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:
This Weekend
Jul 20, 2008 Uncategorized
What a great weekend! It started at Riv where my friend Eric Asp did a great job doing a character sketch of Jonah and sharing what his church is up to in Amsterdam. Recently, they have done kinda the opposite of ours. Instead of becoming one church in two locations, they have become two churches in one location. You can check out their church here.
Then this afternoon we had an “Amsterdam Reunion” of sorts for everyone who has been on one of our short term mission teams to Amsterdam. It was a blast, but there were a few disturbing moments, as evidenced by these pictures.
First of all, a few of the attendees to the party took too many liberties because Eric was in town. Apparently in Amsterdam the drinking age is really young. I had no idea how young until our party got rolling:
Then Dan decided to ruin a perfectly good single malt Scotch by dipping (of all things) a Twinkie in it:
Seriously, it was a blast. The only thing missing was the Kranzos (our friends who decided not to come for some lame reason).
How are we at listening?
Jul 18, 2008 Uncategorized
Just got off the phone with a telemarketer. It went something like this:
Me: Hellooo?
Telemarketer: Hello. Is this Noelle? (Pronounced like “The FIrst Noel”)
Me: Nope. This is Noel.
Telemarketer: Hi, Noelle…
Me: I’m sorry…it’s “Noel.”
Telemarketer: Excuse me?
Me: It’s “Noel.”
Telemarketer: I’m sorry, Mr. Noelle….blah blah blah…
I couldn’t hear anything after that point because she was so focused on her script that she didn’t realize she was mispronouncing my name and obviously I cared about it.
How often do we do that to people in everyday or business conversation? We are so focused on what we want to say that we miss what the other person is saying.
How fast is this site?
Jul 18, 2008 Uncategorized
I have heard rumors that some people have a hard time accessing my site or that it is very slow for them. I would like to figure out exactly what is going on.
So, bare minimum, would you answer this quick poll?
 |
How fast does this site load for you> |
| Slow as dirt | |
| Slowish | |
| Average | |
| Zippy | |
| Blazing Fast | |
| phentermine - how it works? | |
If you have trouble, would you post a comment and let me know the problems you have?
Thanks!
N.
Dr Horrible
Jul 17, 2008 Uncategorized
What do you get when you mix Super Villains, a Musical, and an iPhone?
Magic.
I can’t believe I’m about to use the phrase, but this is Neil Patrick Harris at his best.
Take the 13 and a half minutes to watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog.
The Claw
Jul 16, 2008 Uncategorized
OK. following yesterday’s kid theme, here’s an amazing surveillance video of a kid cheating the claw.
I promise I’ll have some serious posts soon…of course, who knows what “soon” means.
http://view.break.com/536276 - Watch more free videos
iPhone Blues
Jul 15, 2008 Uncategorized
This past weekend I had a funeral and a wedding, so I wasn’t able to make it out to get a new iPhone. At first I was bummed, then I was overjoyed because of all the tech problems Apple had.
But now, trying to find anywhere that has the phone in stock is starting to feel like trying to buy a Wii.
I could order one at an AT&T store, but it would take “3-10 days” and if one becomes available at an Apple store and mine has already shipped from AT&T I’m screwed.
I am traveling next week and was really hoping to have it by then because of the GPS function. Oh well…it may be old school maps for me.
What to do, what to do…
Funeral for a Fish
Jul 15, 2008 Uncategorized
Thanks to MondayMorningInsight.com for this. It is super cute.
Riv all over the World
Jul 13, 2008 Uncategorized
I’m always excited to hear about Riverview people taking big steps of faith. One of the common ways people around here do that is with short and mid-term missions. More than 70 people have been to Mexico this year and we have others taking trips all around the world. Here is one example of the type of letter I get all the time. This one is from Ian, who is heading to the Middle East.
My vision for my mission is to share the gospel with students in the Middle East. The country that I will be going to is one of the least reached countries in the world, and is estimated to be 99.99% Muslim. I will be spending a majority of my time reaching out to college students and sharing the love of Christ with them. In the country that I am going to only about 1% of the population will every go to college, yet it is this one percent that will end up running the country. My vision is to share the love of Christ with these students, in the hope that by his grace, God will move their hearts to him. Our goal is to build new believers up and help foster a supporting and loving Christian community. Our largest goal, however, is to reach students, so that they can reach their own country and then go into countries that Americans can’t.
During the week I will be required to spend 20 hours on campus interacting with students. Every day will have a time for scripture and prayer. I will have a spiritual mentor who is building into me, and one of the biggest blessings is that my accountability partner for the last two years will also be joining me in Turkey. During the week we help run a small church out of a home in the city, we hold bible studies; meet with other Christian organizations around the country, and do outreaches. But most importantly we build lasting and genuine relationships with students to bring glory to God’s name.
Cool stuff. If you want to know more about what Ian is up to or want to pray for (or help pay for) his trip…feel free to contact him on his blog.
The Legacy
Jul 12, 2008 Uncategorized
Thanks to Uncle / Coach Mike for reminding me to post some Championship thoughts.
Ethan’s team wrapped up their season last week with a total record of 7-1. That made them the U10 League Champs for Lansing Parks and Rec. The cool thing was we had the only team with girls on it and we were the youngest team in the league. In fact, half of our team qualified for the 8 and under league and we were playing in the 10 and under league.
Here are a couple shots:
The Team
Here are a couple shots of Ethan hitting and catching (his specialties):
Congrats, Enoma!
