#207: Dr. Timothy Tennent: Foundations of the Christian Faith
Doctrine matters, faith matters, and why we believe it all matters.
Dr. Timothy Tennent wants to help you lean in to the foundations of your Christian faith.
Link:
https://www.spiritandtruth.life/
https://www.instagram.com/twmilt/
EP. 207
Tony: [00:00:00] Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation podcast. It's such an honor to be with you today. If you heard that brand new intro music that's brought to you by the legendary producer who makes this show happen every single week, Caleb, Stan, Caleb, and his team over at State and Creative have done such an amazing job at making this podcast sound.
Do me a favor, check them out. Let 'em know that you heard about them here on the Reclamation Podcast, and if you have any podcast needs connect with them. Speaking of needs, today's conversation is all about meeting the need of theology. I sit down with Dr. Timothy 10 who served at the president of Asbury Seminary for quite a number of years.
We talk about leadership, we talk about faith. We talk about why good theology matters. This was such a rich conversation. I know you're gonna enjoy every. Bit of it. If you do enjoy it, do me a favor. Hit that subscribe button wherever you listen to podcast. Leave a [00:01:00] rating or review on iTunes or Spotify and the highest compliment you can give us.
Share this episode with a friend, somebody who maybe, you know, wrestles with a little bit of theology. I think you're gonna enjoy dr. 10. It was really fun. Now without any further ado, here's my conversation with Timothy 10. Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Reclamation podcast. I'm so excited today to have the president of Asbury Seminary Dr.
Timothy 10 author, speaker, theologian Timothy, thank you so much for being here today.
Timothy: It's great being here, Tony. Thank you for the invitation.
Tony: One of the things that I love to do is to start from a macro perspective before we jump into the ins and outs of this latest resource that we're gonna talk about.
How would you describe the call that God has placed on your life? Like, how does somebody get called into being the, the president of a seminary?
Timothy: Yeah, that's a great question. I never dreamed I would ever be involved in this kind of work. You know, when I was very young, when I came to the Lord, I was called into full-time [00:02:00] ministry, and over the years that ministry calling has been shaped and formed.
So I was a pastor for a decade. I was a professor in a seminary for, for 15 years, and then now I'm here for 14 years. So it's been a kind of a gradual unfolding where you see, where you know God, you know, calls, gets your attention and calls you to use your gifts a new way. So the Lord I never would've dreamed about coming here, but the.
Clearly spoke to us and said that he was given us a new assignment and for us to p pack up our bags and come to Kentucky. So , I had never been to Wilmore in my life, sound like a complete outsider, but the Lord indicated that's what he wanted us to do. So we, we came.
Tony: That's awesome. In my notes I see that you've pastored churches in Georgia and in New England and now you live in Kentucky.
That's quite the. Birth when it comes to the us what have you learned about the church and all the different geographical places are, are there any big, you know, like major differences [00:03:00] or you know, just reassuring similarities?
Timothy: Well I mean, sort the big differences between you know, south and northeast and, and west Coast is that when you go to New England, You, you're really in a very different kind of climate.
And so a lot of the people who had successful churches on the west coast or in the southern US would come to Boston where I lived and say, We're gonna do what we did in, you know, Los Angeles and have a megachurch in Boston. It, it doesn't happen. It's a very different environment. It sort of affects church playing strategy.
I mean, there are some vibrant churches there. I've prep pastored several of them, but it's a different environment in New England and. So, yeah, I learned that the other big difference was just over the scope of time, cuz my early ministry in Georgia was in the eighties and early nineties when I came back into pastoring in the two thousands, the, the church had itself changed dramatically in the US in terms of the kinds of way church structures happened and how the gospel was, [00:04:00] was claimed in ways different than what I was used to.
So there, there definitely been big changes over my, my 40 years of.
Tony: Yeah. You know, I guess that's important distinction, right? Is that not only did the geography change, but the time changed too. And, and everything is kind of shifted. I'm sure you, you've been the president of the seminary since 2009 including the covid years, which has gotta be wild.
What's, you know, let's do a little insider baseball. Like what's the one thing that we should know about being a president of a seminary that we wouldn't normally think?
