Tim Gillespie
Episode 12

Narrator:

Welcome, friends, to another episode of the Story & Experience Podcast. Join your host, Japhet De Oliveira, with his guest today and discover the moments that shape us, our families and communities.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Welcome to another episode of the Story & Experience Podcast. And as you know, for those of you who are regular listeners, that we have the 100 questions and we're going to dive into them in a second, and I'm going to introduce you to the guest. But if you're brand-new, what you should know is that of the 100 questions, the first 10 are standard for everybody. But after that, 11 to 100, the guests gets to choose which ones they want to go to, and 100 is the most difficult one. So it progressively gets more difficult as we transition through these questions.

Japhet De Oliveira:

What you have to imagine is that we just have a cup of tea, each of us, we're sitting down, we're having a chat, which is what's taking place right now. We are just connecting, hearing each other's stories and experiences, and seeing what moments shaped our leadership and our lives. Well, let me dive in because that's actually where the real fun begins, and let me begin with what's your name, and is there anything we should know about how your name is pronounced? Does anybody slaughter it, is there any pronunciation issues. Who are you?

Tim Gillespie:

My name is Timothy Gillespie.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Great. Do people call you Tim or Timothy?

Tim Gillespie:

They call me Tim most of the time, or Dr. Gillespie, sometimes they do that.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Yeah. Yeah. Brilliant. Tim, Dr. Tim, Tim Gillespie. What do you do for work right now?

Tim Gillespie:

I'm a pastor, the lead pastor at Crosswalk Church in Redlands, California.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Just that?

Tim Gillespie:

No, some other places as well. We have about seven campuses throughout the United States.

Japhet De Oliveira:

You can see where I'm going here, Tim, you also are a professor, right?

Tim Gillespie:

Yeah, I'm a professor at three different universities at any given time, and I'm the faith expert for Blue Zones, the company.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Okay. So a few things. That's brilliant.

Tim Gillespie:

I do some work.

Japhet De Oliveira:

International speaker, yeah, it's good stuff. I'm glad you're joining us, Tim. This is going to be a fun conversation here.

Tim Gillespie:

Thanks for having me.

Japhet De Oliveira:

How long have you been in your current role as the lead pastor and driver of this Crosswalk?

Tim Gillespie:

It'll be seven years in October, actually.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Wow. Celebration moment in October.

Tim Gillespie:

Yep.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Yeah. Tell me what morning when you wake up, do you have water, green liquid smoothie, coffee, tea, what's the first drink of the day?

Tim Gillespie:

Coffee.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Coffee.

Tim Gillespie:

And I was actually a little offended that you said we were sitting down to have a chat over tea because I don't drink dirt water.

Japhet De Oliveira:

I'm going to ignore that because this is your moment right now. Yeah, yeah, that's okay. But at some other point, we'll bring somebody else on who really enjoys that and they'll be okay. They'll retort. Tim, where were you born?

Tim Gillespie:

I was born in Loma Linda, California.

Japhet De Oliveira:

And I would say, have you been back to Loma Linda, California, but you actually live not that far away from it, right?

Tim Gillespie:

Yeah, I live right down the street. Actually, for the last 16 years, we just moved over to Riverside, California, interestingly enough, during COVID.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Oh wow. During COVID. Great idea to move during COVID. Was that fun or easy?

Tim Gillespie:

No, it was not fun nor easy.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Not easy.

Tim Gillespie:

It was a hot mess, but we got it done in February.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Well done, well done. Tell me, when you were a little kid, did you imagine you were going to be a pastor?

Tim Gillespie:

No. No, no, no.

Japhet De Oliveira:

No. What did you want to be when you were a kid?

Tim Gillespie:

I wasn't sure. I thought I was going into law, that's kind of where I was headed and where I was studying. And then took a little bit of a different turn.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's pretty cool. If people were to describe you, Tim, as an introvert or an extrovert, which would it be and would you agree?

Tim Gillespie:

It'd be an extrovert, and yes.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Decisive, brilliant, I love it. And then now let's talk a little bit about your habits. Are you an early riser or night owl?

Tim Gillespie:

I'm an early riser. I get up usually between 3:30 and 4 each morning.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Appreciate you joining us bright and early. Brilliant. That's good. What's the very first thought that you had early this morning as you woke up?

