Tim Suffield

The Story of the Tree The Bible is dominated by stories and symbols. Those symbols are embedded in story, they don’t exist on their own, but they gain their meaning through the procession of the narrative of the cosmos. We read their meaning into them because of story. As an aside, I wonder if this means that an eschatological ontology trumps a sacramental one…

The Tree is one of the Bible's big symbolic stories, in this post I trace the contours of the Bible's story of the tree.

Humility in Prophecy As I write the recent revelations about Shawn Bolz—the Bethel church associated ‘Prophet’ who engaged in serial sexual misconduct and deliberately researched people so he could ‘accurately’ prophesy into their lives—are doing the rounds. I’m a charismatic, I think the gift of prophecy continues and should be eagerly sought (1 Corinthians 14). I wasn’t familiar with Bolz before these revelations, I would generally see what Bethel put out as at absolutely the opposite end of the charismatic spectrum to my own world, but it still has plenty of influence on some I know.

Humility is a vital key in delivering prophetic words. If you start to think of yourself as 'the Prophet' you're sunk.

On cancelling church Between Christmas and New Year a bunch of churches cancel church. You’ll often see the same behaviour on August Bank Holiday weekend too. Don’t. No, let me be more nuanced. It is, for example, entirely understandable that many church plants cannot maintain the momentum and volunteer strength required to run a Sunday at particular times of year. If you live in the sort of place that people leave at holiday times then in plants it can be particularly challenging.

Sunday worship is the most important thing in the week. In other words, if its in your control, don't cancel church.

Fasting and Feasting In January, we diet. That’s the sense you’ll get if you talk to the average person on the street. We overindulged at Christmas, but that’s long over, now we sit in the drab darkness trying to force ourselves to eat healthy things, go to the gym, or pound the pavement in the lashing rain. The story we’re told is: feasting is fun, but you have to pay for it afterwards.

Fasting and Feasting are both Christian disciplines. In fact, there's a dynamic to be found within them that describes the Christian life.

On thinking you’re someone The internet has a strange effect on us. Many people, myself included, have the ability to gain an ‘audience’ for something creative that they do—this writing, in my case—in a way can warp your sense of yourself and what it is that you’re actually doing. If you pull some reasonable numbers in terms of how many people read you, then that can exacerbate the effect.

The problem with publishing your thoughts, whether book or blog or tweet length, is that you start to think you're someone.

Spiritual Hand Grenades An old Pastor of mine used to say that when someone spoke in tongues in a church meeting, it was like a spiritual hand grenade being rolled into the room. He was a military man, an ex-Para, so it sounded less odd from him than it does from me: a man who has only seen grenades in museums. His point, though grandiose, was a good one.

Someone bringing a tongue in gathered worship is a little like rolling a grenade into a crowded room.

Research and Pastoring I’m towards the end (he says, hopefully) of a research degree. It’s Masters level rather than a terminal degree, but nevertheless requires true academic research. I’ve found adapting to it an uphill struggle. Most of the forms of writing I’ve trained myself in—the sermon, the blog post, and the article—are foreign to the academic world. I was told early on by my supervisor that ‘I write like a Pastor.’ He should know, I used to be his Pastor, a large part of the reason I ended up doing this programme with him.

What academic research has taught me that's relevant to pastoral work.

Institutions, Again I’ve argued at some length, that we need institutions to unite us in UK evangelicalism. What we have may well serve good purposes, but it isn’t managing to unite us, and they aren’t forming us well. There are two, contradictory, impulses to consider here. First, institutions, as Yuval Levin argues, mould us. This can very much cut both ways but can be a positive effect.

We need institutions that genuinely unite us.

Reflections on 9 months of paid ministry I’ve been in Alton now for around 9 months (as I write), having moved here to take a full-time role on staff at Harvest Church as part of the current team leader’s transition plan. I’ll be taking over as eldership team leader soon (Ed—yesterday, as it panned out!). Here are a few scattered thoughts reflecting on my experience so far.

A few reflection on 9 months of paid ministry.

Resurrection and the theology of the body It’s common in evangelical circles for people to talk about ‘going to heaven when they die.’ It’s common in slightly different evangelical circles to politely scoff at that phrase and remind people that the great hope of the Christian faith is the resurrection of the body. The scoffing isn’t particularly helpful, neither is NT Wright’s take on all of this as though he discovered something unique in the Bible rather than calling for people to return to the faith once for all delivered to the saints.

