Name:
Timothy Paul Jones
E-mail:
timothy@timothypauljones.com
Location: Catoosa, Oklahoma
Birthday: 16 January, 1973
Bio: Timothy Paul Jones is the pastor of First Baptist Church of Rolling Hills, a growing congregation on the outskirts of Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to bachelor's and master's degrees in biblical studies and pastoral ministry, Timothy has earned the doctorate in educational leadership from The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. He is a recipient of the Baker Book House Award for excellence in theological studies and of the North American Professors of Christian Education Scholastic Recognition Award for his doctoral work in the field of spiritual formation.
Timothy has served as a visiting professor of biblical languages at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and in Oklahoma Baptist University's Ministry Training Institute.
Timothy has been married to his wife, Rayann, since 1994. In 2003, they became the adoptive parents of Hannah, a seven-year-old girl from Romania. Hannah and her daddy spend their evenings playing Star Wars Attacktix on the dining room table and chasing each other around the house with lightsabers.
Interests: If I were to summarize the emphases of my Christian life in three phases, they would be ...
... be saved,
... be better, and
... be with.
Being saved
I first professed faith in Jesus Christ as a five-year-old preacher's kid, gripping the pew in front of me at a revival meeting in rural Missouri. My profession was sincere, but I struggled for years with the question, "Have I really been saved?" It didn't help when well-meaning children's workers assured me, "If you really meant it with your whole heart, you're saved." But what if I meant it with my whole brain instead? Or my whole pancreas, for that matter? What would God do then? It also didn't help that, by the time I entered seventh grade, external evidences that I was a follower of Jesus were few.
Being better
At some point near the end of ninth grade, a spiritual shift occurred in my life, and I began to live as if God's desire was for me to be better.
This phase began as an inner recognition that struck without warning as I meandered across a softball field at a moment when the ending of spring and the beginning of summer had blurred together. Somewhere between third base and the pitcher's mound, I became aware of the fact that, deep within, I really wanted to do what God desired. The goal of my spiritual life suddenly became, to borrow Dallas Willard's term, sin-management---the identification and elimination of every iniquitous deed and desire. During the years that followed, I spent more time than I care to recall engaging in spiritual self-deprecation, but I did grow significantly as a Christian. I also sensed the inner calling by which I became aware that I would become a vocational minister.
During college, I encountered a deluge of new ideas that challenged me to ask, "Is my faith true?" (In retrospect, none of the ideas were overly novel or liberal. To someone who had been nurtured with the assumption that no legitimate English translation of the Bible had been produced since 1611, however, the broader world of an evangelical Bible college was a faith-shaking experience.) In the end, although I continued to struggle with issues of the accuracy of Scripture, I found that a denial of Christian faith raised more questions than it answered, and I continued toward the goal of becoming a pastor. I chose to attend seminary at an institution that, when I enrolled, was one of the last Southern Baptist seminaries to lean more left than right.
During the three years I spent at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, the institution shifted into alignment with the more conservative direction of the Southern Baptist Convention. I despised and derided this shift until my final year, when I completed my New Testament studies under Dr. F. Alan Tomlinson. Dr. Tomlinson, a recent graduate of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, was a staunch inerrantist with a gentle spirit. Perhaps most important, he was the finest New Testament scholar I have ever encountered. Unlike many of the professors who had descended on Midwestern during the institution's hard turn to the right, he never once attacked fellow-scholars who embraced more liberal theological perspectives. He simply dismantled their arguments---slowly, deliberately, and graciously. By the time I completed my Master of Divinity, I had embraced an inerrantist position. A few years later, when I decided on a school at which to pursue my doctorate, I looked toward Dr. Tomlinson's alma mater, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. As a result of spending time on both sides of the liberal-conservative divide in Southern Baptist life, I suppose that, though I do believe in the absolute inerrancy and authority of Scripture, I have a deep appreciation for perspectives beyond my own.
Being with
It was a book contract that initiated the movement in my Christian life from be better to be with. In 2001, Servant Publications contacted me and asked me to write a book entitled Prayers Jesus Prayed. As I studied the prayer life of Jesus, I recognized cavernous gaps in my own spiritual life. In an attempt to fill these gaps, I began to read authors that I had never encountered before---Brennan Manning, Henri J.M. Nouwen, Madeleine L'Engle, and Frederick Buechner among them.
As I read these authors, I was enduring some of the most difficult months I had ever faced. In a single year, my wife and I were told that we could not have biological children, and we chose to pursue adoption only to have three birthmothers renege once the infants were born---all of this while completing a doctoral dissertation on spiritual formation! And, indeed, I was spiritually formed: I recognized that what God desires most is not for me to be saved or to be better; what God wants most is for me to be with him, simply to live moment-by-moment in his presence (see, e.g., Mark 3:14; Luke 23:43; John 17:24).
That's where I happen to be spiritually at the moment, recognizing that my most profound need is nothing more or less than to be with God. In this, there is no doubt that I am saved, and there is progress toward being better---but being saved and being better are no longer the goal.
There may be a stage of spiritual development beyond this one; I have theoretically posited one, after all. As such, I suppose that I am bound to remain on this expedition, if only to see whether or not I?m right. But, so far, it's a good road, and, for the most part, I'm enjoying the journey.
Blog Created: Friday, 8 February 2008
Last Updated: Friday, 30 April 2010 - 5:20 PM EDT
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