Timothy's Thoughts

This video shows the development of the human body from conception to birth. Truly, only God can do this.

W ho is your audience? Many times, we an author sits down to write, he thinks of someone to whom he is writing. As he weaves his yarn, he thinks of that person sitting across from him and he is just carrying on a one-sided (usually) conversation. But though we might write to that person, that person is not the audience who will receive the book. I began thinking about the average church size. 59% of the churches in America have fewer than 100 people who attend. There’s nothing wrong with that. I have known many small churches and have a great love for them. But think about the Christian books you’ve read that were written to help in the ministry of churches. How often do we see them reference things that we simply do not find in small churches? Occasionally, you’ll find a book written specifically for small churches, but I’ve read some of those and have often thought that the author didn’t get it. Instead, what you find are books written to churches with hundreds in attendance. Th...

— A federal judge threatened “incarceration” to a high school valedictorian in Castroville, Texas, unless she removed references to Jesus from her graduation speech. — City officials prohibited senior citizens in Balch Springs, Texas, from praying over their meals, listening to religious messages or singing gospel songs at a senior activities center. — A public school official in St. Louis physically lifted an elementary school student from his seat and reprimanded him in front of his classmates for praying over his lunch. T hese statements all just three of some 600 in a recent report on religious hostility. The report claims, “America would be unrecognizable to our Founders.” I’m not sure that true. Our founding fathers were no strangers to religious hostility. I remember reading about Patrick Henry attending a trial in colonial America. The story goes that two Baptist men had been arrested because they were preaching outside of the authority of the religion in that area. P...

I t is not the responsibility of a leader to decide where to go, but to show people how to get there. I’ve used this space to talk about leadership before. Not long ago, I wrote about the misuse of the word vision by Michael Hyatt, Jack Welch, and John Maxwell. I argued that vision in the truest sense is a vision sent from God. But let’s take a step back and look at their kind of vision. As you know, a lot of people are trying to develop a vision. We hear about things like vision statements . Once you have a vision statement you are supposed to cast a vision . Then people are supposed to follow you like cows to the feed trough. While that sounds good, people don’t always do what you tell them they ought to do. Take church, for example. For centuries, we’ve been telling people they ought to go to church. Some do. Some don’t. But I’m reminded of the wagon trains that used to head out west. Who in their right mind would leave Missouri to ride across Kansas in a wagon? And yet, ther...

O ur God isn’t big enough. When I pulled into a parking space at church, I noticed a single white flower growing next to the parking curb. The rest of the grass was trimmed to perfection, but there was that one lily that sprang up in the night and had bloomed. It was a beautiful flower, though it grew where no gardener would’ve planted it. Later, I saw about ten of these wild lilies growing in the median. They were bunched in a cluster right next to the road. They were not centered in the way a landscape designer would have placed them. They were just there. Ask a child who attends Sunday school how they got there and he’ll likely respond, “God planted them.” Now we, being older and wiser, know that a seed must have fallen on that ground. The seed grew and the flower bloomed. When the seed fell, they fell in a cluster around where the first seed had fallen, giving us those ten lilies growing in the median. But we smile and assure the child that “yes, God planted them.” In our wis...

L ast Sunday, our church celebrated 55 years with Gaylan Henry as our pastor. That was also the date of his retirement. 55 years is a long time, so we made a big party out of it. I filmed the worship service and the celebration service and my plan is to make a commemorative DVD. Currently, I’m in the process of securing permission to use the music from that day on the DVD. There are also some images for which I need to secure copy permission. Individuals or groups sang or played songs on ten different occasions. There was also a slide presentation with music in the background. The congregation sang three songs. But some of the songs were actually medleys, so rather than one song they were two songs arranged in to one. And while our church often uses live instruments, we also make use of sound tracks for some of our music. For one medley, I’m not dealing with just one copyright holder. Let’s take a look at who I’m dealing with. First, there is the person who holds the copyright to t...

O ne of the most basic doctrines of Christianity is that though we are born sinners, there is a way for us to change. That’s a scary thought for some people. How often have we heard people say, “I was born that way” or “I couldn’t help myself?” They say the words hoping that we’ll say, “we understand. It can’t be helped. Keep doing what you’re doing.” But that’s not what a Christian says. Instead, the Christian says, “I used to think that way. I used to think that I couldn’t keep from doing the things I did. But then I met a man who changed my life. You don’t have to continue doing what you’re doing.” Recently, there has been one sin that has gotten a lot of attention and some people have said that it is “hateful” to tell people that they can change. But why should our focus remain on that one sin? I suppose it is more difficult for us to think that we were “born that way” when we talk about other sins, and yet, we do tend to be predisposed to other sins as well. No child is born a...

A fter 55 years, the pastor of our church, Gaylan Henry stepped down from the pulpit yesterday. I don’t know if it is a world record for a pastor to pastor one church for that long, but it is certainly a difficult feat to accomplish. Few people are anywhere near that point. For me, it was a busy day. We had more people at church than we’ve ever had. It looked to me like we had about twice as many cars as we have parking spaces. The sanctuary was filled to capacity and we had an overflow area where they had to bring in additional chairs because we hadn’t set up enough initially. I filmed the worship service and the celebration service in the afternoon. I’m planning on putting it all on DVD, so I have quite a bit of work left to do. My next task is to acquire permission from the copyright holders to use the music. I suspect that won’t be a problem, as long as I’m willing to pay the royalties. But it requires different licenses for a DVD than it does to use music in a worship service....

