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SP R I N G 2 0 2 1
A Semi-annual Report to Friends of Bethlehem College & Seminary
From Chaos to Creation and Back Again How Christ Reconstructs Male and Female in a Time of Deconstruction
Also: The Master’s Builder A Tribute to Dr. Timothy C. Tomlinson
WOVEN TOGETHER: BY TIM TOMLINSON
From the President
NEWS & EVENTS
With Deep Gratitude for All EVENTS
As you might expect, I’ve spent considerable time in recent weeks reflecting on my tenure as president of Bethlehem College & Seminary. These twelve-plus years have gone so fast. And so much has happened over these years. The Lord has worked among us in such clear, and sometimes dramatic, ways that it has been awe-inspiring to behold. So has it been worth it? Absolutely! I can think of no other potential investment of my time and energy more worthwhile than being able to play a part in the founding of Bethlehem College & Seminary. the Lord has blessed them many times over for their visionary support and encouragement to us. 5. The many friends and encouragers at other like-minded schools around the country who gave of their time to help us. They were all willing to share their wisdom and knowledge with me, and we became friends in the process. 6. Bethlehem Baptist Church’s openness to our vision and willingness to share her space with us and the time and expertise of her staff and pastors. Our unique vision for this new model of Tim Tomlinson, President, Bethlehem College & Seminary theological education would not have been possible without the But most of all, as I reflect on God’s amazing goodgracious and willing participation of the church and ness and grace toward the school, and toward me, her leaders. I am so grateful to everyone at Bethlehem I am thankful. While I am thankful for many things, Baptist Church who has made this school possible! I want to share with you ten specific things for which 7. The challenges (both at the school and in my I am especially thankful. personal life) that the Lord used to show me more I am thankful for: of Himself. Even though we can be battered by life’s 1. The board of trustees of Bethlehem College & challenges, they are the means to growing in faith, Seminary. I am so grateful for these trustees and their hope, and trust in the Lord. And the Lord has carried dedication to the vision and mission of Bethlehem us through them all so far by His unfathomable riches College & Seminary. They have played such a key role of mercy and grace. in making this school a reality. And then they had 8. The joy of fellowship and comradery with the courage and faith to take a chance on me to help like-minded brothers and sisters at the school. One of get this school off the ground. I am deeply grateful the key attributes of Bethlehem College & Seminary to them for this opportunity (which I have loved), is that it’s a confessional school. When you can the support they have given me over the years, and assemble a faculty and staff who all believe the same for the friendships I have with each of them. I love robust doctrines, then you can have a sense of unity, these men. comradery, and singlemindedness of purpose that is 2. The faculty and staff who took a chance coming rare and unique in Christian higher education. to the school in our early start-up phase. As we began 9. My wife. I honestly don’t know how I could the process of building a faculty and staff, the caliber have done this job without her. Her wisdom, her of candidates was astonishing for such an unknown gracious heart for hospitality, and her kindness to and unique institution as ours. I thank the Lord for everyone have enabled me to serve the school in ways these men and women who were willing to take a that would have been impossible without her. I estichance on this new, upstart institution. mate that she has likely cooked and served over 1,000 3. The students who also took a chance! I was then, meals to students and faculty/staff during the last 12+ and I still am, in awe of the willingness of our earliest years. She has mentored many of our female students students to come to a school with no history, no and played a huge role at home, enabling me to be track record, and no campus of its own. Yet they were gone on trips or away during evening meetings and willing to come because of the appeal of our unique encouraging me nearly every day. I thank the Lord for vision, mission, and approach to theological higher Anita Tomlinson! education. We wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been for these 10. The glorious future that awaits all who put their early pioneering students who willingly grew along faith in Jesus. Everything on earth is ultimately pointwith the school. ing toward the glorious future that awaits those who 4. The “early adopter” donors/contributors. My put their faith in Jesus Christ. History will one day be respect and admiration and thanksgiving for those consummated, Christ will reveal Himself to everyone, individuals, couples, and families who contributed and the elect will be joined with Him in Glory—life financially during the very early days of Bethlehem everlasting with the King of Kings and Lord of Lords College & Seminary has only grown stronger as time in a beautiful, perfect new world! has passed. They gave in faith and hope that the So, my dear friends, thank you for your faith, your school would “amount to something.” They invested trust, your prayers, and your partnership in launching in kingdom work that, at the time, was still more of a this remarkable school. I am deeply grateful to my promise than a reality. Yet they believed we could do God and King, and to you all as partners in this great it. They trusted the vision and were led of the Lord to gospel work, for the privilege of serving as the first give of their resources to found this school. I pray that president of Bethlehem College & Seminary. Tim Tomlinson President 2
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The Inauguration of Dr. Joseph James Rigney as the 2nd President of Bethlehem College & Seminary Friday, September 24, 2021, 7pm Downtown Campus, Minneapolis.
