What About Music?

4 August 2026

One of the problems that consistently plagues small assemblies — especially house churches — is the question of what to do about music. If you’re blessed with a bunch of musically talented folks, great! But many groups are not. What do you do? Play a worship song off somebody’s phone and try to sing along?

You can, of course, but it’s wiser not to. In an age of mass media, too many of our expectations are shaped by consuming professional-grade productions. We have access to professional quality musicians in unprecedented numbers, on recordings that are carefully engineered to sound far better than the actual performers sound live. We need to re-calibrate our expectations to how real people sound. Like cooking and storytelling and dancing, singing is a human ability. We all — or nearly all — have it. Sure, it follows a bell-curvey distribution, so not all of us are equally capable, but I’ll bet you anything if you start singing together, and keep at it, the group will be decent at it after 6 months.

Pick songs you can sing a capella — grab some old Sacred Harp or Free Church of Scotland tunes if you like; there are living traditions there worth interacting with — and go to work.

People sing, the world over. If you want to go to the symphony, you have to go to a city, but singing? All you need is vocal cords; we all got those. Mothers sing to their babies; uncles sing around the cookfire after dinner; workers sing to keep a rhythm going; your friends sing happy birthday, or Auld Lang Syne on New Year’s. People sing; it’s a human trait. Consumer culture makes us think we can’t, the same way photoshopped Victoria’s Secret ads make ordinary women think they’re ugly. It’s a lie. You may have one or two people who can’t carry a tune to save their lives, but I’ll bet you dollars against bent toenail clippings that the majority of your people can sing; they just haven’t ever developed the talent God gave them. Time to develop it.

…and sing the Psalms, too! The New Testament three times (Ephesians, Colossians, and James) says we should be a psalm-singing people. Of course we also sing more than the 150 biblical psalms (some fragments of those new song lyrics show up in the New Testament), but we haven’t any business leaving the Psalms out.

Leave a Comment » | House Church, Worship | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

More Than a Symbol

28 July 2026

If you want to understand what the Bible teaches about baptism, the first thing is to notice that the Bible uses baptismal language in a bunch of ways that we wouldn’t. We’ll come back to that. The second thing is to get a thicker understanding of symbols. Baptism is a symbol, but modern people hear that statement and don’t really understand what it means. We are trained to think “symbol” is a floating signifier arbitrarily related to the thing it’s pointing to, in the same way that there’s no necessary correspondence between a sheet of green metal and a city. A roadside sign that says “I-70 W Denver” is just pointing the direction to Denver. If you pull off on the shoulder next to that sign and say “We’re here!” to the kids in the back, you have kinda missed the point.

Thus far the modern grasp of symbols, which is accurate as far as it goes, but there’s more to it than that. The roadside sign at the municipal border that says “Denver Welcomes You” is related to the city in a different way. Both signs point to the same city, but the latter sign also means that you’ve arrived; it both indicates and accomplishes the welcome. At this point “We’re here!” is the right thing to say.

Similarly, placing a ring on my bride’s finger with the words “With this ring I thee wed” was a symbol that accomplished what it signified. Now, that ring had been on her finger before (to test the fit), and we did not suddenly become married right there at the jewelry counter. It required the proper context; we had to mean to be marrying. But in the proper context, the symbol both signified and accomplished a marriage, and responding with a loud snort and “It’s just a symbol!” would be…how shall I put it?…unwise.

Baptism is a symbol, but it also accomplishes a great deal of what it signifies. In the symbolic lexicon of the Bible, passing through water means a very particular thing: just as there is a “scarlet thread of redemption” that runs through the whole Bible, there is a blue thread of water and baptism that runs through the whole Bible, from the primordial waters over which the Spirit once brooded to the river of the water of life that flows from under the throne in the New Jerusalem. Being washed signifies priesthood; passing through water separates you from the wicked world and marks you as part of the new people of God. Christian baptism specifically follows Jesus’ example; in Jesus’ prototypical baptism, the water was applied, the Spirit descended and the Father spoke from heaven. At Cornelius’ home, Peter preached the blood of Jesus, the Father sent the Spirit…what was left but to apply the water? They did, at once, “and the three agree as one.” The fact that the water is administered by Christ’s visible representatives on earth means that there’s an earthly expression of the Body that is recognizing and accepting the baptized. Peter baptizing Cornelius not only signifies Cornelius’ full acceptance into the Body, it accomplished it: afterwards, Peter stayed and ate with them. (My essay “Washed” has all this in more detail and with biblical support.)

Our modern baptismal theology doesn’t exactly contradict any direct statement of Scripture, in the sense that we have a set of half-decent work-arounds for the passages that are a tough fit for our theology. However, it clearly remains the case that the New Testament readily uses baptismal language in ways a modern evangelical wouldn’t dare. That’s telling. When you find the Bible saying things you wouldn’t, one of you has wandered off the range, and I don’t think it’s the Holy Spirit! If we were writing Romans 6, we would feel a desperate need to clarify, hedge, pile up paragraphs of explanation about what baptism doesn’t do, and anyway it’s a metaphorical use here, etc. We can argue about the proper interpretation of the passage, but the one unassailable fact is that Paul, seeing no need for all the qualifications we would pile up, clearly does not see things the way we do.

Paul reminds them of the day they came to Christ, the day they were baptized. (Remember that the NT knows nothing of delaying baptism: converts are baptized immediately.) From the beginning, the act of baptism is communal; even Jesus didn’t baptize Himself. We are baptized by someone, into a Body, in the presence of the Father and under the ministry of the Spirit. We may get baptized by ones, but in baptism we are never alone. The Body put them in the water – that’s death; you can’t live down there – and brought them out again, initiated by resurrection into the Body and henceforth considered members. They come up out of the water and into something: fellowship with the believer that baptized them. On that day, Paul says, they were united with Christ in His death and resurrection, and therefore they should live like it. We should not be embarrassed to speak the same way. And we wouldn’t be, if we understood the this-worldly reality of fellowship in the Body.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Talking a Good Game

7 July 2026

Every person has their own little ways of rationalizing disobedience to God; part of the process of sanctification is learning to see where you’re disobedient, recognize your own little work-arounds, and repent of them. The same is true for communities. I’m going to speak to some of the foibles of the North American suburban church and its denizens, because that’s the community I happen to have grown up in, but you can take these same principles and apply them wherever you are.

I grew up in Northern Virginia, in an unincorporated “town” mostly populated by commuters who worked in and around Washington, D.C. Mostly these were people who had kids and wanted them to succeed, which (by the metrics of the area) meant doing something that changed the world, made a lot of money, or (preferably) both. Our church was also about changing the world, mostly through Christian education, foreign missions, and a thriving ministry to the international community in our area. And you know what? We did a lot of good work. Faith Bible Church cast a very, very long shadow. I’m grateful and proud to be from there, and I still know a number of people today whose long and fruitful ministries were launched in that church.

I left Northern Virginia behind in December of 1998. Quit my job, packed my car, drove 9 hours to Knoxville for a family Christmas with my grandma…and then headed cross-country. In California, there was a seminary I planned to attend, and a girl I planned to marry. I really had no intention of returning to Northern Virginia; nothing much there for me. But it proved easier to get me out of Northern Virginia than it was to get Northern Virginia out of me.

In the end, every legacy is mixed. As the Rabbi said, only God is good. For me, one of the unfortunate parts of that Northern Virginia legacy was the inveterate on-the-make-ness, the need to be important, the constant preoccupation with activity at the expense of slowing down enough to actually know people. I was partway through my seminary training when I noticed what Hebrews 3:12-13 actually says: “Beware, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God; but exhort one another daily, while it is called ‘Today,’ lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.” Did you catch that? The prescription for avoiding an evil heart of unbelief is encouraging one another daily. Daily.

We love to rationalize this away. We’re so busy. Work has been nuts. Jack has soccer, and Kaitlyn has all the extra practices for that ballet recital coming up. And so on….but it says what it says. Now for me when I first really noticed this passage, I was single, living alone, in grad school full time and working full time. I went to church every Sunday and I had a Christian girlfriend (who would one day become my wife), but I could go a few days without seeing a fellow believer, and far longer than that without exchanging encouragement with a fellow believer. My initial inclination was to rationalize the command away: “I’m so busy; I see believers often enough; I’m sure it’s fine.”

Then I thought: If I just look at this in black and white, I’m telling myself it’s fine to disobey the Bible. If that’s not being hardened through the deceitfulness of sin, what would be? I didn’t have a good answer to that. So I started to explore: What if I didn’t excuse myself from obedience? Rationalization gave way to logistics. I quickly realized that given my own schedule and the schedules of my Christian friends, this might really be impossible some days. But what would happen if I tried? I’ve been trying ever since, and getting better at it as I go. Having more control over my own schedule has been really big, for this.

Does it go perfectly? No, it does not. Some days, as far as I can tell, it’s just not possible. Even in the age of cell phones and video chat, sometimes nobody’s got time, even if I have a few minutes. Some days, despite my best efforts, I’m the one that somehow doesn’t have a few minutes. But honestly, that’s rare.

I don’t make myself nuts about it. Here’s how I figure it: if in God’s providence, there’s really no way to exchange encouragement with another believer on a given day, then that’s on Him; I tried, and nobody was available. But if the reason I don’t get (and give!) encouragement is because I’m not trying, then that’s on me. And you know what I discovered? When I stopped arguing with myself about whether it’s possible and start thinking about how to make it happen, a lot more happened than you’d think. I see a lot more of my fellow believers than I ever did before I started trying to exchange daily encouragement.

Of course, that also comes at a substantial cost. I have worked to have a good bit of control over my schedule, but I still only have the same 168 hours everybody else gets in a week. A few minutes chatting in the parking lot here, a quick call there, a text that turns into a daylong exchange…it adds up, even before you consider the “five minute” conversation that’s still going two hours later, or the quick phone call to a single friend who’s sick, which turns into a grocery run and cooking him chicken soup at his place because he hasn’t eaten in a couple days. My life is in every way richer and more meaningful for it, but all this takes time; it doesn’t happen for free.

…and that’s the thing I really want to talk about here. Take the Hebrews 3 command as an example, illustrating a journey. The starting point is the blind assumption that the ‘normal’ I was raised with, my default setting for life—whatever that is—is fine. From there…

  1. The journey begins with the suspicion that the Bible says something quite different from what I think is normal. The suspicion prompts study, and the study, in due time, yields certainty: God expects something different from me.
  2. The struggle between rationalization and obedience begins. Is it really that important? Am I quite sure the Bible really says this? (Does “Yea, hath God indeed said…?” sound familiar at all?) People underrate this step; it is often much harder than it sounds. Navigate it successfully, and you come out wanting—or at least willing—to do what God said.
  3. The desire for obedience is not the end of the road, however. There’s still the logistics of actually doing it. Obedience is frequently difficult and costly. Just figuring out how can be quite a process of trial and error, and then there’s the costs of actually doing it.

In other words, this is a process. Every step along the journey is commendable; no one should hold any part of the journey toward obedience in contempt. But actual obedience is what happens in step 3.

The thing I want to talk about is getting stuck at the end of step 2. For so many people who come from a pretty conventional background, the first two steps were quite a journey already. Just seeing past the smokescreen of their assumed ‘normal’ and coming to the place where they want what they ought to want was a lot of work. For example…

  • Seeing past the grocery store errand to notice the homeless family sitting on the sidewalk outside the store.
  • Seeing past endless rounds of suburban soccer to the possibility of giving your kids a meaningful relationship with the church.
  • Seeing past our insularity and beginning to want genuine friendships.
  • Seeing past quoting Hebrews 10:25 about the Sunday morning production, and beginning to look for places where Hebrews 10:24-25 actually happens.
  • And yes, seeing past all our addictive busyness to the need for daily mutual encouragement.

Once you’ve gotten around that corner, once you’ve made it to the end of step 2, you want what you ought to want. You can’t un-see it now. You talk about how blind you used to be, how the American church gets it so wrong, how God showed you the error of your ways, That’s all to the good, as far as it goes…

…but then you gotta do it. We’ve been so culturally conditioned to think we can have it all, we really struggle with the realization that Christian obedience may cost us something important. That’s ok. You’re allowed to have that stomach-drop moment where you realize what obedience is going to cost you. For most of us, sticker-shock is part of the process, at least sometimes. Just don’t let it stop you. But my real concern here is not with the people who see the cost of real obedience and just won’t take the plunge. That’s a real problem, but a fairly straightforward one: tighten your belt and jump!

The problem I want to tackle today is getting stuck thinking that insight alone is enough. Getting all the way to the end of step 2 is hard. That can be a really long journey, and it’s incredibly easy to let yourself slip into the delusion that you’ve now arrived. You’ve crested the mountain; just the act of really wanting it, talking a good game with your friends, will somehow bring it about. You have good intentions; you want the right things, and that was a hard spot to get to. But you’ve tricked yourself into thinking that those things will now come to you simply because you now see how important they are.

  • This is the pastor who believes in plurality of elders on paper, has plural elders in his church…but under stress reverts to dictatorial behavior and expects them to back him 100%.
  • This is the minister who believes that a person with the appropriate gifting should lead a particular ministry…but insists on making himself the leader for every ministry of the church in practice.
  • This is the young husband who talks about how important it is for everyone in the family to be accountable…but isolates his family from the church so that in practice, his family is accountable to him, and he’s accountable to nobody.
  • This is the guy who talks about noticing the last, the lost, and the least…but sees the bulging sidewall in a single mom’s tire, and doesn’t do anything because she gets child support, so it’s not his responsibility.
  • This is the man who talks about how confrontation makes us all better…but makes life hell for anybody who confronts him.
  • This is the lady who talks about the Christian duty of close community…but has to have it when it’s convenient for her, on her schedule, entirely on her terms.
  • This is the “complementarian” husband who talks about the importance of accountability…but his family is so isolated in practice that everyone in the family is accountable to him, and he’s not accountable to anyone.

I could multiply examples, but hopefully you get the idea. All of these people, when they don’t achieve the result they say they want, are going to see other people as the problem, somehow. Because they see the need for the thing, because they really want it—and listen, they sincerely do—they think they’re doing their part. It must just be that other people don’t want it as much as they do.

But no. They haven’t reckoned with the ways in which their own decisions—and the conflicting desires that drive them—are tripping them up. But the challenge today isn’t to join these folks in occupying yourself with how dumb other people are. The challenge here is to ask, “Where am I guilty of this?” Where do I want the right things but refuse to pay the costs? Are there people I’m short-changing because I insist that they make sacrifices for me that I wouldn’t make for them? Are there places where my intentions are good, but I’m letting myself believe that insight alone will change my life?

Don’t look at your intentions; good intentions are just table stakes. Look at your results. Look at your effect on the people around you. May God give us all eyes to see.

4 Comments | Ecclesiology, Mentoring/Disciple-Making | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Content to be Competent

23 June 2026

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.

Leave a Comment » | Autobiography, Mentoring/Disciple-Making, Real Ministry Training | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Fire on Every Head

24 May 2026

This post is officially my 800th since the beginning of this blog back on May 15, 2008. It’s been a privilege to serve you all! If this has been a blessing to you, consider supporting me.

Today at Jason Park in Englewood, Colorado, three churches will gather to worship God, reflect on His Word, and share a meal together. Why do we take time out of our regular routines to do this?

When God called Moses out of the Midianite desert to free His people from slavery in Egypt, He revealed Himself to Moses in fire—a bush that burned, but was not consumed. When Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, God stood between His people and the Egyptian army all night in an impassable cyclone of fire. He led them to Sinai, where He came upon the mountain in fire and storm. From that mountain, He spoke the Law, and on that mountain, He showed Moses the heavenly tabernacle, of which Moses made an earthly copy, a place for God’s special presence on earth. When Aaron began priestly ministry at that copy, fire came out of the sanctuary and devoured the sacrifices on the altar, signalling God’s acceptance of their work and His continued intention to dwell among His people. A pillar of fire remained over the tabernacle, and led them through the wilderness. When Solomon dedicated the Temple as a permanent dwelling to replace the portable Tabernacle, fire came down from heaven itself and consumed the sacrifices on the altar, again signalling God’s intention to dwell there, that His people should be a light to the Gentiles and a place where the world could draw near to Him.

To that nation, the custodians of His special presence on earth, God sent His prophets. Some they ignored, some they persecuted, some they killed, until finally He sent His Son—the Way, the Truth, and the Life—whom they took with lawless hands and murdered outside the city. But since it is not possible for Life Himself to be contained by death, Jesus was raised, showed Himself to His people, ascended to the right hand of power, and from Heaven sent His Holy Spirit. At Pentecost as at Sinai, the Spirit came upon His people in storm—a mighty rushing wind—and fire. But with a difference: the fire did not reside on a place or an altar, but on every head. From that day to this, the fire of God rests on the people His Spirit indwells. Jerusalem remains special to Him, and may God grant her peace! but He means to do it by provoking her to jealousy through the Gentiles, in all the different nations and cultures of the ends of the earth to which our people have carried the gospel, running like Samson’s foxes through the Gentile fields, setting everything ablaze as we go.

We come together today, two millennia later, to remember that the fire does not dwell only in Jerusalem, nor only at Christ the Anchor, or Lighthouse, or The Cord, but on every head, uniting us as Jesus prayed to the Father: “May they be one, even as We are one.” We will one day stand all together, every tribe, tongue, and nation assembled before God’s throne, and in this present earthly shadow of our heavenly future, whichever nation, culture, or family you come from, if you belong to Jesus, you belong to us, and we to you, and we are eager to meet the Holy Spirit manifested in each other.

Welcome to Pentecost!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Future of the Humanities

19 May 2026

University humanities departments are an abject failure. I wrote on this at length elsewhere, but the short version is that their faculties turned into monocultures and stopped teaching their disciplines decades ago. A humanities major today will be a long slog through the most provincial drivel you can find in the left gutter of Twitter.

So what do we do?

The obvious answer is to reform the educational system, but let’s be honest: that has the handy effect of making the whole thing someone else’s responsibility. As much as I appreciate the very alternative colleges that are keeping real education alive, and the reformers who are trying to (slowly!) retake their departments at Leviathan State University, I’m not those people. Most of you aren’t either. And even if they win, let’s face it, the victory trickling down to the point that it transforms your local high school English department is still probably two generations off. So in the meantime, while we earnestly pray for God to bless and multiply their efforts, the question remains:

What do we do?

There’s an older model of education that doesn’t require that kind of institutional muscle. It’s simple, direct, and available to you this week: work outside the system. Take a work you know and love — a painting, a poem, an essay, a novel, a concerto — and share it with someone who’s never met it before. Put a little thought into how to help them love it like you do. You won’t do it perfectly the first time; that’s fine. Keep trying.

The Great Works have never been more accessible than they are right now. You have several lifetimes worth of literature, drama, dance, music, and more at your fingertips on the same device you’re using to read this. (And you’re reading me? I’m honored. But next, read something from a different century!) The near-term future of the humanities is in peer sharing groups, private mentorships, and self-education. Not hundreds in lecture halls, but twos and threes at the kitchen table before work on Thursdays.

The truth is, few things could be more traditional. The Great Conversation has been going on for millennia in all sorts of settings, not just universities. Timothy learned the Hebrew Scriptures while he made tents with Paul. Innumerable children learned the basics at the parson’s kitchen table, because he was the most educated person in the village. Quietly and without fanfare, plenty of education has always been happening outside official channels.

The only thing that changed is that we forgot. We built institutions to do it for us, and became victims of our own success. For a while, they were so good that going outside official channels seemed pointless. It’s not.

And now it’s our turn. The Great Conversation continues…if we let it. Plenty of people are still drawn to the true, the good, the beautiful. If you don’t know how to approach that on your own, find someone who does, and walk with them a while. If you know me and you’re interested, hit me up. There are still plenty of us out there who love the best of all that’s been thought and said. Let’s share it!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Are Free Grace Pastors Especially Lonely?

12 May 2026

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.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

My Friend Dick

27 April 2026

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!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Why Do They Leave?

21 April 2026

Among the many, many things they don’t prepare you for in seminary is this: people are going to leave your church. It is going to hurt. Not every time; every now and again there’s a blessed subtraction. (If their presence was a chronic pain, their absence is something much more like relief.) But most of the time, if you’re shepherding well and you care about your people, it will hurt.

When it’s unavoidable, it doesn’t necessarily hurt less, but it’s easier to live with. One of your key couples is moving cross-country to take care of her aging parents, say. Hurts to lose them, of course it does, but they’re doing the right thing, and you wouldn’t seriously want them to do anything different. You wish mom lived nearby, of course, but it is what it is. You swallow hard, say your goodbyes, and talk on the phone every once in a while.

Sometimes, it’s a serious disagreement of one sort or another. Maybe it’s the sort of thing that makes a parting of ways inevitable. Maybe it’s not that sort of thing, and yet they’re leaving over it anyway. Those can be extravagantly painful.

But the hardest ones to live with are the ones where there’s no reason. They just disappear. You call them up and ask, and they say they’ve just been busy. You hear through the grapevine they’ve visited a couple other churches. Maybe you ask again, and still don’t get a straight answer. If you’re in a polity where you can push a little harder for consistent attendance, they resign their membership; otherwise, they just drift away. Six months or a year later, word trickles back that they’re going someplace else…or not going anywhere at all. Nobody seems to know why…or at least, they’re not willing to tell you.

Of course it may have nothing at all to do with you, but it’s a good occasion for self-reflection. “This person clearly feels like he can’t just tell me what’s wrong. Is there something I’ve done or said that is contributing to his reluctance?” It’s important to consider the question. A lot of ministers have learned to say the right things about being open to hearing other people’s concerns, but in practice they’re so high on their own rightness that they don’t really listen. They’ll let someone talk, but only so they can explain to him why his concern isn’t valid and he needs to think more like they do. Some of these folks will make the conversation so extraordinarily and unnecessarily painful that nobody wants to bring a concern to them twice.

Of course you’re not like that.

Are you sure, though? It’s hard to tell from the inside. Here are some tells to consider:

  • Has this person brought a concern to you sometime in the past couple years? If so, how did you handle that conversation? If you’re thinking something like “Well, now that you mention it, yeah…but it wasn’t anything serious, and I got him straightened out” — are you sure? I wonder if he sees it that way.
  • You experience a persistent pattern that runs like this: you announce a new program/initiative/idea, someone raises a concern about it, you explain to them why they need not be concerned, everything seems fine and you proceed on schedule, but three months later that family seems to have drifted away. If this happens regularly, you’re winning the argument so you can do it your way, but you’re not shepherding your people, and they’re voting with their feet.
  • When is the last time a parishioner raised a concern that changed your mind about something substantial? Is that something that happens often, or very rarely? If I asked around your congregation, would they agree? Nobody thinks of everything; if the general consensus is that you don’t really change your mind much, then odds are you’re not listening to your people.

Perhaps you’re a great listener and this isn’t the problem. That’s fine. But opportunities like this don’t come up every day (hopefully!), and it’s worth the time to ask the questions. It would be very convenient — too convenient, probably — if it turns out the problem is all with the person leaving, and there’s nothing you could/should have done differently. Pays to be a little suspicious of oneself.

But then, if it takes two to tango, it only takes one to walk away. Sometimes they do, and they won’t talk about it. That’s a tough situation. Best I can do is this: if I’ve asked all the questions, examined myself as best I can, done what I can do, and they’re still unwilling to talk about it, then better they’re gone. People should be shepherded by someone they can talk to; if that’s not me anymore, then they should find someone else.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

When Mom Fails…Crickets

7 April 2026

There’s an online account with a growing following (or so it seems to me; I can’t know the numbers for sure) who recently delivered a noteworthy public error. I think it’s worth discussing. See the screenshot below (the commentary is on top, reacting to the embedded screenshot below).

Do you notice something missing here?

Of course, we could start with the embedded notion that young women have no moral agency. He’s right that youth need guidance, but the overall impression he gives is that the poor girls never had a chance and bear no responsibility for the entirely predictable results of their own choices. Come now. But you know what? Let’s give him that one for now. Far too many of these girls really did follow the advice they were given, which turned out to be horrible. The advisers bear a lot of responsibility, and a bunch of them were in the church. That’s our problem, so let’s reckon with it.

Notice how he immediately points the finger at fathers, grandfathers, teachers, pastors? That’s appropriate. When something bad happens to the sheep, we want to know why the shepherds failed, as we should. If we believe the elders of the church are responsible to “shepherd the flock of God” as Paul commanded them to do, and that the elders should be “the husband of one wife,” and therefore men, then it follows that the women of our churches need to be shepherded by godly men. Paul wasn’t afraid to do this; he addressed the responsibilities and sins of women throughout his letters (see, for example, Phil. 4:1-3, Eph. 5:22-24, Col. 3:18, Titus 2:1-8, 1 Tim. 2:9-15). If we are going to follow his example, then we will too.

But do you notice something missing? Re-read that comment: he talks about young men, young women, older men…and that’s it.

What about the older women?

Nobody who knows how to fill out a 2×2 grid could possibly miss this, but more importantly, nobody who has been taught by the Scriptures could possibly miss this. If you need a little help, read Titus 2:1-8. Again, Paul is not shy about exhorting women directly; he does it throughout his letters. But here, he also tells Titus that the older women should teach the younger women. What’s the curriculum? “To be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to their own husbands.” The exact things, in other words, that our paradigmatic young, single millennial woman didn’t get, and that as a well-traveled 36-year-old cat lady, she’s still missing.

And honestly, this is kind of obvious. Loving your husband, loving your children, being a homemaker—we all know these things are hard work. They don’t come automatically; they need to be taught, and as with any skill, your best resource is the people who are actually doing it. Which is to say, godly older women. So when our commentator is considering the problem, why did he completely leave them out?

Because he’s terrified, and with good reason. This is exactly how the church world works. Blame for everything that goes wrong flows to the formal male leadership, and those men are not allowed under any circumstances to annoy the middle-aged and older women. Those ladies control the decisions about what the family will participate in—volunteer activities, youth group, giving, church attendance, all of it—and if the pastor annoys them, they will leave and take their family with them, or they’ll run him out of the church. So he keeps them happy. That means that when their daughters aren’t turning out the way they’d hoped, he blames the fathers, he blames the grandfathers, he blames the young men who won’t step up, he blames the church staff, he even blames himself…but he’d sooner cut his own throat than say that mom and grandma failed this girl, and so did the other women of a certain age in the church. Some of these guys are so brainwashed into the limitation, they don’t even think it’s there. Finding fault with the middle-aged women is literally unthinkable for them. They can’t process it. Others are more aware, and more cynical. But either way, they don’t shepherd the older women, and they don’t call them to do their job.

Why would I think this particular guy falls into this category? Because I brought the matter to his attention. I said—this is a direct quote—”[Name], you’ve made a glaring omission here. While the men bear their responsibilities, there is another group that has a direct biblical commission to teach young women on exactly these matters: older women (Titus 2:3-5). You entirely neglected to mention them. Why is that?”

You want to know what he had to say for himself? So do I. Crickets. Zero response.

Because, let’s face it, there’s just nothing to say.

So ladies, let’s do better with the next generation. You know that the things you do—conducting a successful marriage, raising children, managing a household, stewarding and multiplying the wealth and advantage of your family—you know those things don’t just happen by accident. None of it is easy; it all takes discernment, strength, subtlety, and lots of hard work. So teach the skills. Teach them to your own daughters. Teach them to the girls at church that aren’t getting taught at home. Mentor. Guide. Lead. You’ll be glad you did—and so will everybody else.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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