I’ve been involved in youth ministry since 1998. In 2006 I was hired at the Kearney Evangelical Free Church to be the Youth Pastor to work with high school and college students. One of the first things I did at the church was to start a Bible study for young men. It didn’t take long for me to realize that although I was passionate about sharing the Gospel many young people were having a hard time accepting it and believing it.
In fact, one young man, who was raised in the church, became an atheist in front of my face! After a couple of years of being in my Bible study, he approached me and said, “Tim, I’m not coming back to youth group this year. I’m not coming back to Bible study either.” I said, “Why?” He said, “I’m an atheist now.” And I said, “You know that is not true!” He said, “No, I don’t know that, Tim. I really don’t think God exists.” I responded, “You know that’s not true!” And he said, “I don’t know that, Tim. I’ve been reading atheist authors over the summer: Richard Dawkins and Stephen Hawking and Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. They’ve convinced me that God doesn’t exist.”
I asked, “Why would you believe these people?” And he said, “Well, I’ll tell you what, Tim, if you can answer just one of these questions from these guys – one of their objections – I’ll stick around.” He probably gave me ten or twelve to pick from, but I could not answer any of them! I was powerless. I was impotent to answer any of these questions. In fact, they seemed to be good objections and they shook me to my core. This young man looked at me in disgust, turned around, and walked out of the church. He has never been back since.
That sparked something in me. I went home that night and I was praying and although these objections shook me (they seemed good and shook my faith just a little bit), I went to God and I prayed, “What do I do?” I felt like God said, “Tim, if 
you are going to be a shepherd, you need to learn how to defend the sheep.” I felt like, “God, you’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t know how to do this. I don’t know where to turn. How am I supposed to learn how to interact with these atheistic scientists and philosophers?”
Well, I began a journey and I was introduced to the work of a guy named, Dr. William Lane Craig. I started going to his Reasonable Faith website, buying his books, watching his videos, listening to his podcasts, and watching his debates. My life was transformed by the “renewing of my mind,” as we see in Romans 12:2. Studying the work of Dr. Craig helped me to see a bigger and more beautiful picture of God. My faith skyrocketed because now I had reasons to believe it – good reasons! This ultimately led to me enrolling at Biola University, where Dr. Craig is a professor, to get a Masters Degree in Christian Apologetics.
This has utterly transformed my faith and ministry and I am seeing many lives transformed in the process. I am seeing young Christian students who have had their faith devastated by atheistic objections not just get their faith back, but have it stronger than ever. I am seeing atheistic students lose their faith in atheism and come to Christ. In fact, I am even seeing some professors come to Christ in the process.
These experiences have encouraged me to start my own apologetics-based ministry called, FreeThinking Ministries. I have joined forces with Timothy Fox,
who was one of my classmates at Biola who lives in New York, Richard Eng, who is a pastor in Nebraska with a passion for apologetics, and Jonathan Thompson, who is a brilliant thinker in the Los Angeles area. Together, we are attempting to equip the church to engage the culture.
FreeThinking Ministries is devoted to helping all people see God for who He truly is so that they can fall in love with Him – and all people – as they were created to do. We seek to rationally engage all people with truth (Philippians 4:5 ESV). We are focused on strengthening the faith of the believers, and graciously challenging the faith of non-believers (2 Corinthians 10:5).
Our audience is “all people” (1 Timothy 2:4). We desire to equip and to reach the general church audience. As a pastor who has a desire to engage in effective evangelism, I will speak to and teach both Christian and skeptical audiences. We also desire to step into personal relationships in smaller group training sessions. We are passionate about reaching the lost with a clear presentation of who God really is and the Gospel message which corresponds to Him.
FreeThinking Ministries is devoted to strengthening the faith of Christians while rationally engaging and graciously challenging the faith of “non-believers.” FreeThinking Ministries seeks to equip Christians to engage in rational and intelligent conversations leading to evangelism on the most vital issues regarding the truth of the Christian faith today, such as:
- Arguments for the existence of God
- The nature of God
- The interface of science and religion
- Intelligent design
- The meaning of life
- The foundation of moral values
- Speaking the truth in love with the LGBTQ community
- The reliability of the Gospels
- The uniqueness of the historical Jesus
- The historicity of the resurrection
- The challenge of religious pluralism
- Arguments for the existence of the human soul
We want to encourage you to sign up for our weekly articles and monthly newsletters. We hope that you will utilize freethinkingministries.com as a “toolbox” of sorts. If you ever have a passing doubt, or one that keeps you up at night, or if you are having conversations with friends or family members who don’t know the truth, please come to our website. The chances are good that we already have the answer to your question. If we don’t, please send us your question.
Equipping the Church to engage the culture…
Tim Stratton & the FreeThinking Team