The Inauguration Of Dr. Joseph James Rigney as the 2nd President of Bethlehem College & Seminary
IT’S BACK
The Bethlehem Conference for Pastors + Church Leaders February 7—9, 2022. Hilton Minneapolis. Details to follow.
LEADERSHIP AND FACULTY UPDATES
Jonathon Woodyard, (M.Div. ’16) has been named Dean of Admissions and Assistant Professor of Theology and History
David R. Coleman, (Ph.D., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been named Rochester Site Coordinator and Assistant Professor of Theology and Global Studies Joshua M. Greever, (Ph.D., The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary) has been named Assistant Professor of New Testament
David M. Haines, (Ph.D., Université Laval, Québec, QC) has been named Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Theology
Betsy Howard, (M.A., University of St. Thomas, St. Paul) has been named Assistant Professor of Literature
NEWS
Tom Boyer, (M.Div. ’20) has been named pastor of Emmaus Church, White Bear Lake, MN
From Chaos to Creation and Back Again How Christ Reconstructs Male and Female in a Time of Deconstruction
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ry saying towel,” I told my kids as we barreled down the freeway toward home. They were on a quest to discover which words would deconstruct as you said them over and over again. Have you ever tried it? Have you ever repeated a word over and over until it doesn’t sound the way it ought to sound in your ears because it seems to disconnect itself from the meaning it should be representing? It’s as though the word disintegrates in your mouth, becoming only utterances of consonants and vowels. The parts replace the sum; mere letters replace the word. Nonsense replaces meaning. I was reminded of C.S. Lewis’s commentary on self-consciousness, “…it is disastrous when instead of merely attending to a rose we are forced to think of ourselves looking at the rose, with a certain type of mind and certain type of eyes. It is disastrous because, if you are not very careful, the color of the rose gets attributed to our optic nerves and its scent to our noses, and in the end there is no rose left.”
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“No Rose Left”
Lewis’s description is similar to the phenomenon my kids were after in the car—that is to say, there is a kind of attentiveness, a kind of seeing or saying or tasting or touching or hearing, that ultimately deconstructs the thing on which its attention is fixed. A word is no longer a word. A rose is no longer a rose. A man is no longer a man. A woman is no longer a woman. When our perceptions overtake the thing they are perceiving they become a reality bigger than the thing itself, leaving the thing itself behind. A spoken word becomes no more than the noise that hits my eardrums, a rose no more than the scent in my nose and the glint in my eye, a man no more than muscle fibers and cells and hair and appendages; so, too, with a woman. Therefore, who is to say that certain curves or types of appendages or amount of muscle fibers could in any way distinguish between male and female? And perhaps even more to the point, who would dare to assign meaning to such a collection of parts? Lewis instructs us again through an interaction between Eustace and Aslan in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, “‘In our world,’ said Eustace, ‘a star is a huge ball of flaming gas.’ ‘Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.’”
Re-Creating Chaos
Before God created the world, “the earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters” (Genesis 1:2). Into this dark chaos—this formless disorder—God’s voice spoke order, meaning, light! Raw materials were shaped and fashioned with purpose and meaning. Was there ever such a perfectly productive word as the word of the Lord? With his great wisdom, all he spoke came to pass. Yet we know how the story goes. Evil lurked in the shadows, waiting for its opportunity to corrupt the “very good” pinnacle of God’s work: mankind. When the cunning serpent spoke to Eve, his words were not perfectly productive, they were perfectly destructive. And she succumbed to his temptation. Swallowing whole Satan’s lies, she spat out the good words of instruction from her Creator. Mistrust was her food, cynicism her lens, and pride her destination. Adam’s fall began the slow unraveling—the slow de-creation toward chaos and death from the order and life God had spoken. And lo, these millennia later, in the year 2021, we are experiencing the sharp pain of that descent into chaos even still––perhaps never quite as acutely than in the societal upheaval around manhood and womanhood. As our society has tried to apprehend manhood and womanhood, it has reduced it to one’s own sense of things, just as with Lewis’s rose. Its unrelenting attentions to sex and gender have only served to deconstruct it. America has no monuments to Baal or goddess temples to show for our spiritual pride. Rather, our own feelings are the new Baal; human perception is the new goddess that demands a sacrifice. And the sacrifices we have offered in worship to our human selves have been great indeed. It is alarming to some older feminists that their labor to bring forth a better world for women ended up giving birth to a movement that seeks the annihilation of women altogether. Many now have embraced that erasure as an opportunity for re-creation—only in this self-creation, perception is the only existence.
