NoelHeikkinen.com

The Return

Jul 31, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Tired | NOISE: Kids playing with toys they had forgotten about }

Upon returning home we discovered a few things:

1) Grace’s passport request was put on hold because of her name change when we got married. Now we have to come up with all kinds of paperwork to prove who she is and we have to do it today. Because we leave in 14 days for Europe, we have to overnight the stuff today. Yuck.

2) Apparently, I forgot to explain to my neighbor kid the difference between lawn and garden. So he went ahead and mowed both. So much for my kids pumpkin patch.

High Speed

Jul 29, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Multi-Layered | NOISE: Cole crying and waking up everyone in the hotel }

We are stopping in Charleston for the night on our way home and our hotel has high speed wireless. Yay. I have missed the high speed. Yes I have.

I have finally uploaded pics from HSLT and our vacation, as well as from a cool place we visited called Atalaya in our pics section (click the link on the toolbar above). And, yes, I posted all 200 odd pictures. I know most of you won’t care, but for people with nothing better to do, enjoy perusing them all.

Here are my favs, and yes, I know that 10 out of 11 are of my kids. Sue me.

The Present Future & An Unstoppable Force

Jul 28, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Decent | ITUNES: “Rebecca” – PJ Harvey }

I must be in a “church” mood lately because everything I am reading and listening to is on this topic. I am also thinking about teaching on the church this fall.

Most recently, I have read this book by Reggie McNeal:

While I don’t agree with all of his theology, it is a great book. My friend Scott recommended it to me and told me it was a book that was ruining his church in a good way. Basically, the author (a Southern Baptist…ironically I read this down here in the heart of SB country), proposes 6 tough questions for the church. If you have been around the “PostModern” church discussions for awhile, nothing here will suprise you, but he does a great job articulating the points. I discovered in this book a lot of criticism of the church (much of it rightly deserved), and (in a breath of fresh air, really) some solutions. I really enjoyed the book, once I decided to ignore my doctrinal hesitations.

This book reminded me of Steve’s assertion that much of what is being written now has this air of cynicism. (As well as the fact that many young people who grew up in the church are the same way…this is a topic for another day). I think that is true. Yet, there seems to be this transition. And quite frankly, I think I need to make this transition in my own brain. Yes, it is good to have healthy levels of discontent. And where there is reason to be cynical, cynicism. But, let’s not stop there. Let’s look at the church Jesus started. Let’s look at the church the early church fathers died for (I mean the apostles, not guys in the 1300s). Let’s find ways to make that church come alive in the cultural context that God, by his grace has chosen to drop us in!

Anyhoo, I am now diving into another book (Ironically, by another Southern Baptist):

I have come across a passage that may sound cynical, but is meant (I hope) by McManus to be a springboard to this type of forward excitement and thinking. If he doesn’t intend it that way, I do in offering it to you (and it is a long passage, but it deserves a reading):

Do you remember all the voices warning us that America was becoming a secular nation? Do you remember believing it? We were convinced that the great enemy of our time was Secular Humanism. Too many of us still believe this. While our nation systematically eliminates overt Christian influences from the public arena, America’s new grass-roots religion is not atheism but pantheism. Even with the public schools advocating evolution and removing creation science, belief in God is nearly at 100 percent. Even with the bombardment of modernity’s materialism, rationalism, existentialism, and empiricism, our society continues its spiritual quest. America is an extraordinarily spiritual society.

The indictment that we must receive is that the Christian faith as we express it is no longer seen as a viable spiritual option. Masses gave the church a try and left wanting. We accuse them of not being willing to surrender to God; they accuse us of not knowing him. People are rejecting Christ because of the church!…Is it possible that it wasn’t the nation that was becoming dangerously secular but the church? Wewere neither relevant nor transcendent. We have become, in the worst of ways, religious. We are the founders of the secular nation.

Now can we take that as an exciting challenge? Can we use that to point the fingers at ourselves and not “those other churches?”

Waves

Jul 28, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MEDICAL CONDITION: Sunburned | ITUNES: “Mexico” – Incubus }

We hit the beach for one last time today and it was amazing. The waves were friggin huge! I was standing in water that was between my stomach and nipples and the waves were higher up than I could reach my hands. I body boarded out there with the surfers. I wonder what they were thinking of me.

Anyhow, I would often pass up waves that I would have killed to have last week. But you could always see the really big one coming. There were times when I was so tired I could barely paddle back out and the waves would just keep coming and they would literally kick the crap out of me. It reminded me of when Job challenged God and God’s response was, “Oh, yeah? You think you are the big man? Check out what I created.”

I was totally humbled today by the ocean and the power it holds and to think that is a mere hint of God’s awesome power. It’s like when Job says back to God, “I know that you can do anything, and no one can stop you. You ask, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?’ It is I. And I was talking about things I did not understand, things far too wonderful for me.”