Tim Gillespie:

What's that sound? What's that sound?

Japhet De Oliveira:

And what was the sound?

Tim Gillespie:

It was the cat. It was the cat deciding, she's mad about something, I don't know. She was meowing and then purring, it was a strange situation going on.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Poor you, poor you. Leadership question here, are you a backseat driver?

Tim Gillespie:

No.

Japhet De Oliveira:

No?

Tim Gillespie:

I don't believe so.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's good. Well, 10 questions, we're done, easy. So now it is actually in your world, you're driving. And let's see where you want to go from 11 to 100.

Tim Gillespie:

Let's do 11 through 20 and then I want to jump to 75.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Okay. All right, let's go real quick then. Tell us about the most adventurous food, meal you've ever eaten?

Tim Gillespie:

It was reindeer in a Nordic Viking restaurant in Norway. It was great.

Japhet De Oliveira:

And was it good?

Tim Gillespie:

It was very good. It was very good. It had some Lingonberry sauce on it, it was quite good.

Japhet De Oliveira:

All right. And then your favorite movie or book of all time and why?

Tim Gillespie:

Oh, my favorite book is East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I'd give a million dollars to be able to read it again for the first time. And why? Timshell, that's why, thous mayest.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Walk us through the ideal end of your day.

Tim Gillespie:

That's a good question. Good conversation with my wife or my kids, usually in the jacuzzi. And then step out and go to sleep all warmed up and fall right asleep.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Do you fall instantly asleep?

Tim Gillespie:

I fall asleep quite quickly, yes.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's good. That's good.

Tim Gillespie:

I don't have a lot of demons.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Was going to say the same thing. That's great. Tell us, Tim, about what you enjoy doing outside of your work.

Tim Gillespie:

What's that?

Japhet De Oliveira:

What is that?

Tim Gillespie:

Hanging with my kids. My daughter's up in college right now, but I've got two boys at home. So, finding time to hang out with them, watch a movie or just chat.

Japhet De Oliveira:

How's your surfing going?

Tim Gillespie:

Poorly. I haven't gone in a long time. I need to do it again.

Japhet De Oliveira:

What's the one thing you always misplace?

Tim Gillespie:

The one thing I always misplace. My AirPods. I have to find those all the time.

Japhet De Oliveira:

There has to be a better system for us, right?

Tim Gillespie:

I know. And then you get the AirTag, but then you got to carry this big bulky pack around. It doesn't make sense yet. Why don't they just build the AirTag into the AirPods? That seems like it would...

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's true. That's true. The battery will be so large. Tell us about one of the places you traveled and why do you want to go back?

Tim Gillespie:

So my favorite place to travel is Kenya and the Maasai Mara, a place called Mara West. And the reason why I want to go back is because it is a Safari game park, not a game park, it's a Safari park. It's Kenya so you can't hunt.

Japhet De Oliveira:

This is an unedited podcast.

Tim Gillespie:

Yeah, you can't hunt in Kenya. I don't want to hunt but I've seen four of the big five in Africa and I still have not seen a rhino. So I need to go back and see a rhino. That's my favorite place in the world. Amazing place.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That would be beautiful. That would be beautiful. All right. What's the most special day to you on the calendar and why?

Tim Gillespie:

I don't know that I have one. I don't know that I have one special date. I think any day that you spend with interesting people having good conversations, laughing a lot, those are good days. So, whenever you can schedule that, it's a good day.

Japhet De Oliveira:

I like it. I like it. And if you just had to eat one meal for a month, what would you choose?

Tim Gillespie:

Whatever meal I'm hanging out with you eating.

Japhet De Oliveira:

As long as you choose the temperature, I'm with you. That's fine. I'm with you. I'm with you. I understand. I understand. What is your exercise routine?

Tim Gillespie:

So, I have a Peloton. I've had a Peloton for almost a year and I love that thing, and I try and get on that every single day and do a class or two. Usually between 30 minutes and an hour.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Yeah, I usually get those alerts on my watch.

Tim Gillespie:

I know, huh?

Japhet De Oliveira:

It's very exciting. No, you don't get mine as often as I get yours. I feel like I'm getting yours way more often than you should get mine. Mine's like, Japhet's actually done something this month.