Timothy: I don't know. I think the one of the biggest challenges is that you're dealing with a lot of different constituencies. You're dealing with faculty, staff, students trustees, you know, donors, friends, alumni, accrediting bodies, church nominations. There's just a lot of, you know, groups out there that have in some way a stake in the seminary.[00:05:00]
And I think in some ways a seminary also at different, my church and that you have structural differe. Between like faculty and staff and students where there's actually structural differences in their, their power, in their voice in institution, that, that's quite different. So in some ways it's a very different world in the local church because you have different kinds of constituency groups that are deeply involved, deeply embedded, and have governance authority in some ways in life of the school.
It, it's a, it's a juggling act and it's a, a way you have to speak to a lot of different groups simultaneously to be effective in this world.
Tony: What have you learned about the academic institution on the other side of C that maybe kind of like, cuz it, I mean it really rocked, really rocked the local church, but I would imagine that being in the academy, it also really.
what we thought about schooling a, any big realization that process?
Timothy: Well, I think we were surprised, I mean, [00:06:00] gratified, but surprised how many churches contacted Asbury and said, What should we do about, you know, how do we handle communion? How do we handle visitation? How do we handle a number of issues?
And so, you know, the care for the dying. So we realized that our practices were gonna be replicated in some ways in the churches. So we thought a lot. How to you know, keep on, I mean, our kind of philosophy was on the one hand we were going to abide by the CDC regulations and so forth. We were gonna, you know, kind of keep faith with all of that.
On the other hand, we were not gonna cancel anything, so we had our entire student body here. We, we took internationals across the street. So we had even a larger community here in residence at the time doing all that shut down. We had to figure out how to have EU. How to do care, pastoral care, do everything in the midst of Covid 19.
So I think a lot of us, we were dealing with things the local church was dealing with, you know? Yeah. How do you what do you do about people who are dying? What do you do about sick? What do you do about you, Chris? All these things. [00:07:00] So we, we did a lot of podcasts where we shared my, my office, our home office, which became kinda like a Grand Central Station.
I did tons of podcasts for my home office and we basically, Had thousands of of and this course also rolled right into racial reconciliation issues because of George Floyd and all of that, of course. So there was a lot of things that were being they were looking to us for some guidance and, and this theology.
So yeah, it was a wild ride. A wild ride. We we had churches on in Walmart. We had to, we were out facilities for a while, so, Have like a small class with meet a huge sanctuary and for social distancing, the whole thing was just unbelievable. But we never canceled a class. Wow. In the whole of Covid. In fact, we had our highest enrollment in our history in the middle of Covid.
We broke all of our records of enrollment. So we, we, and yet we always abutted by, We kept the regulations, but we, in Kentucky, they [00:08:00] were strict, but we managed to keep moving and we, of course we had a whole semester in line. . But you know, we, we just kept having it. We won graduation with students only, no guests.
I mean, the whole thing. One, one virtual graduation. A lot of challenges, but we just never canceled anything. We just kept figuring out how to do it. How, how would
Tony: you describe the burden of leadership that you faced during that constant pivot shift? Pivot?
Timothy: Well, it was challenging because we had Like more than most things, I think our community was, had a very diverse views about it.
So the people who downplay the pandemic, other people believed it was the, it was, you know, we, we were all gonna die. I mean, we had the whole spectrum there. And so it wasn't easy to lead through that because you had to speak to people who had really deep, you know, attitudes about the pandemic and, and coronavirus, et cetera.
So naturally I put together a team. The [00:09:00] team was diverse in the sense that we had people on the team that really had different views of it, but by design, and so we could actually have good conversations, healthy conversations, and then they made decisions and the community respected those decisions. You know, we, we had to do a lot of messaging, of course, and we had, you know, banners on our website.
We had a lot of dashboard recording. How many cases and all that. We do a lot of data work, but in the end we, we never really had any huge, huge problems on campus and so people kept basically telling us, Whatever y'all doing, it's working. So we kind of kept marching through it, but I think the people that were fearful of Covid appreciate the fact that we had people that were cautious on the steering committee and those that were really fo focused on let's, you know, give back to.
