Church History Resolutions for the New Year

Looking for a meaningful way to start the new year? Today, Stephen Nichols offers five practical suggestions for diving deeper into church history in 2026.

It is New Year's Eve, so happy New Year. If you do make resolutions, let me propose a resolution for you for 2026. Take this year to take a deeper dive into church history. Here are five suggestions for you to do that. First is read sermons. You could say read one sermon every month or read one sermon every week. But reading sermons is a great way to get into church history, a great way to be introduced to these figures, and not just simply read about them or hear about them, but to read them directly. And they're great. These sermons have been so helpful for me, and it's as if these figures are reaching across the centuries to preach to you.

A second suggestion is to pick a person, a person that you've been interested in or that you hear a lot about and spend this year getting to know that person. You could read stuff about them and stuff by them. Start with a good short biography, and then move again into the sermons or into shorter works, and then wade out into the deep there and tackle their books. I've done this in the past and over the years, and I've come to enjoy it very much. This year I'm going with Charles Hodge, one of those stalwart Princeton theologians. I suspect in 2026, we will be visiting with our new friend, Charles Hodge, often.

Thirdly, you can pick an era. You could go to the Great Awakening or to the British Reformation or to Calvin's Geneva. You could go to one of my favorite moments, 20th century American fundamentalism and evangelicalism. But look around the centuries. You could go back to the fourth century and the Christology debates and the Nicene Creed, but pick an era and spend some time in it and get to know it.

The fourth way to do a deep dive, and I don't want this to sound like product placement here, I just want to let you know of some helpful resources, and the first is A Survey of Church History. This is a 73 episode teaching series taught by Robert Godfrey, and it covers all of church history. Or you can audit a course at Reformation Bible College, Church History I and II. These courses are taught by Dr. John Tweeddale. Now, you'll be getting the ending first because we do Church History II in the spring semester and Church History I in the fall. But this is another great way to get into church history. Go to learning.reformationbiblecollege.org, and you can find out all you need to find out to take those classes.

Well, last way to do a deep dive into church history is to spend some time with hymns. You need to get yourself a good hymnal. My daughter-in-law recently found in a used bookstore a wonderful book of hymns and also of Psalms, reset in English by Isaac Watts. The book was published in 1805 in Boston and is full of hundreds of hymns and Psalm renditions by Isaac Watts. After he gives the Psalms, he gives hymns and he divides them up into three groups. They are hymns that are collected from Scripture. There are hymns that are composed on divine subjects, and then he has hymns that are prepared for the Lord's supper. One of those hymns begins with this stanza, “Alas, and did my Savior bleed, and did my Sovereign die! Would he devote that sacred head for such a worm as I?” Well, at the very end of this book, the very last stanza of the final hymn, Watts writes, “Glory to God on high, salvation to the Lamb. Let earth and sea and sky, his wondrous love proclaim. Upon his head shall honors rest, and every age pronounce him blessed.”

So those are some ways that you can get to know church history and its wonderful figures a little bit better. So I would challenge you to make the resolution to do a deeper dive into church history as we move into 2026. I'm Steve Nichols and thanks for listening to 5 Minutes in Church History over this past year and may God bless in the New year ahead.