Beyond the House?

20 October 2026

Properly applying New Testament examples and instructions today requires noticing what obedience looked like then. Misreading the original situation throws everything off.

For example, people sometimes cite 1 Timothy 2:9 as backing for their claim that the young women should not show inordinate amounts of skin. Other Christians, especially those preoccupied with the failings of “purity culture,” will point out (correctly!) that in the original context, 1 Timothy 2:9 isn’t talking about necklines and hemlines. Indeed, it isn’t talking about sexual modesty at all. Taken in cultural context, the verse is clearly speaking to ostentatious displays of wealth. Thus far, the critics of purity culture are correct. But they stop thinking too soon.

Once we grasp the original situation and the clear intent of the command, we can see how the same principles forbidding ostentatious displays of wealth also apply to ostentatious displays of skin. True, the text is not directly talking about skin, but any ostentatious display runs afoul of the principle Paul sets forth. Once we grasp that, applications to other ostentatious displays (dietary choices, say) are easier to see. People who just assume “modest” means necklines and hemlines miss the primary interpretation of the text; people who understand that it’s talking about wealth, but stop there, are making a different mistake. But both of them are missing the point, and cheat themselves of the full range of application.

We make a similar set of errors when we read the household codes as though they’re addressed to a 1950s situation where men “go to work” at the plant or the office, and women “stay home;” in fact, those codes are addressed to productive households. Grasping that was a major reformation in the way my own household worked — and that set of changes was a lot of fun. So anytime I find something that’s widely different in New Testament practice than how we do it today, I get very interested: in what ways are we reading the Bible as though it’s talking about our contemporary practice when it’s not? What lessons are there to learn? What do I need to repent of?

When it comes to church praxis, there’s a really big one: Every single church in the New Testament met in homes. In every attested case where we used larger spaces (the School of Tyrannus in Ephesus, the Temple in Jerusalem), the text pointedly tells us that those churches also met in homes (Acts 2:46, 20:20). Today, we have inverted New Testament practice. We think of the big gathering in a public building as inevitable, the “real” church service, and the small-group gathering in a home as an optional add-on — nice to have, perhaps even important, but not what church really is.

I think it’s worth spending some time with this observation, because in North America, we tend to read the church epistles’ instructions about church life as though they were addressed to bodies of a few hundred people who meet in white buildings with steeples. For all intents and purposes, we have forgotten that the original authors and readers had in mind a different kind of social organization altogether.

It has been easy to forget, because today in the Christian West we put up dedicated buildings everywhere we go. You could write a pretty thorough history of Christianity in Europe, or America’s Westward expansion, or missions in sub-Saharan Africa, just by telling the story of the buildings Christians have built. Having dedicated space for worship and education of believers is very useful, and not that difficult to do…in areas controlled by the Christian West. Why wouldn’t everyone have done the same, even back in the first century?

Because in our first 300 years, we were small, intermittently persecuted, and semilegal. There is zero evidence that any first-century church ever had a building of its own. The oldest known Christian church building is the Dura-Europos church in Syria, which dates to the middle of the third century. The oldest known purpose-built Christian church structure is the Aquaba church, which dates to the dawn of the fourth century. In New Testament times, we met in homes (see Acts 2:2, 46; 5:42, 12:12, 20:20, Rom. 16:5, 1 Cor. 16:19, Col. 4:15, Philemon 2).

As I mentioned above, even when we had access to large mixed-use communal spaces, we met in homes. The Jerusalem church made extensive use of Solomon’s Porch before the persecution that broke out in Acts 6-7, but Acts clearly tells us they were also meeting from house to house (Acts 2:46). Paul regularly evangelized in synagogues until he inevitably got kicked out, but in Ephesus, he was able to use the School of Tyrannus after he left the synagogue. There, too, he taught from house to house (Acts 20:20). As obvious as it might be to us that we could have one big meeting in a dedicated space once a week, that’s just not what they actually did. That seems noteworthy.

