Once upon a time, a college kid sat rapt, listening as an “old” missionary philosopher — I think he was younger than I am now — sat in his living room and spun a vision of a mystical Christianity that revels in the physicality of the Creation: of the kind of Christian that could chase a sunset, caress a stream, focus meditatively on a single bite of a strawberry, and be guided by the Spirit of God in it all.
I was that kid, and I’ve carried that vision in my heart for some 30 years. It’s guided my spirituality, my studies, my career choices, how I spend my free time, the sort of father I am, and so much more.
Bob Hitching was that philosopher, the only kind of philosopher I’ve ever cared about as an adult — the kind with dirt under his fingernails, elbow-deep in serving those around him. That conversation in his living room prepared me well for resisting the gnostic-lite temptations of evangelical Protestantism, and forging a lush spirituality that is biblical enough to stand up to the unapologetic physicality of resurgent neopaganism. I am who I am for my pagan friends today because of the challenge Bob tossed in my lap three decades ago.
Bob had a way of issuing life-altering challenges…and yet, it was singularly difficult to resist a challenge from Bob, partly because he was such a crazy man himself. He embodied what he preached, and he preached the holistic, culture-transforming power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. Bob was the sort of missionary that didn’t just want to see a handful of believers huddling in a basement somewhere. He wanted to see desperate children fed, educated, and happy — so he was as willing to build houses and literacy programs as to preach. He wanted to see kids with no prospects get through trade school and launched into careers — so he was as willing to start scholarship programs as to preach. He wanted them all to have the Bible in their own language, and if they didn’t read their own language, he was willing to write comic books to give them something to read so they’d be ready for the Bible when the translation was finally done. And all along the way, he preached the gospel. Bob was passionate, tenacious, imaginative. God could give him anything to do, because he’d do absolutely anything.
That conversation in his living room wasn’t the only time Bob touched my life. He wrote a couple of books that altered the way I see the world, taught a course on modernity that did the same, inspired the creation of the ministry that took me to Russia, preached a sermon on Romans 3:24 that forever changed my understanding of preaching, and once used me (without naming me) as a sermon illustration to point out specific weaknesses in the way our church discipled its youth (and he was right, too!). I served on his board at Roma Bible Union for a couple of years, and in the last few years before his repose, he challenged me to find new vehicles for helping people grasp the goodness of the Creation. I’m still in the middle of that assignment — we’ll see where it goes. Bob has challenged me, infuriated me, inspired me, and been a model for me.
Reminiscing to my wife Kimberly about him, I found myself saying that Bob had a high-impact touch. It’s not like we talked every week or anything — sometimes we went years between interactions — but when he showed up in my life again, he had a way of facilitating major course corrections. I love him dearly, and I’ll be grateful to him forever.
Two years ago today, Bob suddenly met the Creator face to face. I’ve every confidence that perfectly stripped of his sins and fears, he now enjoys sunsets with a ferocity that I’ll never match in this life.
I vividly remember the day I got turned down for membership in an professional academic theological society. The rejection letter came from the secretary of the organization, a man who was also a well-regarded professor at a big seminary that I happened to be very familiar with.
I knew that I’d jumped through all the same academic hoops his own school’s graduates did. I knew the sort of master’s thesis his program routinely produced, because I’d read a bunch of them, probably including some he’d signed off on: competent 50- to 60-page volumes totally dependent on secondary sources, which is acceptable for a master’s thesis. (At the master’s level, the task is to demonstrate mastery of the literature, not to make a contribution.) Meanwhile, mine—130 pages of meticulously documented original research that accounted for the secondary literature but was grounded in primary sources and making an argument not found in the secondary literature—is selling on Amazon. Not a ton of course, but a couple decades later, there remains a very small but consistent demand.
So why’d they turn me down? I had the right degree and the right background, but I didn’t go to the right school. The secretary of the association—I expect he’s a fine fellow, and I bear him personally no ill will—was just applying the guidelines he’d been given. By those guidelines, I wasn’t good enough for their professional association. If you prepare for ministry in the ways I tend to advocate for these days, you won’t be good enough either. Traditional mentor-disciple relationships have prepared our people for ministry for the better part of two millennia, but some folks just gotta see a piece of Department of Education-recognized wallpaper.
Fortunately, Jesus doesn’t care about that. The people you serve won’t care either, just like my people don’t.
You know who does care? Career academics. If you’re looking for wallpaper—credentials to impress career academics and land you a tenure-track position in a school somewhere—the traditional mentor-disciple preparation simply will not get you where you’re trying to go. In place of that, degree-granting academic institutions offer you highly credentialed faculty, a big library, and a lot of classroom time. The better ones will get you some internships too, which is great. But the ugly truth is that at the core, academic institutions are classrooms doing what classrooms do well. Classrooms can give you a lot of really useful deep background knowledge: Bible, languages, church history and history of doctrine—but preparation for using that knowledge to benefit real people in front-line ministry is just not something classrooms do especially well. Among seasoned ministers, there’s a rich vein of true stories—some tragic, some hilarious—that end with “They didn’t teach me about that in seminary!”
