2 - Eric Samuel Timm

In this episode, Tomy recounts his history with Eric Samuel Timm who wrote the foreword for Shepherds of The Mind and also played a key role in the journey toward psychological safety for theCREEK Student Ministry. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Hey Shepherds, and welcome back to the Shepherds of the Mind bonus content. So thankful that you've returned. Today we are going to be talking about how I was able to get connected to Eric Samuel Tim, who wrote the foreword for this book. So let's dive right in. Well, I share some of the history in the book of how I met Eric Samuel Tim, but it was literally on a beach in Florida. I was working with Brooklyn Lindsay at the time. We were at the church together, and Brooklyn knew Eric as well as some of the other people from uh CIOI, Christ in Youth, and they were there filming for an event that they had coming up that summer. And so Brooklyn asked if I wanted to join for the day. They needed a few extras, I think, for the shoot. And so we used to do things at our church in Florida that we called them creative days, where we just tried to get out of the office and um just spend some time seeking after God. And I thought, oh, this could be a really fun way to do that. Because then after we're done shooting, I'll just stay at the beach for the day. Well, once we got there, Eric was walking up to the house where we had kind of used as our station, someone had allowed them to use it that had a beach home. And he was walking up from the beach, and we had never been introduced before, he had never seen me before, but I was walking next to Brooklyn, and um he just adopted this really, really big smile as he approached us, and then he literally, without warning, without asking anything like that, he just gave me a big hug. And I was like, oh my goodness, I instantly really like this guy for sure. And it was just fun to get to see him in action that day, to get to kind of hang out a little bit and get to know him a bit, and it was just really cool. Well, Brooklyn and I decided not long after that, man, it would be really awesome to have Eric Samuel Tim come out for an event at our church and to speak at our church. And Eric uh mentioned this in the book, but he's a painter as well, and what he does is so captivating because he'll paint a picture, a large uh canvas, and he'll do it in just a matter of minutes during the worship set, and then it he uses it during his sermon that he will preach just kind of as a um prop, I suppose, or a visual representation of what he's about to talk about, and it's so engaging. Well, we had such a great time having Eric there for that specific event. Uh it was such a great turnout, but also he did such a great job. And so I was like, man, this guy is pretty incredible. And we'll fast forward a couple of years, and we had taken our students to this student conference. It's called NYC, it's part of the Nazarene denomination, uh, the Nazarene Youth Conference. And um Eric was a speaker at that conference, and I was able to kind of find him uh even in the midst of, you know, there's like eight to ten thousand people there, and it's massive, but I was still able to find him and and kind of reconnect a little bit, which is really cool. And so um was able to, again, just sort of keep the connection going at that point. I I then when we were uh at uh Plum Creek years later, and I mentioned this in the book, it was like, we we want someone for this outreach event that we're doing. And I was like, I got the guy for us. Eric's incredible, I know he'll do an incredible job. And um again, I I won't rehash everything that we talked about in the book, but what a powerful night it was that Eric was able to just rewrite his sermon for high school based on a short conversation in such a short amount of time. And so I just so appreciate his attunement to the spirit within that. Um, we have had Eric out again since then to our church, and again, he just always does an incredible job. But it more than that, I'm just encouraged by being around him because of who he is and Jesus. Well, then once this book was um probably like two-thirds of the way written, I started thinking about okay, if we're really gonna try to publish this and and go and get it out in the hands of people, I think it would be really awesome to have someone do a foreword for the book. And Eric pretty quickly rose to the top of the list. And um I was trying to figure out, I know this is a big ask of someone, and so how do I go about asking him? And I spent so much time carefully uh crafting the text message just as an intro, thinking it might lead to a phone call or something, and just kind of again, sort of trying to think I was soft-launching the idea of him writing the foreword for this book. But after I had put it out there, uh, he literally responded back with two words. He was like, amazing, yes. And so I had put all of this sort of worry, I suppose, or thought into man, how do I how do I get him to the place where he's willing? And he was for sure already all in. And his voice is just such the perfect voice to open up this book, given how big of a role he played on this journey that we talk about in the Tale of Redemption chapter towards the end. And so it's really great getting to have him involved in this project and to kind of have some back and forth with him throughout. And honestly, looking forward to the next opportunity that we get to partner together in ministry because he's an incredible man. Well, thank you much for tuning in. We'll see you back here soon for another episode of some of the Shepherds of the Mind bonus content.