Scotch Tape Humanity
Into the western world’s self-wrought chaos and confusion over what we are, many are trying with all their might to speak loudly enough to drown out the ever-present voice of the Lord that continues to create day after day after day. God continues to cause the sun to rise, the rain to fall, and small boys and girls to be knitted together in mothers’ wombs. He continues to speak order into every cell and molecule—continues to weave meaning and purpose and design into existence. He continues to give to all: life and breath and everything (Acts 17:25). But the voices of proud men and women shout rebellion, advocating for a humanity in which parts can be cut off, new ones attached, hormones administered, and renaming applied. The confusion over ‘what we are’ is not primarily a confusion about whether we are men or women, lesbian or gay or bisexual. The confusion is over whether or not we are God. And it is from this fundamental seed of pride that all the other confusions grow. As humanity de-creates itself, it then attempts to stand over the void of formlessness and chaos to speak its own words of self-making. Where there once was male, it speaks female. Where there once was girl, it speaks boy. Where there once was femininity, it speaks masculinity. Where there once a design of fruitfulness, it speaks sterility. Our sinful, depraved, and poverty-stricken state means that even in our attempt to destroy the Maker’s work, we must rely on that same God-supplied creation for the materials available to us to undo his world and tape it back together upside down. We have no other material to work with.
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My view of God is forever larger and grander, more intricate and more intimate, because of my classes at Bethlehem College & Seminary. – M. Hayse, B.A. ’20
My faith is deeper and my understanding broader due to the work God has done, particularly in my doctrine and literature classes and in the Bethlehem community. – Rachael Jolivette (Class of 2023)
My Bethlehem College & Seminary education equipped me to find my place in the church by shaping a biblically informed, joy-filled vision for what I am passionate about: loving God and others. – Ruth Winslow, B.A. ’19
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The framework I've been given for rightly understanding and interpreting the Bible has helped me to draw out the main point of Bible stories when teaching my children. – Amelia Schumann, B.A. ’15
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In our polarized world, it’s significant to say that Bethlehem taught me to listen attentively, engage charitably, and consider humbly—and only then to critique. – Christina Boyum, B.A. ’19
After four years of college, I have come to the conclusion that I will never be done learning. I know my Savior better and have a better understanding of my role as a woman through the books I've read and the classes I've had. – Alaina Rudin (Class of 2022)
And just as God not only speaks reality into existence, but also declares truths about himself in his speech (Psalm 19:1–6), so too in humanity’s attempt to re-speak itself into something self-made, it reveals much about itself. The great revealing of sinful humanity is that in our attempts at being God, in our great desire to speak forth something of meaning and substance apart from him, we only ever speak the seeds of destruction. But there is Another who is like us, yet not like us, who offers us a newly spoken word of life.
Hope in the Eternal, Unchangeable Word
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through him, and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (John 1:1–5). Our re-created chaos and darkness has met with Life and Light in the man, Jesus. What’s more, that Life found in the God-Man Jesus was see-able, touch-able, hear-able—in a word, it was perceivable to the senses. John testifies, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us” (1 John 1:1–2). In Jesus, our senses and perceptions—if we will get them on their knees before him through the miraculous work of the Holy Spirit—will not deconstruct into madness and idolatry, but will bear witness to the greatest reality in the universe, namely, that God’s Son is the Word by which all things were made, the Word by which all men and women must be saved, and the Word which recreates a new humanity that is being transformed into his likeness from one degree of glory to the next. The old humanity fell in Adam; the new humanity is buried and raised to life with Christ. The old humanity speaks destruction and death over itself and others; the new humanity speaks order and life as ambassadors of Jesus to whomever would receive him. The old humanity deconstructs through self-exaltation; the new humanity loses itself to gain Christ and with him, everything.