You can, of course, seek out a mentor and get the wallpaper. If you’re going to get the wallpaper, I highly recommend seeking out the mentor too, because again, the ugly truth is that even at their best, academic institutions are classrooms doing what classrooms do well, and the exigencies of daily real-world ministry don’t lend themselves to classroom preparation. But shadowing a mentor for a few years will naturally expose you to what happens most—which is exactly what classrooms don’t do. If you prepare for what happens most, you’ll be prepared for most of what happens.
If you need the academic degree to open up a door for you to pursue your calling, then by all means get it. But don’t neglect the much harder task of developing the character, skills, and knowledge to support your calling. On the other hand, if you’re content to be competent, and you don’t need the wallpaper, then you can save yourself a lot of money by foregoing seminary.
Me, I’ve had the privilege of mentoring a number of people for the ministry. Since I left the seminary world in 2012, I don’t do academic wallpaper. I’m not against it; God may take me back into that world someday. But right now, I’m occupied with mentoring, and I find it more effective. If you love the people you serve, if you want—no, if you need—battle-tested, real-world knowledge presented in its real context, then get yourself a mentor.
Several years ago, I was asked for some hints on how to live as a Free Grace believer in a world that’s decidedly…not that. That discussion may also be worth your time; the article below is more specifically about being a pastor. I speak to being a Free Grace pastor here, but substitute in your own doctrinal camp, and see if the shoe fits anyhow. It may; a lot of us have similar issues.
An acquaintance recently opined that it’s particularly lonely being a Free Grace pastor. It’s too controversial. The masses don’t like it. It won’t grow the church. It doesn’t track with what people read in their MacArthur study Bibles or hear on the radio. And so on. I’ve heard these same thoughts from many other Free Grace pastors, over decades. Also (adjusting for doctrinal content) many Independent Baptist pastors. Many Reformed pastors. Pastors in general, really — a lot of guys think it’s about their particular doctrinal identity (which it may be, in a way we’ll get to below), but pastoral loneliness is certainly not unique to any particular doctrinal camp.
Now, I don’t know this guy well. We’ve never met in person. For all I know, he’s a beacon of genuine fellowship-seeking in a sea of self-absorbed and divisive ministers who want nothing to do with him. He may be doing the absolute best that any man could do in his position, and in God’s good providence, he’s all alone. That really does happen sometimes; it’s probably fair to say that Joseph’s fellowship needs were not being met at the bottom of the well. It’s counter-intuitive, but I suspect that the more Christian the overall demographic is, the lonelier the pastor and the fewer opportunities he has for fellowship. Far too many parishioners don’t want to know anything about their pastor’s struggles, so pastors often rely on other pastors, or friends outside their church, for close fellowship.
You’d think that would mean more Christian areas have more opportunity for a pastor to get fellowship. But the unfortunate truth is that when times are good and we have the favor of the culture, most North American Christians don’t fellowship across church and denominational boundaries. A pastor whose church is successful in terms of nickels and noses isn’t likely to get outside his silo much. We give all kinds of reasons, doctrinal and practical, for that. But as the surrounding culture grows more hostile, we find ways to accept support from other Christians, whoever they are. You see this most starkly on the mission field, where a Baptist missionary finds his choices limited to an Episcopalian and a witch doctor. All of a sudden, the other Christian starts looking really friendly…which means we always could have crossed those boundaries, and our wise-sounding reasons are actually lame excuses.
I grew up in the church, I’m a pastor’s kid, I’ve served as a minister myself for over two decades, and I’ve noticed that the pastor himself is often a major factor in the loneliness equation. Early in my ministry, I was very lonely too. And then I repented of some noxious habits, and since then, that loneliness has not been my experience at all. I see those same noxious habits in many pastors who continue to talk about the loneliness of the job as though it’s some inevitable force of nature, like the air getting thinner the further you go up a mountain. Pardon me, but that’s nonsense. Most (not all, but most) of the pastoral loneliness I’ve observed is self-inflicted, regardless of the pastor’s theology — and theology is one of the really big lame excuses.
Many pastors don’t want to hear disagreement on doctrine…or anything else, really. They talk a good game about wanting fellowship, but don’t actually put forth the effort to engage in relationships that foster it. In the end, they’d rather be the petty lord of their little silo, proceeding uninterrupted with their own agenda, whatever it is, than have meaningful peer interaction with people who will challenge them. They don’t want to hear people out, or actually change what they’re doing to accommodate other people’s points of view. (Many pastors don’t really disciple people for the same reason—real discipleship requires letting people get close enough to see your flaws.) Free Grace soteriology, while very helpful in a number of areas, does little to render anybody immune to this set of temptations. Pastors with Free Grace theology can be as bad as anybody, and pastors who are self-consciously part of the Free Grace movement are frequently worse, feeling a need to be a pill about every doctrinal difference they encounter. (You can read more about that on my Free Grace Theology page.) Pastors of other doctrinal persuasions, substitute your own label into that sentence and see if it hits. It just might.
