NoelHeikkinen.com

The Big 4-0

Dec 8, 2011 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Today is my 40th birthday.

40.

The big 4-0.

There is absolutely no definition of the word “young” that applies to me anymore. Because of my newfound old age, I figured I would offer you 40 little nuggets of wisdom I have accumulated over the past 40 years. These appear in no order whatsoever because I am too old to attempt that sort of mental task.

1) No matter how old you are, you feel younger that you really are.
2) Spend time getting better at your strengths rather than getting better at your weaknesses (unless your weaknesses are sins).
3) Never say “never.”
4) Never say “always.”
5) God is faithful, even when you are not.
6) You will always remember what it felt like to drive your first car (this was mine).
7) I am rich – “An excellent wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels.” (Proverbs 31:10)
8) You can’t talk about Jesus enough.
9) Take time to read everyday.
10) Complexity is good thing in cigars, coffee, beer, Scotch, and a wife.
11) This may be a midlife crisis thing, but my next car will be one I really enjoy driving.
12) When you are tempted to think, “I’ll become a better parent/spouse/whatever tomorrow,” you are wrong. Start today instead.
13) Your only hope in becoming a better parent/spouse/whatever is Jesus – focus more on him today.
14) The longer you are married to the same person, the better the sex is.
15) The longer you are married to the same person, the more you see your own sin.
16) The longer you are married to the same person, the more you are tempted to focus on your spouse’s sin instead of your own.
17) Play catch with your boys today. You still “won’t have time” tomorrow.
18) Hold your daughter’s hand as long as she will let you get away with it.
19) Kiss your kids on the head no matter how old they are.
20) Spend the extra money for comfortable shoes…or insoles.
21) Be yourself in preaching, dressing, and all other style related stuff. Copycats are really only fakes.
22) Exercise even if you hate it.
23) Eat healthy even if you hate it.
24) Drink good beer. Bad beer is at best empty calories, at worst a sin.
25) Run like a kid sometimes, preferably with kids.
26) Read at least one Bible verse a day.
27) Travel.
28) Smile at strangers.
29) Hold doors for people, most of them will be shocked.
30) Really remember Jesus when you take communion.
31) Ask “why?”
32) Treat your wife like a daughter of the King.
33) Treat your daughter like a Princess.
34) Treat your sons like men.
35) Discipline your children because you love them.
36) Discipline your children like you love them.
37) Check your fly before you preach.
38) When possible, try not to offend nor be offended.
39) Even when trying to eat healthy, have some bacon now and then.
40) Beards are epic, but they make you look older.  Mine makes me look like I’m in my 40′s. Oh snap.

Tags: birthday, Jesus, personal, wisdom

I’m Back!

Aug 15, 2011 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Today marks the end of my second annual month long social media fast and it was very different this time around.

Last year, I found myself wanting to post to Twitter and Facebook constantly, this year it was relieving to take a break.

Last year, I enjoyed the break from my email and dreaded the pile of messages my assistant said was waiting for me at the end.  This year, I have wanted to get back to email and my assistant says the backlog is pretty light because she handled most of them.

One thing was the same both times around, though: I am returning with a renewed vision for my online habits over the next year.  Primarily, I want to use this year to leverage my Internet usage for the Gospel.  Here are a few specific actions steps I am planning on implementing:

Twitter and Facebook

One of the coolest things we do at Riv is our Text Project, where we read through the New Testament each year and the Old Testament over the span of three years.  Our approach is simple and you can learn more about it here.

This year, I plan on posting a verse from the Text Project each day to encourage people to read along with me and spend a few minutes daily in the Bible.

I also plan on limiting my time browsing Social Media to a couple minutes a day so it doesn’t become a time waster (as it has been in the past).

My Blog

This year, I plan on being more intentional with my blog posts.

• On Monday, I will blog about something that I think will pertain to the Riv family (whether it be about my weekend messages, current events, or just something I am mulling over).
• On some Tuesdays, I will post a “Tuesday Rewind,” which will be an old blog post, message clip, or some other old gem I dig up around here.  I won’t always do one of these, but I will when it strikes my fancy.
• On Wednesdays, I’ll post book reviews on a wide variety of books from novels to bestsellers, to books I think everyone should read (or avoid).
• On Fridays, I’ll continue to post Friday Random Linkness because it’s fun for me (and I hope fun for you).

