Timothy's Thoughts

I ’ve been riding my bicycle to church. If you’re wondering why I would do that, so am I. The thing is, I can think of all kinds of reasons as to why other people should ride their bicycle to church. Probably the most important reason is that it creates opportunities for interaction between the church and the members of the community around it. When you’re in a car, people might see that you are headed to church but they will never speak to you and you will never speak to them. At no point will you ever say, “Come and go to church with me.” Of course there are other reasons like it being good for your health or it freeing up parking for guests or getting your brain in gear before you participate in corporate worship. But none of these reasons are the reason I’ve been riding my bicycle to church. Those are great reasons and I tell myself that I should be more concerned about those things than what I am, but the real reason I’ve been riding my bicycle to church is because I can. What’...

I love riding a bicycle, but I'm surrounded by roads that I'd rather not ride. To the West I have Crowley Road, which is a six lane road that is constantly flowing with traffic. The City of Fort Worth is planning to put an on-street bike path along it at some point, but they won't tell me when. An on-street bike path is a glorified sidewalk that is wide enough for bicycle traffic, but it still has to contend with driveways along the street. To the North I have Sycamore School Road, which is another busy street that they aren't likely to do anything with anytime soon. To the East there is Hemphill Street. It's a little better than the others. The speed limit is only 40 mph, so only some of the traffic goes 50 or 60 mph and there is less traffic. I do ride this street when it isn't too busy. The plan is to remove two lanes on this street south of I20 and mark it for bicycle traffic. I like the idea, but I don't see it happening soon. To the South there is ...

M ost people want to lose weight and get in shape. People may be content with their fitness level, but they would prefer to be in better shape. The problem isn’t a lack of desire. The problem isn’t that people don’t know what they need to do. Eat less. Exercise more. This isn’t rocket science. So, why don’t people do it? I spent several years knowing what I needed to do but not doing it. Concerns about my health convinced me to rearrange some priorities. There are things I don’t do anymore because riding a bicycle is high on my priority list. But the reality is that we can’t always do that. Work, church, family, life. These things constantly pull us away from our fitness goals. There is an article in Bicycling titled America’s Most Bike-Crazy Mayor and it highlights Betsy Price’s efforts here in Fort Worth to get people riding bicycles. They quote Betsy Price as saying, “I realized if I was going to maintain an active lifestyle as mayor, it would be vital to find ways to incorporate i...

W hy don’t you ride a bicycle? Because I ride a bicycle, I have many people telling me why they don’t. I kind of think that these people feel guilty about riding. While I would like to see more people riding bicycles, if you don’t ride a bicycle, that’s your loss. You don’t have to explain it to me. But here are a few reasons why people don’t ride bicycles. My balance isn’t very good. I suppose this is a ligament reason. I don’t give balance much thought. A bicycle that’s going above 4 mph or so will balance on its own. The faster you go the easier it is to balance. I realize some people have health problems that mess with their balance, but I wonder if the real problem is that people are just afraid to go fast enough to keep the bicycle upright. Besides which, research shows that riding a bicycle can help people develop balance skills. I don’t know how. While I’ve never had someone tell me this, CBS News reports that 8% of American adults never learned to ride a bicycle. That means th...

T he light was red as I rolled to the well-worn stop line on my two wheeled conveyance. It was the last major street I would have to cross before reaching home, the endpoint for a fifty mile ride. A small white car that had been sitting at the drive-thru window of a convenience store pulled across the street and came up behind me. It hadn’t been there for more than a couple of seconds when I heard a man’s voice, “Go!” I looked up at the red light and then yelled over my shoulder, “It’s red.” “Get out of the way! I’m going to bump your mother f_____g a__!” “The light’s red,” I yelled again. I thought about what would happen if he carried out his threat. His front bumper would hit my rear wheel first. Aside from the damage it would do to my bicycle, it would knock me off my feet. A few seconds passed. The light turned green and I crossed the road, hoping that he wouldn’t follow. He didn’t. He made his right turn and the situation was over. Though situations like this one are rare, they ...

W almart will sell you a bicycle for $80. But maybe you don’t like the cheap model. If so, they have bicycles priced as high as $300. Since so many people shop at Walmart, that’s about would people expect to pay for a bicycle, but some bicycles are priced in excess of $10,000. Your average cycling enthusiast doesn’t pay nearly that much. Most of the bikes you’ll find in a bicycle shop are priced between $300 and $2,000. Even that is enough to shock people who are accustomed to Walmart prices. Most bicycles look alike, so some people struggle with understanding why it costs more to buy a bicycle from a bike shop. It all comes down to components. Just like when you buy a computer you can buy one for a low price if you don’t need the latest and greatest components, you can buy a bicycle with lesser components for cheap, but the better components will cost you. The better components are lighter weight, less resistant, easier to use, and less likely to fail. When considering how much you sh...