Reestablishing Men and Women
If you are in Christ, then being born a man or being born a woman is stuffed full of meaning and purpose and design. It’s not that the meaning isn’t there for non-Christians; it’s that they cannot see it as they ought, because they rely only on their old eyes to apprehend it, not the new eyes and perceptions of those who trust Jesus. We have good news to share with them—we have hope for a redeemed humanity. We can call them to repentance and faith, to forgiveness of sins through the Lord’s atoning death, and to fullness of life as men and women. In Christ, being a woman is a sturdy and stable reality to which objectively good meaning and purpose belong. In Christ, motherhood is both a physical and spiritual reality, in which the two do not compete, but complement. In Christ, the physical work of keeping and managing a home not only connects to doing good in this life, but stretches into the life to come as it points forward to our eternal home in God. In Christ, our submission to our own husbands isn’t an arbitrary assignment, but a fitting way to reflect the gospel as the weaker vessel. In Christ, being a daughter is a forever reality that has already begun. The simple truth is this: the world is in desperate need of Christian boys and girls, Christian sons and daughters, Christian brothers and sisters, Christian fathers and mothers, Christian uncles and aunts, Christian grandfathers and grandmothers. At a time when the rejection of one’s created self is posing as the ultimate self-love, when the mutilation of the body is being sold as kindness, Christians must be bold in affirming the goodness of male and female and beckoning the wayward sons and daughters home to their Heavenly Father. Manhood and womanhood were spoken by God through Christ in the beginning. And for men and women who have been born again—re-created by Jesus, the Word made fleshconnects manhood and womanhood are redeemed. Our new life in him is not gender neutral, but rather our bodies and DNA exist through him and for him. So now we offer our bodies, be they male or female, as living sacrifices to him, forsaking the idolatry of our feelings and putting every bit of our trust in the unbreakable statute of his Word. By Abigail Dodds, M.A. ’20, Author of (A) Typical Woman: Free, Whole, and Called in Christ, Crossway, 2019
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TO STUDY, PRACTICE, AND TEACH: FACULTY
The Master’s Builder Dr. Timothy C. Tomlinson President 2009 – 2021
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ifty-five miles west of Minneapolis on State Route 12 there sits a structure known to both the locals and catalogers of American architectural eccentricity as “The Mushroom Building.” In that the small, white cylindrical building with a maroon half-sphere roof is so hard to miss, it serves as a waymarker to let passers-by know that they are in Dassel, Minnesota, population 1,449. Had the builders of the Saint Paul and Pacific Railroad in 1868 not encountered intransigent property owners just south of there and been forced to move their line a mile north, there might never have been a community there that would so profoundly shape one of its favorite sons.
“I joke that I was born and raised in Mayberry, an allusion of course to the small-town life depicted in the old Andy Griffith Show,” says Tim Tomlinson. “Everyone knew everyone else, and while I’m sure that not everyone in town was a Christian, everyone that I knew was. There may well have been big and difficult problems in the world, but I wasn’t
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much aware of them during my boyhood. I think of David’s words in Psalm 16:6: ‘The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places; indeed I have a beautiful inheritance.’” Tomlinson’s maternal and paternal grandparents were also from small farming towns near Dassel. In one of those “only in Minnesota” events, his grandfather lost his whole herd of cattle when it fell through the ice on the lake one winter. This
changed young Clyde Tomlinson’s job prospects after his service in World War II. Instead of returning to farming, Tim’s dad learned the construction trade in Minneapolis and then returned to Dassel to establish himself there as a cement and masonry contractor and to start a life and family with his wife, Jeanette. They had three children: two daughters and a son, Timothy Clyde.
“It’s not that my parents were unconcerned for our safety, but my boyhood was simply lived in a different place and time,” Tomlinson recalls. “We ranged about as children. It was not at all unusual for me to head out with my friends and spend the entire day exploring the entire perimeter of a large nearby lake. The freedom of this place encouraged in me a lifetime orientation toward discovering, learning, and building things. I remember building a fourstory treehouse in an old oak. It must have been over 40 feet in the air!” While the Tomlinson family didn’t travel much, the world came to them in the form of missionaries visiting the local church to tell of their gospel endeavors in far-away places. “My parents were always keenly interested in the places where these missionaries were serving,” he remembers. “They would say, ‘Let’s get out the map,’ and then roll it out such that we could gather around and see where we were in relation to where the missionaries were serving. I marveled at the slideshows and film strips they showed about their gospel ambition and fruitfulness. I began to see just how big God’s world was.” Church life was at the center of Tomlinson family life. “I remember even now how proud I was of my father at the time, looking on as he ushered, assisted in the service of communion, or contributed to discussion in a church meeting,” Tomlinson said. Clyde Tomlinson died during church in 1998. Jeanette remained connected and as active as she could be in that same little church until her death in 2019. “It was such a blessing to me that our Bethlehem College & Seminary faculty and students could be in relationship with my mother during those years before the Lord took her home.” Like most high school graduates, Tim didn’t really know what he was supposed to do with his life apart from gaining more education, and in that formal pursuit he was eventually to commit the next 23 years of his life, albeit with several stops, starts,
and detours. “No disrespect to Dad,” he says, “but I knew I didn’t want to be a cement contractor. So, I headed to college.” He followed local friends to nearby St. Cloud State University. Like so many aimless undergraduates he cycled through different majors for three years, first as a psychology major, then philosophy, before settling on communications. The downside of this increase in intentionality was that St. Cloud did not offer a degree in communications, so he transferred to the University of Iowa, earned a B.A. in Communications and then set out to make a mark on his discipline of choice. “My initial thought was to go out to Hollywood and make it big in the film industry,” says Tomlinson. “So I packed my 1968 Ford Fairlane rust bucket with all of my meager belongings and drove to California.”