Also knew that we had people that understood that, so we had a nice, you know, healthy. So I felt like when I was in the room, I was basically hearing the, the whole community, even though I had six [00:10:00] people there, you know, or seven people, whatever it was. So it, it, it was challenging. It's definitely a leadership challenge.
Definitely.
Tony: You know, in, in our Wesleyan stream, the, the office that you you hold right now has a lot of. Influence, You know, just Asbury is one of the larger seminaries in our denomination. And kind of just in, in, you know, the, the Wesleyan Christianity world. What, what are some of your daily practices that you do to keep yourself connected to God?
Because I could imagine with such a big job you know, being the, the president of a, of, of a seminary and you've. You know, students and residents and students online and faculty and all the different factions that you mentioned, how do you stay connected to God so that you don't lose sight of that?
The kingdom building mission that, that I know that you've been called to and that Asbury's been called to.
Timothy: Yeah, it's a great [00:11:00] question. When I came to Asbury in 2009, I had the spiritual maturity, if you don't use that word A semi professor and I, I felt like that was, I, I felt great when I got here.
I quickly realized a year or so into it that I didn't really have the spiritual depth that I needed to to do this job. Wow. And to respond to the issues I was facing. There was a lot of people who, their full-time job is to criticize me in the, in Asbury, a lot of people committed to Asbury's demise or whatever.
It, it's a very challenging environment. So my wife, I told my wife at one point, you know, maybe a year and a half or two years into it, I said, You know, I either have to get out or go deeper. Mm. And so we, we talked about it and prayed about it, and the Lord really led us to a practice. We started an experiment.
We decided, you know what this is back in 2012, we decided that we would we would get up an hour earlier and we would [00:12:00] spend an. every morning in the Psalms bef prior to our normal devotional time. And we would do that for 150 days and go through the psm. Wow. Go through the Psalms. So we did that and we, we got an hour earlier and we went through the Psalms.
One by one. I think it's a little longer cause it's a week to get through Psalm one, consider a week to get through someone 19 . But anyway, we finished it and we at the end of that, We realized that the Psalms were actually the great resource for us, spiritual resource for us. And so we said, We cannot stop doing this.
This has been so powerful for us. And you know, I, I think everybody has to approach their own kind of solution sometimes differently than what we did, but we realized this was God's answer for us. And so we've been doing that, including this morning. We've been doing that every day. 2012, that means 10 years now we've been doing this.
And it doesn't matter if I'm traveling on the [00:13:00] road, which I'm traveling a lot, we still do it over the phone. So we actually are really have found that spending extended time of the Psalms and we eventually put out a solter. We, we sing the Psalm as. Hmm. We found that that's was really, really cuz the Psalms really brings out all of the conflict, the challenges, the depth, the deep angst, everything you can imagine.
I, I kind of view the Psalms as 150 different journeys of life journeys and some you may only need a few times in your life, some you need every day. But these are journeys that are there. And I had, I was really unfamiliar with the, the 150 journeys. Now I know them very well. I think we're now, I think in our, something.
I think about our 20 something odd trip through the Saulter and maybe, maybe 25. And through that process the Psalms have become really deeply embedded in my life. And so when I try to challenger problems, there is a, there's a, a psalm to meet that, [00:14:00] and that's been one of the other things, but that's been one of the most important spiritual practices that has really shaped my life in the last last decade.
That's so
Tony: interesting that you say that you have no way of knowing this, but I've been praying about what I'm for. Every year I, I've tried to pick up a spiritual discipline and I'm almost done reading the scripture in the year. And so in January, you know, start over again and the Lord placed on my heart's psalms, and I was, I've kind of like talking myself out of it.
Like, ah, it feels a little. Where's the me? You know, gimme a little bit more Jesus. But I, I think you know, I think, I think you just sealed the deal for me. I, I'm gonna do it next year, so
Timothy: Absolutely. I can send you some resources, but I, you know, and we eventually put out a, a salter and a also a a, a devotional guide for the songs.