Meaningful fellowship requires far less doctrinal alignment than most people think. Over the past 16 years or so, the far majority of my Christian friends and ministry partners have not shared my (Free Grace) convictions; we’ve taken good care of each other and done a lot of great work together anyway. And it’s not because I don’t mention my views. In fact, over time a number of my friends and partners have come around to Free Grace, or at least Free Grace-friendly, convictions. It turns out that a living example really helps; most of the slurs our detractors repeat about us just don’t stand up to real-world exposure. And then there’s that pesky exegesis (which keeps validating our basic convictions) and the practical grace and encouragement that we’re positioned to show, which is a real blessing in time of need. Over time, skeptical observers come to need that grace, either for themselves, or for someone they love. They can’t see their way to it…but we can. Receiving it, they become far more interested in where it came from. I find that living out our convictions draws people far more than it repels them.
Beyond that, what does work to break the logjam of pastoral loneliness?
One of the simplest places to start is just do things together. Quit imagining all the things that could possibly go wrong if you don’t have maximal alignment on every conceivable issue. Calm down, man. You’re not getting married to ’em. Start small; look for opportunities. Quit focusing on what you might not be able to do, and ask what you can do together.
Do you both pray to the God who was revealed in Jesus Christ? Then pray together. Pray for your city. Pray for each other. Pray for the mayor, the county board of supervisors, the high school baseball coach.
Do you believe that hungry people need to be fed? Can you agree on doing good and sharing (Heb. 13:16)? Excellent! How much doctrinal alignment do you need, really, to serve a bowl of soup?
Do you share a conviction that singing together is important (Eph. 5:19-20)? I hope so. Why do it alone when you could do it together every now and then?
Is there some terribly compelling doctrinal reason you couldn’t set aside a Saturday for a Lord of the Rings marathon, complete with all the hobbit meals? Well then…
As you seek those shared endeavors, it will matter how you approach them. Cultivate curiosity about others’ points of view, listen closely, and be willing to have long conversations where the Word of God is the centerpiece. They have the Holy Spirit too; be open to them changing your mind on some things. Just that much goes a very long way. Be willing to have real conversations about actual, messy vulnerabilities (yours and theirs), seek help from people who can meaningfully challenge you, and take their feedback seriously—don’t listen to their concerns just to explain why they’re not valid; actually listen. All that makes a big difference too.
If you’re able to begin doing things together, you’ll build relationships. Care for those people; let them care for you. See where God takes it. You’ll be glad you did.
Of all the teachers I’ve ever had, Dr. Richard Seymour is the one I underestimated the most.
Not because he didn’t have good content—he had *great* content, really good, fundamental, life-building stuff. And he was incredibly down to earth for a professor; he spent his days in the classroom, but he started his very early (about 4:30) mornings grabbing a cup of coffee at Denny’s with the cabbies who were coming off the night shift. He’d always tell us “You can call me Dr. Seymour on campus, but when you introduce me to your friends, say, ‘This is my friend Dick.'” He loved to talk about Jesus, and he never wanted credentials to get in the way.
So why did I underestimate him so badly? It’s just that…well…I already knew so much of what he had to say. (Some of you can already see where this is going. What can I say? I was 18.) I was at college to learn; there were other profs with other things to teach, things I didn’t already know. Don’t get me wrong: I took Dr. Seymour’s classes, and enjoyed them. I thought of him as one of the pillars of the school, for sure, but not really one of the leading lights of my education.
About 10 years passed; I became a seminary prof myself. Then one day it dawned on me: all those fundamental things Dr. Seymour taught, the things I already knew—where’d I learn them? I’d known those things as long as I could remember; learned them from my parents.
…who learned them from Dr. Seymour, at Florida Bible College in Coconut Grove, way back in 1969. That man made such an impression on my parents that they named me after him (my middle name is Richard). For his part, he taught them so well that when I showed up in his classroom nearly 25 years later, I already knew all his best material. That is an effective teacher. I’ll always be grateful I dug up his contact info and reached out, a decade late, to thank him for the great impact he’d had on my entire life. He was (predictably) very gracious.
A few years later, I found myself at an FGA conference as part of a brace of panel discussions on a highly charged, controversial topic related to the gospel. As I was getting settled in behind my microphone, I looked up and saw Dr. Seymour sitting in the audience! I don’t mind telling you, that was a little intimidating. I didn’t know exactly where he stood on the issue, and I didn’t want to disappoint him. I was very pleased (and more than a little relieved) when he thanked me afterwards for the things I’d said.
Yesterday, “my friend Dick” stepped into eternity. Today before the throne he joins many, many people who met Jesus through his witness. I imagine he is delighted to be with them all, but especially to be reunited with his beloved son, who preceded him some years ago. And I know my dad is getting a kick out of being with him again! He is survived by his wife, daughter, and thousands of students around the world who are faithfully passing on what he taught them, just like my parents did to me. See you soon, sir. And once again, thank you!
