Beeson podcast, Episode 410
Dr. Dillon T. Thornton
September 18, 2018

Announcer:          Welcome to the Beeson Podcast coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George.

Timothy George:     Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well today I have the privilege of having a conversation with an alumnus of Beeson Divinity School, Dr. Dillon T. Thornton. Dillon graduated from Beeson back in 2011. He went on to do a doctoral program in New Testament studies from the University of Otago in New Zealand. He's now the lead pastor of Faith Community Church in Seminole, Florida. Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, Dillon.

Dillon Thornton:    Thank you Dr. George. It's a pleasure to talk with you today.

Timothy George:     Now let's begin by sort of catching up with you a little bit. Tell us about your church down in Florida, your family, how you all are doing.

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah. We've been here in the Seminole, Florida area for about the last year. I'm serving as the lead pastor at Faith Community Church. It's an EPC, Evangelical Presbyterian Church. EPC congregation, and we're very blessed by the people that we are able to serve there and the great things that God is doing in our midst. My wife Jamie, we've been married for 13 years, and we've got two little boys, Aiden and Cullen, who are now nine and seven.

Timothy George:     That's great. We have another EPC alum down in Florida, David Mulden, who's a pastor down near, I think West Palm Beach, in that area. I don't know if you've run across him, but ...

Dillon Thornton:    No, it's not too far away, but I'll have to look him up.

Timothy George:     Yeah. Well this is, we're going to talk about your book. I think this is your second book. Your first book was published a couple of years ago, "Hostility in the House of God." This is a new book called, "Give Them Jesus." That's what we're going to talk about, but tell us about your first book and how that relates to this one.

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, my first book was more of an academic study. It was a revision of my doctoral thesis. It focused largely on 1 and 2 Timothy and having to look at the false teachers who surfaced in Ephesus and in how the early Christian community reacted to them. This latest book is not an academic work. It's more of a popular level work that I hope will be helpful for the average parent out there.

Timothy George:     Wonderful. Now, to give people a sense of who you are, I always like to read the descriptions of our authors on the back of their books. I don't know if you write this or if you have a publicity agent or if your wife writes this, but anyway, it says some interesting things. In your spare time, Dillon does CrossFit, drinks far too much coffee and reads CS Lewis and watches adventure movies. Is all that true?

Dillon Thornton:    All of that is true. It is. That sums me up pretty well, I think.

Timothy George:     That's great. And you're also of course a pastor, a preacher of the gospel in a congregation that's seeking to serve the Lord there in Florida, and you've written this book, we want to talk about it, "Give them Jesus: Raising our Children on the Core Truths of the Christian Faith." Why did you write this book?

Dillon Thornton:    I wrote this book primarily for parents. Parents, grandparents and other guardians. The fundamental precept position of the book is that Christian parents are responsible for the spiritual development of the children under their care. I'm convinced that most parents feel this responsibility, though they haven't been adequately equipped to fulfill it. 

Dillon Thornton:    Many years ago, when I served as a children's pastor, an important Barna study was published. The study revealed that roughly 90% of parents with children under the age of 13 believed they had the primary responsibility for training their children, but a majority of these parents don't really spend any time during a typical week discussing spiritual truths with the children under their care. Parents are not so much unwilling to provide spiritual training, the study concluded, but they're just ill-equipped for the task.

Dillon Thornton:    The study further indicated that many parents aren't able to guide their children spiritual simply because they themselves don't have a firm grasp of the Christian faith. This is precisely why I wrote the book. My goal in this book is to guide parents to a deeper understanding of the core truths of the historic Christian faith, and then along the way, to supply them with appropriate language, helpful illustrations, relevant object lessons, things like this, so that in the end, they will be better prepared to pass these truths on to their children.

Timothy George:     Yeah. Wonderful. You are a fellow for the Center for Pastor Theologians. It's a wonderful organization, started a few years ago by a friend, Todd Wilson and some other folks. You've been involved in that. You coin a new phrase, at least it's new to me here, becoming a, not a pastor theologian but a parent theologian. What do you mean?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, so a parent theologian, I think one of the things I'm trying to do in this book is help parents rethink our role in the home. We're not just parents. We're parent theologians. By that, I mean we are the ones primarily responsible for opening up God's word with our children, helping our children to understand God's world and then their place in it. I think that's really what a theologian is. You know, we use that term and perhaps many parents out there automatically picture some old guy in a dusty study with a Gandalf-like beard, and that's what they think of when they think of a theologian. But a theologian I think, as [inaudible 00:05:38] says really well, is simply someone who opens God's word for others and helps them understand God's plan in the world. That's really what our path is, as parents.

