A Time to Think

Are you being discipled unawares?

Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh kick off a series on discipleship.

How do we have healthy relationships with those in your farthest circle - coworkers, neighbors, extended family?

Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh talk about friendships outside of the church.

Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh talk about friendships in the church.

What is God calling us to as parents and how do we work that out in our own unique situations?

What does the picture, procreation, and partnership from part 1 of the Defining Relationships: Marriage look like for a couple in the church?

In our day and age, marriage is a term that needs to be defined. Pastor Josh and Pastor Chris break it down.

Romans has one of the clearest passages in the New Testament that lays out sexual codes and their relation to God as a creator. Join Pastor Josh and Pastor Chris for an exegesis of Romans 1.

Pride Month is over, but pride continues with the culture changing to have more unclear language.

Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh reflect on the imagery in Revelation.

The goal of the LGBTQIA+ is no longer to just allow them to celebrate their diversity but to defame the core of the Christian beliefs.

The Pride movement has morphed from protesting those in power, to now being in a position of cultural power.

Pastor Josh and Pastor Chris discuss how to respond to sayings like "Pride Month is just about people expressing themselves" and we seek to be a direct help to parents in answering questions their children may have when seeing Pride displays.

Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss the spiritual gifts of prophecy and tongues.

Pastor Josh and Pastor Chris discuss the Holy Spirit and how he heals.

Pastor Josh and Pastor Chris answer the question, who is the Holy Spirit?

When the church gathers, they come together to be strengthened and when the church is scattered, they are sent to strengthen others.

Every member of a church is valuable and necessary, so use your gifts.

How you use your money is evidence of what you love the most.

Let's think about how you can invite those outside of the church into the church of Christ and how you can invite those inside the church to greater engagement and attendance.

What happens after you show up to church? Don't just turn around and go home; stay and engage. Chris and Josh show that healthy relational engagement is vital to the life and discipleship of the church. Don't underestimate what God will do with simple acts of love as you engage with other believers.

What the church is determines what the church does. As they begin a conversation of the 5 Vowels of Healthy Church Membership, Chris and Josh define who/what the church is before talking about the first vowel: A for attending. To be the church, you must be there!

How do Christians evaluate claims of revival? Recently, national news and Christian social media have been buzzing with talks of revival in a small town in Kentucky. While much of the conversation is about whether or not the revival is real, Chris and Josh spend their time discussing how this event can lead Christians to hope and confidence in the working of God.

On this episode of A Time to Think, Chris and Josh reflect on lessons learned from the Bethlehem Conference for Pastors.

On this episode of A Time to Think, Chris and Josh discuss covenant theology and its importance for Christians today.

On this episode of A Time to Think, Chris and Josh take time to reflect on what it means for theology to be practical.

The plain teachings of Scripture can be understood by a child. This does not make the Bible a simple book, but the clarity of Scripture is such that all things needed to be known for salvation are clear and evident. On this episode of A Time to Think, Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh talk about the God of light who brings light to his children by his clear word.

Enough! In an a la carte world where we may have dozens of sources from different spheres of life giving us advice and direction, the Bible is enough. The Bible is sufficient. While this does not mean the Bible tells us everything about everything, biblical sufficiency means the Bible tells us something about everything. Find out more on this episode of A Time to Think.

How do we know God's word is true? How do we know we can trust the Bible? One of the classic qualities of Scripture is its inerrancy. This doctrine that the Bible is true in what it says butts up against a culture which doubts objective truth.

Who gets to tell me what to do? Our culture believes each individual is the chief authority in their own lives. This fights against the divine right of God to be the authority in our lives. In this episode of A Time to Think, Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh speak about the authority of Scripture and the goodness of God being the authority in our lives.

Why are our resolutions doomed to failure before they even start? Why do we look at days like January 1st or Monday to start next week as the day in which we will begin our new goal? What does God teach us about our resolutions and keeping our promises? Join Pastor Chris Tillman and Pastor Josh Holland as they think through New Year's Resolutions on A Time to Think.