The resurrection of the body affects our theology of the body. A thin interpretation of both in some modern evangelical theology is due to our immanent imaginary.

Why Pastors should read fiction I suspect most of my readers won’t need convincing that ‘leaders are readers’ and that Pastors, whether paid or not, should be devoting some of their time to reading books that encourage their souls and to books that sharpen their minds. Evidently, those who are paid so that they don’t have to work should be devoting more of their time to reading than those who do have to work jobs in order to provide for their households.

3 reasons all Pastors should read some fiction.

How do we apply this? My third and final Bible study question is probably the most mundane. Everyone asks this in our Bible studies. I imagine my readers here are convinced, as are most participants in a Bible study, that the Bible should in some fashion change us and will have practical applications to us or to the world around us. The only point I’d like to make in this post is why I deliberately leave it to last.

The third and final question I ask in a Bible study is 'how do we apply that?' Obvious enough, but its vital that we ask it after the other two.

Where’s Jesus? The second question I ask when studying the Bible with others, is ‘Where’s Jesus?’ By this time, we’ve spent some time discussing what is strange about the text in question. We’ve got under the skin of it a bit and are trying to face it on its own terms. We have not applied it, discussed its relevance for us, or anything similar; we’ve deliberately kept exploring the text for some time.

The second question I usually ask in a Bible study is, 'where's Jesus?'

Knowing what good looks like In ministry ‘success criteria’ matter. On the face of it that sounds like business speak, exactly the sort of thing I am critical of creeping into pastoral work. Except I’m not sure that’s it. Practically speaking, to do something well you need to know how you are going to assess it afterwards. I’ve noticed in multiple churches that when we review things we review them against a whole range of unvoiced criteria.

In order to assess if anything went well in ministry you need to know what you were aiming for.

You will, generally, achieve what you aim at over time. If you don't do this consciously it's likely it'll be unconsciously misaligned.

What’s Weird? When I lead a Bible study, I invariably ask the same three questions every time. The first is simply ‘what’s weird?’ Occasionally, depending on the group, the text, and how easy it is for them to follow, I might start with a fourth: ‘what’s going on?’ This is the basic comprehension question, which does sometimes need to be asked. When leading a Bible study with teenagers I might drop this first question altogether and spend longer on the comprehension.

When I run a Bible Study, I typically ask 3 questions. The first is usually 'what's weird?'

2025 in Review It’s Epiphany today, Christmas is over, the new year doesn’t start today but it’s as good a day as any for reflecting on the last twelve months. It’s become my tradition to celebrate the anniversary of nuakh with a review of the previous year of reading and writing on Epiphany. I've played with the usual format, but right at the top I’d like to say thank you for reading, sharing, and supporting my work.

My annual Epiphany review of the previous year: book lists and all that jazz.

The Hidden God Advent is a time for silence. Or, to put it a little better, Advent is a time for facing up to the silence of God. We don’t like to admit it. This is the time of year for declaring the Emmanuel—that God is with us—and for saying that God is the one who steps into our world and our worlds to ring the changes, to announce the kingdom.

Hope in the midst of silence.

Being Eucharismatic I recently had the joy of having a chat with Jez Field of New Ground's Life and Leadership podcast about all things 'eucharismatic.' You can, if you so desire, listen to it here below or at your podcast venue of choice. Our conversation ranged all over the place, and there were many aspects of being 'eucharismatic' that we didn't touch on, but hopefully it's of interest to readers of…

What does being eucharismatic mean or look like? A had a great conversation with the ever generous Jez Field to explore that.

The O Antiphons In the western liturgical traditions, the last seven days of advent include singing these seven chants—they would be largely unknown to churches like mine whose hymnody owes more to Hillsong than ancient Latin verse. Except, I bet you recognise them. They’re the content of the only advent hymn most of us know, O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. They’re sung in reverse order, but spell out an acrostic (in Latin, so you’d never notice) of…

The O Antiphons teach us seven truths about Jesus we will know in full when he returns.

The weakness of God Nietzsche attacked Christianity with all the strength his mind and powerful prose could summon up. His hatred for Christians was sourced in part because he considered the faith to be a religion for the weak and a religion that idolised and encouraged weakness. For Nietzsche the way of Jesus propagated what he called ‘slave morality’ and stopped humanity rising to reach our potential.

God stooped low in order to lift us up.