Timothy George:     You mention how important worship is, as a part of this experience. Family worship in particular. Say a little bit about how you all do that in your family and what you would encourage others to practice.

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah. So our family worship has looked different over the years. My boys are now nine and seven, like I said. So, we've been gathering in worship in our home, gosh since they were very young. I think my youngest son Cullen first learned to recite The Apostles' Creed when he was three or four years old. Our family worship has taken different forms over the years. 

Dillon Thornton:    We started, as I suggest in the book, learning The Apostles' Creed together, with me teaching through the creed, the gospel story in essence. This is the story I want to tell my boys again and again, more than anything else. I want them to understand God's love for us, demonstrated supremely in the sending of his Son Jesus Christ, who was crucified, buried, raised on the third day, who ascended into heaven, and who will one day return to complete his plan for the world.

Dillon Thornton:    We started with The Apostles' Creed and we returned to the Creed regularly in our home. We've also had seasons where we've learned about church history together. When my boys were younger, I used Steven Nichols' excellent book, The Church History ABCs. We love this book. In fact, after working through it together, my oldest son Aiden named his stuffed hippopotamus Augustine. That was a proud dad moment for me.

Dillon Thornton:    It was, we've used other works as well. There's a great series published by Reformation Heritage called The Christian Biographies for Young Readers, that introduces young people to great figures from church history like Augustine and Luther and Calvin. We've done lots of things. Most recently we're simply reading through the gospel of John together. We take turns reading a few verses at a time, and then we'll pause to talk about what the text is teaching us about God and his world, but whatever our study focus is, I always try to include what in the book I call the four main elements of family worship, which are teach, treasures, sing and pray.

Timothy George:     Yeah, let's speak a little bit about sing, because you say it's good to have a great hymnal. You mentioned one you recommend, The Trinity Hymnal, but there are other good ones to choose from, so that your children are learning something about the liturgy, the singing of the Christian faith as well as the knowledge base that it implies. Isn't that right? 

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, that's right. What I mean with those four essential elements, we're teaching of course the truth of the gospel and the basic core truths of the Christian faith. We're treasuring those in our hearts by memorizing scripture, memorizing things like The Apostles' Creed and then we're singing. We're celebrating these truths that we've been learning about. I think that's what some of the wonderful hymns of the faith help us do. 

Dillon Thornton:    There have been days in our house where my youngest son Cullen will wake up in the morning singing, "Holy, Holy, Holy" because we've been singing that the night before in our family worship time. It's helping us as parents and our children as well celebrate these wonderful truths that we've been learning about together. 

Timothy George:     Maybe that's a part of what you mean. You have a very arresting sentence in your book that, The Apostles' Creed in particular helps us and our children understand that Christians are not just storytellers, but story dwellers. What do you mean by that?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, yeah. I think that's what drew me to The Apostles' Creed, sort of as the structure for this book. A couple of things about the creed in particular. One is I think it is just a wonderful summary of the gospel, but the other is, if it helps us as parents and it helps our children understand our place in God's story. Every time we recite the Creed, I think we are remembering this is the story, the great drama of redemption and we have been drawn into that. So it's more than being a storyteller. We dwell within this story and that brings great purpose to our lives and I think that's something we want to teach our children from a very young age.

Timothy George:     It has a kind of incarnational connotation to it that the word became flesh and dwelt among us. It didn't just visit the planet and leave some information, but actually took up residence or as Eugene Peterson translates that verse, he moved into the neighborhood.

Dillon Thornton:    Moved into the neighborhood. Right, absolutely.

Timothy George:     Now, you mentioned The Apostles' Creed and of course, one of the great values of The Apostles' Creed is it's so Christian. It's not necessarily distinctively Baptist, Presbyterian, Pentecostal, Methodist. It's a Christian statement. Of course, we have it in stone here in Hodges Chapel at Beeson. Every student who comes has to write an essay on The Apostles' Creed. It's kind of our school wide confession of faith. Your point is this goes back to the basics, right? That we want every Christian to know whatever denomination you may be in or end up in. What's in The Apostles' Creed is something that is absolutely essential to the Christian faith.