You don’t know which way the wind blows So how can you plan tomorrow Jesus knows which way the wind blows So give him your tomorrow Believe and receive WHICH WAY THE WIND BLOWS 2ND CHAPTER OF ACTS
H Boyhood in Dassel, Minnesota was a life of dogs, treehouses, adventures, and the care of a close-knit Christian community. Above Right: Tim & Anita with parents Clyde & Jeanette Tomlinson, celebrating the graduate.
e took a circuitous route west, up through Canada and then down the California coastline. With the benefit of hindsight, it appears more clearly that the trip was mapped by a sovereign God. “I set out on this trip believing that I had been saved well before, but as I traveled west to lay my claim on Tinseltown, Jesus Christ laid an even greater claim on my heart and life,” he reflects. “My sister had given me an eight-track tape recorded by thencontemporary Christian artists known as 2nd Chapter of Acts. In that I didn’t have any other tapes with me, and the radio reception was sketchy along the way, I listened to that tape over and over,” he recalls. “The Godward lyrics of those songs imprinted me profoundly, causing me to ponder God in ways I hadn’t done before.”
As he turned south out of Canada, he was welcomed into the home of a Seattle pastor who had previously shepherded the church back home in Dassel. Then he fulfilled a commitment to visit his dad’s cousin near Portland. “He and his wife graciously welcomed me into their home where they had coffee waiting for me. After what I remember to be a most limited exchange of pleasantries, he asked me a direct question: “Tim, do you know Jesus?” Though he assured his cousin that he did indeed know Jesus, the question haunted the entire last leg of his trip. “By the time I go it to Los Angeles, I thought the answer was, ‘No.’” God did not intend that Tim Tomlinson would become the next Steven Spielberg. Try as he might, the opportunities in show business were not forthcoming, but all along the way in L.A., the Lord placed faithful Christian pastors and saints to minister to, feed, shelter, encourage, teach, and pray for this ambitious young man. He left California knowing little about the film industry, but knowing with certainty that he did know Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. “Not knowing what’s next, I opted again for more education,” he says. “I decided to pursue an M.A. degree at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. As a Bible-believing, conservative, and not-particularlyworldly guy from Dassel, I needed to fly under the progressive, even Marxist, radar in order to not get tagged unhelpfully by faculty and fellow students,” he remembers. “But the greatest blessing of my life in Madison was that of meeting an amazing young woman serving as an assistant in the state legislature, Anita Hartl.” “We met at a potluck supper at our church in Madison,” says Anita Tomlinson. “He was a graduate student at the U of W. I was a legislative secretary at the Capitol. It was truly ‘like at first sight’ which blossomed quickly, and we were married 11 months later.”
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Daughter and Her Dad Now as a chef starting a restaurant, I realize just how much God used my dad to bring me where I am in my career as well. As a little girl, I knew he delighted in my budding and diverse interests; he never stopped. He inspired me to think big and outside the box, in faith, and showed me how to put feet to those ideas. He showed me the value of taking risks and exercising patience. He taught me the balance of dreaming and practicality, adventure and responsibility. When I contemplated a jump from full-time ministry to cooking, he said, “How about France?” Later when I plunged into the unknown world of restaurants as many around me were living a different narrative of marriage and family, it was difficult for me to know my place in the Body of Christ. All the while my dad was there—proud of me, praying for the Lord to keep me, and helping me navigate the logistics of adult life. I’ve never doubted his respect for me. As I now deal with the hard work of building a business and doing frontline work in a secular world, I find myself more thankful than ever for my dad—for the godly foundation he has given me and for the role he continues to play in my life. By God’s grace and for His glory, in a world that so deeply needs Him, I hope to steward that well. Karyn Tomlinson, a James Beard Award semi-finalist gourmet chef, recently opened her own fine dining establishment, Myriel, in St. Paul.
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Far left: Mr. and Mrs. Tim Tomlinson, Day 1. Left: Karyn celebrates Dr. Daddy.
Below: Tim greets the school’s future Dean of Admissions, Jonathon Woodyard, MDiv ’16, and a group of pastors.
Left: The ends to which he would go. Tim recruited Dr. Andy Naselli to the Bethlehem College & Seminary faculty on a raft trip through the Grand Canyon in 2011.
Top: Local staff and missionaries at the Quito, Ecuador campus launch. Above: Tim gives the inaguaral address at the launch of University of Northwestern-St. Paul's campus in Quito, Ecuador.