M aybe I won’t go. While trying to plan my vacation time for the rest of the year, I pulled up the schedule for the BMA of Texas annual meeting . Since the meeting is close this year, it occurred to me that I might be able to put in a few hours at work before heading to the meeting. My big question was, when do I need to be there? I looked at the first day and what do I see? 1:00 pm – message, 2:15 pm – message, 3:15 pm – message, 8:00 pm – message. In between we have worship, question & answer, and a concert. There’s some other stuff in there that I don’t know what it is, but it looks to me like there is absolutely no business on day one. Keep in mind that the whole purpose of this meeting is to hear reports from the departments of the association and to conduct business. It isn’t until 2:00 pm on day two that we see anything that looks like business. But it looks like the plan is to cram all of the departments into an hour and thirty minutes. After that, it is more break-out...

D uring the summer before I graduated college, I worked in fire protection. One of my tasks was to college fire extinguishers from the various locations in the factory where I worked, empty them, replace any damaged parts, refill them, and place them back where they belonged. Occasionally, we would find one that was clogged up, so it wouldn’t discharge. That was the whole point of the exercise. We needed to find the ones that wouldn’t work, so that people would have access to a working extinguisher. Shortly after we began that task, we discovered one of these and one of the guys we were working for helped us with it. He removed the nozzle while it was still under pressure hurriedly positioned it so that it would dump into the container we were supposed to empty these things into. Sometime later, I was working alone and ran into the same situation. Rather than releasing the air pressure, like I should have, I tried doing what he had done. Instead of the result he had, I ended up with a ...

T hom Rainer posted an article on Four Types of Churches That Will Soon Die . He includes in that list the “ex-community church.” It reminded me of some of these farm churches that began within riding distance of four or five farms. Since families were large, it was easy for them to reach fifty in attendance from just those few families and then there may have been others who came from a little farther out. Now, communities are in towns that may be five to ten miles away from the church building and there may be ten people meeting in the building. It isn’t just that the church doesn’t look like the community, the church isn’t even in the community. But I’m a member of a church in a large city. There is no shortage of people who are living around the church building. 50,000 people are within easy walking distance. The irony is that with that many people right around the church, there is no sense of community. In a small town, you go to the grocery sto...

A s a student in high school I learned that it isn’t good to tell a teacher that she is wrong, even when you know the subject better than she does. It is better to ask a question and to shape that question in such a way that the teacher will realize her mistake while attempting to answer the question. I never formalized that method, but Gregory Koukl does in his book Tactics . But rather than addressing how not to offend someone who has the ability to influence your grade, Koukl approaches this from the standpoint of how to share your faith. These days, we encounter many people who are offended by Christian beliefs. The tactics Koukl outlines in his book can help us to reduce the conflict and help them discover the truth of what we are saying for themselves. And even if they don’t, perhaps the people listening will. The meat of the book is three questions that we can ask that will cause people to consider what they are saying. Often, people are just repeating things that other people...

D o you ever wonder if the Lord answers prayer? I’m not asking you to answer at church, where the answer is always, “Of course, the Lord answers prayer.” I’m asking you to answer from that place where the silence is deafening, where your heart is broken, where you are out of breath from a punch in the gut, where the floor is wet with your tears. In that place, do you ever wonder if the Lord answers prayer? At church, we have these prayer lists. Every once in a while, someone will mention “a praise” because someone is out of the hospital. Someone might mention “a praise” because someone found a job or found a house to buy. But those things may have happened whether we prayed or not. What I’ve noticed is that people tend to praise the Lord for answered prayer when they receive their petition in a predictable way. In other situations, people seem to pass it off as happenstance, or “I just wasted a good worry.” I wonder if we aren’t looking at answered prayer wrong. Several months ago, I s...

N ot a big fan of the words “I love you.” Words are so easily said, but that doesn’t mean they mean anything. Me being a guy, I tend to equate love and respect. One doesn’t often say, “I respect you.” If people respect you, you’ll know it without them saying it. Here’s how: 1. Their Handshake There’s more to a handshake than just clasping hands. If people respect you, their grasp will be firm. Also, they will make eye contact as they are shaking your hand. If people grasp your hand weakly and they are already looking for the next person to talk to, they don’t respect you. 2. Remember Your Name People who respect you will remember your name. They will not only know your name, but they will make every effort to call you by your preferred name. And if they aren’t calling you by name, they’ll use “Sir” or “Ma’am”. 3. Nod or Wave To nod or wave is a sign of respect. This is usually done at a distance. Also, people will nod or wave to people they don’t know as well as those they do. Even so,...

