1.) Your humble WordPress site Today’s Fresh Manna is read nearly everywhere. Readers are treated to daily posts on faith. Why have you committed to blogging?
I began long distance running in 1976, often running 12-mile runs, three to four times a week. I upped that in 1993, the year I celebrated my 40th birthday. I was asked by a friend to run in my first marathon with him, which I did. I continued to run in four other marathons during the next seven years. My training included running 12-20 mile runs twice a week which averaged 2-3 hours a run. I’d usually be out the door at 5 a.m. to get my runs in before work. And then on [the] other three days of the week, I’d run 6-mile runs with a friend who I loved to run and pray with. It was a special time in my life. It kept me in great shape, it provided me with amazing prayer time, and great fellowship time with a few of my running friends. But, the running was time-consuming!
One morning while out on a run, I had an experience with God that I won’t share here because it would take up too much space. I will say that through this experience, I felt that God began leading me to swap out running for writing. It wasn’t so much about writing (or at least so I thought) but more about capturing on paper, the things He was speaking to my heart. My running was starting to feel selfish because it took so much time and only benefited me. I felt that this change was going to somehow benefit others – although at that time, I couldn’t tell you how. It was a step of faith that I was hearing from God accurately, but I believed I was. I wasn’t a trained writer. Truthfully, I was probably a horrible writer on the technical side. But I managed to put things down on paper.
At that time, I was in a prayer group with a group of guys. One day I was sharing with them about the experience and transition that God was dealing with me about. They wanted to hear something I had written. I pulled out my journal and read what I had written to them from that morning. It impacted them, and they asked if I would email it to them, and so I did. That led to them asking if I would keep emailing what I was writing to them, and so again, I did. They then asked if they could share it with some friends, which I was very happy to say yes to!
This started to snowball. I had to start an email list of all the names of the people who wanted to read what I wrote every day. This list continued to grow by word of mouth and after three years, I was emailing it to over 1,600 people four times a week. It was exhilarating to put my thoughts on paper each morning knowing that people were touched and blessed by it. After a few years, someone suggested I create a blog online. I did and it instantly began to grow. I expanded the same blog to two different blogging sites, and the reader base seemed to double almost every year. A couple of years ago, I was told it had been read in over 196 countries.
I had no idea, and honestly had never dreamed in my heart that this would happen. I was simply trying to obey what I believed God had asked me to do through that profound experience I had with Him at the end of 1999. The commitment is two-plus hours a day, which is what my running used to take. It became clear to me why the Lord wanted me to swap running for writing. I have loved doing it and so I’ve been diligent to do it. I don’t see an end to this. To the contrary, it seems like it is still in its infancy. I could have never imagined being able to influence and help people know the love of Jesus in such a profound way. I receive thank-you notes from people every day which continues to fuel my fire. This all led me into influencing others through Social Media such as Facebook and Twitter where I have over 120,000 followers and am impacting and influencing lives in even more ways! I am so thankful for these experiences. They have enriched my life!
2.) For more than three decades you have participated in Minnesota’s Living Word Christian Church, which now claims eleven-thousand-plus members. Please describe its transformation and your part.
You’ve asked a large question, Nick. Any church that has grown to significantly large numbers has gone through numerous transformations. Church growth experts say that churches hit growth walls that are difficult to break through at first 200 people, then at 500, then at 1,000, and at multiple levels of growth along the way. The walls have to do with the development of leadership to accommodate that growth. People have to be ministered to, prayed for, cared for, connected, and challenged to grow spiritually, as the church grows. To accomplish that takes leadership. Leadership doesn’t just happen. There has to be a vision for the development of leadership all along the way. And that means people have to be challenged as Christians, to find God’s purpose for their life, to spiritually grow, and to make sacrifices of loving others for the sake of the gospel. As they learn to make their life a living sacrifice, they discover that nothing has more meaning in life than to help the world learn of the love of Jesus Christ. They grow from selfish to selfless. They grow from greedy to generous. They grow from aimless to purpose-minded. When a church produces these kinds of people, you have a church that grows and reaches out!
My contribution to that has been to develop and grow a Small Group Ministry to help connect people, a Volunteer Development ministry for people to get involved and take their place serving, to create and teach Leadership Development to help produce leaders, and to help build and oversee our Pastoral Care Department. I have had other various responsibilities beyond this, but these have been my primary contributions.
3.) All of us, principally those with children, have seen an invention of yours: the fold-down baby-changing table that is in public restrooms everywhere. What was your inspiration for this discovery?
My inspiration was having four children! Actually, the desire was sparked out of a frustration for a problem that there was no solution to – which is what sparks most inventions. It began when my wife, Renee, and I began to have children, and continued as we had four babies in a 6-year period of time.
We enjoyed taking our children out for breakfast after the Sunday morning service every Sunday. But there was one negative experience we faced every Sunday at the restaurants we were at. Our babies needed their diaper changed, and there was no place to do it. The restaurant bathrooms were generally small and not very clean. They had no counter space to change a baby. The bathroom floors were dirty and unacceptable for the task. We often had to change our babies in a foyer area on a chair or couch – the location where other people were waiting to be seated. Smelling a ripe diaper wasn’t really how people wanted to start out their meal. The only other option was to take them out to the car to change them. That was not convenient nor did it work very well in Minnesota winters. There simply was no good solution, and we noticed other parents experiencing the same frustration we were! So for three years, I thought and tried to create a solution to this problem. I had put my ideas on paper but kept expecting someone else to come out with some kind of solution. One day in church, I felt the Lord speak to me to create it. I began that week to start a business and use my ideas to create an infant changing table that could be mounted on a restroom wall.
4.) After patenting how did you proceed at American Infant Care Products? When did you decide to sell?
A year later, it was created, patent pending, and I began to pitch it to the world. No one really thought it was needed. I hit one dead-end after another. I knocked on doors to present it to anyone who would listen. The world had never seen a commercial infant-changing table, and didn’t know what to expect. There was just enough interest to keep me trying to market them, yet not enough progress to make it profitable. Three years later, I had convinced an executive at McDonalds to give it a try. They tested it, discovered the need was real and the solution was appreciated. They gave us permission to sell it to their vendors. That was the beginning of a surge that lasted for a long time. Sears followed suit and put one in every one of their stores in America. When McDonalds and Sears began buying them regularly, it was the beginning of seeing commercial infant-changing tables become a mainstream item. All this while, I was working full time for Northwest Airlines (now Delta), running this company, and was in Bible school preparing for ministry. So when I was hired as a pastor at Living Word Christian Center, which was what I felt my calling was, I put the business up for sale and sold it. Since then, it’s been exciting for me to see that infant-changing tables can now be found in most, if not all, public restrooms.
5.) Through entrepreneurship, serving as a pastor, writing, and tweeting, you have impacted countless lives worldwide. How gratifying is this realization?
Since the day I gave my life to the Lord at age 24, I’ve loved life and all the Lord has allowed me to do. Every step had been exciting and gratifying. My life would never have been like this without Jesus becoming my Savior and the center of my world. My wife and I have been partners together in raising our family and serving our church. All of the opportunities to serve God and touch people’s lives have been more fulfilling than anything we could have ever asked for or imagined. These past years, in addition to my duties at church, the ability to be able to reach people beyond the four walls of the church through blogging and social media has been an entirely new excitement and joy! God again let me touch people in ways I would have never imagined. Having a blog that has been read in over 196 countries has been mind-boggling. To hear from countless people who’ve received the Lord and are being touched and drawing closer to Him is such a gift to me. I am forever grateful to the Lord and love all that God has allowed me to do.
Learn More about Tim Burt