Yesterday morning, July 23, 2026, Christ’s church—and so many of us who loved him—lost one of its great prophetic imaginations. Tom Sine died at the age of ninety. Author, Christian futurist, mentor, practitioner, and faithful friend, Tom spent a lifetime helping the followers of the Jesus Way notice where God’s future was already breaking into the present.
In 1996, shortly after Lynette and I moved to Cascadia to help pioneer a new community of Christ-followers, my phone rang.
It was Tom Sine.
Dr. Sine invited me to breakfast at Costas Opa in Seattle’s University District.
I remember thinking, Why would Tom Sine want to talk with me? I was twenty-six years old. Tom was already one of the voices who had shaped my imagination in graduate school. I had read his books. His work had challenged me to see that the future of the church would not be found in simply preserving yesterday’s institutions but in joining what God was already doing in neighborhoods, among ordinary people, and on the margins.
Yet there he was, inviting me to breakfast—not because he had something to teach me, but because he wanted to hear my stories… my imaginations.
That breakfast became another. Then another.
Over the years Tom became mentor, friend, collaborator, co-conspirator, and eventually coauthor. We traveled together, consulted with churches and mission organizations together, dreamed together, argued together, and wrote together. Looking back now, I realize one of Tom’s greatest gifts was that he was endlessly curious. He genuinely believed the Holy Spirit was often at work ahead of the experts, among young leaders, neighborhood practitioners, artists, activists, entrepreneurs, and communities experimenting with new ways of embodying the gospel.
Tom never stopped asking, “Where is new life emerging?”
He listened with the excitement of someone convinced the future of God’s Kin-dom was already breaking into the present.
“Remember: we can approach the future with confidence because we know the end from the beginning – the mustard seed wins the day.”
– Tom Sine
Many people have rightly remembered Tom as a futurist. That title never quite fully captured him for me. Tom wasn’t interested in simply predicting the future. He was interested in helping us notice the future God was already inviting us to inhabit. Forecasted challenges on the horizon were Holy Spirit design opportunities. Troubling data, was the spark for Shalomic creativity. He possessed a rare combination of prophetic imagination and pastoral attentiveness. He read voraciously—not simply books but newspapers, magazines, demographic reports, cultural trends, and stories from around the world. I honestly don’t think I’ve ever known anyone who consumed more newspapers and periodicals. While we were writing together, he gifted me subscriptions to his favorite newspaper and two magazines because he wanted me to be reading the world alongside him.
For Tom, paying attention was a spiritual discipline.
But what made him remarkable was that he never confused information with wisdom. Every article, every statistic, every trend eventually found its way back to flesh-and-blood people. He wanted to know how real communities were living. He loved hearing stories from practitioners on the ground. Whenever a young leader was experimenting with new forms of community, hospitality, neighborhood engagement, or mission, Tom wanted to buy them breakfast.
He always seemed to have another conversation waiting.
Another hopeful story to tell.
Another person he wanted you to meet.
That gift of connecting people may have been one of his greatest ministries.
If one of Tom’s Kin-dom friends happened to be passing through Seattle, there was a good chance Tom and Christine would gather people around their table. Again and again they fed us—literally and spiritually. Their hospitality wasn’t entertainment. It was theology embodied… a better party. Around their table of communion strangers became collaborators, acquaintances became friends, and ideas became communities.
Tom and Christine consistently sought to live the world they imagined.
Long before sustainability became fashionable in Christian circles, they were experimenting with solar energy, growing food, embracing cohousing, mentoring younger generations, living generously, opening their home, and practicing the kind of everyday hospitality they wrote about. Their lives carried remarkable integrity, marked by justice and simplicity. They were never asking others to live differently than they themselves were trying to live.
That integrity left a deep impression on me.
Our friendship wasn’t always easy.
While writing together we occasionally butted heads. We approached ideas differently. We challenged each other. Looking back, I now recognize those moments as gifts. Tom engaged me seriously. He didn’t dismiss my perspectives because I was younger. He welcomed them… he welcomed me. There are ways I am only gradually coming to fully appreciate how he mentored me into greater maturity. There were moments when he related to me with a patient firmness, curiosity, and encouragement that I hadn’t always experienced with my own parents. He called something forward in me. He trusted me before I fully trusted myself.
That may be one of the greatest gifts a mentor can offer.
Many have written these past days that Tom inspired them to imagine a different future for the church. He certainly did that. His books—The Mustard Seed Conspiracy, Ceasefire, Mustard Seed versus McWorld, The New Conspirators, Living on Purpose, and so many others—helped generations of Christians rediscover that God’s mission belongs not to institutions protecting themselves but to ordinary disciples joining God’s renewing work in neighborhoods and cities across the world.
But I think Tom’s deeper legacy lies elsewhere.
He made people feel that their small acts of faithfulness mattered.
He noticed experiments that others overlooked.
He celebrated beginnings.
He connected dreamers.
He asked generous questions.
He believed another world was possible because he believed the risen Christ was already at work within this one.
The church needs that kind of imagination now more than ever.
As I reflect on nearly thirty years of friendship, I find myself profoundly grateful—not only for Tom’s books but for breakfasts, road trips, spirited debates, shared writing, introductions to remarkable people, scores of yellow notepads, overflowing dinner tables, countless conversations, and his unwavering confidence that hope is always more realistic than despair.
And Christine.
It is impossible for me to speak of Tom’s story without speaking of theirs. So much of what the rest of us experienced as Tom’s ministry was, in truth, the shared vocation of Tom and Christine. Together they cultivated a home that became a place of refuge, laughter, generous conversation, and abundant meals. Together they welcomed strangers who became friends and friends who became collaborators. Together they embodied the Kin-dom they longed to see in the world—not as an abstract vision but in the ordinary practices of hospitality, simplicity, stewardship, encouragement, and faithful presence. Christine’s strength, wisdom, generosity, writing, spirituality, and partnership made possible countless conversations, gatherings, books, journeys, and friendships that have shaped lives around the globe. Those of us who were welcomed to their table know that we were never simply guests of Tom; we were received into the generous life that Tom and Christine co-created. For that shared witness, I remain deeply grateful, and my heart is especially with Christine and all who knew and loved Tom as they grieve the loss of a beloved husband, mentor, and friend.
Thank you, Tom.
Thank you for seeing possibilities where others saw decline.
Thank you for believing in young leaders before they believed in themselves.
Thank you for reminding us that the future belongs not to those who cling most tightly to the past, but to those courageous enough to join the Spirit in cultivating signs of God’s Kin-dom here and now.
May we honor your life not simply by remembering your words, but by embodying the generous, hopeful, hospitable way of life you and Christine so beautifully shared with the world.
Grace and peace, dear friend.
Your work continues wherever people gather around tables, welcome strangers, cultivate neighborhoods, nurture young dreamers, and dare to imagine that God’s future is already breaking into the present.
Rest in Peace Tom, dwight
