Timothy's Thoughts

M oney is like water. It only has real power when it is in motion. I grew up near the Mississippi River, but I also grew up near a swamp. The swamp just sits there and grows stale. The Mississippi River is constantly flowing with millions of gallons of water. One might wander where all that water comes from. It comes from a bunch of smaller rivers and streams, which are fed by rain water. And rain comes from clouds which come from the ocean evaporating. But the ocean is filled by rivers like the Mississippi. You’ve heard it all before. It is just one big cycle. And so it is with money. Big corporations pay their workers, who go out and buy things from store owners, who buy things from big corporations. We use terms like trickle up economics and trickle down economics to address the question of whether money flows from companies to the people or from the people to the companies. Usually, we are asking the question of whether it would be better to give corporations money or to give...

The Kingdom of Heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal till the whole was leavened. – Matthew 13:33 J esus spent a great deal of time talking about “the Kingdom of Heaven”. This is one of the shortest stories he told about it. You might ask what “the Kingdom of Heaven” is. The best I can tell, the Kingdom of Heaven is closely related to what many people call “the church” today. It seems to be all the Christians in the entire world. This is different from what Jesus called the church or the assembly, which is a local body that assembles together for worship and service. Even so, “the Kingdom” includes us. In the Bible leaven is symbolic of some evil. It is the nature of sin to start small and grow into something big. The same is true of leaven. In this case, we see a small amount leavening three measures of meal. The Jews Jesus was speaking to would have recognized the three measures as being the amount needed for the feast of unleavened brea...

T hese days it is in vogue to wear any old thing to church. At some point people decided that it would be good to dress down for church because we don’t want other people feeling uncomfortable. After all, we aren’t supposed to be trying to impress other people by what we wear to church anyway. It is God we are to worship. It sounds good, but I don’t think that argument holds water. First, I’m a guy and I don’t spend a lot of time trying to impress people with what I wear. I’m sure some people do, but I don’t think dressing down will change people’s desire to impress those around them. If it isn’t with their clothes, they’ll find something else for that purpose. Second, how many people do you know of that will refuse to go to church because the people dress too fancy? I’ve heard people use that excuse, but I’ve also seen people with very little come to church anyway. But here’s what really gets me. If a person were invited to the White House, no matter which party’s candidate were...

M y pastor asked me to transfer a VHS tape to a DVD. The main reason he wanted this done was because VCRs are less commonly used than they used to be. I told him I would see what I could do. My first concern was that the equipment wouldn’t allow me to make the transfer. Many VHS tapes have a message encoded into the tape that tells the recording equipment not to store the video. Once I determined this was not the case with this video, I sent a request to the copyright owner for permission to copy the video. The copyright owner for this video is a company that has a website. Their contact page consists of a form into which you can put your personal information and a message, and a mailing address. Hoping for a quick response, I used the form. I submitted the request on a Saturday, so I didn’t expect a response till Monday, but this particular company isn’t the kind that would have a lot of correspondence, so I expected to receive an e-mail on Monday. Monday came and went. Tuesday came...

A fter several years of having the same website design, I’m sure our church website is due for a change. As website designs go, it has held up very well. That’s part of why I’m struggling with creating a new design. As is, it has all the things, and more, that you would expect from a church website design, so it isn’t easy to identify problems that need to be fixed. Mike Anderson, one of the developers of MarsHill.com, recently blogged about 5 Principles of Church Website Design . They are: Tell Them Why You Exist Give ’Em A Hook Cast A Wide Net Don’t Fake A Vibe Show The Story I’ve talked about all of these before in previous posts or in the book, in one form or another. Today, I want to focus on the first one. Mike Anderson’s solution was to put the statement “It’s all about Jesus” under the name of the church. My question is, is this enough? Granted, Mars Hill is not one church but several under one name, so we can expect they may have different needs and different goals than a...

N o matter how many times you read it, the Bible always has something that you haven’t seen before. Sometimes it is some deeper meaning that you haven’t seen. Sometimes it is something simple that you just hadn’t noticed before. This was the case for me last Wednesday night. We all know that God has many names. Perhaps you’ve participated in a worship service in which banners showing the names of God are carried in. You probably saw names like Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace, Jehovah, Emmanuel, Jesus, the Everlasting Father. There are so many beautiful names of God. Each one tells us something about the nature of God. It is an act of worship just to see those names before us and to read them off. But there’s one name for God that you aren’t likely to see on one of those banners. I believe it is God’s most unusual name. I don’t know why I hadn’t noticed it before. We were studying a passage that I’d read multiple times before. We were looking at the passage...

R ecently, I read an article by Tony Reinke that compared homosexuality to idolatry and made the argument that it leads to unhappiness. I don’t want to dwell on the issue of homosexuality alone, but broaden the discussion to all sin. So often, the basis for immorality is that it makes people happy. Two teenagers go out on a date and end up in bed together, but they enjoyed it, so what’s wrong with that? It is a childish argument. We’ve often heard children say to their parents, “you just don’t want me to have any fun.” And on the basis that immoral activity is fun (which is usually is when we’re doing it), it seems that morality is not fun. So we end up arguing for moral action on the basis that it is what God commands. It becomes a legalistic argument and we are trying to make it to people who have no concern for what God’s law says. What are we doing?! Have we forgotten the songs we learned growing up? “There is joy in serving Jesus!” “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy, down in my ...