H acked! It’s not something that you want to happen, but it happened to me. It’s a little embarrassing, actually. I’m supposed to know about these things. I’m supposed to be able to prevent this. Yeah, and so is Microsoft. I’ll get over it. Once I get past the feeling of being violated, it’s actually pretty cool. I was able to look at the look at the code they inserted, and I want to talk about that, but first, I’m not exactly sure how they got a foothold. It’s possible that they managed to get my password or maybe the password of the hosting company. I’ve seen situations in which the hackers were able to add get requests to a URL that were then translated into links to other places. But in this case, the index file itself was modified and a large number of files were uploaded to the server. Needless to say, I’ve changed my password and deleted the files. I discovered the problem while working on moving my website to a new server. I haven’t been happy with the previous hosting company ...

I f you haven’t noticed, the current fad is minimalism. People are opting for small houses rather than big mansions. Some people are opting out of housing completely, and living with just what they can carry on their backs, not by necessity, but by choice. Instead of having several devices, people want just one that does what they need. Designers are embracing the concept, focusing on the basic needs and trimming out the extra. I saw an ad for a “minimalist watch” that does nothing but tell time. There’s something refreshing about the whole thing. How different this is from what I remember from years past. I used to have a watch with a calculator on it. I remember buying watches with an alarm, an hourly beep, water resistance to 200 meters, a clock, a calendar, a way to tell direction, and who knows what else. What do I need with a watch that I can dive with? What do I need with the rest of that stuff? But I wanted it because it was available. So what changed? People are, generally, ov...

W e’re well past the middle of the year and by now there are a bunch of people who have given up on their New Year’s resolutions. You’re probably looking at me funny for even mentioning New Year’s resolutions at this time of year. That’s why I don’t do resolutions. I set goals, instead. If I had written a resolution, it probably would’ve been to ride a bicycle at least 80 miles each week. That would give me 4,160 miles for the year, and I would’ve already blown it. But my goal for the year is to ride at least 4,000 miles and at 2,668 miles, I’m tracking well ahead of my goal. At this point, I could skip the cold weather completely and still reach my goal. But let’s take a look at the goals I set and see how I’m doing. Write a Book I’ve been slow to start on this one, but in the past few days I’ve written the first 35 pages of one. I’m convinced it is a book worth writing, so I expect I’ll keep at it. I even have a couple of ideas for other books that I’m looking forward to. At this poi...

C hristians often talk about being blessed. Usually, they are talking about something that is good. On Facebook, I’ve often seen people post pictures of their spouse and kids doing something fun and they caption it simply, “Blessed.” But is that what a blessing looks like? As a single guy, I’ve got to say, I hope not. I’m happy for them. Really, I am. But if a blessing looks like a wife sleeping on a couch with the kids sleeping next to her, what’s an empty couch? A curse? Someone is sure to point out that at least I have a couch, and that’s true. In fact, I’m happy I have a couch. It’s a nice couch. It is soft leather and it looks like new. I give the Lord full credit for giving me the ability to buy that couch. It really is a nice couch. But do you know what would happen if responded to the picture of a sleeping wife and kids with a picture of my very nice empty couch and captioned it “Blessed”? I’ll give you a hint. It wouldn’t be pretty. Even though people talk about being single a...

T here’s been much talk about visitor parking at churches. Some people are very thrilled with the idea. Some people…not so much. I rode past one of Sikorsky’s buildings the other day and saw a whole row of visitor parking. I jokingly said that we should paint the visitor spaces at church purple, to match the visitor card. But what I noticed about Sikorsky’s visitor spaces was that it was obvious that they were visitor spaces. The background is blue, not purple, but it makes them stand out. It is helped by them being vertical, instead of horizontal. If we’re going to do visitor parking, this may be something to think about. And, I’ll have to say, I’ve read some things that make some very good arguments for visitor parking. Thom Rainer mentions parking in his article “5 Things the Unchurched Notice at Your Church.” So keep in mind, that regardless of what I say here, visitor parking may be a very good thing to have. But let me present a different point of view. Walmart Doesn’t Have Vis...

T here’s a whole city out there that most people have never seen. I moved to Fort Worth in 1997. Having grown up in rural Missouri, my impression of Fort Worth was that it was a big city that wanted to call itself country. This was Cowtown and I went looking for cows on numerous occasions, without much success. What I did find was traffic. Lots and lots of traffic. Being the country boy that I am, I’m not a fan of this thing called rush hour. In the country, when you want to go somewhere, you go. It may take you an hour to get anywhere, but you go and the only thing that might slow you down farm equipment moving from one field to another. I learned to plan my life around traffic and discovered that the city folk did too. But what does that have to do with this unseen city? Traffic in cities tends to flow in these channels that we call freeways. In Fort Worth, we also have these six lane streets that handle large amounts of traffic. Neighborhoods are connected to these major streets, so...

