Timothy's Thoughts

T he calling to write is something that many authors talk about. Some Christian authors will even tell you that they went down to the altar and surrendered to the call . Many writers—perhaps most—have a strong desire to write. Put a pen in their hand, give them a few blank sheets of paper and it won’t be long before the pages are filled and the pen runs dry. That’s the way writers are, but is that a calling? In the world’s concept of the calling , it may very well be, but is every person who eats and breathes writing called by God to write? And how do we know if we are truly called or if it’s just something we enjoy immensely? That is what I would like to explore today. In the Bible, a word that is often used to refer to the message the Lord gave various prophets is a word that can be translated as burden . A burden to prophesy, we might ask? Did the prophet get up in the morning and say, “I think I’ll die if I’m not able to be God’s mouthpiece today?” No, not so much. In fact, many ...

S omeone once suggested that if a person would study a given topic for one hour a day, five days a week for five years, he could be a world renowned expert on the subject. When you think about it, it seems to be true. That doesn’t mean that you are an expert on everything you have been doing for five years, but if you were to deliberately study a subject—any subject—with the intent of becoming an expert, you could reach your goal. A working year is 2,000 hours. Five hours a week times five years is 1,300 hours. Just imagine if you could take on this task as your job. You would take up your work each day, looking for things you could learn about the subject that you hadn’t learned before. You would begin your time studying what others have written on the subject, but you would soon exhaust their work and you would start looking for new things. In a little more than half a year, you could be an expert. We see that happen all the time in the engineering world. An engineer is given a new ...

R ecently, I have noticed a surge in interest for my book Church Website Design . I don’t know about everyone else, but when I see book sales rise, it gives me a renewed interest in the subject matter. Now, I’m not going to talk about church website design , exactly, but I am going to talk about that big R you see to the left and tell you more than you probably wanted to know. Now, if you know anything about HTML, there isn't a drop caps tag. To get that, you have to use Cascading Styles Sheets (CSS). In the case of this R, the style is defined inline. I will note that there are some good reasons why you should avoid doing that, but it is the easiest way to go for the typical blogger, since it doesn't require messing with the template or files on the server. This R is accomplished using the span tag and has the following form: <span style="font-size: 100px; float: left; color: #477fba; line-height: 70px; padding-top: 2px; font-family: times, serif, georgia"...

C ontinuing to answer the 20 questions for leaders that Michael Smith of ClearView Baptist Church in Franklin, Tennessee asked Mike Hyatt , this week’s question is, Where do the great ideas come from in your organization? I’ll tell you where they don’t come from. They almost never come from the leaders. Leaders are great people, but tend to get caught of in making the last great idea work. You get tunnel vision sometimes and then some ordinary person comes along and asks, “Wouldn’t it be easier if you did it this way?” Your natural tendency might be to tell them all the reasons they are wrong, but after you take the time to consider the idea and make adjustments for things they hadn’t considered, it might the one of the best ideas you’ve seen in a long time. Remember Moses? He got so busy trying to judge the people that he didn’t have time for anything else. His father-in-law showed up one day, observed what was going on and told him he ought to get some men to help him. Moses set up...

Editor’s Note: I’ve been looking for some ways to do more with this blog than just talk about writing, publishing and websites. To that purpose, I have sought out a few guest bloggers. I know some people don’t like guest bloggers, but I’m hoping you’ll like these. It took some serious arm twisting, but today’s guest is the beautiful, tough as nails, restaurant owner in training, Sara Dawson. W hen Timothy asked me to write a post for his blog, I said, “I thought you would never ask!” Its funny how much it sounded like, “Uh, no.” But as you can see, he talked me into it. I told him that I don’t have anything interesting to say. If I bore you to tears, it’s his fault. He told me I should write about growing up without a mother. So, here goes. I don’t know if anyone ever told me I didn’t have a mother. I don’t have many memories from when I was very young. It was just Dad and me back then. Of course there was also Grandma and Aunt Stephanie. I usually stayed with one of them when Dad wa...

W hen I hear some people talk about their story ideas, I’m amazed at what they think is a great idea. One author described her great idea as “an adventure story from the girls’ point of view.” She also described it as a female Lord of the Rings . Doesn’t that just make you want to rush out to the story and buy her book? Yeah, me neither. I see nothing wrong with putting female characters in an adventure story. We’ve seen several authors do it. But what’s the story? The Hero and the Crown by Robin McKinley could be described in the same way as that above, although there are many things that are different. What that tells us is that the author above has told us very little. At most, she has told us the plot and one characteristic of the protagonist. But as you’re aware, there is a decade of plots, depending upon who is numbering them. A story idea includes characters and plot , but these things alone are not enough. Change is the element that completes the triad. We start with a chara...

P aul wrote to Timothy in order to give him special instruction on how people in the church should behave themselves. In I Timothy 1:3, 4 that the church at Ephesus had problems with false doctrine as well as problems with people spending too much time talking about fables and endless genealogies. So, Paul tells Timothy what they should be doing instead. What does he tell him is the most important thing people should do when the church assembles? Pray. ( I Timothy 2:1-4 ) These days, we hear a lot about styles of worship, how many services we should have or whether we should have small group meetings during the week or on Sunday morning. In all of that, we may have lost sight of this simple truth. The most important thing for a church to do when it comes together for worship is to pray. We are to pray for our needs. We are to intercede for others. We are to give thanks to God. We are to pray. We are to pray for all men. We are to pray for those in authority. Why? So, that we may have...