Dad stepped into heaven 4 years ago today. I have no reason to think my experience of this event is universal. But I recently found myself describing it, and here’s what came out.
It’s a peculiarly exposed feeling, your dad being gone.
You’ll feel naked, unprotected. You’ll maybe fall apart. Maybe you’ll only stumble. Either way, you’ll pick yourself up and do the next thing, and the next, because your people rely on you the same way you relied on him. You’ll tend to the people you love because duty moves you when nothing else would. When it’s fresh, some days you’re fighting through a haze to do what you need to do, but you show up and do it. Mostly. In your weaker moments, it feels like none of it means anything. You know better, of course, but that’s what it feels like. He’s gone, and he’s not coming back.
It’ll be the first thing you think about, every single day.
Time will pass.
And then one day, it’ll be the second thing you think about. Then the third. You’ll probably feel bad. It’s too soon, you’ll think. But it happens anyway.
The one year anniversary will come around. You won’t be ready to stop saying “My dad died this year” and start saying “My dad died a year ago.” It’ll still feel like yesterday.
You still feel naked without him.
People say it gets better with time. They’re not wrong…and then again, they are. You might grow accustomed to it, but the naked feeling doesn’t go away. You get callouses, and with them, perspective. (If you’re blessed and you work at it, you might have good community around you. I do; I’ve worked very hard for it, and God has been very kind. It’s great to be shoulder to shoulder with trustworthy folks. But it’s not the same thing, and you realize that, too.) One day, you realize he probably felt the same way when his dad died. He never told you. He didn’t pass on that naked feeling to you; he became the shelter. Under that shelter you grew, unaware of what he was giving you. (“Unaware” isn’t right. I was aware, and deeply grateful. I was blessed to know what I had when I had it. But I know more about it now than I did then.)
Now you know more deeply. And you know you’re not on the demand side anymore; you’re on the supply side. You shelter who you can: your kids, their friends, whoever’s within your reach that needs it.
You give them what you can, as long as you can, buying them precious time and space to grow strong and wise. You’ll be gone too soon, and it’ll be their turn.
Comments Off on On the Supply Side Now | Autobiography | Permalink Posted by Tim Nichols
“No man but a blockhead ever wrote, except for money.” So said Samuel Johnson, and he was a better positioned observer than most people. I’m certainly guilty of writing for reasons other than money, so I guess that makes me a blockhead. If you’re interested in being a blockhead too, and you want my advice, I wrote it up a while back.
If you read the gospels carefully, you will discover that Jesus goes to the places and the people who are totally respectable, and to the people who are…at the other end of the spectrum, shall we say. (Note Luke 7:36-39, which nicely encapsulates both ends of the respectability spectrum, or compare John 3 to John 4, or Luke 11:37 to Matthew 9:9-11//Mark 2:14-16//Luke 5:27-30, Luke 19:2-7, Matthew 11:19). There was a point in my Christian life where I noticed that fact in a more-than-theoretical way, and it’s had a profound impact on me. For your amusement and edification, Gentle Reader, here are a few of the places I’ve been….
Bacon, Beer, and Body Paint
Once upon a time, I had a minor role in launching/promoting an event to benefit an oil field worker named Dan who’d been handicapped in a vehicle rollover. Insurance covered his medical expenses and bought his motorized wheelchair, but didn’t cover the necessary modifications to his house so he could get around in there. Doors needed to be widened, etc. And of course, he also needed a new job, and training for it. Dan’s brother had a few thousand bucks, but that wasn’t nearly enough to fund everything that needed to get done.
But Dan’s brother was also a good salesman and knew a little about event planning. So he piled the money into a fundraiser: a beer-and-bacon festival. He got a local business with a big parking lot to let us use their property for the weekend, and a handful of other businesses to sponsor the event with give-aways, door prizes, etc. They had a couple of breweries, Denver Bacon Company, I think some insurance and real estate brokers, a local pot shop, that sort of thing. They got musicians, face painting for the kids, all kinds of stuff. A good friend of mine worked for one of the businesses, and asked me to help promote the event. I took posters to businesses in high-traffic areas, personally invited everybody I knew, everything I could do to promote it.
Come the day, I showed up and hung out most of the day. I still have a set of 4 tin cups from Sailor Jerry’s rum that I won in the door prize drawing. It was all going swimmingly until the spokesmodel from the pot shop visited the face painters. I recall passing through that area and noticing one of the painters doing a piece on her back, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time. Half an hour later, I see a huge crowd over by one corner of the building. I wander over to see what’s going on and discover this same model doing an impromptu photo shoot wearing nothing but her Daisy Dukes and expertly applied body paint. So then I get to decide, do I just leave? Do I just avoid her? Something else?