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, correct. That was my other main reason for starting with the Creed and allowing it to give structure to the book. This is, in fact, the oldest and the simplest creed of the Christian church. The creed, for those out there listening who might not be familiar with it, it gets its name not because it was written by one of the apostles, but because it contained the main tenets of the apostolic teaching.

Dillon Thornton:    It weaves together the big truths of the bible, and the creed unites believers throughout the world and across the centuries. You're right. It's not Baptist doctrine or Pentecostal doctrine. It's Christian doctrine, and so I think this makes it the ideal starting point for our children.

Timothy George:     On this question about doctrine itself, The Apostles' Creed of course has a tripartite orientation. It's Trinitarian in form as well as content. Even though it antedates the great decision of the Council of Nicaea in 325, you have all of those elements inherent within The Apostles' Creed. How do you take up something that seems so abstract, so difficult, so hard to even talk about as the doctrine of the Holy Trinity and bring that into your family worship with a five year old, a seven year old, a ten year old?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, right. I think this is probably one of the greatest questions that parents are asking. Is how do I take very complex truths and explain them to my children? The Trinity just being one of many examples. As parents, we must have a solid understanding of the historic Christian faith. This is certainly the first step. We then need to develop ways of explaining these truths with accuracy and in child-friendly ways.

Dillon Thornton:    CS Lewis is one of my heroes. In one of his essays, he refers to translating truth. Lewis says, "I've come to the conviction that if you cannot translate your thoughts into uneducated," or we could say child-friendly, "Language, then your thoughts were confused." So throughout "Give Them Jesus," what I've tried to do is I've tried to help parents clarify their own thoughts and then I've tried to assist them in the work of translation by providing these illustrations and object lessons in phrasing fairly complex theology in elementary terms.

Dillon Thornton:    Related issue I should comment on here, I think is the topics of Christian theology that if fully expounded, are not exactly G-rated, shall we say. I think parents sometimes struggle with subjects like the crucifixion or the virgin birth, wondering if their very young children are ready to hear about these things. Crucifixion is the sort of things that can give even a grown man nightmares, that it was savagely violent.

Dillon Thornton:    Now, parents need to understand the magnitude of suffering Jesus endured for his people, but we'll need to use discretion as we describe crucifixion to our children. Depending on the age of the child, certain details may need to be omitted and this omission does not mean this parent has diluted the gospel. There is a difference I think between understanding the mechanics of the crucifixion and affirming the meaning of the event. The particulars of Roman crucifixion such as the use of nails to hang the victim on the cross, these particulars may or may not be shared. The pivotal point to emphasize with our children is that Christ actually suffered and died for us, or similarly we can talk about the virginal conception.

Dillon Thornton:    My seven year old son isn't ready for basic biology discussions yet, but this doesn't mean I need to wait until later to teach him about Jesus' birth. When we talk about Jesus' journey to earth, I generally say something like, Jesus was born in a special way to show us that he is both human and God. We'll talk about the natural way of conception as my boys get older, and then they'll understand exactly how Jesus' birth was special or supernatural. I can introduce these ideas to my children when they're very young, and then continually come back to fill in the details as they get older. 

Timothy George:     Yeah. You're a good writer. I guess I'd like to give my wife credit for that or she'd like to take credit.

Dillon Thornton:    You should. You should, absolutely.

Timothy George:     Because you had her courses in writing here at Beeson Divinity School. But one of your subtitles, I think this is in the chapter on I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son our Lord, what Scrooge and Schwarzenegger have in common. What do they have in common?

Dillon Thornton:    Well I guess folks will have to read the book to find out the whole story there. I think that was just sort of a catchy introduction to talking about the real meaning of the Christmas story and what it really is all about. 

Timothy George:     Yeah. It's a way of kind of getting attention, isn't it? 

Dillon Thornton:    It is, yes.