But I do think that, I think it was probably maybe the third or fourth year into it I began to realize in the morning as we [00:15:00] sang the song, we're gonna hear the voice of Jesus. Singing with us and, and once you realize that songs are the prayer book of Jesus that he had, it becomes very powerful when you actually you're actually communing with Jesus in a way that is very powerful.
And so you, you think, because the song, I mention the name of Jesus explicitly, but actually he's in, he's in all the songs and it's very powerful. Believe me. Trust me. That's
Tony: good. And what, you know, what we'll do is we'll link to that in the show notes. It's on your website, the meditative journey through the.
So we'll be sure to link through that. If anybody wants to join me in Psalms next year and, and sounds like you too, ,
Timothy: we'll do it again with you next year. Absolutely. We do it every year. That's
Tony: great. I do wanna talk about your new resource the, the foundations of Christian, of the Christian faith, a resource for catechists and deciding let's let's start with defining catechists for some pe some of the listen.
You know, there's somebody on their treadmill right now who's like catechist. I should know what that word [00:16:00] means, but I don't. How, how would you define that term in the church today?
Timothy: You know, the word catechist is, is really a, a, a key word in discipleship, an instruction. It literally means to sound down.
And it was really about a a more mature believer sounding forth of faith to a younger believer who would then echo it back and it so country, the word. Where you well basically how does the, how is the, the gospel reechoed or resounded through the generations? We, they didn't have podcasts. They didn't have internet.
They didn't have books. They basically had one to one transmission with people to people. And so catechesis originally was mostly older disciples teaching younger disciples, and eventually, as of course, morphed into all kinds of other resources. I still think there is a powerful human. To discipleship.
It's really crucial in the church, but essentially it's a, it's a word, an ancient word for the church, for [00:17:00] how the faith is passed down. Therefore, it's connected to discipleship and basically how we instruct new believers in the faith.
Tony: Th this is th this is a, a thicker book than what I normally get from Christian authors. , I'm trying to, As carefully as possible. I, I don't mean it in any way other than just this, You clearly put a to of time and energy into it. How did you know that God was calling you to write something that was so in depth, so thorough, you know, like who gets called to, to write a catechesis?
Timothy: Well, I think I, it was a pretty obvious thing for me because there was so much Clearly a problem in falling off of biblical literacy and Christian practices in the culture, in the church itself. And so we began, One of my advantage in my position is I travel over the country, over the world. I made multiple world worldwide trips every continent, and I spent a [00:18:00] lot of time talking to our alumni.
We have 13,000 plus alumni in the world. And so they're giving feedback and they're saying, You know, we do not feel like we have resources to pass down the faith. It used to happen more in the home. It's now being kind of pushed more into the church. So how does the church do this? And even the home people who wanna do it in the home are saying, What do we do?
This, this has been also put out into smaller versions, like you know, just the apostles creator, just the Lord's Prayer. Those who just wanna, can't take a book that's, you know, that's 300 pages long. This brings together all the resources in one place. And the amazing thing about this, this resource, I didn't have to really think through the, the contents because the the church has, despite all the difference in the church and all the different branch of the church, Orthodox women, Catholic, Protestant, the church has basically agreed on why we used the Apostles Creed, why we used the Lord's Prayer, the 10 Commandments.
Why That's I. So that's been pretty much [00:19:00] a standard throughout the history of the church. So my job was to kinda re-articulate in modern terms, how do you explain to somebody, you know, what the puzzles create means, or what the 10 agreements means. But the, the structure wasn't too difficult. I did add some things that were peculiar to our culture, if you wanna discuss that, but the, the main body of this is very much a part of what the church has been using all through history.
Tony: Yeah. You, you've kind of broken this down. Three major areas, and then also use kind of historic you know, historic to the church documents kind of language here. But what made you break it down into doctrine, ethics, and ordinances. And I'm, I'm wondering if you could kind of give us, you know, a 30,000 viewpoint of, of each one.
Like if someone's like, Oh, you know, what is doctrine? How are we answering that and why was it important to start? ?