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Like waking up from the longest dream, how real it seemed Until your love broke through I’ve been lost in a fantasy, that blinded me Until your love, until your love broke through YOUR LOVE BROKE THROUGH KEITH GREEN
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eith Green was perhaps the most popular contemporary Christian recording artist of the late 1970s and early ’80s. He appropriated the “piano man” sound of Elton John and Billy Joel for the glory of God and played to mammoth audiences at live evangelistic concerts and distributed his recordings on a “pay what you can afford, or just take them if you can’t” basis. “Anita and I attended a Keith Green concert in Madison and came away not knowing entirely what was next, but on our knees in prayer sensed that whatever it was, it was in full-time Christian ministry,” Tomlinson said. “The message of ‘Jesus above all’ was so clearly expressed in word and song and was irresistible to us,” says Anita. “Keith’s sold-out love for Jesus Christ was so radical. We determined to live our whole life for Christ and for spreading the gospel.” The “Tim Tomlinson approach” to such a change was, of course, more courses—more education. He and Anita moved to Minneapolis where he enrolled at Bethel Seminary and earned an M.A. in Christian Education. “There are two huge milestones of our lives during those Bethel years,” he said. “One of the deans gave me an opportunity to teach a class—and I loved it—and then Anita and I started attending Bethlehem Baptist Church where a young pastor named John Piper was in the pulpit.” Tomlinson began his teaching career as an instructor at Bethel College, but he soon joined the faculty at what is now the University of
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BETHLEHEM COLLEGE & SEMINARY
Northwestern–St. Paul, where Anita was already employed. Northwestern proved a welcome and encouraging home both for the Tomlinsons’ Christ-ignited hearts and, in that the school owned a large network of Christian radio stations, for Professor Tomlinson’s previous training in communications. “I was named chair of the Communications Department after only a couple of years and served in that role for a decade,” Tomlinson said. “When the school needed to build new capabilities in distance education and international outreach, they turned to me as someone who loved—and still loves—to build things.” In the classroom, Tomlinson influenced the vocational and spiritual lives of many students, including Dallas Jenkins, the creator-director of the currently popular The Chosen, the first multi-season series about the life of Christ. “Dallas was and is a natural,” says Tomlinson. “I suppose I see in him, with absolute delight, something of the filmmaker I once thought I might be.” Tomlinson was also a help and encouragement to his peers. “When I joined the faculty at Northwestern, I was new to higher education,” said Dr. Garry Morgan. “Tim was already a dean by that time, and he warmly shared from his years of experience to help me adapt and thrive.” Tim became “Dr. Tomlinson” when he completed his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota in 1994. “I took my time on that one,” he said. “In order to be the kind of husband and father I wanted to be, as by now our daughter Karyn had entered our lives, and to maintain high personal standards for the kind of teacher and administrator I wanted to be, I spent a decade on the doctoral work.” Even during the vigorous multitasking of this period, Tomlinson found time to serve the local church as an elder, Sunday School teacher, and ultimately volunteer “administrator” for The Bethlehem Institute, the church’s adult theological education program for ministrybound young men. In June 1997, John Piper wrote in his journal: I had a very significant lunch with Tim Tomlinson on Wednesday. I think he is going to be a key person in The Bethlehem Institute. …His greatest concern is that we may dream too small. He is very convinced that what we're dreaming about is on the cutting edge of what's happening in theological education in these days.
The Bethlehem Institute became such a popular program that young men were applying from all over the country, and demand grew among the students and apprentices for a full, degree-granting program. Thus was born Bethlehem College & Seminary, and thus was called Dr. Timothy C. Tomlinson to be the school’s first president. “I was at that place at which other men might watch the clock and calculate the time remaining to retirement,” he said. “But my itch to build was not yet fully scratched, and I was pretty sure that I had neither time nor interest in getting yet another degree to pursue some new line of work—though my history might have suggested otherwise. When the call came to help found and lead Bethlehem College & Seminary, I tell people ‘I thought about it—maybe a minute—before answering with an enthusiastic, ‘Yes!’” Psychology, philosophy, communications, theology, education—even the natural history exploration, treehouse-building, and cinderblock-lifting back in Dassel—all these gifts and experiences cohered in God’s defining vocational assignment for the life of Timothy C. Tomlinson. He designed and executed a radical new concept of church-based higher education, championed intentional smallness for the sake of relational depth, and created low-cost delivery and generosity-funded excellence. He assembled a world-class faculty and administrative team. He shepherded the school to third-party accreditation in record time. Most importantly, he held fast to the doctrines of truth and grace. Chancellor John Piper observes, “In the early days, as Bethlehem College & Seminary was coming into being, I wrote in my journal, ‘These are remarkable days in their quietness and low-key momentousness.’ Part of that ‘quiet momentousness’ was Tim Tomlinson’s stepping into the role of founding president for this infant school. We prayed, ‘May the Ruler of the kings of the earth give his undeserved blessing to our efforts to magnify his name.’ Under Dr. Tomlinson’s leadership God has answered this prayer beyond my poor expectations. For the time I have left on earth I will thank God for Tim’s steady, faith-filled, fruitful leadership.” By Rick Segal, Vice President of Advancement, Lecturer of History and Political Philosophy
Left: The accreditation of Bethlehem College & Seminary as a degree-granting institution, in what was regarded as record time, was a signature achievement of the Tomlinson presidency. Below: The Founding Chancellor and President.