Tim Gillespie:

I get that one. Japhet stood up. I'm like, oh no, what's going on?

Japhet De Oliveira:

You're really good at it. That's fantastic. So you try to do it every day, right?

Tim Gillespie:

I try to, it hasn't been great lately, but yeah, I try to.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Do you have a particular, with Peloton, is it a particular studio that you have to race with?

Tim Gillespie:

They've got different instructors and my favorite instructor is Emma Lovewell. The mission statement for our church is Love Well, so that's why I was like, oh, that's interesting. I like her choice of music and she doesn't yell at me too much. Just enough apparently. So yeah.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's pretty fantastic. That's great. All right. And let's go here, tell us about something you would rate 10 out of 10.

Tim Gillespie:

Oh yeah. Well, there's a few things I would rate 10 out of 10. People may not like this, but the music of Rage Against the Machine, I would say it's 10 out of 10, it changed a particular genre. And my 14-year-old's getting way into them so I'm kind of a fan. And a buddy of mine makes a steak that is 10 out of 10 when he comes over to my house, and our families get together. It is as good as any steak I've ever had in any restaurant, so that's 10 out of 10.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's beautiful. All right. Now you said you wanted to go to a 75 after the first one here. All right, so let's dive to 75. Here we go. Do you remember the first item that you purchased with your own money, and if so, what was it and why did you buy it?

Tim Gillespie:

It was a Bandido BMX bicycle. It was $275. I remember that. I had to mow lawns at my house because we didn't get allowance, we did work. I saved up my money. I saved up $225 and my dad covered the last $50, but I had to pay him back. I used him as a credit card. And it was this little bike shop in town and they made bikes one-off, mine was number one 134.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Oh my. That would have been a really cool BMX.

Tim Gillespie:

It was awesome. It was white. It had white tires, that was a poor idea.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Did you actually learn to do anything on the BMX?

Tim Gillespie:

Yeah. I never raced or anything because they were all, for us, they were all on Saturday and we were going to church. But yeah, did some tricks. I wasn't great.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's fantastic. BMXing was always really fantastic stuff. It was definitely a genre, definitely an era of time. All right, where'd you want to go after 75?

Tim Gillespie:

I don't know, let's go to 80.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Eighty, all right. How would you like to change in the future?

Tim Gillespie:

I've never been good at creating habitus, as it were. I'm actually not that consistent a person, I don't do things exactly the same way all the time. I used to think it was organized and so I used to get all these things that would help me get organized, and now I have a lot of clutter from things that are supposed to help me get organized. And so, I realized it's not so much organization, it's consistency. That's really the key. I'd like to become more consistent in, even stuff as silly as, well, something that I think you're brilliant at like your folder hierarchy in your computer. I'm pretty good at searching things out through Spotlight, but I'm not so good at knowing where I put something. I just need to become more consistent I think.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Isn't that what Spotlight's for?

Tim Gillespie:

That's how I use it.

Japhet De Oliveira:

I mean, it really is. Apple realized that we're not good at folder structures so they created Spotlight for us.

Tim Gillespie:

Exactly.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Tim, in many ways, with what you do and the way that you think, for our listeners, you should know that Tim's not only... I mean, he's like, yeah, I'm an extrovert and I lead this church for seven years, and yeah, sure, I teach at a university, but he's also a TEDx speaker, and he's an international speaker. He's probably one of the most innovative and creative people that I know on this planet. He's my go-to person whenever I need to think of what should we call something, what should we name it, how do we think of it and how do we reframe it? So Tim, maybe your ecosystem, your habitus is actually a beautiful tree. Maybe it doesn't look like a brick wall.

Tim Gillespie:

I like that, I like that better. Okay, I'm not going to be any more consistent. It doesn't help. You know what I think it is though, my daughter has ADD, not ADD, she has dyslexia pretty significantly. I think that that's genetic, I think that may have come from me. I don't have it in a way that presents itself through difficulty in reading or that sort of thing. But the idea of not thinking clearly, like I married a woman who's amazingly logical in the way that she thinks, and I'll stand looking at something as silly as trying to put your bag into the, put a bag somewhere, and I'm looking at it, I'm like, I can't figure out how to do it. And she's like, turn it around. Oh yeah, now it fits. But I never would have come up with that. I think the obtuseness of my mind is, it's probably a bit of a curse and a blessing all at the same time.