Timothy: Well, I think the, the, the deeper question is the, the first question is what does it mean to be a Christian, Which is a very important [00:20:00] Wesleyan question cuz we, Wesley felt like the church had focused too much, and I agree with him too much on becoming a Christian and not enough on being a Christian.
Mm-hmm. . So if you're focused on becoming a Christian, you're focused on evangelism and justification. If your focuses on being a Christian, then you, you ask, Okay, what is the second half of the gospel? What is the role of the Holy Spirit of being sanctified and being formed and shaped? And, and if the discipleship really is the, the great new Vista renewal, then it really does bring the Wesleyan message right into the heart of the church's future.
So the church has always believed that if someone is really going to embody the Christian. They needed three things. They need to have right beliefs, which is doctrine. What do you believe they had to have their lifestyle? I think the word we would use lifestyle needed to be consistent with Christian principles, what we call this ethics.
And thirdly, they need to have practices that would be [00:21:00] able to allow them to grow in the faith. We call this the means of grace, probably in our term. You know, the the Lord, the Lord, supper, baptism, prayer, Bible, reading, all of. So those three components are necessary to really properly form if you have someone who's just doctrinally formed and some churches do that.
They focus on doctrine only then, you know, with someone who knows a lot, but their life may be unchanged. If you have somebody who is early, maybe has some amazing practices, but really doesn't understand what lies behind it and the power of the gospel, then you also don't have a problem. So it's trying to bring together, You know, belief, lifestyle, and practices into one.
You know, one whole cohesive whole, because that's really the heart of what's actually means when we become the cycles of Christ.
Tony: Hey guys, just pausing this conversation with Dr. 10 to remind you to sign up for the Spirit and Truth Conference. March, 2023, Dayton, Ohio. You're gonna wanna be here for speakers like Kim Moss[00:22:00] Maggie Omer, Matt Reynolds, and so many more.
You're gonna love the kind of the essence of this Worshipful Conference. for a discount code, you can go to Spirit and truth.life/conference and use the code podcast to get some money off your registration. I can't wait to see you there. Yeah, talk, talk to us about the importance of ordinances cuz I, I think you know, a lot of my podcasts family, they go to non-denominational churches where they're not familiar with ordinances or the liturgical calendar or any of these kind of Things that may be a little bit more practical in the, the Wesleyan stream or I, you know, I grew up Catholic, so ordinances, like, you know, gimme all the smells and bells.
I, I went to a Catholic funeral not too long ago and I, I was just almost brought to tears by how much I kind of missed a l, you know, high liturgy. Cuz in the Methodist churches I've been going to, we just didn't do it. And which is okay, right. Talk. Talk to us about the importance of [00:23:00] ordinances and how they can shape our faith.
Like how, why do ordinances matter?
Timothy: I think the main reason, especially in the post enlightenment world, is that if you think the Christian faith is something that is merely cognitively explainable, you know, like the work of God is explained in doctrines and you. Things that were to do, like ethical things, then you really don't get actually into the heart of the faith.
The heart of the faith. As important as doctrine is important as who our ethics and lifestyle is. There is a mystery to the faith. It, it is a great mystery. God's work in our lives, and there are many, many things in our lives that the Holy Spirit has to deal with at a deep, mysterious. In the ordinances like the Lord, Supper and baptism are great examples of mysteries.
Or how in the world, you know, the fact that Christ promises to meet us at the [00:24:00] table. It is not something that you believe, it's something you do. You know, you're taking the Eucharist into your body. You know, you are being baptized under water. These are very powerful things you. . And the amazing thing is God promised to meet us in those situations.
So I think the the, the mystery, the gospel is captured really well there. And I think there's something about the, the power of, especially the Eucharist where you regularly remember your baptism and you reenter that that mystery of the faith is really, really powerful. And I think that ultimately you can't really experience Christianity unless you underst.
That there is a mystery to it that goes beyond just what you can explain or put in a tract or whatever. What
Tony: did we lose as a church when we cut out liturgy?