My Email

My assistant hit a great rhythm over the last month regarding my email.  I plan on entrusting more and more of it to her, so I can focus more and more of my time to teaching and leading at Riv.

Well, that’s about it!  It’s great to be back and I am excited to see what the next year has in store for us.

Tags: facebook, personal, social media, twitter

iFast 2.0

Jul 15, 2011 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Last year, I fasted from Social Media and much of the internet for the month of July and it was a super fruitful time for me.  You can read my post-fast thoughts here and here.  Because of this, I have decided to do it again.  The bottom line is I will be mostly offline between July 15 and August 14.

Here are the parameters I am laying out for myself:

No Twitter. No tweeting, no reading other people’s tweets. A lot of time I’m not really living in the moment, rather I’m trying to capture the moment to share with others in 140 characters or less.

No Facebook. I don’t need to catch up on everyone’s lives, photos, and status updates this month. I also don’t need to share everything from my world. Sorry to everyone with birthdays during this month…you’ll just have to live without me saying “happy birthday.”

No Google+. I am tempted to play with this one over the break to try to figure it out, but nope…it has to go.

No Blogging. Most of the time, I love writing for my blog. Sometimes it’s a chore. This month, it doesn’t matter because I won’t be doing any of it.

No Reading Blogs. This one might be the hardest for me, since I have a lot of blogs I like to keep up on and no one would know if I snuck a peak. But it’s time for some offline thinking.

Limited Email. I’ll periodically check my personal email, but for the most part I’m going to let my assistant handle my work email. If something earth-shattering is happening that needs my attention, I’ll have her let me know but for the most part I don’t think the world will end if I don’t respond to email. To this end, I’m going to disconnect my iPad and iPhone from my work email account so it’s harder for me to access and have my assistant change my password.

So what will I do with all of the time / mental energy I save?

Read the Bible, pray, and plan for the fall. I am really really excited because this fall I am starting a year long journey through the book of 1 Corinthians.  I’ll take a bunch of time during the next month to get ramped up and ready for that.

Vacation with the Fam. We have a couple little trips planned (including a Cubs game and some time on Lake Michigan) and I am looking forward to some down time to focus on being a husband and a dad.

That’s about it. My plan is to be back online on August 15.

See ya then!

Tags: facebook, personal, social media, twitter

Prayers

Jun 6, 2011 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Would you be willing to take a few minutes to pray for me?

I have a lot going on these days (you may notice I have been a little slow on the blogging front) and I could really use a few extra prayers.  Here are some specific requests:

School – I am officially done with school this week and I am presenting my final project for feedback.  The final version is due on July 1.  What is my final project?  Well…

Book Proposal – My final project is a book proposal on the team approach to leadership we use at Riverview.  I have been wanting to write this book for 10 years or so, and this is a key moment.  Please pray that a publisher would be willing to pick up the book so I can get it written this year.

New Series – I am launching into a new series in a couple weeks at Riv.  I will be looking at 5 big theological concepts and will be trying to make them accessible to everyone.  I didn’t realize until just recently that kids will be in the service for three of the weeks, which will make things interesting.

Travel – I am doing a fair amount of travel this month, which can be tiring for me and stressful for my family.

Baseball – This is the big month for baseball for all my boys.  It started last month but it kicks into high gear this month.  Please pray that I am able to make all my boys feel valuable by hitting as many of their games as possible (even when they are all playing at the same time_.

1 Corinthians - This next year, I am doing something I have never done before.  I am taking 15 months to cover one book of the Bible.  I have done shorter books, but never one as long as 1 Corinthians    I am teaching it in chunks (as different series) starting in the fall and I am going to spend a lot of time reading and researching over the summer.

Thanks so much for your prayers!  I would love to reciprocate.  If  you want me to pray for you, just leave your requests in the comment section and I will pray for ya.

Tags: personal

Money Question #3 – Too Poor to Give

Dec 8, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

This week, I’m answering common questions I am receiving about Riv’s series on generosity.

Today’s Question: What do I do if I’m really struggling financially?  Should I give anyway?

I know there are a lot of people facing this very question in Michigan these days (not to mention all the broke college students around here).  Let me answer in the form of a story from my own life.

When my wife and I were newly married, we were not financial givers at all.  And I mean it, we didn’t give at all.   We thought we couldn’t.  Then we had a kid and went down to one income.  Now we really couldn’t give.  Eventually, we bought a house and as any homeowner knows, that’s not a cheap thing.  Not to mention the fact that during the course of this season, we had another kid.