Japhet De Oliveira:

The fact that you know it as well is important.

Tim Gillespie:

All right, 83.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Eighty-three it is. Think about your favorite childhood memory. What was it?

Tim Gillespie:

Oh, I can tell you that. It was searching for shards of either glass or pottery or whatever at Caesarea Maritima on the sand dunes outside of that ancient city, or kind of on top of that ancient city I would say. My father did archeology for I think 15 years or something like that. And so every summer we would go to Israel and stay at ... a resort, and we got to do archeology from that resort. And so as a kid, we would just comb the sand dunes trying to find really cool artifacts and that sort of thing, and found some cool stuff, found a couple of coins and that sort of stuff. So yeah, Roman artifacts and really Christian stuff, it was very cool.

Japhet De Oliveira:

So you were Indiana Jones.

Tim Gillespie:

I was...

Japhet De Oliveira:

Great. All right, after 83, where do you want to go?

Tim Gillespie:

Let's do 87.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Eighty-seven. When you're under incredible stress, what helps to ground you?

Tim Gillespie:

So, being able to parse something. Sometimes there's so much that you have to do that you got to parse it out and begin to look at it and it's different pieces before you can see the whole. And so being able to do that, that's when it comes to work and the tsunami of work that sometimes seems to come. What really stresses me out though are relationship issues. I work at a church and inevitably you're going to make some people upset. And having to sort through, is it reasonable that this person is upset? Did they hear me correctly? Are they being unreasonable, am I being unreasonable? Those kinds of things have a tendency to stress me out I think even more than the amount of work, because work's going to get done right, or it's not, sometimes it doesn't, but those relationships are a little more difficult to really navigate through.

Japhet De Oliveira:

I think the parsing thing is really good. I like that. I think that's great wisdom in that because people can get, as you said there, they can feel there's tsunami at work, a tsunami in life. And being able just to parse.

Tim Gillespie:

You know what the two tools [are that] I use, and I think I probably have you to thank for them, I use MindNode. That's kind of a brain tree kind of thing. So I use MindNode. And then I also use OmniGraffle to begin to organize it if I need to. When you're done with that, people look at you and they think, oh, you're brilliant. You put all those boxes and lines and arrows from one to the other, which is really just trying to map out what's going on in your head.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Yeah. No, I'm with you on that. I love it. I love it. It's really good. That's great. All right, where do you want to go next?

Tim Gillespie:

Let's do 90.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Ninety. All right. Well, here we go. Tell us about how you overcame a seemingly insurmountable obstacle.

Tim Gillespie:

I'll make it kind of work-oriented. In the Seventh-day Adventist church, I'm a pastor in the Seventh-day Adventist denomination, no one has ever planted a church outside of where they plant the church. We have a structure, local church conference union, division is what it's called. It's a hierarchical structure. So I wanted to plant a church in Chattanooga. I work in Redlands, that's never been done before. It's across conferences and it's across unions. When I say it's insurmountable, it was definitely every time we talked to somebody, it was met with, you can't do that. I had a very simple strategy for surmounting that, which is, let's just do it. And so we just did it. It's amazing, when 200 people show up and they're interested in giving to the organization and becoming a church, all of a sudden people start listening.

Tim Gillespie:

I don't know if we stumbled into that. We sort of did because we didn't, we kind of didn't know that it could be done. It was kind of the Good Will Hunting, put it on a board, didn't know it could be done, and then solve the problem. That's not really the premise of that movie ... Sometimes you just have to do the things that people say can't be done because, often the reason why it can't be done is that nobody really tried in earnest. Just give it a try. I hate to sound like Nike, but sometimes you just got to start something and go down the path and figure out if you can figure it out. And if you can't, that's fine, too.

Tim Gillespie:

Around you, I think you have to create a culture of, and I need to say this correctly, you have to create a culture of failure, that does not mean a failed culture. What it means is that you accept failure as just the next step towards success. If you can be kind of stalwart enough to not allow failure to derail you and realize, oh, this is just part of it, then you kind of welcome failure because it gets you to the next spot on success. We've always tried to do that in the organizations that I work with.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Where did you learn to not be fearful? That was not on the question list, by the way. That's 90A.