Timothy: Well, I, I think there's entertainment liturgy. I think liturgy is [00:25:00] part of all churches. I think we have formal liturgies and we have more informal liturgy, so, Oh, that's exactly, Some people are very much attracted to. Like formal liturgical things that the church does. And you mentioned some of those, you know, where you have the, you know, the incense or other kinds of things of the, the perception of the cross and so forth.
But I do think that in, in some ways, all churches have rhythms life rhythms that they, they experience. And so part of the power of catechesis and of is how do we learn from things we repeat? Our kids said to us, you know, one. When on a family vacation, when they're all adults, you know, the things they most remember their childhood were things that we did every single year, or, you know, things we could regularly, the regular rhythms of life, the things they're most embedded in our lives.
So even Pentecostal churches have very deeply held rhythms of things that are part of that experience [00:26:00] in Pentecostal. And I think some ways that it's the distinct between liturgical and non liturgical churches. Is actually a false one because liturgy literally means the work of the people. So what it does really means is are the people passive in the church building?
Are they simply passive in the pews or are they in some ways actively participating both in worship in the world? And Pentecostals lost. I check they're pretty active in the pulp and in the pews if I don't have to active in the, in the building. And that's, that's a very powerful thing. I think that in some ways we have maybe rethink because the word sacrament in literally is tied to again, to mystery.
And I think someone other, in that process of how we respond and how we come forward or kneel or go out in the world and serve the poor is bringing, brought up into the mystery of the gospel.
Tony: So when we think about. [00:27:00] This process of disciple making and catechesis, how, how do you let that play out in your life personally? I, I mean, you're, you're obviously super busy. You're surrounded by people all the time. How, how do you pick your spots on like, Yep, okay, this is a person that I'm gonna pour into, or, you know, find those people and bring them in.
What's kind of your process in that? Cuz I, I imagine there are, are some people who are like, Man, I just don't know that I have time to make
Timothy: discipl. Well, that's true. The time isn't always a factor, but you know, we, we, we do what we're committed to doing. I, I, I have gone through many change over the years of who I disciple, but at this stage in my life, I'm focused mostly on very senior leaders that people that, especially fellow presidents or in some cases they're like provost or.
People that have, are just new to this world who really need a lot of help and mentoring and guidance, because I, I know this world. I think in some ways we have to always ask what [00:28:00] is our world? What is, what is the, what are the areas where we have expertise? And so my I focus more on that. So I spend some time with, with people.
And as a fellowship, you may not know it, there's actually a fellowship. Of Evan Del Seminary presidents across the whole country. We meet together, we pray together. We have meetings, we talk, We are all, all in fellowship together. And there's several ones of those that I spend a lot of extra time with that have asked or reached out to me in some ways.
So I think it in my whole life, over the, through my life is, the people I've done is different. But that seems to be the group that I mostly spend time with.
Tony: In the process of writing this resource I, I'm, I'm always curious, how, how did God speak to you? What did you learn, God, that maybe you didn't know or that you needed to be reminded of?
Because I can't imagine you went through the Apostles [00:29:00] Creed, the Lord's Prayer, and the 10 Commandments. You asked a ton of questions. If, if anyone's thinking about picking up this book, one of the things I'll tell you is that it's, it's a lot more than just an information. Like, it, it, it wants to extract information from you.
I want you to wrestle with some things along the way. What happened internally with you as, as you put this out into the world?
Timothy: Well, it's interesting question cuz on the one hand there, it's, it's very familiar territory for me, so I felt very comfortable. Because these are pretty basic Christian things.
But the other hand on the catechesis section where we the 30 questions, this is done in part by asking people what are the questions you have about, about Christianity? And it was a little surprising. I mean, for example, a lot of Christian Young Christians would said to me we have no idea what the purpose of the Old Testament is.
Or, We don't understand the Old Testament. We don't understand the purpose of the law. One of the questions about the. . [00:30:00] And of course I knew enough to know that the Christians really differ about how we relate to the law, and Wesleyans have their own kind of view of it, which is different than a lot of other Christians.
