Rick Nier...Woo!

This is just a little something I shared with children's workers at my church. Children’s Ministries is an exciting thing to be a part of in the church. We get to take an empty cup and fill it with good stuff. The scripture is filled with promises of what happens when we follow God’s plan. We know that part of His plan is one generation passing along the stories and the good news to the next generation. We’re given the hope that by doing this, generations will continue to grow up and seek God. In this way, being among the first to fill a cup with the contents of our choosing is an exciting thing to be a part of. But there is a second reality in being a part of children’s ministries in this day. It’s the sad fact that not all the cups are empty. Some of them are dirty and have been damaged. Many have been filled with ugliness that we recognize as being ‘from the world’. Rather than discourage us from trying, it gives clarity to our call to teach children ‘the way they should go.’ It...

Check this out... One day as Jesus was preaching on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, [ a ]  great crowds pressed in on him to listen to the word of God.   2  He noticed two empty boats at the water’s edge, for the fishermen had left them and were washing their nets.   3  Stepping into one of the boats, Jesus asked Simon, [ b ]  its owner, to push it out into the water. So he sat in the boat and taught the crowds from there. 4  When he had finished speaking, he said to Simon,  “Now go out where it is deeper, and let down your nets to catch some fish.” 5  “Master,” Simon replied, “we worked hard all last night and didn’t catch a thing. But if you say so, I’ll let the nets down again.”   6  And this time their nets were so full of fish they began to tear!   7  A shout for help brought their partners in the other boat, and soon both boats were filled with fish and on the verge of sinking. 8  When Simon Peter realize...

I preached recently from the book of James, where Jimmy was talking about faith and deeds. He foolishly believes the two should line up. Actually, I am just foolish enough to believe the same. But as difficult as it might sound to actually do what you say you believe, faith is harder than that. See, I think faith should actually translate into how you hope for things. This is where I've struggled lately and I've been appreciative of some people who have reminded me so. I believe in God. But more than that, I believe God has great plans for me and for the church I work with. This is not me saying I believe in my best life now or some pie-in-the-sky romance novel version of my life. You know the kind; where money always rolls in and you achieve everything practical and impractical, all within a nice abbreviated version of what reality would ever afford. But I do believe my faith in a BIG God should move me to hope BIG. To dream BIG. To expect BIG. This only makes sense if I actua...

What’s the greatest thing you’ve ever done? (Go ahead and think about it. I'll wait right here.) Are you back? Okay, read this verse. “I tell you the truth, anyone who believes in me will do the same works I have done, and even greater works, because I am going to be with the Father. ~John 14:12 Now that I have read to you words from Jesus, who wants to tell me what they think about the greatest thing they have ever done? Yeah, if nobody wants to answer, I don’t blame you. Conquering Super Mario Brothers just doesn’t seem all that great when you consider that God has given us each His Holy Spirit power to be able to accomplish things. Somehow, the ability to eat a pancake bigger than your head doesn’t seem to be what I imagine Jesus was thinking we’d do with this awesome power. So your follow-up question may be; “Okay, well, how am I supposed to know what God does want to accomplish through me?” I've told my teens about a book I read many years ago by Henry Blackaby called Exp...

My pastor is going through a series of messages from the book of James. Recently he hit on chapter 3, which starts out this way; Dear brothers and sisters, not many of you should become teachers in the church, for we who teach will be judged more strictly. Now, it's not like I ever get distracted during a sermon, but here's what went through my mind. 1. Is Jimmy basically saying "you don't want this job?" Any pastor can tell you the practical application of this verse. Judged more strictly? You bet! Because anyone sitting in the pews knows what we could have been done better. It's like armchair quarterbacks. Every guy who watches quarterbacks can look at the screen and yell about the throw that should have been made. But we don't normally have 300-pound defenders aiming to knock us down. I've never had a 300-pounder come at me after a sermon, but I've had my share of criticism come for something I said, or didn't say. 2. Is this going to mak...

We're not victims. Yes, we are barraged with images everyday. Some of them come out of nowhere. Many of them are surprising. But we're not victims. What we see and, for that matter, what we hear is mostly a matter of choice. Not always, mind you, but we absolutely have a lot of choice in the matter. Let me explain with a story from what feels like the distant past. When my wife and I were doing ministry in Michigan, we were doing so in a very rural area. This translated to lots of farms nearby. Farms meant lots of farm boys. And some of those farm boys were big. So once when my wife was driving by one of these farms, she passed a house in which lived a farm boy. A big farm boy. She wasn't stalking, but with windows wide open she caught a glimpse of this farm boy walking around his house in his whitey tighteys. She kept driving. But now the image was burned into her retinas. The next time my wife and this (purposely left unnamed) farm boy were in church, she me...

