Author: David Tyra

Even after all this time it always surprises me when people tell me they listen to our church services on the radio. I suppose about once or twice a month someone will tell me that they listen, or a church member will tell me of a friend or neighbor or co-worker who listens to our broadcast. Many people have told me that they listen to part of our church service on the way to or from their own church.

I was kind of intimidated all those years ago when the deacons told me that the morning worship service was broadcast live on a local radio station. This was about three days before I preached in the morning service for the first time. I did my best to forget about the radio broadcast. I wanted to focus on the church service, and just let people listen in.

I’m glad we broadcast it live, “warts and all”. I have no interest in delaying it a week or two so we can edit it and make it “slick” and polished. When I have the rare opportunity to listen to a Sunday morning church program, I’m much more interested in live broadcasts than in the ones that are “produced”. No offense to those who go to the effort to edit; I just think hearing a live church service on the radio (or watching one on television) is much more compelling. Even with mistakes, or the occasional few moments of “dead air”, or the “holy hubbub” that’s heard when we greet one another (or when listeners can hear how off-beat we are when we clap to songs!), I still think its best. We are who we are, and we do what we do. Of course we want to try to be our best and to do better, but this isn’t a sales presentation. It’s a worship service. And I’m glad that people want to listen in.Read More

Last week I went to a pastor’s conference at Highland Lakes Baptist Center near Martinsville, Indiana.

Highland Lakes Baptist Center is both one of the nicest camping facilities you’ve ever seen, and also the headquarters for the Southern Baptist Convention in Indiana. It is 400 acres of rolling, wooded hills that contain a wonderful Worship Center, a rustic Welcome Center that looks like a lodge in a state park, a large cafeteria facility, various cabins and bunkhouses (heated and air-conditioned, thank you very much), an outdoor swimming pool, an obstacle course, a Frisbee golf course, and various trails for hiking.

This isn’t a commercial for Highland Lakes, and I didn’t really take advantage of any of those wonderful facilities. I saw them as I drove in and out of the property. They looked very nice.

I spent the majority of my time at Highland Lakes sitting in a room with fourteen other pastors from around the state. We spent our time being taught by, conversing with and being prayed for by seven other men, former pastors all, now working out of the state organization to do all they can to encourage pastors and strengthen churches. In fact, that’s pretty much their mission statement.Read More

I love Easter. We’ve just come through what for pastors is the most wonderful and exhausting time of the year (along with Christmas). But I love it. I love sunrise services, shared breakfasts, and the increased crowds on Easter Sunday. But most of all I love the Truth that Easter celebrates.

I don’t love the view of Easter that equates it with springtime, the yearly cycle of birth-death-and rebirth, and some vague sentiment of “what Easter means to us all”. I especially don’t love the claim that Jesus’ resurrection was a myth.

I’m with the Apostle Paul: if Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, “we are of all people most to be pitied.” (1 Cor. 15:19) If I didn’t really believe that Jesus rose from the dead, I’d quit the ministry and go get an honest job.

There are what are called “minimal facts” about the death of Jesus and what happened next. That means that even disbelieving, skeptical scholars admit the following:Read More

It’s the end of an era. We all knew it was coming. Billy Graham has finished his race and is now at Home in Heaven with the Savior he has preached about for all these decades. There are all kinds of retrospectives and news segments rehearsing the details of his life, so I’m not going to do that here. Let me just give you some random thoughts I have as I think about Dr. Graham’s passing.

I first became aware of Billy Graham through my grandparents. Whenever a Billy Graham Crusade would be broadcast on television, it was always on in my grandparents’ home. My earliest memories of him are in black and white, because that’s the only kind of television anybody in our family had until the mid-1960s.

My grandfather came to faith in Christ when he was fifty years old, and it radically changed the direction of our family. The truths of the Gospel became precious to my grandparents, and they loved it when anybody would boldly proclaim those truths. They loved to hear our pastor preach the Bible, but they loved to listen to Billy, too. Ironically, our pastor didn’t support Dr. Graham or his crusades when he came to Indianapolis. But my grandparents didn’t care. When Billy was in town, they would always attend a night or two of his Crusade.Read More

I remember the first time the old age truck got me with a hit-and-run at Christmas time.

It was Christmas Eve. My daughter and her husband were bringing our first grandson over to our house for our Christmas get-together. Our grandson was all of six months old. As they were coming in the door with their arms full of baby, baby seat and baby bag (and some presents, too), it suddenly hit me: “They’re coming to grandpa’s house for Christmas…and I’m the grandpa!”Read More

A pastor friend of mine told me that once after a Sunday morning worship service a couple of his deacons approached him. They mentioned a particular story he’d told that morning, and then chided him by saying, “You’ve used that illustration before.” As if they were the modern equivalent of the Apostle Paul’s Athenian audience: “For all the Athenians and the foreigners who lived there would spend their time in nothing except telling or hearing something new.” (Acts 17:21)

I was in disbelief. This pastor had faithfully served that congregation for nearly ten years. In all that time you’re bound to repeat something. The Lord Jesus only ministered publicly for about three years, but there is plenty of evidence in the Gospels to show that He repeated Himself often.Read More

I hate saying goodbye to friends.

Our friends David and Judy Atkins are moving from Linton to Missouri. David is assuming the pastorate of a church in a town called Edina. I’m delighted for him; this is an answer to prayer. But I’m going to miss him. In fact, I miss him already.

It has been a source of amusement to me that in more than one place where I have pastored I have had better fellowship with the Assembly of God preachers than I have had with the Baptists. One independent Baptist pastor even tried to lead me to the Lord. (No, I’m not joking.) But the Assembly guys have always been encouraging.

David and Judy Atkins have been at the Linton Assembly of God for these past ten years. I met him as a result of our now-defunct ministerial association, and he and I hit it off pretty well right from the start. Somehow he and I were delegated to be the only signees on the ministerial association’s checking account. I was reminded of this fact when he brought me the battered briefcase containing the ministerial association’s bank statements for the past ten years or so. The account has five dollars in it. The only reason it has that much is that David Atkins himself put five dollars in it some years ago to keep the account active. I think, as the only other signee on the account, I’m going to withdraw it and send it to David and tell him to take his wife out for ice cream.Read More

My wife and I got married on December 26th, 1976. She was 18, I was 20. (Sometimes people ask me, “Preacher, would you tell our kids they’re too young to get married?” And I always say, “I’ll talk to them if you want me to, but I don’t really have any higher moral ground here.”) Not long after we came to Linton in 1997, Rae Anne and I had our twentieth wedding anniversary. (Virginia Miller used to introduce Rae Anne by saying, “And here’s his little wife of twenty years.”) The thought occurred to me: “I have been married to Rae Anne longer than I lived before we got married.” And I took great satisfaction in that thought.

I entered the ministry in June of 1978, not long after I graduated from Bible college, serving a church in Tulsa, Oklahoma as their associate pastor and youth director. The next year I took my first pastorate in rural Indiana, and I’ve been pastoring Indiana churches ever since.

I had been in the ministry for 19 years when in the providence of God we came to Linton and you called me to be your pastor. That was on August 6th, 1997. As we walked through the process of getting to know each other, asking each other questions and praying for God’s guidance, for a time we really didn’t know how God would lead. When, somewhat to my astonishment, the deacons told us they would like to proceed to a church vote in view of calling me as pastor, Rae Anne and I agreed.Read More