And I really wrestled a lot more with, gosh, you know, how do I talk about this? Because this is meant to be kind of an introduction to Christian faith in general, but they're, some of these questions involve real difference in a church of. . So that was a, a big learning point. The other thing about the Old Testament, which comes out in the the letter part of, part one of the book was that people asked me a lot, I have no idea that the Old Testament, it's a whole big mystery to me.
I, the whole thing's just a big, big thick book. How do you get started? What, what do you do? I mean, that was a big issue. Nobody felt courage to like jump into the Old Testament and read from Genesis of Malachi. And so I realized that and also how it relates to the New Testament. So I realized, you know, if you know four figures, you know [00:31:00] Adam, Abraham, Moses, and David, if you just enters those four figures, basically the Old Testament really does open up for you and the New Testament finally makes sense.
Cuz if you know this, those four figures, that's the main way the New Testament relates to the old is to Adam Abraham, Moses, and. . And so it actually helped me to think through, like as a leader, like how do you explain the Old Testament? Somebody who's like, it's all mystery to me. I can't, I can't, I didn't know where to start.
So there, there are ways in which the book always helps you, because to me the teaching is the art of summarization. And whenever you can't summarize something, it means you're not, you don't really know it. And so when someone says, Give me a summer of the Old Testament, and you can't do it well, it means that you yourself need to learn it better.
And so I did find it was helpful for me to think through how to explain things to people who have never really encountered the faith.
Tony: Oh, that's good. [00:32:00] As this book by the time people listen to this, the book will have been out in the world for almost a year. What is your prayer? And, and having this out here, if someone picks up this book, but listen to this conversation, they're like, Man, this is exactly what I need.
What, what should we be praying alongside you? Because I know my, my community loves to pray. What should we be praying alongside you as people put this book in their hands? .
Timothy: Well, what we pray for is disciple believers. And I, I think that you know, the Gen Z the gen, the alpha generation are hungry for people to, to say to them being a Christian actually means something.
And I think we, we have a long period of minimalistic Christianity where basically the evangelical movement is asked the question. What is the least someone has to do to become a Christian? That's been our mantra. Our, that's been our unfortunately, our, you know, prom directive. You know, what is the least one has to do?
[00:33:00] We try to lower the bar. I think we have to declare that project over, and I think we, we're now in a new phase where people are saying, Now I want to know what is, what is Christianity? What Give, give it to me full strength. I want it. Give me the Tabasco. I, I don't want to just, you know, have give me the whole thing.
So this is really laying out okay, this is the foundation you need to build on. And of course, from this foundation you can build the rest of your life. But I do think that that the church can pray, your church can pray, that we get beyond the minimalistic Christianity that has obviously failed us and failed our culture and moved to a more robust.
Non eroded. We, well, we, I mean, I look at myself and say, if I was 20 years old today and the gospel that's being kind of pard about today, would I be a Christian? Answer is no. I would never, I would never be attracted to faith because I would not be interested in what's being put out there today. So we have to realize there's people out there that are actually [00:34:00] praying for and, and, and don't realize it, but they're longing for something really, really robust and we should give it to 'em.
That's good.
Tony: That's good. I like that a lot. Since I have you, I, I'd be remiss if I didn't ask a question about the next generation of pastor. Right. You're, you're training them up and sending them out. Asbury's, you know, one of the premier institutions for that. What do you see the next generation of pastors?
What do you see in them? What, what what words of wisdom do you have or their future church members, because there's a lot of people listening who are gonna be in a church that's pastored by this next wave of leaders. What what words of wisdom do you have?
Timothy: Well, I love, I love our young people.
I love their energy. I love their, their creativity. I love their innovative commitments. I love their, their desire to get, get it done. I'm kind of very inspirational, [00:35:00] so I think we're going to a period where the church, as we know, a lot of what we know at the church has to die, but Jesus said, unless they're gonna weed Paul are gonna die.
It will not bear fruit. So we have to go through the death. Quite a bit of kind of institutional life Christianity and really see something else reborn. I think our generation was very reticent to, to accept that and to even embrace it. The death of anything. We, we want to kind of keep these institutions rolling.
