Rick Nier...Woo!

The other day I was talking with my neighbor, and we were discussing all the raking we had been doing. (Needless to say, I have done more, but that’s not the point.)  I wondered aloud what it would be like if God had designed all the leaves to fall off the trees at the same time. The thought of being under a tree when all of its leaves came down in one big lump amused me. Can you imagine the trauma it might cause kids who are playing outside? The thought amused me even more.  My neighbor, who takes care of his yard to a degree that most of us can only aspire to (and then some) commented that we’d all have dead grass. Thanks, Johnny Raincloud. He might be right. Seeing a pile of leaves waist-deep would be very discouraging and might keep more of us from all the raking that we do. After all, we still rake all the leaves, but the work has been spread out over weeks.  Yes, I’m getting tired of my rake now, but a pile consisting of every leaf my trees ever held would feel insu...

I have told a few people about my family’s word of the year. You know about this trend, no doubt. Equal parts resolution and trendy reminder to oneself of something you want to achieve. For my family, it came almost as a whim. We had chosen the word adventure the year before. It fit within the context of what we were going through.  Honestly, the adventure hasn’t ended, but I felt a need for us to grow in the place where this adventure had taken us.  Extra.   It was fun to me because of how my teenagers were using the word. Extra. If someone is doing anything they view as unnecessary or over the top, they are considered extra. You'll have no problem imagining that my kids see me as extra several times every day. If you want to see extra, come and watch a teenager react when you tell them something they don’t want to hear.  But we chose the word  extra . We said we wanted to engage in life more than we had before. We wanted to represent C...

Seven months ago, I never saw this coming. We had just told our kids that we were going on an adventure , one that began with informing the church we'd been a part of for 15 years that God was moving us elsewhere. We told our kids that we didn't know yet where we were going, but that we would trust God to lead us where He wanted us. We acknowledged there would be difficult parts of this adventure. We knew saying goodbye to friends would be hard. My wife and I prayed about the transition and what impact it would have on our children. There were parts of this adventure I'd have preferred not to have experienced. There were hard conversations, doubts, lots of prayer and more conversations. I've shared some of the experiences here , here and here . Actually, there's a few more, but you can find them for yourself. I wouldn't want to be accused of over-linking. The entire time, whenever I prayed, I told God an answer would be a good thing, because He would rece...

Because science. That's why. It's the answers parents can give their kids when they don't know the real answer. It's the answer that movies who delve into science fiction can use when they don't know how to get their hero out of the trouble he's found his way into. Because science. But it's not the only way to shut down a debate. I remember coming across a quote from someone who was clearly angry with Christians. He listed all the many things Christians have done wrong throughout history. The crusades, holy killings, and the attempted extinction of people groups in the name of religion. He went on to decry the hypocrites that do whatever they want for six days of the week and then find themselves in church one day of the week. He ended his rant with, ‘but it’s all ok, because Jesus.’ He was very angry. But quite frankly, he summarized the Gospel perfectly. We shouldn’t seek to abuse God’s grace, but all of the wrong things we do can be forgiven and was...

Like many other pastors, and especially youth pastors, I like to pick a title that catchy, and perhaps bordering on irreverent. Here was the idea I had for my most recent sermon. People Jesus liked hanging out with more than he liked hanging out with people at church. Maybe that's too wordy a sermon title. But read through the books of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and you’ll discover a list of people that Jesus liked spending time with; sinners, kids, smelly fishermen, prostitutes, drunks at weddings, women with shady pasts, tax collectors, .... I speak slightly with tongue in cheek because the truth is that we are those sinners and people with shady pasts, no matter how much we try to play dress up. The truth is we worry about a lot of stuff. If the stuff we tend to worry about had as much impact on the kingdom of God, compared with the commandments and commission of Jesus, then maybe we’d have a reason to stress ourselves out. But it doesn't. Sorry . It just doesn't. D...

Matthew 3:13-17 13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to be baptized by John. 14 But John tried to deter him, saying, “I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?” 15 Jesus replied, “Let it be so now; it is proper for us to do this to fulfill all righteousness.” Then John consented. 16 As soon as Jesus was baptized, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and lighting on him. 17 And a voice from heaven said, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” Jesus is doing a pretty cool thing here, being baptized. This marked the beginning of His ministry and connects Jesus to the people He came to save. I work with teens and, of course, have a couple of them in my own home. There is this fascinating dance between parents and their teenagers. Parents have to somehow impart wisdom to teenagers without it sounding like a lecture. Their best bet is to somehow trick the teenager into t...

Hey Parents. I'm going to be a little blunt today. This post may sound self-serving, but there's a truth you need to hear. I was reading Barna research today. You can see the article here . They have done their homework and found that 73% of us Americans identify as Chistians. Woo Hoo, let's celebrate! That means 3 out of every 4 people in American are professing to follow the commands of Jesus. Never mind that most of us can turn on the evening news or look at our newspaper and readily see that 3 out of 4 people are certainly not following the commands of Jesus. 73%. That's a lot. Even if that many people were simply trying to be like Christ, we would have a pretty good thing going on. Oh....wait a minute.... Barna doesn't stop with asking people what they profess to believe. They ask them how they are practicing their professed beliefs. So Barna defines a 'practicing Christian' as someone who identifies as a Christian and attends a church service...