The New Testament simply knows nothing of our modern custom of gathering in large numbers and not in homes. In cities where the gospel made more progress (like Ephesus) and the converts became numerous, they thought of themselves as one church (“the church in Ephesus”) that met in multiple homes across the city (again, see Acts 20:20). Thinking of all the separate gatherings as a single church is another thing we wouldn’t do in the territorial post-Great-Schism hellscape that is modern church praxis, but that’s another post. For today, the point is pretty simple: all the commands in the church epistles are addressed to churches that gathered in homes, and it is within the life of such churches that those commands were first obeyed.

I’ve noticed a trend when I bring this observation up in different forums: people hate it. American churchmen seem to be allergic to it. And this is before I ever get to any application. Just the observation seems to provoke pretty strong hostility. People often immediately leap to a straw-man. They’ll act like I’m saying that the first-century church met exclusively in homes, that large gatherings aren’t valid or aren’t church, or some other easily refuted claim. No. I haven’t said that it’s wrong to meet in a building, or that the early church didn’t do that, or that nobody should have a large church. At this point I’m just observing what’s here in the text. I haven’t even entertained the question of what we ought to do with a church that has prospects of growing that large, which God sometimes does; He grew the Jerusalem church by 3,000 on the day of Pentecost alone! (And they still met in homes; see Acts 2:46!)

My first point here is not a prescription for ecclesiology; it’s a lesson in practical hermeneutics. We read the church epistles as if they were composed under the same material circumstances that we face today, and in fact they weren’t. As a matter of historical fact, this is simply not controversial. So why are we reflexively hostile to it? Christian men wore tunics in the first century, not pants; nobody gets mad when you point that out. So what is it about this observation that people find so repellent?

I think they realize, instinctively, that this is a different sort of business than tunics vs. pants. Nobody thinks that the New Testament is talking about pants. But we do think that the New Testament is talking about churches–what we think of as churches. We’ve redefined the biblical word such that our common usage is not what the text is talking about. I think we instinctively realize that will have implications we can’t foresee, and it makes us uncomfortable.

So what are the implications?

To answer that, think about the differences between a large gathering of a couple hundred (or more) people in a public building versus a gathering of, say, 20-50 people in a home. Here’s one important difference: home gatherings, even good-sized ones, are small enough that the participants get to know each other. The New Testament commands around the shared life of the Body are all assuming a context where the participants know each other.

“Do good to all, but especially to those who are of the household of faith” and “Remember to do good and to share” are not given presupposing that you’re gathering in an auditorium of strangers; they presuppose that you will know the lives of the people around you: what they do, what they need, and how you might best help. “Consider one another in order to stir up love and good deeds” presupposes that you spend enough time with people to be able to study them and know them well enough to intervene in meaningful ways.

“Encouraging one another daily” presupposes that you see one another daily. Hebrews 3 doesn’t mean that every member of the church has to see every other member of the church every single day, but it certainly does mean that church members should expect to see other church members every day. You have to ask: if you only see your fellow believers once a week in an auditorium where you barely know anyone, in what meaningful sense are you obeying the command?

And likewise for the rest. If you don’t know the people you go to church with, or you have vague surface-level interactions with them, how are you going to meaningfully stir them up to love and good deeds? How will you do good to God’s people and share with them if you don’t know what they need? It won’t do to say, “Well, I do encourage them when I see them (once a week).” “I do share when I know of a need (which is almost never).” “I happily encourage good deeds in a generic, one-size-fits-most kind of way.” Do we seriously think this is the Body life that the New Testament is encouraging us toward?

To be clear, I’m not saying that big churches are wrong. I used to be a snob about that, and I had to repent. I watched a big church here in the Denver area rescue a friend of mine through their thriving small-group ministry. That church is so big it looks like an airport concourse inside. That big building was what got my friend in the door; he was looking for a place to blend into the crowd. But at the doorway, a greeter singled him out, connected him to a small-group leader, and that small group became his community. Given what was going on for my friend at the time, I’m pretty sure that church saved his life.