Right on Target
I was down at Centerpoint chatting with one of my regular guests. He was a bit drunk, as is usual for him, and he asked me to pray for him about something. I did so. When I finished, he thanked me, and then he grabbed my shoulder and said “Now I’m gonna pray for you.” I didn’t want to tell him not to, so I let him. In minutes, there were tears in my eyes — without knowing it, this Jesus-loving drunkard was praying for the deepest concerns I had that week. Was he in active sin? Yes. Was he being led by the Spirit despite that? Undoubtedly.
“Tim won’t go!”
Went to a friend’s thirtieth birthday party. She’s one of my favorite felons, and has a friend group to match. We closed the restaurant where we started out, and then tried to go to a pop-up haunted house down by the highway (this was in mid-October). By the time we’d re-convened in the haunted house parking lot, they were closing. So we’re standing in the parking lot as the last carload of our people arrives. Someone catches them up on the situation and explains that we’re trying to decide where to go next. One of the guys says, “Titty bar!” My friend vetoed it immediately: “No, because Tim won’t go.” She wasn’t just assuming (although she was right); she’d been there when I declined an invitation from her boyfriend a few weeks earlier.
If it’s spiritually risky to be like Jesus, it’s spiritual suicide to knowingly refuse to be like Him.
Suicide by Tim
I’m sitting at a kitchen table with a man who’s threatening to kill me. It’s not an idle threat; he’s a combat veteran, a Marine turned cop. I know he’s drunk; I assume he’s armed. If you were watching through the window, the scene would look pretty calm. Samuel (not his real name) is talking; I’m sipping a glass of water. Below the table, I’ve quietly drawn and opened my carry knife. Plan A is talk him down; Plan B is “I go home to my wife, no matter what happens to him.” At the moment, the most likely approach is to send the water glass flying at his face while three inches of very sharp steel comes in low for whatever I can reach, before he can draw whatever he’s carrying.
This was not in my plans for the day. I’d gone down to the Springs to spend an afternoon with my friend Jack on his day off. We’d eaten and talked, and I hung out for a while at his church’s coffee shop while he worked a volunteer shift. (That shop itself is a cool story for another time.) Afterwards, we went back to his house, and a bunch of his friends and coworkers came over to hang out. The beer and whiskey flowed freely, and in due time Samuel took offense at something I said. The initial threat was just a generic “We can take it outside” type of thing — I forget the exact words — but things turned ugly when Jack tried to intervene.
“You don’t want to do that, Samuel. Tim would do you. Just let it go.”
That was like pouring gas on a fire. “I’ll kill him!” Samuel said. “I don’t care!”
He didn’t, in fact. Samuel’s squad had been on patrol when their humvee got hit by an IED, killing his three buddies. He had a massive case of survivor’s guilt that he medicated with whiskey when he was off-duty. Samuel really didn’t want to be alive; the only reason he hadn’t killed himself was because he was afraid to face God after committing suicide. Jack’s attempt to deter Samuel had the opposite effect: Samuel wanted to die, and Jack had just told him I could get it done for him. He escalated and threatened my life in a roomful of witnesses in order to create a situation where I’d kill him. But that didn’t mean he’d go down easy.
Until He Stood Up
Back when I first started Centerpoint, I would have one of the guests assist me in serving the Lord’s Table. One night a fellow I’ll call John asked me if he could assist me. He had been interacting reasonably well during the service, so I didn’t see any reason why not, so I said yes. He stood up next to me, and it quickly became apparent that he was drunk enough that he wasn’t going to be able to continue standing without help.
By this time, we were serving, and I couldn’t see how to swap him out for someone else without conveying a rejection I didn’t want to convey. So I got my arm under his elbow to give him a little extra stability and soldiered through. Right decision? Probably not, but I couldn’t see my way around it in the moment, so I went with it.
And So On…
Am I telling you that you should be willing to go anywhere, with anybody, anytime? No. Please note, they knew I wouldn’t go to the strip joint. If a particular place or group of people presents you with a temptation you can’t handle, then don’t do it. “Flee youthful lusts,” remember? If you can’t go to the place and be with the people and give God thanks, then turn down the invitation. “Whatever is not of faith is sin.”
But if your misgivings about going to the place or being with the people are founded in some ridiculous notion that Christians are supposed to be country-club respectable, if you’re worried about what other people will think of you, if you think “it’s just a bad testimony,” for vague and unspecifiable reasons…repent. You need to re-read the Gospels and have a hard look at how Jesus ministered, who He was willing to talk to, what He was willing to be accused of. They called Jesus a glutton and a drunk that pals around with traitors and whores. When’s the last time anybody accused you of that? Never? So that would be a way you’re not like Jesus. A servant is not greater than his Master. Repent.
I’ve got more such tales. I wouldn’t handle them all the same way now that I did then. Sometimes that’s a matter of brainstorming after the fact and coming up with a more gracious or wiser approach. Other times, I’ve grown in discernment and interpret things differently than I used to. I didn’t do everything right in the past, and I have no illusions that I’ll do everything right in the future. And you know what? Back when I refused to go to those places and spend time with those people, I never made any of those mistakes.
