About Me
My name is Sean Ellis and I admit that I am a Bible nerd. I grew up in a Christian home in the United States, but didn’t develop an appreciation for the Bible until age 22. By that time, I had joined Youth With a Mission (YWAM) to become a missionary. YWAM is a non-denominational, Christian missionary organization that helps young adults experience short-term Christian missions all over the world. Within the mission, I specifically worked with YWAM’s Bible schools for 16 years. Based on the inductive Bible study method, the School of Biblical Studies is a 9 month course developed to allow Christians to study the Bible for themselves from Genesis to Revelation. You can see more about it at http://www.sbsinternational.org.
I currently live with my family in the nation of Taiwan (no, not Thailand, but Taiwan… look at a map). My wife works as an elementary teacher at a school that was started for missionary children, while I am the teaching elder at House of Blessing Bilingual Church in Taichung and work as a resource teacher for Bible schools in Asia. We have four kids, and are living out our dream of being a family overseas in missions. I started in a Disciples of Christ Church, then my family switched to a Methodist church, which became a non-denominational Pentecostal church. As an adult, I attended an Evangelical Free church, until we moved and then we went to an Assemblies of God church. In other words, like most Christians today, I am a “mutt” (and I mean that in the best of ways) when it comes to preaching, doctrinal views, and Biblical standpoints. I am privileged to follow in the history of orthodox, creedal Christianity. I would describe myself as someone who believes in the Bible (but am not a fundamentalist), is evangelical (but not in the television, big hair way), missionary who believes we could be on the brink of the next Reformation in church history.
The Bible Nerd 
Sean keep them coming bro i love it!
Thanks Sonny! Hope you guys are doing well. Thanks for the link on your church website. Just a few more years until we start that church together 🙂
Sean
Bro I am so ready you say when and i am there. I hope you guys are well also. I miss you like crazy.
would u like to participate in my questionnaire
Hi! I have been to your church a few times in Taichung and have enjoyed your sermons– the latest one I heard was the about the Parable of the Worker– really great!
I was reading through your bio and see you describe yourself as someone who believes in the Bible (but you’re not a fundamentalist). I am still learning a lot about Christianity and Jesus and the Bible and have seen this word “fundamentalist” thrown around a lot. Curious as to what your definition is– or if you know the accurate definition…. sorry for the long (maybe confusing) post.
Thank you for the encouragement and it is great to have you at church as well. Fundamentalism was originally a movement that began to protect what some Western Christians saw as “fundamentals” of the faith that were being challenged by theologians and church leaders. These fundamentals included such things as the inspiration and inerrancy of the Bible and the core tenets of the Gospel message. It eventually became connected to a certain view of eschatology (end times) and even got associated with American politics. It is not the same as “evangelicalism”, although many see it that way. Sadly, though the there was a heartfelt desire to protect some of the core, orthodox traditions of the Christian church in this movement, many today have a negative reaction and connotation of this term due to its use by some leaders who have seemed intolerant and unloving to others who don’t share their views.
Thanks for the quick reply! I have read several articles now in between waiting for your reply and it appears there are many definitions of fundamentalism–maybe defined by many people who decided to leave this “movement?” It seems it’s associated with many people who take every single word of the Bible literally– still trying to figure out what I believe about this myself. Of course, I wouldn’t try to drink poison or something just to prove God is all powerful and mighty to save. That’s what one might call lunacy! I think you hit the nail on the head when you said many people have a negative view of this word because it has sadly been associated with being intolerant and unloving toward anyone who differs in beliefs like you said.
Enjoying some of your others articles too— I liked the one about Ashley Madison…and also about as true believers in Christ, we should encourage people to look at our lives as something to imitate if we are consciously living for Jesus.
I like your writing style too– funny…smooth and easy to read and follow. Thanks!
Thanks for the encouragement! Yes, one issue is “taking the Bible literally”. However, I think some people do not understand what that actually looks like as we read the Bible. To many people, “taking the Bible literally” means that they believe in the authority and inspiration of the Bible. They can trust the Bible and believe it contains only truth. I would agree with that of course, but that should not be described as “taking the Bible literally”. The issue of literal and figurative language is a separate issue from the truth and authority of the Bible. There are many parts of the Bible that we don’t read “literally” because the Bible (like all language) uses many figures of speech. For example, the “body of Christ” could be his literal body, but Paul often uses it as a metaphor to figuratively describe the church. We have to interpret the Bible with an understanding of the types of literature and determine when something is being communicated literally or figuratively. The context of the passage helps us to do this.