Welcome to Tedderville
An Introduction
I am a Christian and a pastor. In theory, the Triune God, in the Persons of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit should always be my main characters, regardless of what I write. My primary page, Walking Points, is part of my ministry - a writing ministry. There I share, teach, guide, encourage, counsel, shepherd, etc. These are all forms of ministry and that’s what Walking Points exists to do… to help others navigate their faith and life from God’s eternal perspective.
Under the “because I’m a Christian” description of who I am, I should have the same key characters here in my more personal writing as well. And I hope I do. But the focus here is different. It’s not organized. What you will find written here is whatever I feel like writing during a particular week. I hope I can always pass along wisdom I learn, no matter the style or purpose of my writing. However, I subtitled this page “personal miscellany” for a reason, and that should be kept in mind.
In one sense, everything I have ever written has had an autobiographical or self-teaching or self-counseling nature to it. From the sermons I have preached and turned into chapters of books, to the devotions I have written and posted online, to the prayers I have shared, all of these have risen from what I have heard (read) God saying to me through the Bible (his Word) and his Spirit. From that revealed Word, I have attempted, under the direction of God’s Spirit and in his power, to communicate wisdom and direction as best as I’m able to understand it. Therefore, the key structure of most of my writing has been to teach and guide, ask some questions for discussion and personal reflection, and then offer some next steps to help others begin putting these Christian truths and principles into practice in their lives.
Tedderville is different in this regard. While I hope some of what I shared in the previous paragraph shows up in some form or fashion, albeit, in a less-structured way, here I am attempting to be more vulnerable and personal in what I write. That’s uncomfortable for me and perhaps a little risky. Putting yourself “out there” often is. I have had to take very personal theological stands that have gone against the grain of our culture, including those I know and love, and that has been excruciatingly difficult. I have never enjoyed telling people hard truths, even in love, that have confronted, corrected, or rebuked the direction they were headed, and that includes parenting my four children. (Also, I should say, I’ve never enjoyed being on the receiving end of this either.) I did it (or wrote it) because I genuinely believed it was best for them, but not because I enjoyed it. I hope and pray I communicated such things humbly and lovingly, but more importantly, my prayer in all of it was to be faithful to God and to glorify him and bless those who read or heard my words.
But this is different. Sharing personal experiences, reflections, and observations about “non-essential” things is scary to me. The people-pleaser in me is really uncomfortable with such things. The introverted and private side of my personality would prefer to only share such things in my personal journal or with my family and closest friends.
And so, this is a leap of faith. A leap in the dark. I do not suspect I’ll be sharing anything here so consequential that I’ll lose friends, though I may lose sleep. But that’s only because I overthink things far too much. Can you relate to any of this? I admire folks who can just “put it out there” and not seem to care what others think about what they’ve written. I’m not blessed to be among them. But I do hope that what I write here on Tedderville will occasionally help you think about things in your own life and even make you laugh from time to time. The pastor in me will probably not be able to resist doing a little teaching here and there, but hopefully it won’t be in the form of “here’s what you must believe” on the subject. Yet regardless of the form and intention of this exercise, I will seek to glorify God in all of it because he is Lord of every sphere of my life - the serious and the silly and everything in-between. “Every square inch” (to quote a famous theologian) is under his authority, and so I don’t get to write things God doesn’t care about because he cares about all of it. Or put another way, it all comes from him and belongs to him and therefore should honor him.
Lastly, and again, pardon me for the self-indulgence, but I hope this exercise is a little cathartic for me. Opening up about things I have thought about for a long time (or even briefer amounts of time) is exciting to me, even as it scares the living daylights out of me. Once more, not because what I’m writing here is so important to the rest of the world, but because I’m bearing a bit more of myself here than in my usual writing. So be it. I’m almost 60 years old. Why in the world would I care so much about what others think (without going out of my way to be obnoxious)? Don’t know.
And so, on that note… here we go. Thanks for stopping by.
Enjoy,
Dale
Why “Tedderville?”
Here’s my not-so-deep answer for you: Tedder is my last name. And “ville” can refer to the name of “a place with reference to a particular quality.” Therefore, this page is the “place” that has the “particular quality” of me. So, there you have it. These are my miscellaneous meanderings, not someone else’s, and they are, in large measure, if not necessarily about me, the result of what I have experienced, learned, thought about, and so on. There you have it.