Timothy George:     Getting the attention of your children, of those who are listening and learning. One of the great helpful things you do in this book called "Give Them Jesus" is throughout the book you have kind of, you call them family worship guides. Key verses, key concepts, nuggets of truth, ways in which you can take these grand, mysterious, deep, unfathomable doctrines of the Christian faith and put them in a way that your children can get a handle on them. That's very useful to people who buy this book and use it in their families.

Dillon Thornton:    Yes. Thank you Dr. George. What I've tried to do with those family worship guides, "Give Them Jesus" is not designed to be a book that parents will read and then leave sitting on their bedside table or on a bookshelf somewhere. The design, I hope, is that parents will read a chapter and then take the book to the living room, gather their children and use it as a tool for their own family worship time. 

Dillon Thornton:    The Apostles' Creed is giving structure to the book so it has six main chapters, each of them doctrinal in nature but then at the end of each chapter, there is a family worship guide, where I am walking parents through those four essential elements, to teach, treasure, sing and pray. I'm trying to give them some discussion questions to help them in their family worship time. I'm suggesting some great hymns of the faith. They can sing together and some prayer prompts to guide their conversations as a family [inaudible 00:17:11] with the Lord. It's meant to be a very hands-on sort of thing.

Timothy George:     You know, there's been a little controversy in the wider church about using the language of inviting Jesus to come into your heart. Now I did that when I was a young person. I didn't see anything wrong with it. I think Jesus really did come into my heart, but I know some people feel that may be misleading in some way. What we're talking here in a way is child evangelism but also child instruction, right? Child learning about the Christian faith. How do you think about that?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, that's a good question. I do talk about this in the book. I'm all for child evangelism in terms of sharing the gospel with children. I think we continually do that. We start when they're very young and we continue to share the gospel throughout their lives, but I do think that it is important that we look for that child appropriate understanding of the gospel. I know in my denomination that I grew up in, I'm pretty thankful for many things about that denomination.

Dillon Thornton:    I think at times we could be a bit quick to sort of rush someone down the aisle or ask them to pray a certain prayer. I think we want to look for that child appropriate understanding of, do you understand who Jesus is and what he did? His person and his work? We're not looking for a child to be able to write a systematic theology textbook or anything like that, but an understanding that's appropriate for his or her age and I think absolutely, we pray, we cry out to God in the best way we know how. I don't think there's a magical formula or a certain prayer that must be prayed, but we confess our sins. We believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and we will be saved. Absolutely.

Timothy George:     Now of course one of the final notes in the Apostles' Creed is about the church. I believe in the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins. You're the pastor of a church. How do you teach children what church is and how to be a part of church when they're very young especially?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, it's always a great joy to see families who attend and participate in worship and in church life and in community together. There is, I think a movement today, at least in certain circles, that would say the church is no longer necessary, no longer needed, like maybe it once was, and so we can all have our own, our own relationship with the Lord and stay at home and maybe even just do family worship. I'm not a proponent of that at all.

Dillon Thornton:    I think parents do bear that primary spiritual responsibility of training their children. We should be worshiping and instructing our children at home, but we also need to gather in a local assembly, where Christ is worshiped and where the sacraments of baptism and communion are happening and church discipline is being practiced and all of those things that we look for in a true and a healthy local church. That's a very, very important part of our family's life, and I would hope and I encourage that it's an important part of everyone's life as well.

Timothy George:     You made the distinction between the church universal, the church as the body of Christ, extending across time as well as space, but also the church as a local fellowship, as a local community as believers. You give us three questions, three key questions to pose when we're looking for what kind of church ought we to be a part of and bring our children up in. I want to read the questions. Maybe you just have a brief comment about each one of them. They're really good questions. The first one is, of a potential church home, to ask does this congregation prioritize the preaching and teaching of God's word, especially the gospel?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah. I think that a lot of families these days don't necessarily look for that as one of the first things of a potential church home. Maybe they're more interested in is the children's ministry exciting? Is it very cutting edge? Is it a fascinating children's facility or something like that. I'm not saying that those things are wrong, but I think a far more important question to ask and certainly to begin with is, is this a place where God's word is going to be preached? That's important for us as parents. That's important for our children as well. Are we going to make a really, really big deal about the gospel in this place? I think that's the most important question we can ask.

