This episode is a part of a continuing series to enable you to hear the spectrum of American Indian/Native American/Indigenous/First Nations voices, especially in their response to Christianity and its history in the United States.

If you are interested in this interview, you may also be interested in my interview with Dr. Tink Tinker, an Osage man, in Episode 8.

My guest for this episode is The Reverend Dr. Tim Ross. Tim is a close friend of mine. Until Covid, we were in a prayer/conversation group together for over a decade.

Tim is a pastor, teacher, cross-cultural worker, husband, dad of four grown children, and grandfather of five grandchildren. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation (West). He has servers as minister of the Hopwood Christian Church in Elizabethton, TN since 1996. Prior to that, Tim and his family served with Christian Missionary Fellowship among the Maasai tribe in Kenya, Africa. Tim is an instructor at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, mentors ministers and missionaries, and is passionate about building relationships with folks of all cultures, with immigrants, prisoners, and folks who struggle to get by. He is a graduate of Milligan College and Emmanuel Christian Seminary.

Tim is here to share with us his experience as a Cherokee, an Christian, a minister, a missionary, and his beginning work with NAIITS (originally referred to as North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies).

You can learn more about NAIITS at naiits.com.

Other resources related to our conversation:

Cherokee Nation

Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation United Keetoowah Band

The Cherokees and Christianity, 1794-1870: Essays on Acculturation and Cultural Persistence, by William G. McLoughlin

Journeying into Cherokee: Help and Encouragement for Learning the Cherokee Language, by Mary Rae and Ed Fields

Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys: A Native American Expression of the Jesus Way, by Richard Twiss

Native American Contextual Ministry: Making the Transition, by Casey Church (author), Ray Martell (editor), Sue Martell (editor)

Monuments to Absence: Cherokee Removal and the Contest over Southern Memory, by Andrew Denson

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.