What is the Timothy Ministry? It is Greenwood Bible Baptist Church’s response to the command we find in the book of II Timothy 2:1,2, where Paul addresses a young preacher named Timothy, and says, “Thou therefore, my son, be strong in the grace that is in Christ Jesus. And the things that thou hast heard of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also.” As a young man, Timothy was trained by Paul himself, (II Timothy 2:2). When Paul wrote to Timothy, after Timothy had become established in the “unfeigned” faith himself, Paul admonished Timothy to “stir up the gift of God” (in the sense of stirring up hot coals to keep them on fire), so he would be able commit to other “faithful men” that same “fire”, who could then be used of God to pastor other churches, or go to a mission field in another part of the world, to accomplish what their home church had been accomplishing, and what they were trained in the Scriptures to do.
As a New Testament church, GBBC has been entrusted with the solemn task of winning souls to Jesus Christ and leading them to greater faith and spiritual growth in Jesus Christ, so that they might then repeat the same spiritual cycle laid out in Matthew 28:19,20 and other Scriptures, which outline the Great Commission for us. To accomplish this task better requires a program like the Timothy Ministry. One of the unintended consequences of a program like this is the spiritual growth it affords to men who have no intention of going into the ministry, or to the foreign field, evangelism, or any other full time ministry, but who have every intention to simply stay in their church and increase their commitment to God as they grow in grace. The Timothy Ministry can be used of God to spiritually strengthen men within the church, who can then be used by God in greater ways in the future for the strengthening of the church base, which is very important as the church grows numerically. With numerical growth must come individual spiritual growth, and the Timothy Ministry is one means that make this possible!