Timothy George:     The second question, is this a place that prioritizes the sacraments of baptism and communion?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, this is something as I hinted at earlier, this is something that we're not going to be doing [inaudible 00:21:55], in our family worship times at home. This is something I think the church does as we gather together as the body of Christ in those local assemblies. We are looking for the sacraments to be practiced. This is, I think, and in the book I talk about college students, and young adults that I've met over the years in student ministries and things like that, that will say to me, Fellowship of Christian Athletes or this event over here that I go to, is that my church? I always say, well are they baptizing people? Are you taking the Lord's Supper together? Because those are marks of the church. While it's fine and good and healthy for you to be involved in those gatherings, you also need a local assembly, a local group of believers that you're a part of as well.

Timothy George:     Yeah, in this chapter, you refer back to an experience when you were doing your doctoral work in New Zealand, when you would go to a pub with friends and you'd have a few pints you say. I don't know what kind of pints you had, but you have a few pints, and then you would talk about great theologians. Maybe Calvin, maybe Barth, maybe Didymus the blind. You were an astute group. But, you wouldn't call that a church. 

Dillon Thornton:    Absolutely.

Timothy George:     It said, so what makes a church a church?

Dillon Thornton:    Yeah, I think, yeah I'm looking for those historical marks of the church, where the gospel is being preached, the sacraments are being practiced, church discipline is being practiced. If those things are happening, then we have a true and a healthy church. But if those things are not happening, then it might be a wonderful fellowship group, it might a wonderful bible study or an enriching discussion of scholars or whatever, but it's not a local church.

Timothy George:     That third question of course has to do with what you were just talking about in a way, discipline, that that is also a part of what a New Testament congregation, a church of Jesus Christ should be a disciplined community. Discipline in particular is related to the word discipleship. 

Dillon Thornton:    Yes, yes. The idea there that I try to communicate in the book is that we all need that accountability. We all need someone in our life, multiple people in our life, to help hold us accountable, to show us the way when maybe we've lost our way. I think that's an important part of church life.

Timothy George:     I've heard other parents particularly talk about how the church individuals in the church, leaders, mentors, other than parents even, have a role in the upbringing of their children in the faith, by modeling for them, the virtues of the Christian life, and forgiveness and discipline and all of these things. That's another reason God has so tempered the body that we are to belong together to one another, as a real koinonia, a real community of faith.

Dillon Thornton:    That's exactly right, yeah. 

Timothy George:     I'm talking with Dillon Thornton. He's a graduate of Beeson Divinity School. He has a PhD in New Testament studies I think, from the University of Otago in New Zealand. He's written a couple of books. We've been discussing "Give Them Jesus: Raising our children on the core truths of the Christian faith." Dillon, as you think back on your time here at Beeson as one of our students, what comes to mind? Was anything that you experienced here helpful as you shape this book, in your current ministry?

Dillon Thornton:    Absolutely. The Beeson faulty, students and really just the overall experience have had a tremendous impact on my family and on my ministry. My three years at Beeson were among the most formative years of my life. I would say that if I had not attended Beeson, I probably would not have written this book, certainly not in this particular form. As I said earlier, I'm very fortunate in that I was raised in church and I'm grateful for many of the things that characterized my childhood denomination, but the churches I attended and served in, from childhood through college really were not liturgical, not confessional, at least not in the sense of using historic confessions like the creeds.

Dillon Thornton:    My first significant interaction with The Apostles' Creed occurred during the Beeson admission process, 10 years ago. When I applied to Beeson one of the requirements, as it sounds like it still is today, was an essay on The Apostles' Creed. For me, that was the beginning of a deep, deep appreciation for this powerful summary of the scriptural storyline. In some respects, I can say that Beeson provided the impetus for this project.

Timothy George:     Well my guest today on the Beeson podcast has been Dr. Dillon T. Thornton, a pastor, pastor of Faith Community Church in Seminole, Florida, a father, a parent, married to his wife Jamie and they have two energetic boys, Aiden and Cullen and he has written this book really as a way of guiding, I would say a kind of manual, a workbook as much as anything else, to help parents raise their children on the core truths of the Christian faith. "Give Them Jesus," published just right now by Faith Words. I commend it strongly and thank you Dillon for this wonderful conversation.

Dillon Thornton:    Thank you Dr. George so much for the opportunity.

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