One President to Another Over a decade ago, Tim Tomlinson took a risk. Leaving a fruitful position at an established college, he set out to found and lead a new institution of higher education. He did so because he embraced with all his heart the mission of that fledgling school to spread a passion for the supremacy of God in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ. Not only was this school established under his leadership, but we have grown our student body, attracted a world-class faculty, and completed the process of accreditation in record time. As I receive the baton of leadership from Dr. Tomlinson, I am profoundly grateful that he took that risk. More than that, I’m deeply grateful to God for Dr. Tomlinson’s love and concern for the truth that God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him. I’m grateful for his humility, which has been evident to me in his enthusiastic support during this transition. And I’m grateful for his gospelgrounded hope that, by God’s grace, the best years of Bethlehem College & Seminary are yet to come. Dr. Joe Rigney, President-Elect, Assistant Professor of Theology and Literature
SPRING 2021
SERIOUS JOY
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IN LIGHT OF THE GREATEST BOOK
The Isle of Gratitude:
Later on, Crusoe says that he believes God shipwrecked him on the island to teach him gratitude. While reflecting on his time in on his plantation in Brazil, he recalls feeling regretful and dissatisfied with his circumstances:
Providence and Thankfulness in Robinson Crusoe
This section features some of the best writing by undergraduate students who are studying “Great Books in light of the Greatest Book for the sake of the Great Commission.” After moving to the city, I really missed my family’s home in the suburbs. The lack of green and prevalence of gray wore on my heart. It didn’t seem a matter of the grass being greener on the other side—at least there was grass on the other side! I struggle to be thankful. That is why, ironically, I was thankful to read Robinson Crusoe. If anyone struggled to be thankful, it was Crusoe. And if anyone paid the price for this ingratitude, he did. In this novel, Daniel Defoe weaves together the themes of providence and thankfulness to show that thankfulness is at the heart of the Christian life. He does this in two primary ways: first, by telling parallel stories of how Crusoe comes to the island—one story of misery caused by discontent, the other of a gracious but severe Providence—and then second by showing how Crusoe changes during his time there. The novel opens with a discontent Crusoe. His parents want him to stay in London with them where he could live a prosperous life, but he says that he “would be satisfied with nothing but going to sea” (5). With a grassis-greener-somewhere-out-there attitude, he cannot bring himself to be thankful for the station into which he was born, but rather rejects the advice of his parents and runs away in search of the satisfaction he feels he could have nowhere else but at sea.
After several harrowing adventures at sea, Crusoe settles down to manage a successful plantation in Brazil, but even here he is not satisfied and sets off again on that fateful voyage that would leave him stranded on the Island of Despair. Looking back, he says regretfully: As I had once done thus in my breaking away from my parents, so I could not be content now, but I must go and leave the happy view I had of being a rich and thriving man in my new plantation, only to pursue a rash and immoderate desire of rising faster than the nature of the thing admitted; and thus I cast myself down again into the deepest gulf of human misery (32). In no uncertain terms, he blames his fate on this rash desire for more. Crusoe speaks in similar language all throughout the story leading up to the island, saying of himself that he was “born to be [his] own destroyer” (33). Clearly Crusoe sees his own discontentment as the reason he ends up on the island, and he takes pains to ensure the reader knows that as well. Despite insisting that he himself caused all these miseries, Crusoe also lays out a second, concurrent, and equally true storyline, in which the hand of Providence brings him to the island. We can see God in the details from the first scene of the book. When still in London with his parents, Crusoe receives from his father a prediction that he realizes later was actually quite prophetic: “If I did take this foolish step, God would not bless me, and I would have leisure hereafter to reflect upon having neglected his counsel when there might be none to assist in my recovery” (7). From the start, Crusoe sets up the story with God at work behind the scenes.
