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Baylyblog has moved: come visit our new home...

Baylyblog has changed its name and moved.

For the latest content, head on over to Out of Our Minds at Warhorn Media.

I don't know why you say goodbye, I say hello...

Dear readers,

I have a couple important announcements about some serious changes taking place, and what's coming next...

First, a few months back, Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson of Warhorn Media sat down with me and we ended up talking for hours about homosexuality. The result is an eight-episode season of a new podcast called The World We Made. I hope you'll download the first episode. Listen, subscribe, and share.

That podcast will air right up until the release of my new book about homosexuality called The Grace of Shame (also releasing from Warhorn Media) which I know many of you are excited about and have been supportive of. Thank you so much for all of your help! I couldn’t have completed it without your encouragement and support.

Second, and maybe most significant for longtime Baylyblog readers…

Some of you may remember Baylyblog began back on March 4, 2004 as a World Magazine blog titled “Out of Our Minds, Too.” World’s owner, Joel Belz, was a longtime family friend and I had worked with Joel and World’s editor and his wife, Marvin and Susan Olasky, in opposing gender neutered Bibles. So when Marvin called to suggest the blog, it seemed like a good fit and a good work.

The opportunity the internet presents us today is similar to the opportunity the printing press presented the Reformers five centuries ago. The Reformers used the printing press to do many things, but especially to pamphleteer, bypassing Rome and going directly to the people. The internet allowed us to bypass the stranglehold the Evangelical and Reformed establishment had on the church in North America. The legacy publishers gnashed their teeth at this threat to their longtime monopoly, and continue to do so, but the battle has been won and the prophetic ministry of local pastors in local churches is no longer dependent upon magazines and brick-and-mortar publishers seeing money in it for themselves.

Baylyblog’s title was originally “Out of Our Minds, Too.” Dad had written a monthly column called “Out of My Mind” which ran in Tenth Presbyterian’s "Eternity Magazine” for twenty-five years, so I asked my brother David to write with me and we stole the name from Dad. After a couple years we moved on from World. World's editorial voice was incompatible with historic Reformed orthodoxy, so we began to host the blog ourselves renaming it Baylyblog.

Now it’s time for another change.

For the last several years I’ve grown in my desire and commitment to write books. This is something our other Clearnote pastors and the elders of Clearnote Church, Bloomington had been pushing me to do for the past fifteen years, but until a year ago, it hadn’t happened.

Then we released the book on fatherhood, God’s and ours, on Father’s Day 2016, titling it Daddy Tried. I hope you’ve read it. If you haven’t, please do. Please get your sons and the fathers and sons of your church to read it. A number of sisters and mothers have read it and appreciated it also, although the book is written for men. If you’ve read it, please post a review on Amazon. We are very limited in getting the word out about the book since legacy publishers haven’t been willing to touch our work. As one CEO of a well-known Evangelical publisher said to me, “Tim, we are not interested in publishing you because you opposed our [gender neutered Bible translation]."

There is a cost to defending the faith against those inside the church with all the money and fame who own the publishing companies and don’t like criticism. But you can help us bear that cost by talking up and buying and reviewing Daddy Tried. Would you please help us get the word out about this book? I get no royalties from it. I signed them over to Warhorn Media. Thank you for your help on this.

Now we have another book ready, and we’re already planning the next book.

As my focus on writing books increases, maintaining this site on my own has grown more difficult, and even distracting. We’ve been arguing about what to do about the pressure of maintaining the blog for some time now, and you’ll recall our decision to remove comments several months ago. In part, that decision was to relieve the pressure I was under to moderate and respond to all the comments.

Also, Baylyblog is long overdue for a redesign. Or rather a total overhaul, and that would be expensive and time-consuming. We’ve fantasized about putting Baylyblog to death, but it doesn’t seem right to do so now.

Instead, we’ve decided to pull the trigger on another solution. Baylyblog is getting a name change and a new place to live.

Let me explain.

image1.PNGWarhorn Media is the new home, and the new title for the blog will be the old title, Out of Our Minds. Warhorn Media is also the home of our new podcast, The World We Made. We hope you will follow along over at Out of Our Minds for future episodes.

