Third Millennium is focused on newer churches in developing areas.

Media

Generally speaking, Ligonier focuses on traditional media (books, radio, tv, video), since that is the most effective way to reach its target audience.

Third Millennium uses some similar media, though we tend to emphasize "high tech" rather than "traditional." So, we don't raise money for radio, except where radio is cutting edge or reaching people groups that don't have access to seminary training. We prefer to use media that is easily piratable (internet, DVD), and we believe strongly in the pedagogical value of imagery over audio alone. We affirm and make use of traditional media, but have focused our efforts on those media that are most easily transportable and replicable in underprivileged settings.

We have also placed more emphasis on the internet because (1) it is a means to access developing nations, and (2) the internet itself is, in a sense, a "developing area."

Content

Ligonier's content is essentially designed as ongoing education for adult Christians. It tends to offer introductory perspectives on a wide variety of topics that would be of interest to adult Christians. During my time at Ligonier, I was never under the impression that Ligonier had a particular, definable end goal in mind. Rather, they seemed to be a perpetual, growing ministry to adult Christians.

By contrast, Third Millennium has a particular, definable end goal: to provide materials that can take a person from an uneducated level to seminary graduate level. So, we have some materials that are very basic -- probably more basic that Ligonier's most basic materials. But we also have materials that are more advanced than anything Ligonier does.

Our initial goal is to provide a "seminary in a box" in five langauges, selected to achieve the broadest global coverage possible. After that, we will probably continue to add elective courses in those languages, and we will certainly attempt to add more languages. We will also continue to build supplementary materials to support our "seminary in a box," and to increase chanels of distribution.

It should also be noted that IIIM runs the Reformed Perspectives Magazine, Reformed Answers, and Reformed Sermon sites that are listed on the sidebar. Finally, as an added bonus, the difference between IIIM's Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible (NIV) and Ligonier's Reformation Study Bible (ESV), also from their forums:

1. A very clear difference is the volume of notes. The SRSB has far more note content in it. That was because we tried to comment on all the significant passages. The NGSB/RSB does not always offer comments on passages that are commonly used in the church and/or by theologians.

2. Our study helps are quite different. Aside from things like maps and concordances at the back of the Bible, and in-text maps and charts, all of which tend to be stock elements from the publisher, ours has the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Union. Also, there is a reverse index to these historical documents throughout the study notes. This reverse index comprehensively covers the footnoted/indexed Scripture references in the Westminster Standards and the Three Forms of Union. Our Bible also features what is, to my knowledge, the only "parallel" version of the WCF. Especially for this project, we created a system of notation that specifies the differences in the WCF between the 1647 critical version and the various versions used by the PCA, EPC, OPC, and ARP. The book intros are also expanded (e.g., the OT books all have a "Christ in [name of book]" feature).

3. The theological articles in the NGSB/RSB are copied from Concise Theology by Packer. The ones in the SRSB are tailored to this particular study Bible. We retained some of Packer's, significantly altered others, and wrote many new ones. Our goal was to address the questions people might look to a study Bible to answer, rather than to provide a brief summary of systematic theology (we felt the standards did that part fairly well on their own).

4. We also worked hard to harmonize the notes. The original contributions were quite varied both in theology and quality. Some appeared to be little more than Sunday school outlines, some were clearly not Reformed, and others were quite good. Some of the notes even contradicted others. We tried very hard to bring all the notes up to a respectable scholarly level, to update the scholarship (new ideas and discoveries had been made since the notes were originally written), and to ensure that the entire Bible presented the same theological position.

5. As a result of (4), the general thrust of the SRSB is unified. It presents a centrist, conservative, traditional Reformed position, and adds an emphasis on literary analysis that was lacking in the original (detailed book outlines throughout the actual study notes, awareness of literary concerns, literary interpretations, etc.). In the tradition of semper reformanda, it does suggest some new twists on old readings here and there. But the stance of the notes themselves is very conservative as a whole. It is hard to compare this to the NGSB/RSB, since that was a far less integrated work. The NGSB/RSB is hard to characterize "as a whole." It is much easier to comment on any of its given parts or sets of notes.

I still don't have a Spirit of the Reformation Study Bible (I do have the Reformation Study Bible), but I hope to get one at some point...