But avoiding people and places that Jesus wouldn’t avoid was just one more thing I needed to repent of. I did, and I’ve no regrets. If it’s spiritually risky to be like Jesus, it’s spiritual suicide to knowingly refuse to be like Him. Get out there. Whoever those people are for you, Jesus loves them. You should too.
One of my daughters sent me Aaron Renn’s interview with David Murrow a while back. The subject of the interview is “Why Men Hate Going to Church,” which is also Murrow’s book title. There’s a lot to unpack there, and I encourage you to listen to it, but one particular thing jumped out at both of us: safety.
Murrow talks about how virtually every Christian radio station has a tagline that’s something like “listening that’s safe for the whole family,” which is obviously designed to appeal to Christian moms. That makes good business sense for the stations, since mom is the one who decides what to listen to in the car. Murrow points out that at the same time Mom is getting her safe listening option, little Johnny in the back of the minivan is getting catechized that Christianity is the safe option that appeals to his mom. By age 11 or so, testosterone is flooding his body and he’s looking for danger and adventure and the opportunity for hijinks…and we’ve spent his whole life teaching him that Christianity is safe. Then we wonder why he’s turned away!
My daughter is a teacher and youth minister, so kids abandoning the faith is something of a preoccupation for her, as it should be. “You were raised on Christian music,” she said to me. “How did you avoid this trap?”
As it happens, part of the answer is that I wasn’t really raised on Christian music the way she was thinking, not like Murrow is talking about. I grew up on a lot of old music: everything from old cowboy songs to bluegrass to classical to native American chants recorded on the reservations to the soundtracks of Victory at Sea and Hatari! (Yes, on vinyl, but not because it was cool; it was just all we had.) Contemporary Christian music wasn’t really in the mix much at home, although I certainly heard plenty of it at church.
But there’s a much more significant answer: I grew up around people on mission. I never thought Christianity was safe.
My parents weren’t missionaries (although they tried, to the point of attending candidate school once upon a time). My pastor wasn’t a missionary either, but he’d tried, hard. After getting rejected by around 30 mission boards, he concluded that the Lord was telling him to stay stateside, and accepted a pastorate. My pastor’s brother, however, founded a little mission agency called World Evangelical Outreach. WEO (pronounced “wee-oh”) was headquartered in my hometown, first on the church grounds and then in the same little office building as my dentist. I still remember walking into the office and hearing the secretaries answer the phone “Wee-oh, how can I help you?” (Later on they changed their name and moved to a bigger location, then ultimately to a KOA property outside Orlando. You would know them today as Pioneers International. They’re, ah, a little bigger these days.) A lot of their missionaries passed through our church, along with others with New Tribes, Sudan Interior Mission, Arctic Missions, China Inland Mission, Baptist Mid-Missions, Greater Europe Mission, Missionary Aviation Fellowship, and many more.
These people were not safe; they were badasses. Men who smuggled Bibles into Communist countries and evangelized whole villages on their way back out, who made contact with reclusive tribes in deep jungle, seeking to save them from extermination by loggers and oil workers, who spent nights on an Albanian warehouse roof with an AK-47 to protect the winter’s food supply for an orphanage, who flew in and out of tiny jungle airstrips to get someone to life-saving medical care. Women who saved abandoned twins in sub-Saharan Africa, brought girls out of sexual slavery in Saigon, defied apartheid to bring the gospel into villages that would never otherwise hear. Couples who travelled the Sahara together to find nomadic Tuareg camps, built houses in the New Guinea highlands to bring medicine, literacy, and Jesus to remote villages, ate and shared Jesus with Hezbollah fighters, their wives, and their children.
Of course we didn’t stay stuck in our own century either: we read tons of missionary biographies and all kinds of Christian history, too. I learned about Mary Slessor, David Livingston, Amy Carmichael, Corrie Ten Boom, Brother Andrew, John Wyclif, William Tyndale, Polycarp, the Forty Soldiers. So as I write these paragraphs, I have names and grainy photographs and artists’ renditions in my head for some, but I also have memories of men and women around my dinner table. One of them taught me how to play dominos; I showed another how my Transformer worked; a third explained to me how he lost his ring finger. The stories from centuries ago are real to me, part of an unbroken legacy that stretches from the Old Testament prophets through Jesus and the apostles and right on down to the guy sitting next to me at the kitchen table, asking me to pass another of Mom’s sourdough muffins (which are in fact delicious).
Some of them came back every four or five years to tell us how things were going. Some of them came back on medical evac flights. Some of them came back on medical evac flights and then went back again, and again, and again. (Ralph and Maridee Sauers, I’m looking at you.) Some of them didn’t come back at all; we’ll see them again in glory.