So, the next time you see a snowfall and your first instinct isn't to pause and stand in awe f the Creator, you may want to check yourself. Listen, I get it. I was born and raised in Florida. Snow was what my grandparents talked about. Snow was something we saw in movies. But now I have lived over half of my life in these places where the white tundra is just expected for half the year. You call it North. I've asked God for forgiveness for what I call it. Recently some guy I've never heard of (I'll give him credit below*) took amazingly close up shot of individual snowflakes. What I see is evidence of a Creator. But not just a Creator. A Creator that doesn't seem to care what you and I give Him credit for. Take a look at these and consider that, for thousands of years, these flakes have been falling on the ground, mostly unnoticed for their stunning beauty and individual style.                 These unique flakes, all beauti...

I told you I would be sharing how my preschool chapel times go throughout the year. I'm attempting to teach God's love, which is actually a bigger topic than we ever give it credit for. Here was my introduction to the topic. I like to play games that involve a ball. One of the reasons is because balls do not have an end. See this ruler? It has a beginning and an end. A ball does not have an end. It just keeps going and going. That’s like God’s love for us. God’s love has no end. He has loved us ever since He made us. He will always love us, no matter what. There is a second reason I like this ball. You can share it. A ball is more fun when you play games with it with other people. With a ball, you don’t keep it to yourself. You share it with others. God’s love is the same way. It’s better when we share it. We’re going to try an experiment. I want to toss this ball around. If we want to show love, we will toss it to someone else. But in order to show love, we will toss...

I wear a few different hats at my church. That may be understating things, but suffice it to say I get to know a lot of different people in a lot of different age groups. One of the benefits is the relationships I build with multiple generations and the vantage point from which I can see where our church is at. On any given Sunday, I will have lots of different people that I would like to catch up with as several people that might seek out my attention. Yesterday was one of those days. But I should mention that one of the areas I oversee is that of children. And children will get your attention....ummm...whenever they can. I was leading in our worship service, which will involve leading the singing as well as calling ushers to collect the offering. This year in our church, we have children collecting change for missionaries. So while the ushers are collecting money in an organized fashion, we have about 20 kids running around the sanctuary, shaking people down for their loose c...

Do you want to know the best way to be ready to return to work after a vacation? I've discovered it. Consider this. You've worked for a while (perhaps a long while) to save up money to get away. Family vacations are nice and all, but going anywhere is going to cost you some cash. And for the sake of argument, let's assume you added some extra time off. You won't be at your destination all that time. You just added a few days at home, in order to get some stuff done. There it is. You just gave your wife unfettered access to your skills and labor around the house. That garden won't weed itself. The thorough cleaning and reorganization of a kitchen needs a partner, right? For us, it was cleaning out the garage. Because when you clean out any other area of the house, the garage becomes the new catch-all. Let's just put this stuff we don't want to look at in a bin in the garage. Cleaning it out later became cleaning it out now. When moving the vehicle a...

We all make choices. We do. We choose and we choose, over and over again, day after day after day. From what flavor we'll brush our teeth with to what foods will dirty them all over again. From what music we will distract ourselves with while performing any myriad of tasks. From what we will say or not say to those we have chosen to visit, call or pester. We all make choices. And let's not dare question that we have a right to our choices. From what we are offended by to how we might offend others, we like having our ability to choose. Isn't that why Americans claim the prize of 'there's no better place to live'? I like living here. I just chose to use that as an example of how much we like our freedom to choose. (See what I did there? I talked about choices by choosing my words. So clever...) Tell someone they have no options and watch them squirm. Deny me of something, even if I didn't want it 5 seconds before, and now I can't get my mind off wanting...

I shared this with my teens lately. Make no mistake about it. Teaching on the hard sayings of Jesus means grappling with those hard sayings myself.  As they were walking along, someone said to Jesus, “I will follow you wherever you go.” But Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens to live in, and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place even to lay his head.” He said to another person, “Come, follow me.” The man agreed, but he said, “Lord, first let me return home and bury my father.” But Jesus told him, “Let the spiritually dead bury their own dead! Your duty is to go and preach about the Kingdom of God.” Another said, “Yes, Lord, I will follow you, but first let me say good-bye to my family.” But Jesus told him, “Anyone who puts a hand to the plow and then looks back is not fit for the Kingdom of God.”  ~Luke 9:57-62 It is interesting to me how we respond to the words of Jesus. I think Christians like to say Jesus was a wild man who said audacious things to p...