I used to say, I liv’d just like a man cast away upon some desolate island, that had no body there but himself. But how just has it been, and how should all men reflect, that when they compare their present conditions with others that are worse, Heaven may oblige them to make the exchange, and be convinced of their former felicity, by their experience (30). The implication here is strong: God ordained that it should be Crusoe’s fate to end up on a real desolate island in order to convince him that his former circumstances were better than he gave them credit for. By telling these two stories, Crusoe highlights how God takes an ungrateful rebel and uses that rebel’s own discontentment to bring him to an island where he will save him and so teach him gratitude. The second major way Defoe intertwines the themes of Providence and thankfulness is through showing how Crusoe changes on the island. The man’s great changes begin when Providence brings him to salvation through a Bible he found in a shipwreck. Crusoe is thankful for this salvation because, through it, he has received more than enough to make up for any physical thing he lacks. Even though he is alone on the island, he feels happier than he could have ever been before, and he gives thanks for this reason: [God] could fully make up to me, the deficiencies of my solitary state, and the want of human society by his presence and the communications of his grace to my soul, supporting, comforting, and encouraging me to depend upon his Providence here, and hope for his eternal presence hereafter (90). Because the Lord has given himself to Crusoe, and all the blessings that come with him, there is always reason to be thankful. Although he admits he may not be
grateful for the island in itself, he is grateful for how God used it to bring him to salvation (91). Furthermore, Crusoe realizes that Providence owes him nothing, allowing him to consider how his situation could be worse. This he does by considering what his time on the island might have been like if God had not graciously provided him with all of the supplies from the shipwreck, which helped him to survive. He is able to find such joy in this and says: “And this part also I cannot but recommend to the reflection of those who are apt in their misery to say, Is any affliction like mine! Let them consider, how much worse the cases of some people are, and their case might have been, if Providence had thought fit” (104). This is a very different Crusoe than the one we see in Brazil ungratefully comparing his luscious plantation to a desolate island. Now he considers how his case could be worse in order to thank God for seeing fit to treat him graciously. Ultimately, by weaving these themes of Providence and thankfulness together throughout the book, Defoe is showing us the centrality of gratitude in the Christian life. Hidden within this adventure novel is a story about how God took an ungrateful rebel and made him thankful by taking away everything he had, but giving the man himself. Woven into this novel is an illustration of how this college student can be grateful even if he is not seeing as much green as he would like in the big city. So now I am counting this book among the list of blessings that I am learning to be thankful for. Now I can look to Robinson Crusoe, who learned gratitude on the Island of Despair. By Devin Thomas Schmidt
Bibliography Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. Edited by John Richetti. London: Penguin Books, 2003.
New By Faculty Authors
Practicing Thankfulness: Cultivating a Grateful Heart in All Circumstances SAM CRABTREE
40 Questions about Biblical Theology ANDY NASELLI CO-AUTHOR
More Than a Battle: How to Experience Victory, Freedom, and Healing from Lust
After Emmaus: How the Church Fulfills the Mission of Christ
Before We Forget: Reflections from New and Seasoned Pastors on Enduring Ministry
JOE RIGNEY
BRIAN TABB
JONATHON WOODYARD CO-EDITOR
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These students have extraordinary financial needs that go beyond the scholarship support already provided to all resident students by generous givers. The Alex Steddom International Student Fund was established to support the financial needs of four international seminary students, annually. The need is presently $185,000. By God’s grace, the fund is replenished every year. Alex Steddom, longtime member of Bethlehem Baptist Church, and son of Pastor Chuck Steddom and his wife Carol, was to have joined Bethlehem College & Seminary as a seminarian in 2015. The Lord called him home while on a mission trip to Northern Ireland, just weeks before school was to start. Alex embodied a real passion for God’s
supremacy in all things for the joy of all peoples through Jesus Christ, and understood deeply that missions exist because worship doesn’t. The Alex Steddom International Student Fund serves to make sure that the seat Alex was to occupy in the seminary will, by God’s grace, always be filled by a student from elsewhere in the world who plans to return to his country with an “Education in Serious Joy.” Graduates without debt are free to answer immediately God’s call on their lives and are made affordable to churches and ministries that need them.
Dieudonné Tamfu,
René González
Chyingtawng
Chinechetam
Benaya Ariel
Edison D'Souza
Ph.D., TBI ’07
El Salvador
Naw Zau Naw
Jeremiah Ogazi
Indonesia
Mysore, Karnataka,
Director, Bethlehem
(Class of ’21)
Myanmar
Lagos, Nigeria
(Class of ’23)
India
(Class of ’21)
(Class of ’22)
College & Seminary-
(Class of ’24)
Cameroon First Grantee of the International Student Fund
The Alex Steddom International Student Fund is a temporarily restricted fund that permits Bethlehem College & Seminary to borrow from it for other purposes, if necessary, at a market rate of interest.
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SPRING 2021
SERIOUS JOY
15
Serious Joy IN THIS ISSUE From the President With Deep Gratitude for All To Study, Practice, and Teach The Master’s Builder: Dr. Timothy C. Tomlinson President 2009 - 2021 From Chaos to Creation and Back Again In Light of The Greatest Book
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We Thank God for You As a church-planter and pastor, I have learned many things about ministry, people, and especially my own heart. With what I learned at Bethlehem College & Seminary I can say that the challenges, questions, joys, and sorrows have made me seek the glory of God and my joy in Christ more and more. However, none of this would have been possible without such an excellent education at such an affordable price. As a pastor, having the peace of mind to launch into ministry without debt enables me to shepherd with simplicity of heart and without monetary burdens. The Serious Joy Scholarship is a commitment of three strands—the donor, the seminary, and the student—but above all, it is the powerful provision of God to raise up pastors whose goal is to care for his flock. Michel Galeano Lead Pastor, Iglesia Gracia Sobre Gracia Weston, Florida Michel, Gabby, Priscilla, and Sebastian
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