Feasting at Christmastime This is a time full of feasting. Everywhere you go it seems you’re offered a plate of mince pies or piece of stollen, perhaps with a glass of mulled wine. You can’t escape it—biscuits and coffee at church become wine and cake week after week. Or at least that’s normal in the UK, I’m told this is less normal in North America and can only conclude it’s because you hate Christmas, what else could it be?

If we looked at our tables at Christmastime, would we see the Church?

The Month with Two Faces You’d be forgiven for thinking I was speaking of January, named after the Roman god Janus who had two faces to look forwards and backwards in the year. Rather, Advent—the first season of the Christian year—has two faces. One face is a face of joy, the face we associate with our Christmas traditions, with chocolate and feasting. From this mouth Advent bids to us “

Advent is a month looking forward to the joy of Christmas. Advent is a month looking forward to judgement.

Advent has two faces.

Advent is for Waiting This is the time of waiting. It doesn’t look like it if you look around you though. We must be one of the most impatient cultures yet to grace the face of the earth, which is why I’m convinced we need to recover some sense of Advent as a counter-cultural act. This is the time of waiting, of hoping and of preparation.

Advent can teach us to wait, and by waiting we can learn to long, and by longing we can encounter joy.

Advent is Coming Advent starts on Sunday, which will confuse some of you because you’re expecting it to start on Monday. Others of you will be appalled at the idea of ‘doing Christmas’ in November, even if it’s just one day, so it’s good news that ‘doing Christmas’ and celebrating Advent are quite different things. Advent is dark. Advent is bleak. Advent is about staring at the wretched core of the ash we clutch onto so that when our eyes are lifted and the thrice holy God comes with the dawn, we are amazed, delighted, and ready.

Advent is coming. How can we embrace the season?

Wisdom is Embodied This will initially seem like an odd claim to make, and a particularly odd claim to read on your phone, the most disembodying and dislocating device you own. Wisdom doesn’t feel embodied, wisdom is about ideas, surely? Ideas are immaterial if anything is, right? Your body isn’t relevant to things that we think, or so the narrative goes. This is a thought that can be thought easily in the digital age: everything is disembodied.

Wisdom is embodied, not something that exists in the realms of ideas.

Treat People like Adults I fear that, without really intending to, churches have a habit of infantilising people. We should treat people like adults. My new staff team tells me this is something I say a lot. In my experience, the vast majority of people act like they are treated. If we expect people to act in disciplined, orderly ways, then most people will do so.

Churches can, accidently, infantilise people. We should attempt to treat people like adults.

What is the ‘Quiet Revival’? One thing is for certain: it’s neither quiet, nor a revival. The term is now everywhere in the Christian discourse, the UK Bible Society released a report from some research they’d conducted that claims there has been a notable uptick in the number of young people, especially Gen Z men, attending church. That data has been challenged by many, because they claim it doesn’t reflect what they see in their context.

What exactly is the so-called Quiet Revival? How should we think about it?

Time Belongs to Jesus We have to thank a man of the north east, the Venerable Bede, for the fact that we all call the year I’m writing this 2025. Bede didn’t invent AD as a counting system (that was Dionysius Exiguus in the sixth century), but the eighth century he popularised it as a way of counting dates. Notably in famous Ecclesiastical History of the English People…

Writing the date should remind you that whatever you're writing it on is part of a grand story that finds its meaning in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

Is England a Christian Nation? We need to make distinctions. Is England a ‘Christian Nation?’ Perhaps unsurprisingly, it really depends what you mean by the question. There are reasonable definitions of ‘Christian Nation’ where England, and the UK, or one of the two, fit it, and there are reasonable definitions where they do not. This post is my attempt to very briefly explore seven different things the term could reasonably mean, and give a yes, no, or ‘it’s complicated,’ answer to the question of whether we can describe England as that.

Is England a Christian Nation?

In this post I suggest 7 different things that question could mean and how I would respond to each of them.

Understanding Wisdom What is wisdom? Does it have something to do with whether or not you put tomatoes in a fruit salad? Wisdom is a key Biblical concept, undervalued in the modern day. I rarely hear preaching about wisdom, for all it’s at the root of the problem of Eden and therefore we might assume also involved in the atonement. We are waking up again to the importance of spiritual formation, and maturity, which is the same thing in essence.

Wisdom is understanding; it's perceiving reality and living in accordance with it.