Timothy's Thoughts

A couple of years ago, I went on my first official “Mission Trip” to Albuquerque, New Mexico. This year, our church has returned to do much of the same thing we did then. In fact, some of the work we are doing this week includes repairing picnic tables we repaired two years ago and replacing windows in a mobile home that we repaired windows in two years ago. I find myself, again, asking, why do we do these mission trips? Before we answer that question, I think we need to define two different types of mission trips. Interestingly, a mission trip may be one type for one person and another type for someone else on that same trip. I see these two types as expert mission trips and training mission trips. An expert mission trip is one in which a person with special knowledge and experience, such as an eye doctor, travels to a mission field to put that knowledge and experience to use. A training mission trip is one in which people travel to a mission field to perform tasks that they do infreq...

W hen I was in high school, I had a number of times when I was required to speak in front of a group of people, both at school and other organizations. I hated it. If I could have gotten out of it, I would have. I still remember feeling ill from nerves, leading up to the speech. But now, I kind of wish I could go back and do it again, with the knowledge I have now. There were things that our teachers tried to teach us about public speaking. Most of it, I didn’t get, because it didn’t help me with my situation. Here are some things I wish I had known: 1. Knowing the subject matter is more important than wording. My approach to giving a speech was to write out what I wanted to say and then develop ways to memorize what I had written. The problem is that when you are standing in front of people, you don’t trust yourself to recall your memorized speech, which makes you nervous, which causes you to forget even more. Now, I don’t write speeches, I write outlines. The better I know the subjec...

I ’ve been doing a lot of thinking about small groups. Part of that is because I’ll be taking on the leadership of one of our adult Sunday school classes (pending church approval). A church without small groups will struggle to be more than just a performance venue. If the only interaction people have at church is shaking hands with a few people, it is unlikely that people will miss them when they are gone and when they are hurting, there is no one there to help them. That’s not what church is about. But just what is a small group? From Acts, we know that the disciples met from house to house. We don’t know exactly what this looked like, but we know they did it. Today, different churches do small groups differently. Some people will say something like, “We don’t do Sunday school; we do small groups.” But we need to be careful that we don’t turn that around and say, “We don’t do small groups; we do Sunday school.” Sunday school is just one of several things that can be considered small ...

S ome people say that the church website is the new front door to a church. Their argument is good, since most people visit a church’s website before they visit church. But then they go immediately into what the home page of the website should look like. There’s nothing wrong with having an attractive home page, but we must be careful that we don’t forget everything we know about church doors. I’ve been to many church buildings. There are quite a few of them that I’ve entered, but not by the front door. The church I grew up in had two doors. There was the front door, which was at the top of a set of steps. There was a side door that closer to the parking lot and had not steps to get to it. Most people used that door. The only people who used the front door were visitors who made their way around the side of the building by walking across the rocky and uneven yard, before climbing the steps. But that was the door that had a sign above it, stating the name of the church. The other door w...

H ave you stopped to think how many times in the Bible that God answered prayer by sending a messenger? When Daniel couldn’t understand a vision, God sent a messenger to set him on his feet. When Abraham prayed for Lot’s protection, God sent messengers to forcibly remove him from harm’s way. When Peter was in prison, God sent a messenger to free him. When a eunuch was seeking to understand the scripture, God sent Philip. When some women were praying on the river bank, God sent Paul. With it happening so frequently, you might think that is God’s preferred method. And you just might be right. When Jesus looked at the multitudes in Matthew 9:37-38, he said, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Pray ye therefor the Lord of the harvest, that he would send laborers into his harvest.” And when Isaiah saw a vision of the Lord in Isaiah 6:8, the Lord said, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Isaiah responded, “Here am I; send me.” Could it be that we have the wro...

W hat does it mean to ask in Jesus’ name? John 16:23-24 shows Jesus telling his disciples that whatever they ask in his name, the Father will give them. We tend to apply this to ourselves as well, but we all can think of situations where we asked for something in prayer and ended with “in Jesus name I pray” and we didn’t get what we asked for. So, either that isn’t what this passage is talking about, or we’re applying it wrong. It might be helpful to follow the analogy a little closer. Instead of jumping to this being a God who is omnipotent, so he could give us anything, let’s follow the relationship as it is presented. This is the father/son relationship. So, how would this work with the fathers and sons we know? It occurs to me that I have some things that belong to me, but they are still at my parents’ house. One of those things is a bicycle. Suppose you went to my father and asked, “Can I have that bicycle?” My father would respond, “No, it isn’t mine to give you.” Now, suppose to...

A theist Greta Christina wrote about 6 thing that would convince her to believe in God . Here they are: An Unambiguous Message – Writing in the sky with letters 100 feet high saying “I Am God, I Exist, Here Is What I Want You To Do” Accurate Prophecies in Sacred Texts Accurate Science in Religious Texts The One Successful Religion – The believers in one religion having better lives than those in all other religions. Inexplicably Accurate Information Gained During Near-Death or Other Supposedly Psychic Experiences I don’t see six there either. Perhaps she expects God to know what number six is. But here’s the thing, I don’t think she would believe it if writing appeared in the sky. I’ve seen billboards that were signed “God”, but I didn’t assume God had written the message. I assumed some human wrote it. As for accurate prophecies and accurate science in religious texts, the Bible has been shown many times to have accurate prophecies and to mention scientific concepts that were ac...