Park Cities Presbyterian Church (PCA)

Good-bye, Tim!

By Stephanie Byrd

Published February 1, 2010 in Witness

On December 20, 2009, the congregation of First Presbyterian Church of Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted to elect Tim Tinsley as its senior pastor.

Tim has served PCPC for 18 years. He started out knowing one person in Dallas, David Gowdey, and is now beloved of thousands. Lest we get sappy, however, Chrissy Snelling, PCPC’s first middle school director, reveals the truth about Tim’s heart: “Tim will say it is the people of Dallas he is going to miss, but it is really the Mexican food.”

Not the babysitter

In the summer of 1991, the Session of PCPC was looking for a youth pastor. They believed it was more urgent to find someone who could capture the hearts of their children than to hire a senior pastor. “They believed that adults would keep coming as long as they kept getting decent preaching, but the kids wouldn’t,” Tim said.

David knew that Tim was in town on a mission trip with his church youth group from Knoxville, and he suggested that the Session solicit Tim’s advice on finding a good youth pastor. Tim had served for ten years in youth ministry and spoke frequently at Fellowship of Christian Athletes and Young Life meetings.

“I was just very forthright, and we just hit it off big-time,” Tim says of his first meeting with the PCPC elders. As soon as Tim left the room, Tommy Bain said, all the guys looked at each other and said, “That’s who we want.”

Tim, however, had no interest in moving to Dallas. He loved and respected his senior pastor, John Wood, whom he calls “the greatest living preacher I’ve ever met in my life.” His family had just built a house in Knoxville.

The next night the elders invited Tim back to meet some of the parents. “They wanted me to say that I’ll take care of their kids,” Tim remembered. He told them, “I’m not really taking care of your kids if I’m not teaching them to reach the lost. I’m not a babysitter.” Ultimately, Tim says, the parents appreciated this approach. Harry Hargrave walked Tim out to his car that night and told him they were interested in offering him a job.

Tim had been unprepared to respect this group of wealthy Texans. “I wasn’t impressed with what they had,” he said, “but I was impressed with their fervency for Christ and their love for their children.”

When he came back to Knoxville, he told John Wood everything. “If he was against it, then I wouldn’t be for it,” Tim said. John reluctantly realized that the PCPC leadership and Tim had a strong vision in common: reaching the city with the gospel.

Ministry in the early days

When Tim became youth director at PCPC on November 1, 1991, his office had a desk but no chair, no phone, and no computer. Church members helped Tim plan trips, figure out budgets, and organize events. “Facilities here weren’t good, so we had to meet in people’s houses,” Tim said. “People were so gracious to us.”

Tim remembers walking into the Highland Park High School cafeteria to eat lunch with students for the first time. He knew only one kid: Paul Jackson. “God used him to introduce me to the students, the teachers, and the staff,” Tim said. “I had a wide-open door.” He taught parenting classes at the high school and counseled students. Coaches gave him season passes. He had firm parental support and strong student leadership at a number of local schools.

On the youth group’s first ski trip to Colorado, in 1992, there were 19 kids and four sponsors. After a couple of years, Tim said, “It just exploded.” For Chrissy, the most unforgettable trip was when a kid boarded the bus right after throwing up, and everyone else on the trip soon got sick. “We called it the chuckwagon,” Tim recalls.

Tommy remembers a clever tactic Tim used when he first taught the high school class. Tim noticed that no one brought a Bible. He said, “One thing I’ve noticed that’s different in Dallas is that you all have the Bible memorized.” Then he started teaching from Galatians 1 without using a Bible. Slowly, more and more of the kids began to bring their Bibles because they wanted to evaluate his memorization skills.

Tommy and Tim began meeting every week to prepare for the high school class. They continued meeting for the next 18 years as they became best friends. Growing to know Tim better, Tommy said, “you realize how deep and rich and tender his teaching is.”

“Tim taught me to hide God’s Word in my heart,” Chrissy says. She and Tim memorized seven memory verses a week for three and a half years. “To know God and to make Him known was our philosophy of ministry while doing youth work together,” Chrissy says. “Tim knew that children came to Christ based on relationships.”