Yeah. But I think this, this generation understands that that won't, that won't work. And we have to see that births are being new. We're we're seeing for. You know, thousands of church plants. We, we've trained already over a thousand church planters at Asbury since I've been here, and we're launching a whole new center for trip publication.
And what we're seeing is churches that are being planted, you know, in tattoo parlors, in pubs, in Home Depot, break rooms, you know, schools, whatever. It, it's a very different [00:36:00] world. A lot of house church movement, a lot of banded Together. We have thousands in small group bands, and these bands are. Movements.
And so our new room conference and our, and our seed bed publishing is unbelievably growing. And so the new room conference we had just a few weeks ago, we had almost 3000 leaders there. You know, these are people wanting to grow and wanting to be brought to something deeper. So I think it's very exciting.
I look out over the new room conference and 78 years ago when we first started, it was a lot of older pastor. Which was wonderful. But today I look out over the the congregation this past two weeks ago, and it was just packed with mostly young people. Wow. And we have now a collegiate initiative called The Awakening Project, which is going around and meeting these groups across the country in college campuses.
You would not believe of the fervent prayer groups that are all over this country by [00:37:00] very young people. . And so I think there's a lot that you, You know, the news, you know, is one thing, but beneath the news there's the reality. And I think there's a lot of deep, powerful things happening in the church in North America.
And by the way, in Europe where the church is, they're ahead of us in terms of the death process. And the church there realizes it's dead and there's now some amazing ener energizing things happening in Europe where we had all kind of given up hope for. So I do think that this is a great time to be part of training young people through the ministry.
I love that.
Tony: I love it. Okay. One more question to ask you. But before I do, I know that my listeners are gonna want to connect you with you all over the innerwebs. We're the best thing to learn more about what God's doing in and through you.
Timothy: You mean on the internet? Yeah. Well, timothy ten.com is my website, and so I have 'em there.
My, my sermons, my publications, various things I think about, what are my blogs, whatever, so people [00:38:00] can connect there. All my blogs allow people to write in and they can write in and tell me what they think about anything. I say , which is great. Oh, that's great. I'm happy to have interaction with people.
But yes, by all means in, in the Wesleyan Church I was at their headquarters recently. I'm so thankful for them, and, and we serve constituencies all the way across, you know, Pentecostal to Anglican and all the, all the Wesleyan denominations. We are so happy. We, and I one enjoy this job is getting to know people from all of these different groups.
So we're, we're thankful for all of 'em.
Tony: Amen. That's great. Okay, last question. I always love to ask people, it's an advice question. I'm gonna ask you to go back and give yourself one piece of. Except I get to name the season with yourself. That advice,
Timothy: I mean, I'm asking myself. I'm talking to myself 20 years ago or
Tony: 30 years ago.
Yeah. Yep, That's exactly right. I'm gonna take you back to the day before you started as the president of Asbury Seminary, 2009. If you could [00:39:00] pull up a chair in front of that younger version of yourself, sit knee and knee with him, look him in the eyes. What's the one piece of wisdom you're gonna give him?
Timothy: I would say to him, Take a deep breath. It's go, This journey's gonna be okay. You don't, you don't need to freak out. It's gonna be okay. And and just trust the Lord. To trust the Lord more, you know, to do his work and to do even beyond anything you can imagine. Because this job has been, not been about my competency, but about God's faithfulness.
And that's been a great, great thing about this journey is God has met. And show me that he's doing his work. Amen.
Tony: Amen. Timothy, thank you so much for being so generous with your time today. Thank you. And for pouring into the next generation. I'm praying that this resource continues to reach churches and church leaders and just, you know, church members all over the world.
So,
Timothy: Thank you, Tony. Been a great [00:40:00] blessing. God bless you. And your, your those who listen to your podcast.
Tony: What an amazing conversation with Dr. 10. I absolutely love his heart for the church. I love his heart for the faith, and I think his resource foundations of the Christian faith is one that you might wanna consider picking up.
There's so many great things in there. I know you're gonna. Guys, I'm thankful for each and every one of you, thankful to be on this journey with you and for the community that we get to build here on the Reclamation Podcast. And remember, guys, if you wanna follow Jesus, you must be willing to move.
