Timothy's Thoughts

O ne of the banks I do business with tells me that if I will sign up a certain feature, they will plant a tree in my honor. This is one of those things that looks good on paper, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. As I stated on Facebook, since they aren’t going to plant it in my yard, I don’t see the point. Now that might upset some of you green hugging environmentalist types, but have you really thought about it? Suppose for a moment that I signed up and sure enough, they plant a tree in my honor. Now, you realize that banks don’t have workers who plant trees. So to plant my tree, the bank will pay someone to plant a tree. That’s what makes it sound so great. We need trees, don’t we? The more the better, right? But who are they going to pay? The stated goal of the bank is to plant 25,000 trees. If they are planting the trees 12 feet apart, they will need about 83 acres for the trees. I very much doubt they are planting them on the lawn at corporate headquarters. Instead, I su...

Y ou’ve probably already heard about high school students walking out on a lecture by “anti-bulling expert” Dan Savage when he launched into a diatribe against Christians and the Bible. In fact, his remarks are quite viscous and were aimed at the Christian students who were in the room. This from someone who has been described as “President Obama’s anti-bullying czar.” Obviously, President Obama would do well to try to distance himself from Dan Savage. This type of thing is what has bothered me since the beginning of this emphasis on anti-bullying. The problem I see is that people are not as concerned about bullying as they are about someone disagreeing with them. Also, there is the problem that bullying is not clearly defined. I’ve read that 71% of people believe Dharun Ravi using a webcam to show Tyler Clementi involved in homosexuality is bullying. That’s what the news media called it from day one, so that number doesn’t surprise me. But how many of those people would be able to s...

H ere’s a shocker. When Steve Laube posted the list of Christian Book Award winners on Tuesday, I saw the names of nine authors only two of which were women. And one of those women was the last of three names that co-authored a children’s book, the other two were men. That works out to be 22% for the women and 78% for the men. The thing that makes this a shocker is that to hear a lot of people tell it, Christianity is dominated by women. Some people seem to think that it’s the women who go to church. It’s the women who work in Sunday school and youth ministry. It’s the women who sing in the choir. Why without the women, the churches would fall apart, or so I’ve heard. (Perhaps they would.) Then look at all the Christian writers conferences. There’s no question that those are dominated by women. Women easily outnumber the men there by a margin of ten to one. I really don’t believe Christianity is as dominated by women as some people think. That certainly isn’t the case at our churc...

S ometimes we see discussions about things that some churches call sin and others do not. It often centers around how much involvement a church allows people involved in that sin to have. Often we see churches trying to be more accepting of people, no matter what sin they might be involved in. I was thinking about one of these discussions. In this case one well known preacher was criticizing another well known preacher for not speaking out against one sin that it has become taboo of late to speak against. I think you know which one it is. In fact, the pastor had no problem with two men of that persuasion to serve in the church, except one of them was still married to his wife. Rather than try to sort through that mess, I’ll leave it at that. I’ll just say, the pastor mentioned above has said that people of a particular persuasion have stated going to his church because other churches are not accepting of their lifestyle. As I thought about it, I began to think, you know, I have no ...

“ D on’t judge,” the world says, but the fact is, we don’t always have that luxury. At church, we do background checks on our leaders. Why? Because we’re trying to protect the children from wolves in sheep’s clothing. That requires judgment on our part. Parents judge their kid’s friends. People who are dating, are judging the other person to see if they are the kind of person they think they can spend a lifetime with. Let’s admit it, judging is a part of life. But here’s the real question: What should be our basis for judging? And don’t say “the Bible.” Of course it should be the Bible, but what should be our basis for disqualifying someone? When dealing with the issue of marriage, we usually pull out 2 Corinthians 6:14 . A believer shouldn’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers. But that applies to more things than marriage. It applies to churches. A church has no business having unbelievers within her membership. It applies to business. Don’t go into a partnership with an unbeliever...

I love the way God works. At our church, I work with the Awana boys in the 3rd through 6th grade. This year, we’ve been down in attendance because we quit running the van. We decided to try focusing on those who wanted to come rather than including those who just wanted to ride the van to get away from home. We’ve had nights this year when we’ve had more male leaders than we’ve had male clubbers. I’ll admit, I’ve been down about the turnout. Well, last week was our spring revival services. Each year, on Wednesday, we combine Awana with the revival. This time, we did handbook time as usual and then took the kids down to sit in the auditorium. Dr. Philip Attebery, dean of the BMA Theological Seminary brought the message. As I listened to the message, I was thrilled. It was the kind of sermon I like to hear. It headed off into some somewhat deep concepts and he got into the means of some of the Greek words. He talked about how the individual is not the most important thing in a church....

I write note and leave them on my desk. Usually, I remember what they are, but some have no meaning at all. On one sticky note, I wrote two seven digit numbers. I don’t know what they mean. I must have known at one time. On another, I wrote “Theme of Ruth.” Not sure why, but I did. On another, I’ve listed seven names. Again, I’m not sure why. The bigger question is why haven’t I gotten rid of them. Notes are like messages from someone in our past. They knew something and wanted to communicate it to us. Sometimes they are successful. Sometimes they are not.