God used Bill Tinsley's book to transform discouragement into lifelong passion.
To meet your hero can be an utterly profound thing. To spend precious moments with a life-altering personality that you had followed only from a distance has a curious way of sifting one’s thoughts. To meet the very person whose writings have made such an indelible imprint on your own life’s trajectory must be one of life’s greatest privileges.
And I had that joy.
Several years ago, I was speaking at a large gathering of church planting leaders where I was sharing something of the story of how we had seen God do amazing things in our church planting work in the Greater Toronto area.
During one of the meal breaks, I was loading my plate at the buffet, and across from me, below the “sneeze guard,” I could see a name tag which read, “Bill Tinsley.” Losing all interest in my immediate task, I cautiously asked, “Excuse me sir, are you the Dr. William Tinsley who wrote the book, Upon This Rock?”
He said, “Well, yes I am. Please call me Bill.”
I pressed further. “Would you have a few minutes to chat?” Bill gestured to the tables, “Why don’t we eat together?”
And so we did. With a sense of holy anticipation, I began to relate to Dr. Tinsley where I was spiritually and emotionally before reading his book—and how God used it to change everything about my present, and the trajectory of my future. If there was one man, one book, that God used more any other, it was the man across the table from me.
Let me explain.
As I write this, I am traveling to a global church planting conference in Thessaloniki, Greece. Church planting leaders from 95 countries around the world will be gathering in the very city where Paul requested prayer for the “gospel ...
from Christianity Today Magazine https://ift.tt/2MfZWf1
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