Tim Gillespie:

I think I'm just too stupid to know the consequences sometimes. I don't buy what a lot of people say. A lot of people have this idea that, I think we spend a lot of time asking for permission, and people don't like to give permission because every time you give permission, you have a stake in it, and sometimes you just have to move ahead with what I think God is calling you to do, within reason. Obviously, you're not going to hurt somebody. But organizations, this is a problem, organizations are a hot mess. And the church, if you will, as an organization, it's a mess. I'll just say that, I work for an organization that's a huge mess. We've got tons of issues in this. But an organism is beautiful and organisms don't really ask permission. Organisms move by instinct and do the things that they're supposed to do. Or they're not going to survive, they understand that survival mode, that limbic brain, if you will, that just has to make something happen.

Tim Gillespie:

And so, sometimes you just move ahead. And it's amazing, people love to get behind something that's successful. And so, if you can make something happen and make it successful, then tons of people will take credit for it. And if you're someone who really couldn't care less about who gets credit for what you do, you can do a lot more, honestly. There's a lot of people out there that say what we've done at Crosswalk is because they allowed it. Okay, that's fine. If that's what they think. And some did, some did. Some just didn't stop us. And I've always said, all I need is a little space. Give me a little space, I'll inhabit all that space and push the boundaries on it.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's beautiful. All right. Which one you go next?

Tim Gillespie:

Ninety-three.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Ninety-three. Paint us a picture of success.

Tim Gillespie:

Oh, contentment. When you can be content. Understanding that there's a lot of abundance out there that we get to live in and that we can, and it doesn't really matter what it is. There might be somebody who's making 16 bucks an hour but loves what they do every single day and they go home feeling fulfilled and feeling content. That's success, man. Because there's people who make millions of dollars who hate everything about their life and sometimes end their life tragically. Finding the peace within the abundance of what you live regardless of the size because abundance is not about size, abundance is about acceptance I think.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's good, that's good. What's next?

Tim Gillespie:

Let's do 98, 99 and 100.

Japhet De Oliveira:

All right, all right.

Tim Gillespie:

If we've got time.

Japhet De Oliveira:

Yeah, I think we could, let's go. What is one great thing that you are capable of achieving?

Tim Gillespie:

I'm really good at getting people to catch onto a vision. A few instances over the last even few weeks, I realized I can galvanize a room to get behind what I'm saying. Sometimes I think it's because I'm just passionate about what I say, even if I don't know it that well, I have a tendency to project passion. Which is sometimes confused for aggression. I got to be careful with that. I have been accused of that a few times. But no, I think that's what I'm really good at. I think that's why I'm a pretty good public speaker. People listen to me and go, yeah, I want to live in that reality that he's talking about. I think I'm really good at that. I will accept that in my 49th year of life, I will accept the fact that that's something I'm pretty good at.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's good, that's good. What is the most difficult truth you've ever told?

Tim Gillespie:

The most difficult truth I've ever told. I'll go back to a very personal one. It's having to wrestle with my daughter's learning disability and having to tell her your mind just doesn't work like other people's, that's why this is hard. It doesn't mean you're less than, in fact, you think in ways that other people can't. There's such a blessing to that. If you have a kid that's wrestling with dyslexia, read the Dyslexia Survival Plan by a guy named Moss I think is, Foss, Moss or Foss is his last name. Ben Foss I think. It's amazing because he talks about the benefits of thinking like that.

Tim Gillespie:

But sitting down with a 16-year-old girl who's just struggling and has always felt that she's stupid. And talking about, no, there's something different. There's something different. That was what was hard, because she didn't want to be different. And say, no, there's something different and it makes you amazing and it makes you beautiful. But it makes certain things way more difficult because of the way that the world is structured now, it's not structured for your mind, it's structured for someone else's mind. And you're going to have to always bend the world to make sense to you. And that's a lot to ask of a 16-year-old girl trying to figure out who she is. So that was probably the toughest conversation I've had.

Japhet De Oliveira:

It's true. You're shaping not only her, but you're shaping actually others, the way that others actually perceive her and the way others will perceive each other. So you're changing the future, as well. So, good for you, good for you, and good for her, as well. All right, question 100 then. Tell us about, Tim, about one question that you just want to answer.

Tim Gillespie:

So it's a faith question, right? I think that there are different kinds of believers. There's 99 to one percenters. 99% belief, they don't question, and that sort of thing. And then they have 1% of doubt. And then I think there's 49-51-ers who are always kind of on that precipice of I believe, but I'm not sure it all makes sense all the time. And I've never been a 99-1%. I work with people like that and I'm just amazed, you don't seem to have questions. My questions are not can God do a miracle or did Moses part the Red Sea, that's a bit superfluous to me, part of that narrative is a bit superfluous to me. The question is like, so is this true? A big foundational question. Is there a God? And I find myself landing on that 51% most of the time, but there's been times in sermons I'm speaking in front of a thousand people and I've thought, I hope this doesn't mean that I'm disingenuous, I don't believe it is, but I thought, huh, I'm not sure that sounds right.

Tim Gillespie:

So I find myself, even when I give Bible studies, which I don't do personally too often anymore because we've got staff for that, but explaining something and realizing like, man, my questions are really big and really foundational. I think what I'm confronted with a lot is that question of faith, not did this happen, did this not happen, what is God, what is God not like. But man, does this even exist. My leap of faith is not, is this reasonable, or was the biblical narrative accurate? My question of faith is, is this even true at all? If it is, I can accept a lot of things down the line, and I have a lot of different opinions on those sorts of things.

Tim Gillespie:

But there's a very foundational question that I have that, like I said, I think the majority of the time, I mean, that's what faith is. Faith is not assurity, faith is not knowing, faith is stepping into that abyss going, I'm going to believe. I'm going to believe that this is true. And then I think that plays out a lot, that sounds like any given day I might be an atheist, it's not exactly that. I think it's a little more nuanced than that. But those are hard truths to kind of face up to.

Tim Gillespie:

You know what I want for my congregation, what I want for the people around me is, but you know what, it's not unquestioning belief. I don't actually believe in that. I think that when you doubt it means that you believe in something, right? I think when you don't doubt, I really question about the quality of people's belief when they don't have questions about it. I'm like, are you paying attention? Because some of this stuff is hard. Some of this stuff is confusing and some of this stuff is, some of this stuff is, it's fantastic in some respects, right? I got to take some leaps here. And I'm okay with those leaps.

Tim Gillespie:

This is why I think like theology is really important, what you say about God, the consistency in which your theology expresses who God might be, what God's character is. Those are really important things, and I think that in the world I work in in the Christian world, there's some ludicrous statements that people say about God constantly, because they haven't really thought through the implications. Words matter, and they matter a ton. I face those every day.

Japhet De Oliveira:

But Tim, there's many things that are beautiful about what you actually do as a leader, but that's actually one of the most beautiful things I think in the way that you preach and speak and think, is that you are calling your community, your friends, those who come into your presence as well, into a space of not just blindness, but actually into a space of openness. And it's scary to be in that space of openness because we would often, I'm with you, I think we often would like just to Narrator:be concrete and no thinking. I love where you're going with that.

Tim Gillespie:

Yeah, man. Thank you. Your faith is built in the struggle to believe, it's not built in the certainty, I think I would probably use that word. The idea of certainty is probably anathema to the idea of faith more than we think.

Japhet De Oliveira:

That's good. You're actually talking about real faith.

Tim Gillespie:

I suppose so.

Japhet De Oliveira:

No, that's fantastic. Well, unfortunately, our time has come to an end. Thank you, Dr. Timothy Gillespie, professor, speaker, friend, visionary. It has been a pleasure as always to connect with you, my brother. Thank you for sharing your stories and experiences that only a snippet that have shaped [you]. Even if not over a cup of tea, I appreciate your moments here. And look, to everybody who's listening, I'm going to encourage you to also share your stories and experiences because when you do so, you learn, others learn from you, and you will grow and they will grow, as well. And we can only be more transformative in these moments. So, God bless everybody. Thank you again, Tim, and have an absolutely amazing day ahead of you.

Narrator:

Thank you for joining us for the Story & Experience podcast. We invite you to read, watch, and submit your story and experience at adventisthealth.org/story. The Story & Experience Podcast was brought to you by Adventist Health for the Office of Culture.