I ’m fascinated by desire paths . In the video below, Tom Hulme discusses designing based on desire paths in dirt. But desire paths aren’t always paths that we can see from satellite photos. Since I do quite a bit or work with websites, I spend a significant amount of time looking at website statistics. In particular, I look at the phrases people type into search engines. There are a number of search phrases that I have targeted. When I see these show up, this tells me that what I’m doing is working. But things get more interesting when I begin looking at the other phrases. Not long ago, on a church website, I saw that someone had visited the site after typing the phrase, “hanging of the greens service ideas.” On one hand, this is of little importance. At some point, the church had positioned itself on this desire path by holding a “hanging of the greens service” and someone posting something about it on the website. You can be sure that the person following this path isn’t going to vi...

F or the past couple of weeks, our Sunday school class has been looking at some of the Apostle Paul’s letters. Now, you may be wondering how Paul’s letters relate to hashtags. Recently, I’ve been seeing hashtags…I mean a lot of hashtags. I’ve been seeing posts with three or four or more hashtags. I see posts where half the post is taken up with hashtags. What do I do? I ignore the post and keep on scrolling. I suspect most other people do as well. We need to think about hashtag strategy, and I think Paul’s epistles can help us with that. Paul’s Form Paul followed a standard form, when he wrote his epistles. This may have been how he was taught to write in school, but it is worth considering. First, he tells the reader who he is. In your Bible you’ll see that all of Paul’s letters begin with the same word. Can you guess what it is? Absolutely right. “Paul” is the first word of every letter. (Hebrews would be an exception, if it is written by Paul.) Next, Paul gives a brief introduction ...

S o, as I’m reading through 1 Corinthians and trying to prepare for a lesson on Sunday, it occurred to me that when we get to chapter twelve, Paul is still dealing with problems. He has just addressed the unfair distribution of the Lord’s supper. Chapter thirteen is going to call for them to place a priority on love. But that usually not the way we address it. Usually, when we see this thing about spiritual gifts, we ask people what their spiritual gift is. We may even send them off with a spiritual gift assessment and when they come back and tell us that they have the “gift of wisdom” or the “gift of prophecy” or whatever it happens to be, we start trying to match them up with some ministry that tends to have a lot of people with the same assessment as they have. Besides the fact that the Bible tells us nothing about what circles to fill in for each of the spiritual gifts, what does that have to do with problems? It seems to me that Paul is stating what he seems to think is obvious to...

S ome years ago, following a committee meeting at church, I made a sarcastic comment to a friend about what had been discussed. I don’t remember what I said, or what had been discussed in the meeting. What I do recall is that I found myself summoned to a meeting at church, a few days later. I show up at this meeting, not even thinking about the earlier conversation. But when I got there, the door closed and the conversation began, “Someone told me that you’re upset.” So much for my idea that this meeting had something to do with a project I working on at the time. For the next hour or so, we discussed this thing that I didn’t want to discuss at all. A simple offhand comment had turned into a position that I was expected to defend and my attempts to dismiss the whole thing did nothing to bring the conversation to a close. All from me just thinking aloud. I learned something from that. Venting is not allowed. Never say something that you aren’t willing to defend. I was looking for someon...

S tephen Wilkes made the observation that “The act of sharing has become more important than the experience itself.” He made this statement in a TED talk in which he was telling about his work as a photographer. To achieve the affect he is looking for, he spends many hours in one location, shooting thousands of photos of tourist attractions. This gives him a lot of time to observe human behavior. While doing so, he noticed that people were using historic locations more as a backdrop for photos of themselves, rather than exploring the site. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether that is a good thing or a bad thing. We’re unlikely to change it. I’m more interested in why this is the case. This hasn’t always been the way things are, but one thing we know about humans is that we don’t change much. Our motivations today are very similar to what people’s motivations were when the Bible was being written. It’s unlikely that the change in what people do at sites has anything to do with a chang...

H ow is salvation like a helmet? I’ve heard many sermons about the armor of God. More often than not, emphasis is placed on what a helmet is rather than on the armor itself. Just as we aren’t battling flesh and blood, we aren’t actually wearing armor. There is value in knowing that a helmet protects the most valuable part of our body and we might point out that like a helmet, salvation keeps us alive, even if we have other injuries. But maybe the point of Ephesians 6:10-20 isn’t that spiritual things are like physical armor, but we are to prepare ourselves for battle. Truth When we stand in battle, we are to have truth. We are battling for hearts and minds. The enemy is lying to those we are trying to reach. When we speak the truth, the enemy is caught with his pants down. No lie can stand up against the truth. So, we go into battle with truth like a belt. Righteousness Of course none of us are completely righteous, but Jesus is our righteousness. Even so, one of Satan’s favor tactics ...