Obviously their Christianity wasn’t the safe, Mom-approved path. It was the biggest adventure in the world, far superior even to joining the Peace Corps or the military (which some of them had also done, before). Tourist travel was childish and self-indulgent by comparison — not even in the same league. For the longest time, I thought I was going to join them overseas. I did short-term hitches doing child evangelism in Spain, a building project in Trinidad & Tobago, teaching English and computer skills in central Russia. Closer to home, I served on street evangelism teams in the Atlantic Provinces of Canada, various locations in metro DC, and a series of places in the southeastern US, especially Florida. I knew that God could call me anywhere, and I was ready to go!
Imagine my surprise when He called me to California, of all places. We had a long argument about that, and I lost. After all, I did tell Him I would go anywhere! So I went. After I finished seminary, He took me into the desert for six years, and from there to the heathen wilds of Denver, where I’ve been ever since. I’ve been overseas, training pastors in Australia and such, but it seems likely that the majority of my calling is stateside.
These folks’ legacy of following Jesus anywhere He leads has informed my decisions my whole life, is with me today, and I’m pleased to pass it on in turn to my students, my daughters, my disciples. There’s another little kid I ate with last week, and I’m the guy at his kitchen table, asking him to pass another muffin while he shows me his Lego model. (And because God’s fun like that, his name is Timothy too. Wild.)
I’m not surprised when God calls me somewhere surprising, if I may put it that way. The darker the corner, the more it needs light. Some of the corners have been pretty dark, but that’s another post. The point for today is, your kids don’t need more vapid CCM; they need time with Christians doing dangerous things for Jesus.
One year dies; another is born. It’s a good time to reflect and set some new goals.
Since this is going to be one of those New Year’s posts on goal-setting, I want to acknowledge at the outset that goal-setting doesn’t always make sense. Real life doesn’t always lend itself to the strategic long view; I’ve had a few years where my life was so upside-down that surviving from one week to the next was all I could do. I know some of you are in that situation too. If it doesn’t make sense to set goals for the year, may God bless and guard you. Keep being obedient in the moment, and trust that in so doing, you’re following God’s strategy, and doing better than you could know.
Now, for the rest of you who can afford a moment’s reflection, let’s reflect a bit.
Back when I was a full-time seminary prof many years ago, I found myself regularly needing books that I just couldn’t afford on my meager salary. So I put the books I really needed to own on my Amazon wish list and would check it once a week to see if there was a bargain used copy available. Every once in a while, there would be, and I’d snap it up. (I gotta tell you, when there’s a book I really needed for research, couldn’t find in the library, cost $80 new if it could be had at all, and I can grab it for $10? That’s a thrill!) Over time, I noticed that a book didn’t stay on my wish list for more than a year or two; either I’d find it on one of my weekly forays, or I’d find that I didn’t need it after all.
Meanwhile, I also noticed that I’d gone my entire life without successfully keeping even one New Year’s Resolution.
The juxtaposition of those two facts suggested to me that I can actually achieve a goal, but there was something about the “New Year’s Resolution” scheme that just didn’t work for me. So I decided to take the scheme that was working and apply it to my goals, and just like that, “Amazon Wish List” goal-setting was born.
That first year, I set 8 goals spread across multiple domains of my life (body, spirit, and career, if I remember right). I didn’t do any strategizing about how I’d achieve them–no SMART workup, no scheduling, no nothing. I just did the same thing I did with my Amazon wish list: review the list once a week. Each week, I gave myself a simple yes/no grade on each goal. If I’d made progress toward that goal that week, it got a yes; no progress got a no. I resolved that I wasn’t going to beat myself up over a no, any more than I would beat myself up over a book on my wish list that I couldn’t get a good price on. I just forced myself to notice: am I progressing or not?
With nothing but a 3-minute weekly review, I hit 5 of 8 goals that year. For those of you who are keeping track, that’s 5 more goals than I’d ever gotten making a New Year’s resolution. It was worth doing again the next year, so I did.
I’ve refined it somewhat over the years, but I still use the same basic approach, and it still pays off handsomely. Here are some of the refinements I’ve found helpful:
I’ve tweaked the categories a bit. Current categories are body, spirit, relationships, and calling.
I generally allow myself 8-12 goals. More is too much to keep in mind. I do permit subcategories where they make sense (e.g., a goal to “go deeper in my friendships” will have subcategories for each person/couple I intend to go deeper with).
While my weekly scoring is still a simple yes/no, I’ve moved to a different scoring system when I’m reviewing the whole year. Final grading options are 1 for an achieved goal, 0 for a failure to achieve the goal, and .5 if I didn’t hit the mark but made solid progress (= better than halfway there; no rounding up!) This year’s score is 12/20. (I don’t have 20 main goals, but there are subcategories.)
I take the time to look for patterns in my year in review. For example, I’ve never missed a reading goal, so I know my “3 minute magic” approach to goalsetting works for me in reading (also for upskilling/continuing ed., relational goals, and certain types of calling goals). It does not work (at least not consistently, for me) in workout or major writing goals; those have to get a spot on the calendar, or they don’t happen.