Spam Attack

Jul 27, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Insane in the Membrane | NOISE: Kids }

I have been hit with a major spam attack. I periodically get spammed on my comment section of the site, but this week it has gone through the roof. An average of 100 spams per day and today over 1000! Kyle hooked me up with MT Blacklist. So, I am running the despamming program tonight. In the meantime, two things for you to know.

1) Don’t click on any bizarre links referring to, oh, say porn or viagra or gambling or the like in any of my comments sections.

2) Hopefully I don’t lose any of your comments, but it is may happen. Sorry about that.

HSLT

Jul 23, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Reflective | NOISE: Dan Leading Worship }

Steve complained that not enough of us at HSLT were blogging about the week, so I am going to hit you with a few bullet points. Right now, Dan is leading the final worship set of the week and I just got done with the last message.

*It was a privilege for me to get a chance to teach with Tom Short this week. He and I are so different, and yet we seemed to have this great synergistic relationship. Often, I found myself quoting him on the stage and he did the same with me. I can’t remember if that has happened at a conference before. Very cool stuff.

*I mentioned in a previous post how I was excited about the evangelism training this week and I want to reiterate that. It was really grounded in the student’s personal relationships.

*One of our focuses this week was prayer. That has been an awesome thing. I was struck by the verse in James 5 that says, in part: “Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The earnest prayer of a righteous person has great power and wonderful results.” I always hear the last part of the verse quoted, but it is very significant in context. Our prayers have great power and wonderful results as we pray for our friends who have confessed their sins to us. Note this does not say “forgiveness,” it says “heal[ing].” We have a great role in praying for each other and I have seen that this week. Teens who have never prayed have prayed for each other and God has begun healing in a lot of areas. Cool stuff.

*8 people from our church got baptized. Cool.

*In a non-spiritual area, my van got fixed and immediately broke down again. Then the mechanic rebuilt my distributer for free because he didn’t catch it the first time. Amazing.

*Vacation. Mine starts in an hour. Very exciting. I am going to swim and play with my kids and kiss my wife and read. Not necessarily in that order, but maybe in that order.

That’s all for now. Love and Kisses.

Hip Hop Spirituality

Jul 20, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Good, Thanks for Asking | ITUNES: “Jesus Walks” – Kanye West }

Here’s an excerpt from P Diddy on MTV’s site. It’s from a two-part article on spirituality in the Hip Hop community and it is about Kanye West’s album (which Dan turned me on to, thank you very much).

“I think that a lot of times when you’re talking about God or Jesus, people get intimidated,” opines P. Diddy, who released the single “Best Friend” about his relationship with God in 1999. “The way Kanye did it, he made the record so hot that they can’t front on it. It wasn’t about the lyrical content; it was undeniable. Then, because [the record] was blessed to be a hit, you’re forced to deal with the power of God and the record is going to touch you. You can’t escape it. ‘Best Friend’ was definitely one of the first records, but to be honest, ‘Jesus Walks’ is just a hotter record. It’s a rap record about Jesus [that] young men and women can understand, instead of you pushing it down their throats. You hit them with that heat and they understood it.”

Time Warp

Jul 19, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Ecstatic | NOISE: Washer }

For the last few days my site has had a bit of a time warp because my ISP was shifting to new servers. So I was afraid that I had lost the last few days of posts. But I did a little craziness and got everything back (no help from Kyle, of course). Yay.

And, yes, for those of you playing at home, the van is still broken.

The Miracle of Life

Jul 18, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: OK | NOISE: Jed doing Evangelism Training }

It was beautiful, really. We were standing on the edge of the ocean, the waves rolling in over our ankles. The kids were playing in the surf. Just then Eric began to find little crabs in the sand. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7…he kept tossing them into the bucket. All of the kids ran over to witness these cool little lives.

As I stood there, looking over the ocean, I was thinking how cool it was that my kids could learn about the miracle of life here and how precious it is. I glanced over to see Ethan (my three year old) pouring sand on top of the crabs and crushing their helpless bodies down with all of his might. Yes, the miracle of life…smooshed into a pool of death by a three year old.

HSLT

Jul 18, 2004 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

{ MOOD: Decent | NOISE: HSLT Evangelism Training }

HSLT started last night, whether we were ready or not. We had tech problems, I was sick, it was interesting, to say the least. It was one of those times that you have to acknowledge God in. If anything good came out of it, it was not because of us.

Right now Chris Old and Jonathan Kimball are leading Evangelism Training. They are doing great. I am sick of evangelism being seen as a skill set to be mastered. They are leading us through a worship time centered on The Romans Road. Then, they will share a few different methods of sharing about Christ with others. It’s pretty cool.

Anyhoo…back to work.

(And in case you were wondering, Henry set up a wireless network so we can surf…very nice).