On 1 November, Pastor Tim Grant entered into glory, leaving behind his wife and their three young daughters. He served at Tenthill and Mount Isa Baptist churches before joining Cairns South Baptist Church as an associate pastor in 2024.
Tim was senior pastor at Mount Isa when he joined Matthew Littlefield and Warren McKenzie in writing the Ezekiel Declaration. In August 2021, the three pastors wrote to Prime Minister Scott Morrison urging him to oppose COVID vaccine passports. They warned that making vaccination a condition of ordinary public life would divide Australians and put pressure on churches to turn people away from worship.
More than 3,000 church leaders and 26,000 church members and attendees signed. The declaration gave thousands of Australians a way to voice their objections together. It also brought a neglected Christian conviction into public debate. Christ is Lord of the conscience, and pastors answer to him for how they receive the people who come through their doors.
In August 2022, one year after the Ezekiel Declaration's publication, Tim and the other co-authors appeared on the Caldron Pool Show. You can watch that episode here:
Tim kept making that case. In 2022, he and Littlefield also published Defending Conscience, tracing how Baptists helped defend religious liberty. Earlier this year, Tim wrote for Caldron Pool about how deeply it had discouraged him to hear Sydney Anglican ministers criticise the declaration. He was glad to see the diocese examine its own pandemic response, and he said so.
Tim loved the Lord deeply and impacted the lives of many people both at the national scale, but also in his personal ministry. He served in many roles in his life and helped people greatly in all of them. He had a keen mind for the things of the Lord, history, law and justice, and many people are mourning his death.
His friends remember him as a man who stood for the Lord, defied tyranny, advocated for the truth and did it without receiving acclaim.
Please pray for his family.
We thank God for Tim’s life and ministry. We pray that Christ, whose welcome Tim was so concerned to defend, will comfort his wife and their girls in the days ahead.