I’m excited about these changes. Out of Our Minds will work like a site within a site. I will continue writing on all the things I write about here, but I won’t have to worry about keeping the site floating. Warhorn will take care of that.

Warhorn has an established platform with people already performing all the various tasks that have also needed to be done on Baylyblog (technical maintenance, graphic design, social media engagement, etc.). Warhorn has already been the home of our books and podcasts, along with the Psalms project of My Soul Among Lions and many other works that are dear to my heart.

So it all makes sense. My work has long been part of Warhorn Media, although it’s likely you didn’t know it. I want to build the ministry of the younger men and women who have served me so faithfully all these years. Here at Clearnote Church our beloved Pastor Max Curell likes to remind us that form should follow function, and hence this change.

What can you expect from Out of Our Minds at Warhorn Media?

The same things you’ve come to expect from Baylyblog when it stood alone. I’ll still do most of the writing and editing of “Out of Our Mind’s” content, although we’re hoping a number of other men and women will also contribute content. This content will usually be aimed at church leaders, but also regular folks working to sort out God’s will for the church and world today. We’re hoping most of our faithful Baylyblog readers will find the changes mostly cosmetic in nature.

The past thirteen years of content hosted here will not disappear. Although we don't have a finalized plan, you can rest assured it will remain online. For now, it will remain right where it is. 

Please pray that this move will allow us to unify and strengthen our efforts, as we hope.

So come on over and join us at Out of Our Minds for the continuation of this work each of you dear readers have made such a joy for me over the last thirteen years. You're already familiar with my writing. Here's a taste of the audio content we will be releasing in the coming weeks. 

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Have I mentioned you should subscribe?

Now then, this is the last post on Baylyblog. This blog (to paraphrase John Cleese) is no more, has ceased to be. Bereft of life, it rests in peace. This is an ex-blog.

Love,

Tim

Seeing the threat to his royalties, Eugene Peterson finesses things—making things worse...

Now the Washington Post reports Eugene Peterson is having second thoughts about whether or not he himself (at 84 and retired from the pastorate) would actually in the final analysis really and truly go ahead and officiate at a sodomite wedding. Tough question that one—especially when one considers the filthy lucre at stake.

Which is a lot. Of money, that is. The Post reports:

Eugene Peterson, who is best known for “The Message” Bible translation, set off a firestorm this week when he said in an interview with Religion News Service that he would be willing to conduct a same-sex marriage. In response, LifeWay Christian Resources, the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention, said it was prepared to stop selling Peterson’s books.

A threat to royalties can have a profound impact on a pastor.

Predictably, this financial threat to Eugene Peterson didn't produce true repentance, but only further conniving betrayals of God, His Word, and His sheep...

Check out My Soul Among Lions's Summer Psalm Series...

If you're not following My Soul Among Lions on Facebook, you might not know that they've been livestreaming a new song each Tuesday night at 8pm as they work their way from Psalm 21 to Psalm 30 in preparation for their next album this Fall.

Clearnote Bloomington has had the pleasure of being led in worship with these songs each Sunday morning, followed by a sermon on the same Psalm. They're calling it the Summer Psalm Series.

Everybody else can listen to the sermons here, and catch the songs on Facebook. Here's the livestream of Psalm 25 from this past Tuesday night, and the corresponding sermon.

The World We Made: Coming soon...

UPDATE: There’s been lots of interest in this podcast, with about 2000 listens from 30 countries and counting! If you haven’t subscribed yet, we’ve added a few links to make it easier for those of you who aren’t on iTunes, which is most of you. (Welcome non-Apple fanboys.) Don't miss an episode. Scroll down and subscribe now.

"These are the confessions of American Christians recovering from American Christianity. This is the world we made."

Warhorn Media is pleased to announce a new podcast hosted by Jake Mentzel and Nathan Alberson and featuring Tim Bayly. The World We Made is designed to help ordinary American Christians think through the difficult issues we face in our culture today. Season 1 is about homosexuality.