That bit about looking for patterns, especially in failed goals, helps set the next year’s goals. Nearly every failure on this year’s list is either due to a too-distracted lifestyle or to a lack of specific, scheduled time to achieve the goal. That tells me that eliminating distractions and clearing dedicated time for major tasks are going to be high priorities in the coming year.
I’m still praying and thinking, but I expect to have a solid list of goals by the end of the week. What about you? What are the big pieces in your life? Marriage? Parenting? Career? Education? Fitness? Prayerfully and thoughtfully, set some goals in each area and review them once a week. See what God will give you!
Back in my days running the sound board for my church, I quickly learned that invisibility is the key attribute of a sound tech. Everybody in the house should hear everybody on stage effortlessly, and everybody on stage should hear themselves and each other effortlessly, just as if there were no electronic amplification involved at all. For a young man both interested in technical things and possessed of a young man’s ego and hunger for recognition, it was a perfect lab for character formation: if I did the job well, nobody gave me a second thought.
The only time anybody looks back at the sound booth is when something goes wrong: they can’t hear a soloist or a speaker, there’s a sudden screech of feedback, or some such. Those mistakes are obvious enough; everybody knows they’re happening. But there’s another, more subtle type of mistake.
When the mix is off just a bit—one voice a little too high, another instrument a little too low, too much reverb here, just a touch too little mids there, that sort of thing—nobody looks back at the booth. But there’s an unease in the room. They can’t consciously name what’s going on; half of them are not consciously aware that anything’s going on. But there’s a wrongness you can feel, a restlessness in the crowd.
I learned to pick up on that restlessness as a newbie. The problem was, as a newbie, I was barely half a step ahead of the crowd. I know something was wrong, because I could see them reacting to it. But I often had no idea what was wrong, or how to fix it. The one thing I had going for me was blind instinct. I’d just get my hands on the knobs and start adjusting—a little too far this way; a little too far that way; back until it felt right, then stop. Move on to the next control. I couldn’t tell you, much of the time, what the needed adjustment was. I couldn’t consciously hear it, and after dancing all over the sound board, I usually couldn’t tell you which adjustment made the difference. But I’d get done making adjustments, and it just felt right to me. I could see the difference in the room, too: people would settle back in their seats, quit fiddling with their bulletins, just sing along with the music.
My fellow sound techs, including the guys who trained me, noticed. I remember more than one of them asking me “What did you do? That sounded good!”
I would just shrug. “I adjusted it until it felt right.”
In those days, we were blessed to have members of the music group Glad as part of the church, and sometimes Ed Nalle would sing on a special occasion. I vividly remember Heidi, Ed’s wife, coming back to the sound booth on multiple occasions. “Can’t you hear that?” she would ask. No, I couldn’t. Then she’d grab a chair, turn it around backwards, and half-sit on the chair back in front of the board. She’d reach up and make a couple of adjustments. It would sound better.
Unlike me, Heidi knew exactly what she was hearing, and knew exactly what to adjust. She ought to; she’d been running sound for decades. She had words for things I wasn’t even sure I heard, and as far as I could tell, she was never wrong. Looking back, I probably could have learned a lot more from her, but it honestly never occurred to me to ask her to stick around after service and show me what she’d adjusted and why. I don’t know that I’d have had the nerve; she was a seasoned, working pro, and I was a barely-trained amateur. So I just stood at her elbow and watched. I tried (failing, half the time) to hear exactly what difference each adjustment made. But sometimes I could hear the difference, and those times made me a better sound tech, just by watching Heidi’s example.
Why am I telling you this?
Because we rub shoulders every day with people who are the moral equivalent of barely-trained me, back in the day. The world these days makes them uneasy, and they’re not sure why. They don’t quite have words for it. Of course, there’s little they can do outside their own lives to influence the mix, but even in their own lives, most of the time, they have no idea what they’re doing. A little of this…oops, that was too much; dial it back. A little of that….
Catechized by a culture that’s abandoned special revelation and at war with natural revelation, they don’t even suspect the existence of instructions that could help them. The culture has worked very hard to make them deaf. But the image of God is still within them, and a sinful, broken world hurts them even though they don’t know why they hurt.
As Christians, we hear what they don’t. Sometimes, we can explain; other times, they’re so deaf they can’t hear us anyway. What we can always do is what Heidi did for me: be an example. Half the time, they won’t be able to tell why we’re doing what we’re doing, just like half of what Heidi did was completely opaque to me. But the other half the time, they’ll be able to tell the difference. Maybe not anything they quite have words for, but it just feels better somehow. So even if you don’t know how to explain yourself, even if you know they wouldn’t get it even if you could explain well, just be an example they don’t understand. Your very existence shows them that a better way is possible.
Of course, you’re only an example if they can see you. Let the unbelievers around you into your life. In a culture that often hates us, we’re tempted to just hide. Don’t. Let them see you. “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father who is in heaven.”
Posted by Tim Nichols 
Full Contact Christianity 