So I’m not saying that these biblical commands can’t be done in a big-church context. But they really can’t be done in a room full of 700 strangers, with the worship band cranked up so loud that you can’t hear the people singing on either side of you. Participatory groups where people know each other are the context for the commands, and if we’re going to obey the commands, then we need such groups, one way or another. It may not matter whether the groups meet in a fellowship hall at Airport Church or at Denny’s or in a living room, but we can’t do without them.

So the next question is, how do we get there? It’s convenient to want the church staff to put together a program…perhaps a bit too convenient. If we are the church, and if the need of the hour is small groups of believers that know and encourage one another, what’s stopping us? It’s probably not the church staff. Let’s take some responsibility here.

We can start by taking another look at things we’re already doing. We’re going to educate our children anyway; can we do that together? We’re going to start businesses; is there work we can join forces on? We’re going to buy groceries; can we develop a food co-op based on buying staples together? What else are we doing anyway that we might do together?

There’s a reason that paragraph is all questions, no answers: I couldn’t possibly know the answers for any given community. I’m doing well just to have a few answers for mine. This isn’t a McDonaldized Christianity; I have no idea what will work in your context. But I do know that God blesses our efforts to fulfill His commands. Let’s get to it—together!

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Posted by Tim Nichols

“I Do Not Believe in Home Churches”

29 September 2026

“I do not believe in home churches.” It was hard to believe my eyes. There I was, reading a public social media post by…well, let’s leave his name out of it, shall we? Suffice it to say he’s a bigwig in a Bible-preaching denomination that projects a public image of rock-ribbed faithfulness, and generally delivers on it. I think highly of him, and of the organization he’s part of. And he goes and says that.

It’s a dumb thing to say. There’s no way he actually believes it.

There’s no way this man doesn’t believe in the church that met in Aquila and Priscilla’s house (1 Cor. 16:19), the church that met in Nymphas’ house (Col. 4:15), or the church that met in Philemon’s house (Phm. 2). The first purpose-built church building dates back to the beginning of the fourth century; there is no way this man is seriously claiming that none of the home gatherings of our first three centuries were real churches. There is likewise no way that he is disparaging the thousands of home assemblies in which our persecuted brethren meet throughout China and the Muslim world today. He’s a good man, he understands the unity of the Body, and he simply wouldn’t say that those gatherings aren’t real churches.

In fact, if I were to title this post “[Name] Doesn’t Believe in Persecuted Chinese House Churches,” I imagine that he’d find that very uncharitable. Why? Because he doesn’t think that. Which is my point: “I do not believe in home churches” was a dumb thing to say, in that it can’t possibly be true.

So why say it? I don’t know the man personally, but I’ve enjoyed his writing in the past, and he does not strike me as given to casual flights of rhetorical fancy. He’s trying to tell us something, so let’s steel-man this thing: what could he possibly have meant? If he believes in home churches in New Testament times and around the world today, what home churches does he not believe in?

Home churches in present-day North America, it would seem. So why is Philemon’s house church fine, but a house church in Omaha today isn’t? That, I think, is the question.

Until a few years ago, this would have been a complete mystery to me. More recently, I’ve had occasion to rub shoulders with some more militant house church folk, and I’ve discovered that there’s an entire regrettable subculture of folks who seem to think that a church meeting in a building is The Whore Of Babylon. Having a pastor, taking an offering, any sort of shared funds, even having musical instruments is anathema for some of these folks.

In their defense, a lot of them got burned badly by institutional churches, and have responded to the pain by leaving the institutional church behind. Not the wisest or most measured response, but understandable. Some of them have rebelled against the spiritual authorities God gave them, and started something in their own living room where nobody can tell them no. Some are serially offended to the point of leaving every church within reasonable driving distance, and are doing their own thing because they’ve burned every bridge they have.

This to say, I now understand why so many of my pastoral colleagues are leery of “house church people.” Makes sense, regrettably. If his experience of home churches has been that they’re collecting points for malcontents with bad theology, then it makes sense to blow them off. I assume something along these lines is true, and that’s why the fellow “doesn’t believe in home churches.”

But it’s still a dumb thing to say.

6 Comments | Ecclesiology, House Church | Permalink
Posted by Tim Nichols

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.

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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.

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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

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