I keep hearing that our society is a post-Christian society. In others words, we used to be a Christian society, basing much of our lives on what churches taught, but not anymore. While I’m sure that’s true, isn’t it time for us to stop thinking of ourselves as a “post-Christian” society and begin looking at ourselves as a “pre-Christian” society? What’s the difference? Sure, it doesn’t change anything about our society. Many people will still be antagonistic toward Christianity. The difference is one of hope. When I think of us being a post-Christian society it makes me think, “Things just aren’t as good as they used to be.” When you turn it around and see it as a pre-Christian society, I begin to think “Things aren’t great, but with work they will become better.” Our goal should not be to survive in a post-Christian society, but it should be to change our world in such a way that our society is once again a Christian society. What we once were, we can be again. Just because peo...

R ecently, I’ve heard several stories of businessmen who have taken a stand for the their Christian faith. In each case, there have been people trying to pressure these men to change the way they do business. There have been pickets and boycotts and whatever they thought would work. An yet I keep seeing one simple statement, “business is booming.” We must not forget what a great God we serve. Our God can take the actions of a lost world and turn them to our good. Let us not forget that “we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28) It should come as no surprise to us that business is booming at companies where the enemies of the Christian faith are in opposition to the views of the owners. So let this be a lesson to the rest of us. Let us not compromise on our walk with the Lord. It won’t be easy, but if we are serving the Lord as we should, he will bless us and use the actions of our enemie...

W atchers – characters who work from the sidelines, influencing other characters to take action. Dr. Who is one example of a character like this. Though he is also the main character, his actions are such that he watches out for the people of Earth and makes an appearance when they need him. He always has people with him who he encourages to take action, putting them in danger, when he himself really has nothing to fear. That’s one of the interesting things about watchers. They usually have more knowledge of the situation than anyone else and yet they seldom reveal what they know. If we include a watcher in our own writing, we’d better have a reason why the character doesn’t reveal what he knows. Perhaps it is because he doesn’t want to worry people. If you knew that the world was about to explode, would you create panic by telling them or let them go on their merry way? What’s the point of making their last few minutes miserable? Or maybe the character is the type who is trying to ...

I f you don’t have a clear vision, no strategy will save you. – Michael Hyatt G ood leaders create a vision, passionately articulate the vision, and relentlessly drive the vision to completion. – Jack Welch I believe that there’s no such thing as a leader who doesn’t have a vision. – John Maxwell R ecently, my employer went through the mid-year review process. They also combined it with career discussions, so I had the opportunity to sit down and talk about the direction of my career with my boss. There are a couple things it made me realize. First, I’ve had very little say over the direction my career has gone. I’ve moved from position to position within the company because they needed someone willing to do the work, not because I felt like a change in position would be good for my career. The second thing I noticed is that not only has my career not had any direction, I don’t know where I want it to go. That’s probably not the best thing to tell your boss, but it is true. If I...

I n a 2010 debate between Delaware Senate candidates Chris Coons (D) and Christine O’Donnell (R) there was a disagreement concerning schools being permitted to teach creationism as a competing theory to evolution. Coons made the argument that the First Amendment has been interpreted by the Supreme Court to imply separation of church and state. O’Donnell interrupted and the following was the exchange: O'DONNELL: "Let me just clarify, you're telling me that the separation of church and state is found in the First Amendment?" COONS: "'Government shall make no establishment of religion'" O'DONNELL: "That's in the First Amendment?" I’m conservative, a Christian, and I voted Republican straight down the ticket in the last election, but I’ve got something to say to my fellow conservatives. When we become so focused on winning the argument that we fail to consider what we’re saying, we are in danger of losing the freedoms we hope to ...

S ome of the families of those killed in that Colorado theater have said that they “do not want” the death penalty for the man who did it. Good for them. At least I think it is good for them until hear some people say that they think it would be better for him to spend the rest of his life in jail thinking about what he did. It makes me think that they don’t believe he’ll have to think about what he did if he goes to hell. But that is more of a faith problem and has nothing to do with whether the man should be executed for his crimes or not. While the Bible tells us in Genesis 9:6, “Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed,” it also says in Numbers 35:31, “Ye shall take no satisfaction for the life of a murderer, which is guilty of death.” Often, it seems like people have the idea that murderers should be executed so the families will get justice. God doesn’t take satisfaction in the death of a murderer and neither should we or the families of the victims. Instead o...

A church website hosting company recently posted an article stating that web hosting is the biggest cost of a church website . It became clear that they were promoting their own services when I saw the following list: Take these example costs from a variety of church website providers. The number you see is the monthly cost. Mychurchwebsite.com: $49-$119 Buildachurchwebsite.com: $54-109.95 Clover sites: $20 Siteorganic.com: $99-299 Faithpulse.com: $59.95 Sharefaith: $14.99 (Best Value) My first thought when I saw this list was that these are annual costs because my own church is paying about $80 a year for web hosting and I know there are other hosting companies that have even more economical rates, if you are really looking for the lowest price. But these are monthly rates and that means that Sharefaith is charging more than twice as much as you really need to pay. Even so, $180 a year isn’t really that bad if you’re putting the website to good use. But is that really your biggest...

T oday is Chick-Fil-A Appreciation day. I’m looking forward to a chicken sandwich for supper. But if they have so many people stop by that they run out before I get there, that would be okay too. I really like this, because instead of having to show my support for Christian values by not doing something, I get to show my support by taking action. I’ve always hated boycotts because I don’t shop at many of the places that I’m supposed to be boycotting anyway. But I can go buy a few more chicken sandwiches. And though I don’t think I could eat chicken sandwiches all the time, one of the things that impresses me about Chick-Fil-A is that they serve quality food. Their sandwiches are among the best. Their ice cream tastes like homemade. Their lemonade is the real stuff. Even their diet lemonade tastes good. Where else can you get diet lemonade? And it isn’t enough that they just have it; it is good. So it doesn’t put me out at all to buy a few more chicken sandwiches. It’s a little out ...