Rick Nier...Woo!

Here's a little something something I wrote up for our church newsletter. I figured you might like it here as well. Can we all agree to officially let go of certain phrases? I know everyone likely has their own peeve over a certain word or phrase. One of mine is “this is a busy season for us.” First of all, I don’t know if you’re referring to season by weather, by sport, or by when all your reports are due. That’s right students; reports never go away, even after you graduate college. Get used to it. I’m not here to judge our busyness. I’m busy, you’re busy, we’re all busy. For families with children, that’s just part of life, even when you limit each child to one extra-curricular activity per season. Yes, I said season. So, if we’re all so busy, how do we do anything? Perhaps without realizing it, we make time for the things that are important to us. Some of those things give us natural reasons to make time for them. For instance, a job gives us money, so we can pay for pesky th...

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...

Were there Associate Pharisees? I like to think I have some experience with being an Associate Pastor. Even though I've only worked at 2 churches, I have worked with 8 different Senior Pastors. Yes..., I know that's a lot . Yes..., I have wondered if it's me . But being an Associate means different things to different people. It means different things to the people working with the Associate and it means various things to each Associate. What I have discovered is that it primarily means being willing to follow the leader. Leadership comes from the top and to become a good complement, one must be willing to follow the vision being given from the top. So one day I wondered if there were Associate Pharisees. We read about these religious leaders all the time. Surely there were some junior members. There had to be someone to work with the kids, right? Someone had to lead those overnight trips with camel racing and Dodge Scroll. (The trick to Dodge Scroll is to avoid be...

I want to tell you a little bit about my first girlfriend. (This was before I met Jen.) I was head over heels for this girl. Because I was so ‘in love’, I was willing to do anything to be able to date her and tell people that I was dating her. So she had some standards that she wanted me to reach for if we were going to be a couple. I really wanted to date her, so I said, ‘Lay it on me, babe.’ ( Those are the kinds of things I say to woo damsels...works every time. ) She wanted us to talk every day, at least on the phone. She wanted us to go out on a date, at least once a week. She had some rules for how I should act, both when we were together and when we weren’t. After all, she said, ‘I’ was now an ‘us’ and we should consider how people view us, even when we weren’t together. I really wanted to date this girl. So I agreed to her standards. How did I do? The first rule was that we talk every day, at least on the phone. Well, this was before cell phones, so this was kind of difficult. ...

I just know that some of you saw the title and are reading now, hoping for lyrics to a Taylor Swift song. My apologies. Yes, T. Swifty does have a song titled Blank Space , where she writes about her ex-lovers and the apparent vacancy for the next ex-boyfriend. But I have a different picture of what a blank space can offer. Blank space offers a space for grace. I have conversations with people all the time where the unspoken request is for grace. Deadlines weren't met, relationships need to be restored, wrongs have been committed. While there is certainly an understanding of consequences in most people's minds, it occurs to me that the blank space we can offer provides a way out. This way out is not something people immediately consider. After all, what's done is done and there's no going back, right? But I see a blank space that says otherwise. New deadlines can be established. Relationships don't need to remain broken. Wrongs can be made right. The Church should a...