Is a Super Bowl Ad Worth It?

By Timothy R Butler | Posted at 3:17 PM

I’ve been seeing a lot of Christians questioning the He Gets Us ads as a waste of money. Please check out the ministry before jumping on that bandwagon. It isn’t about a 30 or 60 second commercial. It is about the follow up those commercials encourage. The people talking and the people going to the HeGetsUs.com web site, asking for prayer or asking for help finding a church. Those prayer requests and questions are passed on to a local church volunteer (including a group of us at Little Hills Church).

At Little Hills, we have meaningful opportunities to pray for people and encourage them in Jesus’s love every week as a part of this ongoing effort, of which the Super Bowl ads were just a small part. And thanks to the generous donors who paid for He Gets Us, little churches like us don’t have to pay anything in this process — they just ask us to receive those prayer requests and questions and share Jesus with people looking for Him.

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Feb 10, 2023

Allegations Against John MacArthur's Church

By Timothy R Butler | Posted at 3:50 PM

I’ve been increasingly concerned regarding alleged spiritual abuse coming out of John MacArthur’s church, their “Biblical counseling” program and related ministries. Kate Shellnutt’s superbly sourced exposé for Christianity Today is disturbing, but corroborates what I’ve feared for a number of years.

MacArthur’s church, Grace Community Church, elders’s reply to Shellnut’s article will sound familiar to anyone who has been through #SpiritualAbuse. As someone who has both experienced spiritual abuse subsequently spent years ministering to those who have, I’m unsurprised the church mischaracterizes the reporting as anonymous lies. Sadly, churches caught in such things almost inevitably attack those who bring it to light.

CT appears to have done all journalistic due diligence and offers names in most cases. Grace CC’s statement tries to hide behind keeping matters Biblically private, but if the church is unresponsive to private confrontation, a public callout is both Biblically good and necessary. Covering up abusive counseling and the like has no place in the Church. Period.

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Feb 05, 2023

Away for the First Time

By Timothy R Butler | Posted at 7:03 PM

We say the church is God and not ours, but planting a church one gets pretty attached and sometimes that can get blurry feeling. I’m used to being there to fix the things that don’t work, hit all the right knobs for the live stream if something goes wrong and so on. I’ll admit it was a little scary being away from it for the first time during a worship service, even if my absence was made necessary by chickenpox (the last thing I’d want to do is share this!).

But what a wonderful reminder that the church is HIS, not mine nor anyone else’s. His Body at Little Hills Church went into overdrive tonight to make everything work for worship in-person and for those of us worshipping online. Thank you to my mom (Tamara Haffner Butler) who got there super early to make sure all the systems were on, Jim Krenning who faithfully delivered God’s Word on a challenging passage, Melanie Lawrence Haynes who led worship beautifully, Pastor Tim Krenning who oversaw the Lord’s Supper, Jeff Landis who read Scripture and helped with a few technical points and of course, the entire church family (whether online or in-person) who was praying and simply BEING together.

God is at work and this was beautiful tonight as He made sure His work continues. Indeed: His Treasure is the lasting treasure.

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Nov 14, 2022