Have you ever walked in a crowd of people and considered just how much they are not thinking about you? I have. Reality is eye opening.  See, I wake up in the morning, either because I can't sleep or because I  stupidly  responsibly set my alarm the night before. And as I yawn and stretch and attempt to figure out what day it is, my thoughts soon turn to... Myself! That's right. I sense my hunger. I know exercise is needed. What will I wear today? Will anyone be close enough to notice if I shaved? And just before my to-do list comes rushing at me with the force of a monster truck, I know I need to head to the bathroom. So there is no time to be hitting the snooze.  My first dozen thoughts are all about me. Which, by my math, will equal more thoughts than everyone else in the world, combined, thinks about me all day. It's not even close. And it shouldn't be close.  Because it's not about me. Not that this truth will keep me from thinking abou...

When I normally think of sticky, I think avoid. I like things clean. I stray from messy. Sticky things have their place. Honey goes on a biscuit. Glue goes in a bottle. Children go in their rooms. But I love the good people at Sticky Faith, youth ministry gurus who provide great resources for helping the Bible stick in the minds of teens. See, as much as I abhor stickiness in my home, the youth room is a great place for sticky things. This would apply both to the weird smells in the youth room as well as the conversations on deeper matters that we have. We've all read about the dangers of teens faking a form of Christianity through high school, only to leave it behind in college. So it is important for us to ensure that teens own their faith. Can I Ask That?  by Jim Candy, Brad Griffin and Kara Powell is a great tool to accomplish just that. It's a set of books, one for the students and one for the leaders, that ask the difficult questions and allow space for students t...

I think I have sometimes pictured pre-Jesus Israel as this nation full of choir boys. They all knew their part. They all knew God's Law. They all knew, and practiced, right over wrong. A simple glance around any church should have told me I was an idiot. Not that the church I am a part of is full of idol-totin', sailor-talkin', sin-saturated pagans. (Then again, I'm not saying we don't have our share...) But to assume that the ancient world, with their lack of agenda-pushing media, was a world similar to any opening-number of a Disney movie, is just silly. Sin entered the world through Adam. It didn't wait until 1984 to get started corrupting people. Why 1984? That's when Kevin Bacon corrupted an entire town by telling them there was a time to dance. Perish the thought! Listen, I've been educated about Bible matters, history and the like. But it's interesting the preconceived notions we carry, such as people now are more corrupt than in the old days...

I know not everybody who follows me, follows sports. But this is simple, and you don't even have to appreciate touchdowns to get on board with this.  Recently Ray Rice, a running back for the Baltimore Ravens, got into some trouble with the law for domestic abuse. The National Football League, for whom Ray wears a uniform, has long been known for being strong in punishments that effect their image. They suspended Ray for two games and then everybody lost their minds.  ESPN voices all over said the punishment wasn't large enough and the NFL missed an opportunity to send a message about how women should be treated. I tend to agree.  But one guy stood out above the rest, in my opinion. It was Herm Edwards, a former coach, and now an analyst working for ESPN. Herm was asked about the punishment and he talked of a similar situation when he was a coach, one in which one of his players was also caught mistreating a lady in public. Herm talked about how the league wa...

Most of us live in a what-if kind of dream world. I don't mean that in the way most children dream. As kids, do you recall dreaming about what you would do if you won a million dollars? This is not the kind of dreaming I mean.  We're adults, right? Our dreams are perhaps a bit more grounded. (I said perhaps, because I know someone out there is still dreaming of that million dollars.) We dream about  what  we will do  if  certain things happen. For instance; I'll go grocery shopping if it stops raining. I'll have plans on Friday if somebody invites me to something.   Our dreams, to varying degrees, are based on things that could actually happen. But the mass effect of this kind of realistic day-dreaming is that we daydream multiple possibilities for our day, our week, our month and even into our distant future. I'll move to Chicago if I get a job there. I'll marry that girl if I work up the courage to ask her out. There's only one prob...

Last month, when we had that giant storm come through and cause all sorts of ruckus, I was awoken in the middle of the night by my wife saying, ‘There’s a tornado warning. I have all the kids downstairs. You should come downstairs.’  Jen and I have been married for over 17 years. We’ve had discussions on what to do in a storm. Despite my tendency to scoff and doubt weathermen, I went downstairs and promptly fell asleep on a couch next to one of the kids. Jen stayed up for a few more hours on high alert. After about an hour of the roof not falling in around us, I went back to bed, seeking a spot where a child's leg would not be lodged in my back. I think we discovered our differences in storm situations back when we were engaged. She was spending some time in Florida one summer, when the people on TV started telling us to evacuate to nearby schools because of impending hurricane-like weather. Jen looked to me and asked what we needed to pack and if we had an emergency bag to take...