As the years passed, Tim said, “I realized that the parents needed some encouragement in terms of discipling their children.” In 1996, after his ordination, Tim became Pastor to Families. “His teaching to parents over those few years was really extraordinary,” said Tommy. “It was a really rich time in the church’s history.”

Big changes come along

Soon after that, the church began a nationwide search for an executive pastor. Skip Ryan and Tim were having lunch one day, talking about what they needed in a candidate, and Skip finally said, “Why don’t you do it?” Tim agreed to become executive pastor—for Skip’s sake. “We were just growing so fast,” Tim said. “It was so hard.” They had parking problems, staffing problems, and building problems, and Tim said, “I took all that off of Skip’s shoulders.”

In 2003, the elders encouraged Tim to take a year’s sabbatical as he dealt with his divorce. At the end of that time, Tim was afraid he would not be allowed to continue being a pastor. At a Session meeting, he told the elders that all he wanted in life was to preach the gospel, disciple men, and do missions. If the church shared this vision, he would stay. If not, he would go.

John Hawkins said, “We don’t shoot our wounded around here. We can’t imagine this church without you.”

So Tim’s role became Pastor of Evangelism. He traveled around the world on mission trips, sharing the gospel.

During that time, Tim met Laura Eaton. Her husband had died of cancer around the same time that Tim was going through his divorce. A mutual friend asked Tim to pray for Laura (whom he had never met) and at the same time asked Laura to pray for Tim. Laura also began reading Tim’s e-mail devotionals and falling in love.

Their first date was at Starbucks on March 23, 2006. “We immediately hit it off,” Tim said. Laura and Tim married July 20, 2006.

Growing ministry opportunities

When Skip resigned as senior pastor a month later, Tim became the primary preaching pastor. He also began receiving job offers. But he said he clearly heard the Lord telling him, “You need to stay here.”

“I liked the burden of preparing each week and the thought that I was feeding God’s people,” Tim said. “It was humbling.” For the past few years, Tim says he has been preparing three or four talks every week. He reads the scripture passage and then memorizes it and meditates upon it. He spends considerable time thinking about what it means to a variety of people in the congregation—the single mother, the newlywed, the businessman.

“It’s about connecting people with the beauty of Christ,” Tim says. “I don’t teach like a seminary professor—I teach like a guy sitting at a bar or a coffee shop.”

Tommy sees one of Tim’s greatest strengths as evangelism. “He will talk Christ to anyone who breathes and just does it in a winsome manner,” he says. “It just rolls off him.” Tim, however, doesn’t see himself as an evangelist. “I just like to talk to people about real stuff,” he says.

Tim says that the biggest highlight of his time here at PCPC has been his relationship with Tommy. “I’ve never had anyone love me the way he does,” Tim said. He also says he learned a lot about gospel-centered thinking from Skip. “To have the benefit of those two men in my life—just a huge impact on my life. Inestimable.” Finally, he prizes the friendships he has had with the kids in the youth group.

As Tim reflects on the future of PCPC, he says, “I pray that our session will continue to be shepherding. Now our Session does that so naturally, it’s beautiful.”

“I pray that we will see our membership grow through new professions of faith,” he adds. “The perception is that we could be very judgmental because of our theological acuity. But we have the best of both—a theological acuteness and a humble, loving spirit.”

The most important statement he can make about PCPC is that “I feel free to leave.” He would not leave if he felt that it would hurt the church.

Tim is drawn to the new opportunities ahead of him. “I want to preach every week,” he said. He looks forward to involvement in several local churches and organizations that have grown out of First Presbyterian Church. The church devotes half its contributions to missions, which greatly appeals to Tim.

The church in Chattanooga has been experiencing some ups and downs, he says, and he can handle that. He referred to Philippians 4:11: “I have learned in whatever situation I am to be content.”

Tim distills what the last 20 years of ministry have taught him: “God’s called me to be faithful, and if he wants me to be significant, that’s up to Him. There’s a real freedom in that.”