The last two weeks of November have been quite the struggle for me. But to properly share this struggle, I have to go back a couple of months...you know....when big box stores began putting out their Christmas decorations and playing Christmas music in certain parts of the store. You know the stores. I can be counted along with all those complainers, the self-righteous (and self-appointed) judges who criticize our society for stuffing ourselves with Halloween and then immediately start the gorge of unneeded things for Christmas, all while ignoring the one holiday that celebrates contentment. Then people...people you and I know, started posting Christmas music videos. I watched it. I enjoyed it. But it wasn't time. You don't listen to Christmas music until the day after Thanksgiving, when it is also acceptable to decorate your home. I've held this standard for a few reasons down through the years: 1. A lot of Christmas music can get annoying if played more than 4...

Have you ever experienced that moment when your parents are so mad they don’t even spank you? That moment when they are so angry they sputter and stammer and don’t actually say anything? Or maybe they were so furious with you they said something like, “Get out of my sight before I do something I regret!” Geez Mom, that escalated quickly. God had a moment like that. It happened in Exodus 33. God said to Moses: “Now go. Get on your way from here, you and the people you brought up from the land of Egypt. Head for the land which I promised to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying ‘I will give it to your descendants.’ I will send an angel ahead of you and I’ll drive out the Canaanites, Amorites, Hittites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites. It’s a land flowing with milk and honey. But I won’t be with you in person—you’re such a stubborn, hard-headed people!—lest I destroy you on the journey.” Exodus 33:1-3 ‘If I were to go with you I might destroy you.’ That might cause some conce...

God says He is not willing that any should perish. (See Matthew 18:14.) Meanwhile we argue over who makes it or not.  You tell me who's thinking with their heart? Let me say right from the start that this isn't about inclusion. I don't know whether to thank my generation, my parents, my pastors or my God-given brain, but I live in a world of absolutes. There is truth. There is black and white. Words have definitions, no matter how uneasy I may be with any of them.  Politicians, musicians, actors and reality shows can say whatever they want to fit their own personal agendas, but I was raised in the belief that God is God and it's okay that I don't always understand Him. In fact, why would I want to change my life around someone who I perfectly understand. (My wife would be another great example. I mean that in a good way.) I make it my goal to know God as much as I can. I want to achieve a closer relationship with Him than I have today. That means ...

Love does not always mean acceptance as the world thinks about love and acceptance. 'Just accept me and leave me be...' seems to be the mantra of this world. However, when we love someone, we often change our habits when we are around them. Consider a guy trying to attract a girl. Body spray will only get you so far. At some point he will have to move beyond one-liners and Chuck Norris jokes. Change must come. She may accept him, but he will have to make some choices along the way if he will show his love.  Consider how we adapt to family members. For those that smoke, they may take it to another room, even in the winter, to appease the family that doesn't. They do this to show love. The needs of others trump the desires of self.  Consider roommates. They may keep their music down or their dirty clothes contained. They do so because they have accepted this relationship. They continue to do so out of love, even if just a desire to love God through the loving act...

I'm still plugging away in my sermon series while my senior pastor is away. The next few days will offer snippets of this past Sunday.  It’s confession time. I’m a recovering American Idol fan. How many of you have ever watched the show, or still watch it? I know many people who have really gotten into the show, cheering and voting for their favorites to win it all. I once called in to vote, but that was a long time ago. But my favorite part was not the end, where all the great singers were. My favorite part was the beginning, when they would parade in the tone-deaf crowd for our amusement. You know, the people who couldn’t carry a tune if they had a bucket. I think most of us see God as one of the American Idol judges. No, not the current ones that are such a hot mess. The originals. Too many of us fear a Simon Cowell-like judge, the surly brit who was rarely kind. (That was absolutely horrible.) On the other hand, too often we treat God like He is going to respond to us lik...

Peter. Ah, sweet, innocent, dumb Peter. We turn to Acts 10 to find him hungry and dreaming about food. Sounds reasonable, right? But this dream has a purpose and God shows Peter all sorts of animals that first century Jewish people would have said was unclean. God tells Peter to kill and eat, and in normal fashion for stupid people from the Bible, Peter tells God no and why he can't.  God tells Peter why he can. Check it out...  But the voice spoke again: “Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.”   The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven. ~Acts 10:15-16 This happens three times!  But the best part is found in the very next verse.  Peter was very perplexed. What could the vision mean? ~Acts 10:17 What could the vision mean?!? Are you kidding me? What are you confused about Peter? I think it means that God doesn't want you to call anything unclean that He has made clean. I d...

After their fateful bite the first thing to hit Adam and Eve was knowledge of good and evil. Knowledge…of evil. It broke God’s heart to describe us as “knowing good and evil.” We tend to gloss over Genesis 3:22, where God describes us as knowing good and evil, and assume the biggest problem was our disobedience. That was a problem, yes, but not the primary problem. The big problem is that we became very much like a toddler spending our first night in a big-boy bed, or a big-girl bed. We assumed that since we were not held back by the restraints that a baby-cage offers that we were ready to come out whenever we wanted. But just because you can do something does not mean you should do something. I remember when one of my daughters was first in a big-girl bed. Oh how she loved the power. I can get out of my bed anytime I want to . But what she discovered was that her parents liked to celebrate putting children to bed by having a bowl of ice cream. Why can’t I have ice cream, mommy? I want...