Connecting with God
Jul 31, 2008 Uncategorized
Imagine my surprise when I surf over to the Leadership Network Advance and see this pretty picture:
I was quoted in their most recent paper on the devotional life of a leader and they must have thought I was a pretty model as well.
You can download the whole paper here or just read the snippet where they quote me (the most important part, of course):
Though the fundamental ingredients of Bible reading, reflection, and prayer are common in virtually every model of devotional life, they take widely varied forms. To create a meaningful devotional life, wise leaders recognize the link between personality and particular models.
Noel Heikkinen, pastor of Riverview Church in Holt, MI (http://www.rivchurch.com) explains that some of the spiritual disciplines used for centuries simply don’t fit his personality: “I’m such an extrovert that solitude can actually become a destructive discipline for me if I’m not careful. When I’m alone with my thoughts and pray too long, my mental process gets tied into a knot and I get stuck. I’m a verbal processor, so any time of solitude must be accompanied immediately by interaction and verbal processing.”
Noel’s perspective about his devotional life corresponds with his theology about the way God leads his people. He explains, “I’m convinced that God gives direction in community, and I’m convinced that he seldom gives it to someone apart from community.” Western culture, and particularly American culture, is fiercely individualistic, and in many churches, the pastor is perceived as the channel who uniquely hears the voice of God, receives direction, and communicates it to the people. Noel reacts to such a view: “This perspective distorts our devotional lives so that we expect God to give us direction apart from the Word and input or feedback from others. If we’re perceived as the sole the arbiters of God’s voice to our people, we get defensive if they question us. And as pastors model this individualistic approach to spiritual life and leadership, other believers follow us and claim, ‘God told me’ to do this or that, and they defy anyone to disagree.” At the Jerusalem council, church leaders wrestled with some of the most important issues of the early church. They didn’t look to one leader to tell them what God wanted them to do. Instead, God led them as they collaborated: “So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends Barnabas and Paul” (Acts 15:25). Noel asserts, “That’s the model of spiritual life and wisdom we need to follow.”
Fighting WordPress TrackBack Spam
Jul 30, 2008 Uncategorized
I have been getting slammed lately with TrackBack Spam. In part, my redesign was prompted by cleaning up the site after getting hit one too many times.
Hopefully, I now have it under control thanks to BloggingTips.com.
Here are the steps I took for those of you having the same problem:
1. Renamed wp-comments-post.php file, which is in the the root of all Wordpress installations
2. Opened comments.php in my theme folder (wp-content/THEME FOLDER) and changed the “wp-comments-post.php” file name to my new name.
That’s it. Hopefully it works.
Scour is Amazing
Jul 30, 2008 Uncategorized
I’ve been playing with Scour - The social search engine lately and I have discovered it to be amazing.
Especially when you search for “noel heikkinen” under the “images” section. Click on the image for a larger version if you don’t see what I mean.
Testing
Jul 28, 2008 Uncategorized
Today I am going to be doing a bunch of site tests / improvements. Please forgive any flaky performance on the site.
Pray for North Korea Today
Jul 27, 2008 Uncategorized
Today has been declared as a day to fast and pray for North Korea. Here’s a list of a few things to pray for. For more information on each of these requests, head to Persecution.org:
- For the 200,000-1,000,000 political prisoners to be set free.
- For Human Rights
- For the Starving
- For the North Korean Children
- For Refugees
- For Freedm and Spiritual Awakening
- For the Destiny of the North Korean Church
- For Workers
- For Revival and Transformation in North Korea
- For Unification
- For Korea’s Destiny in Christ
- For the Unity and Restoration of the Church Worldwide
Heading Home
Jul 26, 2008 Uncategorized
This past week, the fam and I spent the week in Carolina Beach, NC.
I got a chance to speak a couple times at the College Leadership Training program and the rest of the week was vacation. Miracle of miracles–I didn’t get s sunburn. The glory of SPF289.
Here are a few pics I snapped this week. I tried to post them with the new WordPress ap for the iPhone, but it wouldn’t work and I had to wait until I had full internet access. Since we are staying in a hotel in West Virginia on our way home, I can slap them up.
Enjoy.
One of the highlights this week was getting to know a few guys better. The first was Jim Pace. Can you tell he pastors in the backwoods of Virginia?
The second was Neil Kring, a very white man who seriously thinks he’s black. You have to forgive him a bit because he lives in the middle of Indiana. He may not have ever met a real live black person.
Here’s Jesse enjoying all you can eat crab legs:
Here’s Ethan enjoying all you can eat jello:
Here’s Coley enjoying all you can eat ice cream:
Here’s the kids jumping into the pool less than 30 minutes after eating all they could eat.
We shall be home in the next day (or so). Peace out homies (and Neil).
Many Versions of Noel
Jul 25, 2008 Uncategorized
Check out this amazing site called Face of the Future. You upload your picture and it transforms it into a bunch of different versions.
I uploaded this picture:
The site predicted that when I am older, I will look like this:
And if I was a Modigliani painting, I would look like this:
If I was a El Greco painting, I would look like this:
Sign of the Day
Jul 23, 2008 Uncategorized
Grace and I were going for a walk the other day and we came across this lovely sign in an empty lot:
