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.

Leave a Comment » | Ecclesiology, Mentoring/Disciple-Making | Permalink
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.

Leave a Comment » | Equality and Difference of Man and Woman, Mentoring/Disciple-Making, New Fundamentals | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Every Beggar’s Hand an Altar: New Covenant Sacred Space

31 March 2026

What does sacred space look like for the Church today?

The theology is pretty clear, but there’s different ways to apply it, and it makes a big difference which direction you go.

The theology is “Here we have no continuing city, but we seek the one to come.” The fire and storm that came on Sinai and that inaugurated the Temple sacrifices in Solomon’s day came on every head at Pentecost. From that day forward, sacred space isn’t a chunk of real estate in the same way that it used to be under the Old Covenant; the Spirit-indwelt believer is a portable mountain of God.

The commonest response to that reality is to ignore it, and just think of a church building as the “house of God” in the same way Solomon’s Temple was. Theologically, that’s a non-starter, but it’s very common.

The second most common application is iconoclastic: none of the buildings matter, it’s all just about the people now. This has curb appeal because it’s a very simple, straightforward application of the theology. Too simple, as it turns out. It misses two very important things.

First, in the immediate context of Hebrews, the same passage that says “we have no continuing city,” also says we need to do good and to share, “for with such sacrifices God is well pleased.” The book of Hebrews carefully develops a theology of new covenant priesthood in which Jesus replaces the old covenant priesthood with the far older priestly order of Melchizedek—and we come behind Him as our Forerunner. His sacrifice ends all sacrifice for sin, but there are still new covenant sacrifices, and we offer them as part of our priestly duty. He ministers, not in the earthly sanctuary, but in the heavenly sanctuary of which the earthly tabernacle was a copy. So there is such a thing as new covenant sacred space. It’s just in heaven.

But the iconoclasts are still wrong. Hebrews situates Jesus as our Forerunner and us as His younger siblings. Where He goes, we go. He goes behind the veil, into the heavenly sanctuary. We also offer sacrifices—the fruit of our lips, doing good, and sharing. When you’re a portable mountain of God and the Lord of Lords is your Forerunner, every beggar’s hand is an altar. The picture Hebrews paints is not that the sacred space is far away from us; we have been given the spiritual authority to call the sacred space down right here, right now, to offer our sacrifices in the presence of the Most High. That doesn’t mean there’s no sacred space on earth, that just means it moves: “here we have no continuing city.” We make the sacred space wherever and whenever we need to. Anywhere we offer our sacrifices, heaven meets us there.

Second, the iconoclastic move neglects the way God made us to be: humans exercise dominion over the earth. We build homes, shops, neighborhoods, cities—and that’s not some incidental factor or regrettable failing; it’s obedience to the first command God gave us (Gen. 1:28). We build things for purposes. A merchant has a store, a mechanic a shop, a chef a restaurant, an artist a studio, a teacher a classroom. From the Church’s earliest days, we gathered in multi-purpose spaces: principally homes, but also Solomon’s Porch, the School of Tyrannus, like that. It wasn’t until a few centuries in that we purpose-built spaces for the church to gather – not surprising, considering our quasi-legal status prior to Constantine.

Making a building for the purpose of gathering is the most natural thing in the world; it’s what we do for any other purpose. But constructing the building for that purpose does not make it sacred space. Sacred space is made when we, as new covenant priests, minister in the heavenly sanctuary. We do that all over town. And we can, and should, do it in the church buildings, too.

4 Comments | Ecclesiology | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Having Something to Show

3 February 2026

Several years ago, a new friend asked why we don’t invest more heavily in worldview and apologetics training in our ministry. Initially, I was surprised, because I think we do invest quite a bit in those things. But what he meant was hosting weekend seminars on Critical Race Theory or how to prove Jesus rose from the dead. Great ideas, but not where we put our focus. Here’s my account of why we do it the way we do.

Clearly, the evangelical church has utterly failed our youth; the American church is losing them in droves. I agree that training in worldview and apologetics is absolutely essential, but at the same time I know plenty of people who’ve had that training and wandered away anyhow. I’d say there are a couple other necessary ingredients for the apologetics training to bear fruit.   

For instance, consider a guy like Russell Moore. He’s had those classes; he has all the access to apologetics resources you could ever want, and just look at him. On the other hand, remember Kim Davis, that county clerk from Kentucky who refused to issue marriage licenses once they told her that two men or two women could constitute a marriage? She was definitely not the articulate spokesperson we would wish for in a highly charged cultural debate, but she had courage enough to stand firm even when she didn’t know what to say. Kim Davis needs apologetics training, but teaching someone like her what to say is much easier than discipling someone like Moore out of his idolatrous lust to sit at the cool kids’ table. 

Apologetics is hard work, and well worthy of study. I’ve written a whole year of worldview and apologetics curriculum with that in mind, and I’ve taught the apologetics portion of that in multiple churches, schools, and other venues. But years of practical ministry have shown me that apologetics training is the last thing, not the foundation. Apologetics gives you good things to say, but it’s character – love for God and others – that moves you to step up and say them. Apologetics training only helps if you have the courage to stand up and speak to start with.

Part of growing that character is getting grounded in the Story of Our People, getting your loves and loyalties rightly ordered, and learning what to expect in this part of that Story.  I agree with you that there’s a lot of rough water between where we are now and the obvious, end-of-history winning, when Jesus breaks the pagan nations with a rod of iron. But I also think we need to grasp what winning looks like in the middle of the Story. There was a day when winning looked like God Himself being nailed to a cross by the very sinners He came to save. On another day, it looked like Stephen praying for his murderers; on another, they stoned Paul and left him for dead. This to say, God always leads us in triumph, but I don’t expect it to look good from the vantage point of the people who write headlines. They’re going to dance on our martyr graves – and we’ll still be winning.  We took Rome in three centuries, and they were killing us the whole time.

So we need to conduct ourselves like we’re winning, even as we expect to be persecuted, driven from the public square, deplatformed, marginalized, and even martyred. We proclaim the truth, and God uses it to confound the “wise ones” of this world, even as they do their worst to us. Our testimony is a powerful part of the total picture here: loving God, loving our neighbor, loving what is true, good, and beautiful. If our marriages are thriving while theirs are falling apart, if our children are healthy and whole while theirs are neurotic and desperate, if we live with purpose while they drift rootless–that’s very hard to argue with, even if they think they have arguments. Apologetics training helps us highlight those things to pagans who are programmed not to see them. But it’s all for nothing if we got nothing to show. 

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Putting the Puzzle Together

2 December 2025

One of the things that’s really striking about the North American church is its near-total lack of interest in what the Bible says about local church life and worship. The Bible doesn’t give us a specific order of service, tunes to sing, or a template for the church event calendar, but it does give us a series of instructions to obey and examples to follow. When we get all the puzzle pieces on the table at the same time, we learn quite a lot about what we ought to do. I recently had occasion to correspond with a fellow pastor on the topic, with a specific focus on the role of women in the local church. Here’s some of what came out:

Biblical Basics

1. Women are not forbidden to preach, but preaching is for the public square, not the church. (See https://theopolisinstitute.com/conversations/proclaim/ on this)

2. Women are explicitly encouraged to prophesy with their heads covered. (1 Cor. 11, 14:26,31)

3. Women with the pastoral gift should practice it in ways appropriate to their sex (see #5). Since “pastor” is not actually a title, using the word that way just creates confusion. (The Bible never says God only gives that gift to men, and explicitly calls women to teaching/shepherding functions in Titus 2:3-5.)

4. Women do not serve as elders; it’s a fatherly role. (1 Tim. 3:2//Titus 1:6, 1 Tim. 3:4-5)

5. Women are not allowed to teach or exercise authority (or judge prophecy; an exercise of authority) in the church service. (1 Tim. 2:12, 1 Cor. 14:34-35)

Problems with the way we currently do church

1. We don’t permit women to be pastors since it is seen as a subset of being an elder, but this means we often bar women from shepherding when the Bible does not. Or when women do exercise the gift of shepherding, we have to invent another category for it, lest we confuse it with being a “pastor.”

2. In strictly biblical terms, our typical Sunday morning “preaching” is actually a combination of teaching and prophecy exercised within the church. In conservative churches, women are usually barred from “preaching” since it is correctly seen as a teaching role, but as a consequence they are also barred from exercising their prophetic gifts within the church. Furthermore, since we wrongly define “preaching” as something for the church, rarely will anyone (man or woman) preach in the public square, which is a problem. Public proclamation is one of our basic responsibilities.

3. 1 Corinthians 11-14 allows women to do than your typical conservative church will allow because of the way we bundle functions together (especially with a single long sermon and no opportunity to share or exercise gifts in the service). It is natural for male leaders to feel this lack and try to find a way to mend it by making room for women to do more. The problem is, in most of our services, the only thing for them to do is give a sermon—which is typically heavy on authority and teaching, and so crosses the line.

Toward a solution

We don’t know everything we’d like to know about early church praxis, but if we trust in the sufficiency of biblical revelation, then we don’t need to. Where the Bible doesn’t specifically tell us what to do, we have liberty. That’s a feature, not a bug: God is giving us the responsibility to adapt to the needs and circumstances of our neighbors and communities. However, where God does give us specific instructions, we have the duty to submit to them, trusting that God really does know best. So for example, elders should be male because the Bible says so, but we need not meet in homes—even though we know they did—because the Bible doesn’t tell us that we have to. We’re free to meet in homes if we like, or build a building, or rent space somewhere.

Male eldership was directly commanded; plurality of elders was normal. We know there were deaconesses and prophetesses and church widows (likely a subset of deaconess). We know services were highly participatory (1 Cor. 12-14) and included the Lord’s Table (1 Cor. 11) and a meal, but the meal’s not commanded. We know services could include extended teaching (nobody thinks Eutychus died during a TED talk), but we don’t know that it was normal practice. In fact, from 1 Cor. 12-14, it seems that long-form teaching from a single speaker was not normal, at least not in the Corinthian church. “Pastor” was a spiritual gift in the early church, but whether it was a church office is highly debatable (probably the best argument is based on Eph. 4:11, but mostly the people who make that argument don’t apply the passage consistently). Given what we know for sure about church offices, we can confidently say that if pastor were an office in the early church, it certainly was not the modern office of pastor (=CEO). They were certainly singing the biblical psalms, and there’s good indication they were writing new songs (Paul quotes some of them in his letters). The NT tells us three times to be a psalm-singing people. The Psalms themselves tell us to sing a new song, so we need new songs to sing too. We know they devoted time to Scripture reading and prayer, and we know that prophetesses prophesied with their heads appropriately covered.

The modern church files virtually all of that under “descriptive, not prescriptive” and moves on to just do whatever it prefers. They rely on accrued tradition (although in most churches, those traditions are much younger than people think) or on marketing consultants that tell us what will sell. By contrast, we have long thought that we should take the biblical revelation more seriously than that. After 10+ years of brainstorming and development, covid presented us with a need to begin holding worship services…so we’re busily putting all that into practice as best we can.

At Christ the Anchor, we try to include all the elements commanded or modeled in Scripture. We sing the Psalms (Eph. 5:18-19, Col. 3:16). We have four long Scripture readings (Psalm, Old Testament, New Testament, and Gospel) totalling about 20 minutes (1 Tim. 4:13). Following the Scripture readings, an elder will deliver a brief (7-10 minute) homily, then open the floor for sharing and reflection (1 Cor. 14:26), wrapped up by an elder summing up what’s been said and correcting what needs correcting (1 Cor. 14:29-35). Then comes a time of prayer (again, open floor- 1 Timothy 2, 1 Corinthians 11:3-16) before moving into confession, passing of the peace (1 Peter 5:14), Eucharist (1 Cor. 11:17-34), and a meal (Acts 2:42).

In our church, women participate in the open forum (especially to exercise the gift of prophecy) and in prayer (1 Cor. 11:3-16, 14:24,31). As a matter of practice (not a Biblical requirement), to distinguish between the roles of men and women in the church, a man (as a representative of Christ) will read the Gospel, and an woman (as an image of the Bride) will lead the corporate prayers of the people.

There are more than a couple of kinks to work out, but as a baseline, this approach to our church service has allowed us to be strongly father/elder led while encouraging our women to step up to what Scripture calls them to do in the service.

Comments Off on Putting the Puzzle Together | Ecclesiology, Equality and Difference of Man and Woman, New Fundamentals | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

An Orphanage for Pastorlings

18 November 2025

Seminaries serve an important function: they train up leaders whose churches are simply not adequate to the task. This is the same function that orphanages serve. But we think ill of parents who—simply because orphanages exist that will take in their kid—decline to do the job themselves.

In today’s churches, we think it’s normal. Why?

It’s not because the Bible taught us to think so. The first-century church raised up its own leaders. “The things which you have heard from me among many witnesses, commit these to faithful men who will be able to teach others also” (2 Timothy 2:2). That verse was given to a man in church ministry. Today, you’ll find that verse all over seminary websites and literature, but Paul intended it to be obeyed in the context of the church.

It’s not that the New Testament is somehow opposed to academic preparation; it says nothing of the kind. But the New Testament knows nothing of “preparation for ministry” that is abstracted from the local church context, taking place outside the local church and away from the oversight of local church leaders. That’s not a thing in the New Testament—and for good reason.

Is our way better? Consider that the seminary is famously unable to prepare its students for the realities of practical ministry. “They don’t teach you that in seminary!” is a very common joke among seasoned ministers, but for the guys in their first couple years of ministry, it’s not funny.

Imagine walking up a nice suburban sidewalk, knowing that on the other side of the front door you’re about to knock on, there’s a young widow and three kids whose dad is never coming home. And they don’t know about it yet; you’re the one who’s going to tell them. And nobody ever taught you how to do it. Nobody even mentioned that you’d have to.

That’s a sign of pretty serious dysfunction. Seminary-trained pastors, answer me this: would you go to a doctor whose med school prepared him for practicing medicine as poorly as your seminary prepared you for ministry?

Why do seminaries fail so terribly? I think it’s pretty obvious. A seminary is two principal things: classroom and library. Naturally, it gravitates toward the things classrooms and libraries are good at. Doing the rough work of discipling people through the dust and mud of daily life, becoming a generalist in the varieties of human misery along the way—that doesn’t fit well into semesters. In most academic programs, you can’t even flunk someone for having weapons-grade empathy but no discernment or vice versa, no tolerance for disagreement among teammates, or other critical failures of personal development, and still less for lack of personal spiritual maturity. In other words, there’s a fairly obvious mismatch between the tools a classroom brings to bear and the task of preparing someone for ministry, and an even more obvious mismatch between what the classroom can assess and the needs of real practitioners.

You know what I find particularly maddening? As a culture we know exactly how to solve for that mismatch. In trades where practical know-how is everything, from electrician to doctor, we solve that problem reliably with a relatively simple formula. We use academic study to give the trainees sufficient background knowledge to get them started, and then put them into the field for supervised practical experience. Practical performance is graded, tests with meaningful feedback are frequent, and the trainee is expected to improve rapidly, because their future opportunities hang in the balance. We don’t let them practice independently until they’ve been through that gauntlet and prevailed.

And it works. Our electricians and our plumbers and our doctors graduate into their trade able to practice competently. What we do with our pastors, at this point, is analogous to putting a guy through the first two years of med school—the classroom part—and then sending him out to practice medicine with no support at all. We’ve no right to be surprised by the results.

6 Comments | Ecclesiology, Real Ministry Training | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

Wanting vs. Needing

14 October 2025

What people need and what people want are frequently two different things. In ministry, the observation “That’s not what the sheep want” gets used to justify all kinds of defections. “I’d love to teach more Bible, but it’s not what the sheep want!” “I’d love to have more prayer in our church, but that’s not what the sheep want.” “I’d love to care more for the poor, but that’s not what the sheep want.”

The sad fact is, these things might be true. But it’s the shepherd’s job to lead the sheep where they need to go, not where they want to go. They have their own will and they get to make choices, but that doesn’t relieve us of our responsibilities. If they’re headed the wrong way, we chase them down and turn them toward what they actually need. If their desires are disordered, it’s our job to help them want the right things. Let’s get to work!

I have to admit, leading the sheep toward what they need is a lot harder than giving them what they want. Bright-eyed guys coming fresh out of seminary and hoping to just be good shepherds and make a living wage at it may well be disappointed, and it’s discouraging to see ear-ticklers prosper while good shepherds struggle. But remember Who we’re following: foxes have holes, etc. While there’s nothing wrong with making a paycheck in pastoral care, that’s a relative rarity across the sweep of history and cultures.

Even in our prosperous times, shepherding work is mostly not what churches pay for, at least in my experience. My pastor father was a great shepherd, in a place where they certainly had the means to pay him. He got paid for teaching Christian school and media distribution; the shepherding he did–which was a lot–he did on the side, for free. I once served a church for two years with the title “Pastor of Discipleship and Ministry Logistics” and got zero support for the discipleship side of things. Nobody above me on the org chart ever asked how discipleship was going — not my boss, not any of the elders, nobody. My spending request for curriculum (a whopping $60) was turned down; I ended up buying what I needed out of my own pocket. I got plenty of support and accountability around making sure the bulletin got done and we didn’t run out of copy paper, though. Part of the answer here is to adjust your expectations; churches, like sheep, don’t always want what they need. Helping them want what they need is the job.

That particular church is where I learned this lesson the hard way. They’d hired me because they knew they didn’t know how to disciple or shepherd. They wanted me to bring those skills to the church, and I did. I expected them to support me intelligently in the task. I look back at that now and think, “Well isn’t that cute!” Of course intelligent support is a reasonable thing to want, but it’s very naive to expect people that don’t understand your job to support you well. Of course they didn’t know how to support me, for the same reason that they needed to hire me in the first place — they didn’t understand discipling or shepherding! The wise course of action would have been to actively train the leadership in how to support my work. Instead, I was struggling to do my job in spite of them, and was therefore constantly frustrated at the lack of support. As I say, that was the place where I learned this lesson. Feel free to profit from my error: go thou, and do un-likewise.

But mostly, that’s not a problem shepherds have. Most of the shepherds in Christ’s flock, most of the time, support themselves. Even Paul did, sometimes — if he’s not too good to make tents, who are we to balk at it? I can tell you, self-supporting ministry comes with a certain kind of freedom. If you’re self-supporting and you have a small network of godly men who will provide wisdom and accountability for your work, you don’t need anybody else’s approval. Just go forth and shepherd, and be glad you have the time to do so! During a big chunk of that two-year stint I mentioned above, I was tracking my time in 15-minute increments. Since I found the practice helpful, I continued it for a while after I left that position. Fun fact: in the weeks after I left, I spent *more* time shepherding than I had when I was on a church payroll, ostensibly being paid to shepherd and make disciples. Fewer distractions, you see. No marathon staff meetings. No copy paper to order. No bulletins to make. Just people who needed pastoral care. So I cared for them.

Effectiveness comes from focus. Focus is mainly about what we don’t do.

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Posted by Tim Nichols

Why Church?

23 September 2025

An acquaintance recently posted this meme:

This is a seriously dumb stance to take. It’s not an either/or thing.

But — whoever wrote the meme — let’s give him his due. I understand why church attendance feels irrelevant to a lot of people. For too many of us, church is Christian karaoke, a TED talk, and lying about how great your week was over bad coffee and stale donuts in the foyer. We don’t see those people in between Sundays, and in bigger churches, we won’t see the same people week to week even on Sunday. It’s not hard to see why that seems irrelevant.

That is irrelevant. But that’s not what church actually is.

So get a better church. Start obeying what the Bible says to do when we’re together: use your gifts to edify one another (1 Cor. 12-14), sing the Psalms to one another (Eph. 5:18-21//Col. 3:16), do good to one another and share (Gal. 6:10, Heb. 13:15-16). Can’t find a church like that? Don’t worry about it — find yourself a couple other believers who also want to obey these commands together. Get together and support one another. See where it goes.

A gathering like that isn’t irrelevant to your impact on the world; it’s where you get patched up from last week and armored up to go out into spiritual battle this week. It’s where you find answers and moral support for the hard things you face. It’s the people who pray for you when you’re headed into something tough; the people who show up at your door with a big pot of chicken soup when you’re sick; the people who will give you a ride home from the hospital after an outpatient surgery.

You need these people. If you don’t have them, you’re missing one of the great blessings of the Christian life. And not to put too fine a point on it, you’re disobeying one of the basic commands in the Christian life (Heb. 10:24-25).

Now if you’re one of four guys posted to a radar station in the Aleutians, and you’re the only Christian, then it’s not your fault you don’t have fellowship. You’ve been providentially prevented, and that’s on God. He’ll see you through it; take your time in the Cave of Adullam and turn a profit on it as best you can. But let’s be honest, that’s not most people.

Most Christians don’t have fellowship because they aren’t seeking it. They aren’t even trying to obey the instructions God clearly gave. If that’s you, there’s no better time to start obeying. Find yourself a few people and get to it!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

The Glories of a Good Corn Dog

13 September 2025

My latest Theopolis post, “The Glories of a Good Corn Dog,” went up this week. Enjoy!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

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