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Testimony.  Pastor Stout was raised in a mainline church which espoused liberal theology. He was taught that the Bible was merely a history about what certain people thought about God thousands of years ago. It provided an interesting historical reference, but was not authoritative or binding on us today. When he got into college, his courses in zoology taught evolution and this made sense to him. He became a professing atheist, although deep down wondered if perhaps the organized structure of the universe and everything in it could be pointing to a creator god of some kind. For about a four-year period of time beginning in high school, it seemed that wave after wave of Christians were trying to witness to him about Christ. His standards response was, “If you don’t talk to me about what you believe, then I won’t talk to you about what I believe.” His junior year of college he transferred to UCLA (the University of California at Los Angeles), from which he eventually graduated with a degree in physics.

The continual testimony of believers witnessing to him over the years got him to thinking about his position. His response was to write out a list of ten issues which he thought showed that Christianity was suitable for people living in a desert 2,000 years ago, but irrelevant for us today in our scientific environment. With this list, he was no longer avoiding discussions about God, but was ready to meet head on anyone who was willing to talk to him. Then, two events took place which led to a complete reversal of his understanding and beliefs.

Shortly after Tim began attending UCLA, there was a girl, Claire C., a voice major in music, who had an early class which Tim was also taking. They started walking to class together, just to be social. The walk took about ten minutes. She was also a Christian. She was living in an apartment on the second story of a set of three separate apartment buildings which surrounded three sides of a parking lot; the fourth side opened onto the street. Her apartment was in the back of the complex, opposite the street and facing into the parking lot. One morning while Tim was waiting for her in the parking lot, she appeared and suddenly belted out a song about her joy in Jesus. She was singing from the elevated height of the walkway for the second story, and her voice literally reverberated off the walls of the surrounding apartment complex. Tim was embarrassed that this singer was heading towards him and wished he could crawl under the asphalt. You just don’t sing about Jesus like that in public! However, there was a presence of joy on her face that seemed real. In truth, Tim was not a happy person. Good grades and optimism for an interesting career were not satisfying him and he knew it. The joy on Claire’s face as she sang her praise to Jesus haunted him. Actually, it made him angry. He thought he had everything in life going for him, but he was not happy. Why was she happy and he wasn’t?! Ultimately, this became a major step in breaking his will against his professed atheism. On the one hand he yearned for the inner presence of Christ that he sensed she had, but on the hand he attributed to that to being simple-minded about reality. Science showed the Bible was not true and that was that. He had no interest in deluding himself about a bunch of ancient desert tales.

A short time later, Tim met with a lady, Glenna O., who had graduated in English from the University of California at Berkeley a number of years earlier. She was active in a ministry focused on high school students and very well studied in apologetics. Apologetics is the study of evidences and arguments in support of the Bible and Christianity. Tim refreshed his list of objections and then met with her. He was totally unprepared for what happened. As he went through the list, Glenna allowed him to speak at will. She then proceeded to develop his arguments better than he did. She next demolished them. English majors weren’t supposed to do that! This was a complete shock. As a science major, Tim thought this discussion was going to be a pushover. However, honesty required him to admit that actually she made a better case for God, the Bible, and Jesus Christ than he did for atheism and evolution. He never dreamed that this could be possible.

God began to work on Tim’s heart that there truly is a living God who created the universe and gave it its order, that the Bible is an authoritative revelation from Him to man. Furthermore, Tim needed Jesus Christ as his Savior and needed to come to Him as his Lord. The next day, Tim made a confession of faith as he was praying to God. Shortly after that he was baptized by immersion during a church service.

In Psalm 96:1-2 we read, “Oh, sing to the LORD a new song! Sing to the LORD, all the earth. Sing to the LORD, bless His name; proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day.” It is the testimony of Tim that God has placed a new song in his heart since the day he received Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. He now understands that Claire’s joy is the normal fruit of a living relationship with a living God who dwells within Him. It is something that God offers all who are willing to come to Him on His terms. Tim, too, knows this joy in his life. Furthermore, the above passage in Psalms speaks of God’s desire for those who know Him to proclaim the good news of His salvation from day to day. Since the day of his salvation, it has been the desire of Tim to proclaim faithfully the good news of God’s salvation from day to day.  

Education. Eventually, Tim graduated with a B.S. In physics from UCLA. This was during the Viet Nam War and he had a choice of serving in the Army in Viet Nam or working as a civilian electronics engineer for the U. S. Navy. He opted for the Navy and subsequently worked on continuation engineering for the Terrier and Tartar missiles used aboard various U. S. Navy ships. This precluded him from pursing graduate school in science at the time.

A few years later Tim began studies at the San Francisco Baptist Theological Seminary, working on a three-year program for a Master of Divinity degree. Because of certain problems in the seminary at the end of his first year, which led to most of the faculty and students leaving it including him, he did not complete the degree. However, the courses he did take, including ones in Greek, Hebrew, the Christian Life, Systematic Theology, practical theology, hermeneutics, and church history, provided a solid foundation for subsequent personal study.

Ministerial Experience. While in Seminary, Tim founded an organization, Campus Light of Life Fellowship, Inc. which ministered on university campuses in Northern California. The University of California at Berkeley was the primary campus of focus, but others, including Sacramento State University, San Francisco State University, and San Jose State University,  were also regularly visited. The primary focus was on evangelism and apologetics.

After four years of Campus Light of Life Fellowship, it was time to move on. He spent one year teaching science classes at the Regular Baptist High School in Martinez, California (now located in Walnut Creek, California).

At the end of the school year he moved to San Francisco, California to work with Joe Honeycutt, who is still a close friend, in an attempt to start a church in “The City.” Two years were spent in this ministry, first co-pastoring with Joe and then, after Joe moved on, as the Pastor.

After a gap of several years, he next pastored the Gold Hill Bible Church in California for ten years.

This was followed by devoting his time to a creation science ministry, Creation Truth Outreach, Inc.  (www.creationtruthoutreach.org). He is still active in this ministry. The primary focus of this ministry has been the distribution of free creation science videos and pamphlets to university students across the United States, along with personal discussions with students as the Lord provides opportunity. Over the past decade, he has passed out over 120,000 videos and pamphlets on over 200 campuses, many of them multiple times. He has also been a regular contributor to the creation science magazine, Creation Matters, published by the Creation Research Society. Almost 50 of his articles regarding aspects of creation science and/or the theology of creation science have been published in this magazine over the past seven years. A list of these articles is available at http://www.creationtruthoutreach.org/cm1.html. Tim believes the Lord is leading him to start The Rock Baptist Church in Greenville, Texas to meet the need for a church in this community which is dispensational in teaching and young earth in understanding of the book of Genesis, which values traditional music, and which places Biblical values ahead of human philosophy concerning its approach to understanding and practicing the Bible.  

Family. Pastor Stout has been married to his wife Gloria for 45 years. They have five children–4 girls and 1 boy and 10 grandchildren–8 girls and 2 boys.