Don't think much when you watch Hallmark movies or Christmas animated films. If you do, you might just find out how peppy yet empty most Christmas messaging is. As usual, Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh are willing to be annoying in order to be helpful, so they decided to tediously comb through a number of song lyrics and movie quotes from popular Christmas media.

Lights, trees, gifts, oh my! Decorations and traditions transform many a home, workplace, and family into a new environment during December. Many of us, without thinking about it, find joy in these decorations. But what if thinking just a bit could bring an even deeper joys to these beloved holiday symbols? Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss.

Christmas is a time of competing symbols and storylines. One storyline centers around the birth of Christ and the other involves the coming of a gift-giving visitor on Christmas Eve. How should Christians consider Santa Claus as a symbol and storyline in the Christmas season? Pastor Josh and Pastor Chris talk about engaging in holiday tradition while remembering that anything Santa can do, Jesus can do better.

Is tuning in the best way to turn off? In our pursuit of rest and relaxation, we often turn to technology (tune in) in order to quiet our minds and escape from the burdens of our lives (turn off). However, we find that turning on media of any sort usually doesn't provide us the rest we desire. Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss this conundrum and what to do about it.

Each time we log on or tune in to digital technology, something is done to us. We are not merely passive engagers in social media or television, we are changed by it. Whether we tend toward anger or anxiety, depression or envy we know that our hearts and minds are affected by the amount of time we spend consuming media and the type of content we consume.

If you don't have a purpose for your device, it will use you rather than you using it. Instead of you controlling your time, television or social media will control your time. In order to not be consumed by our technology, we must pause to reflect on how we purposely engage with the vast amounts of media around us.

Time is a non-renewable resource. When it passes, we cannot get it back. Pondering the fleeting and finite nature of time causes us to consider how much of that non-renewable resource we use on devices. Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss how God reminds us about the nature of time and calls us to use it in a way that honors him.

Headphones have dramatically shifted how we interact with media. Instead of a community of people gathering to listen to a speaker or a musician, now content and music is in the ear of the individual. You may have no idea what the person beside you on a plane or in line at the grocery store is listening to. How does that affect our culture and the church?

Short, opinionated news media has made us disagreeable people. The media we consume has led to a decline in our ability to have basic discourse with others, and instead we spend much of our time focused on how we disagree with others rather than pursuing conversation with them. Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh set aside A Time to Think about the difference between disagreeing and discourse.

Every channel on TV is designed to entertain. Politicians seek to entertain and often pastors do as well. Entertainment culture seeps into every way we encounter information, so Pastor Chris Tillman and Pastor Josh Holland help work through how to approach media content in an entertainment driven world.

We are tempted to spend the great majority of our time thinking of trivial things. Social media, TV entertainment, and the vast amount of content available to consume on the internet lead us to be bombarded by and focused on insignificant things. Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss how to divide our time on media between the trivial and the significant.

For the Christian, being counter-cultural is about more than criticizing ideas outside of the church. The Christian must also fight by creating a better, more persuasive culture within the church. Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh give ideas on how to build attractive cultures which are more beautiful than the competing ideas around them on this episode of A Time To Think.

How do Christians think through being called a bigot or being charged with hate speech? How do thinking people respond in a society which is quick to level personal attacks prior to discussing the substance of an idea? Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss in A Time To Think.

We think we have freedom to chart our own path or create ourselves as we want to be. However, we are not truly free to create ourselves, because we ultimately need someone to like what we create. We need the people around us to affirm or "recognize" who we are as good and right and true. Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss our culture's deep longing for recognition.

We are plastic people in a liquid world. Technological advancements in the realms of transportation, communication, and medication have all lead us to feel that we can shape the world around us and determine our own shape as well. Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss the issues with these changes in thought.

Pastor Josh and Pastor Chris discuss how Sigmund Freud led us to believe that we are primarily sexual creatures.

Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss views of morality divorced from God held by Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Pastor Chris and Pastor Josh discuss what it means to live free.