Blog Archives - Page 14 of 23 - Timothy Paul Jones

Church History: Father’s Day without a Father and the Unsung Stanzas of Amazing Grace

21st June 2015

Today, for the fourth year, I experience Father’s Day as a father but without a living father. My father passed away in the late summer of 2011. As far back as I can remember, his favorite hymn was “Amazing Grace.” I do not recall this song ever being sung without it drawing tears from his eyes. […]

Apologetics: A New Teaching Series on How We Got the Bible

4th June 2015

A few weeks from now, Rose Publishing will release a new book and video series entitled How We Got the Bible. The topic of the book and video series is—you guessed it!—how we got the Bible. (Click here for a quick peek at the video production process.) Here are a few of the topics I cover in […]

Apologetics: Why the “Lost Gospels” Were Lost

2nd June 2015

In 1945, a farmer named Muhammad ‘Ali al-Samman found a trove of ancient codices while searching for fertilizer. He and his brothers returned home with the thirteen papyrus books. That’s when his mother apparently used a few of the papyri as kindling in their stone oven.[i] Most of the texts, however, survived the kindling pile and […]

Apologetics: Early Testimonies about the New Testament Gospels

26th May 2015

In an earlier blog post, I explored the evidence that the four New Testament Gospels were linked with the names Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John from the time they first began to circulate in the churches. In this post, I want to dig a bit deeper into specific first- and second-century testimonies about the authorship of the […]

Apologetics: Who Really Wrote the Gospels?

12th May 2015

So who really wrote the Gospels? How do we know that Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John dictated the books that bear their names? According to skeptics, these four first-century personalities had little or nothing to do with the four New Testament Gospels. One scholar of the more skeptical sort has described the process in this way:

Apologetics: Were the Gospels Written While the Eyewitnesses Were Still Alive?

5th May 2015

“The four Gospels that made it into the official canon were chosen,” Richard Dawkins declares in The God Delusion, “more or less arbitrarily, out of a larger sample of at least a dozen including the Gospels of Thomas, Peter, Nicodemus, Bartholomew, and Mary Magdalene. … The Gospels that didn’t make it were omitted by…ecclesiastics perhaps because […]

Family Ministry: Living in a Story that Leaves an Impression

4th March 2015

2015-02-22 Dr Timothy Jones from Tri-Cities Baptist Church on Vimeo.

Apologetics: Two Reasons Not to Use When Sharing Your Faith

5th January 2015

In my years as a pastor and professor, I’ve spoken with thousands of people—most of them firm believers in the biblical perspective on Jesus—about Christian apologetics and the historical foundations of their faith. In the process, I’ve heard multitudes of well-meaning Christians provide two particular reasons for their faith. The first reason runs something like this: “I just know Jesus […]

Church History: The Story of the Real Santa Claus

2nd December 2014

Today, St. Nicholas is mostly known as a paunchy old geezer who spends one night each year breaking into people’s houses and stealing cookies before escaping to an Arctic hideaway where elves do his work for him. Kind of creepy when you think about it. The good news is that none of this was what […]

PROOF: Martin Luther on Beards and Human Depravity

31st October 2014

There’s nothing we can do to change our sinful nature. From time to time, we may have calmed our consciences by pulling the plug on a sinful habit or two. Perhaps we flushed a few pills down the toilet, vowed not to gossip so much about our coworkers, or made a New Year’s resolution to […]

Family Ministry: The D6 Conference Celebrates Six Years

13th October 2014

D6 launched its first family ministry conference in 2009. Six years later, the D6 Conference has developed into a global community of leaders who are forming the future of family ministry. I’ve been privileged to partner with D6 since 2010, championing an environment where the church and home work together to shape the next generation. […]

Family Ministry: Join Me for Free Dinner and Family Ministry Forum at D6 Conference in Louisville

28th September 2014

Are you planning to attend the D6 Conference in Louisville? While you’re enjoying D6 Louisville, the Billy Graham School of Missions, Evangelism, and Ministry at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary wants: * to take you to dinner, * to provide you with transportation to and from dinner, * to give you an opportunity to receive […]

Proclamation: The Search for a Shining Face

19th September 2014

God sent a shining face from beyond the sun, the wisdom of God in human flesh. Solomon once asked, “Who is like the wise?” (Ecclesiastes 8:1). God’s answer in the New Testament is, “This one, the eternal wisdom of God in a virgin’s womb. Here he is.” The Search for the Shining Face from Southern […]

Family Ministry: How a Biblical Worldview Shapes the Way We Teach Our Children

1st August 2014

To have a biblical worldview is to interpret every aspect of our lives—including our relationships with children—within the framework of God’s story. At the center of God’s story stands this singular act: In Jesus Christ, God personally intersected human history and redeemed humanity at a particular time in a particular place. Yet this central act […]

Leadership: Three Crucial Priorities for Shepherd Leaders

30th July 2014

This post adapted and abridged from The God Who Goes Before You, by Michael S. Wilder and Timothy Paul Jones (Nashville: B&H, forthcoming). ________ A couple of years ago, an individual who thought he might be called to pastoral ministry informed me, “I love to teach, and I want to preach—but I can’t stand people.” […]

Family Ministry: Learning to Do Less So That Parents Can Do More

28th July 2014

Parents in your ministry don’t have time to disciple their children—or, at least, that’s the way many of them feel when they look at their weekly to-do lists. According to recent research in the field of family ministry, half of all church-involved parents have simply resigned themselves to the notion that their families are too […]

Church History: Why Does Church History Even Matter?

25th July 2014

Why does it matter if Christians know the history of their faith? Well, imagine trying to sustain a marriage with total amnesia, never fully aware of all the past experiences that you and your spouse have shared. Sure, it’s possible sustain such a relationship—and many people whose husbands or wives suffer from dementia valiantly do […]

Family Ministry: In Praise of Inefficiency

24th July 2014

I saw something beautiful the other day while walking down Breckenridge Lane. In a front yard not far from my home, a young mother was removing a layer of leftover leaves from the fall in preparation for planting spring flowers—an ordinary activity in the middle of an ordinary day. What was extraordinary about this scene […]

PROOF: The Pirates are Coming

11th July 2014

PROOF and the doctrines of grace are the theme for this year’s Vacation Bible School at Sojourn Community Church—and it’s all wrapped up in a high-seas pirate adventure! Look carefully in the video, and you’ll see PROOF coauthor Timothy Paul Jones falling to the deck with the rest of the Sojourn VBS pirate crew. Be […]

PROOF: Cutting through the Confusion about What to Call “the New Calvinism” (Part 2)

25th June 2014

For part one of this series on naming the “New Calvinism,” click here. A Trinity of “Neo’s”: Neo-Calvinist, Neo-Puritan, Neo-Reformed The relatively recent introduction of “neo-Calvinist” to describe the latest resurgence of interest in Reformation theology has muddied the semantic waters even more—but not because “neo-Calvinist” or “new Calvinist” carries too many different meanings (not […]