Over the course of the first season, we talk with Tim about how we went from having anti-sodomy laws in all 50 states (just 50 years ago) to where we are today. What are the changes Tim has seen in his lifetime? What exactly do they mean? What part did the culture play and what part did the church play? How are regular Bible-believing Christians supposed to respond? What has Tim learned as a pastor to help equip us for the challenge of ministering to men and women tempted by homosexuality?

These are the questions we'll be unpacking over the course of eight 20-minute episodes. We'll start out slow and easy, and things will pick up steam as we get closer and closer to the end. You won't want to miss it, so check out the trailer (above), and go ahead and subscribe now in iTunes or Android (or wherever you listen to your podcasts—Google Play Music, Stitcher, TuneInRSS feed) so you're ready when the first episode drops (July 17). 

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The public shame of Eugene Peterson...

Screen Shot 2017-07-12 at 11.35.28 AM.pngA friend just sent me this link to a recent interview Jonathan Merritt of Religious News Service did with eighty-four year old IVP and NavPress author, Regent prof, and pastor, Eugene Peterson. This particular excerpt has to do with sodomy, lesbianism, and sodomite marriage. Peterson says he's OK with them all.

My friend writes, "As one formed by Intervarsity in the late 80s/early 90s, I see one "esteemed " teacher after another have no courage."

He's speaking euphemistically. This is no mere lack of courage, but utter apostasy. In other words, this man will never enter the Kingdom of God.

One might hope the things Peterson says are the product of early stages of dementia if only they didn't perfectly reflect everything I've known of Inter-Varsity and its press for decades now. How any Christian continues to give money in support of this organization and its employees is...

What a little girl does with a reconnaissance-by-artillery weaponized water balloon launcher...

Grandmother is a missionary to the Congo and is home for a visit to help with the care of her grandchildren (whom Mary Lee and I share with her). Unbeknownst to her, I had cast a longing eye at these reconnaissance-by-artillery weaponized water balloon launchers on sale at Sam's Club a couple weeks ago. (I've been reading We Were Soldiers Once...and Young: Ia Drang - The Battle That Changed the War in Vietnam, so you know my frame of mind.)

Well, all that to say that my children's missionary Grandmother had the same idea and actually bought the thing. But having spent much of her life in the Congo where death, mayhem, and poison-tipped pygmy blowgun darts are as much a part of life as...

James Comey big and strong...

Before this news cycle is completely over, may I just say that Mr. Comey is one of the more pathetic government bureaucrats I've had occasion to witness in my sixty-three years. The juxtaposition of his towering size and manly presentation with his pathetic...

A few of my favorite things (1)...

It's summertime, so how 'bout a little diversion? Mary Lee and I get quite a bit of joy out of God's good earth and its lawns, bushes, trees, and gardens. Mary Lee does the perennial gardens, I cut the grass, and we both work on the other stuff (fruit trees, roses, berries, vegetables, etc.) Here then are a few of our favorite things.

Arbor Day: over the years, we've planted about 150 bare root trees and shrubs purchased from Arbor Day. The trees are inexpensive. If you take out a membership, you can buy shrubs and trees for between $5 and $10. Some of their trees are available in bulk, 50 for $40. At this price, I don't get all tense about keeping them alive, so somewhere less than half survive a full year. But that's many trees and bushes so that, by now, our yard has lots of trees and bushes that started as tiny whips. A few are over fifteen feet tall now. We've planted red oak, red maple, magnolia, sawtooth oak, cherry, apple... 

Loving the Church...

A friend of mine was commenting recently on my love for the church. It put me in mind of when and where I learned that love.

It was twelve years ago at the church Rob Rayburn serves in Tacoma, Washington. After a year or two attending Faith Presbyterian, I’d begun to be drawn into the life of the community. In my private devotions, I’d been meditating on Paul’s words in Ephesians 1:18 and they were striking home. That’s where Paul prays that the Ephesians will know "what are the riches of the glory of [God’s] inheritance in the saints.” The saints are full of riches. This is the Church.

For me, these riches were no abstraction. They were the riches of patience, kindness, long-suffering, love, and on and on; riches in the people I took for granted each week. God had put those riches in them through His Spirit.

I had never had much respect for the men and women who made up the churches I'd been in, but now it became clear...