Rick Nier...Woo!

We worry about a lot of things that we can't know about. I can remember, back in high school, spending countless hours talking with my friends about aliens and space and God's will. It was stuff that was too lofty for us (Job 42:3). But if the conversation turned towards living out our faith, practical living stuff that we could figure out, suddenly I wasn't as interested. Did God allow aliens to abduct the dinosaurs? I don’t know, but let’s discuss that for hours. What practical steps can I take this week to grow in my faith? I don’t know, who wants to watch a movie? My days since high school have changed my interests a bit. Now I worry less about Bigfoot and Loch Ness and more about developing godly habits (both for me and the people I work with). That’s why I instantly liked how Moses concluded things in Deuteronomy. Towards the end, after reviewing the entire Law with the Israelites, Moses offers this; God , our God, will take care of the hidden th...

I think I might have liked this book more if... No, I'm not sure anything could make me like this book. Roger Wolsey has written a book called Kissing Fish; Christianity for People who Don't Like Christianity . Granted, I like Christianity, so that was probably one strike against it from the start. Perhaps if it had read less defensively it might have helped. On the one hand, I get it. In order to clarify what something is, you oftentimes have to contrast it with something else that people are very familiar with. In this case, that would be conservative Christianity, although it more often felt like Roger was attacking the Christians, not the Christianity. It is hard to separate the two, but I felt part of what was missing was asking what conservative Christianity would look like if it were lived out correctly. But who has time for details? On the other hand, if you are trying to attract followers, perhaps sounding like the smart kid who has everything figured out wh...

I have to confess something. There are times when I want to tell the truth. Yes, shocking, I know. You might imagine that it's just the pastor in me that makes this honesty want to burst out of me like a song on Glee, but it's not that at all. Alas, that is not it. It's not the sugary-sweet honesty that I want to tell. The type of honesty I'm talking about is the kind that will possibly offend, or at least sting for a few days. It's more than just letting you know that something is stuck in your teeth or that your hair looks like Justn Bieber's. It's truth's truth and many times it hurts. But there are some ways to deliver truth that apparently make it easier. I say 'apparently' because they are found in the Bible. It's Deuteronomy 31 and Moses isn't going to last much longer. So he decides it's the season of Festivus and it's time for the airing of grievances. He tells the Israelites about what could happen if they diso...

Have you ever had someone just stare at you without saying anything? It gives me the creeps. I want to know what is going through their head. I want them to speak up. The silence weirds me out. So, like many people, I fill the silence with my own noise. It doesn't have to be that way. Just after crossing the Jordan, the Israelites are poised to attack Jericho. Perhaps you know about their singing to bring down the walls. Yeah, that's pretty epic on God's part. But what comes before that would make you uncomfortable. As the entire army marches around the city walls for 7 days, they are given these orders. “Do not give a war cry, do not raise your voices, do not say a word until the day I tell you to shout. Then shout!” Joshua 6:10 Imagine you are a citizen of Jericho and you see an entire army marching around your city walls. Only they aren't saying anything. They are marching in complete silence. Creeeepy! Awkward as it might be, I imagine God might be g...

Youth Ministry. It's kind of a funny term when you consider it. Is it ministry to the teenage crowd or ministry by the teenage crowd? Modern youth ministry seems to have started when some cool hippie started some fires and gathered teens around it to sing Kumbaya. To hear Greg Steir, president of Dare 2 Share Ministries, talk about it, Jesus was the first youth pastor, since most of the disciples were teenagers. As the lights have gotten brighter and the technology cooler, there is still an ongoing debate about how youth ministry is accomplished. As the offerings for educating youth pastors increases, the expectation of being professional rises. Although, how professional can we seem when Chubby Bunny is still an approved game? But I must admit that the last time I was with some of my church leaders, I did tell them that youth pastors are like specialists, much like podiatrists, dentists, and pediatrists are considered specialists. And since they make more money than genera...

Last Friday, as a way of celebrating one last night of freedom before school started, my wife decided we no longer needed comfort. So we went way out...to our back yard and set up the tent. The kids loved the idea. I brought my laptop. I was checking the weather to see if we needed to put the cover up on our tent when I found that a meteor shower was expected. I looked up and saw a lot of clouds. But the children looked anyway for meteors that we wouldn't see. It led us to talk about space, a favorite topic of mine. I used the laptop to search pictures of space. I stumbled upon pictures of the size of Earth, like this one to the left. This was no big deal, as they've seen pictures of Earth before. But then I showed them this one. Now I had them intrigued. Those other planets seemed awfully larger than Earth. How could this be? Shouldn't we be the largest? Why would God make other planets larger? Without going fully into 3-point-pastor mode, I simply shared that we...

I'm going back for this book review. In 2003 Mike Yaconelli wrote a book called The Core Realities of Youth Ministry . I had just come from a National Youth Workers Convention, where Mike hosted. I bought a copy of this book, as well as his Dangerous Wonder . I ate them both up and still think they are great. That's why I was greatly discouraged when I went this last spring to find my copy of The Core Realities . I looked at home. I looked at my office. I went around accusing people of stealing it. Nothing. It was nowhere. Figuring I would find my original once I purchased a new copy, I took the plunge. I bought it because my original copy had my notes written in the sides. I bought it because I had used it 7 years ago to add to my teaching of core values and I wanted to revisit that topic. (That's not to say I haven't talked about core values in 7 years....) I believe Mike has written a powerful gem that every youth pastor should be required to read. I think...