Now we had a mortgage, a car payment, a bunch of credit card debt, some student loans (which my father in law graciously helped with), two kids to feed and clothe, and we were doing this all on one income.  In fact, my income was so low that I had to do freelance work on the side to make ends meet.  

I can’t remember what initially challenged us in this area, but we began to feel convicted that as Christ-followers, we should be giving generously.  That was a struggle for us since we hadn’t been giving at all!  We decided one day that we were going to change cold turkey. From that day forward, by God’s grace, we were always going to give away a minimum of 10% of our income to the church and look for other opportunities to be generous as well.

By God’s grace, that’s what we have been able to do.  We have never gone without heat or clothes or groceries (we almost did once and someone provided several bags of food for us).  Granted, we have had to do without some stuff, but God has always richly provided for our needs and a great much more.

As our income has grown, we have been able to give more.  Now, we have no debt other than our mortgage.  This puts us in the great position to be continue to be generous.

Remember this verse?

God is able to make all grace overflow to you so that because you have enough of everything in every way at all times, you will overflow in every good work. – 2 Cor 9:8

Tags: money, personal

Merely Talking

Oct 20, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

“In all hard work there is profit,
but merely talking about it only brings poverty.”
Proverbs 14:23 (NET)

“Merely talking about it.”

Solomon could have been talking about Twitter or Facebook status updates. In fact, his verse would easily fit in the 140 characters of a Tweet.

Do we spend more time talking about the stuff we have to do / the stuff we are doing / the stuff we just did than we spend actually doing the stuff? I know that is my natural propensity. In January, I made a resolution not to check email, Twitter, or Facebook in the mornings (with the exception of quick “Happy Birthdays”). Over the year, my commitment to this has waned and I not only start my day with these little addictions, but I keep coming back to them all day long.

Today I am starting over.

I found a great tool I am hoping will help. It’s called “Self Control” and it’s not just a fruit of the spirit, it’s a piece of software. I have been testing it for the last couple days and I really like it. It blocks certain websites for a set period of time, allowing you access to the rest of the web. I like this because I had been using a software called Freedom that blocked the entire internet. That hosed me up because I use the web for too many other things, especially when I am doing message prep.

So as of today, I plan on doing a quick blog post in the mornings, throwing out some birthday cheer, and then shutting down Facebook, email, and Twitter until after lunch. I figured I’d “Apply my Team” (that’s you) to this particular area of sin. The added advantage is by posting this out there, I now have a couple thousand people who can keep me accountable.

Tags: facebook, personal, productivity, social media, twitter, work

Re:Train

Aug 9, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Dan and I will be spending the week in Seattle as we begin taking Master’s classes in The Missional Leadership Program at The Resurgence Training Center. This year we are going to attempt the crazy plan of going to school in Seattle, all while trying to be good dads and husbands and continue pastoring full-time at Riv.

It’s going to be an interesting year, so we would appreciate your prayers and understanding if we seem dazed and confused on occasion. Luckily, we have amazing wives who are very supportive of what we are doing and a kick butt assistant who will manage our schedules and protect our time ferociously.

Tags: personal

What’s Next?

Aug 3, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Now that I am back from my Social Media Fast, it’s time to jump into the new year (Riv’s calendar really goes along with a school calendar). With this new season of life and a little bit of perspective from my month off, I am going to modify my use of Social Media a smidge. Here’s what I am thinking:

Twitter
I am suspecting this is going to be the hardest part of my Social Media world to jump back into. That’s odd because it was one of the hardest habits for me to break. Now that I am not Tweeting constantly, though, it’s weird to start up again. Not sure how this one is going to change, but I know it will…

Facebook
By far, Facebook is my primary mode of connection with people at Riv and around the world. I am excited to get back in there and start connecting again, but I am going to limit my Facebook time so it is not a distraction from Riv, family and school (yes, I said school…more on that later). Not sure what the limits are going to be, but I am thinking about starting the day on Facebook and ending it the same way and trying to stay off in between. We’ll see…

Blog
I have been blogging for a very very long time and I plan to continue for a very very long time. However, I have noticed that since I started importing my blog into Facebook, my readership has decreased on the actual blog site. In particular, the comments have almost completely died out unless I specifically request feedback. There has been a corresponding increase of comments over on Facebook which makes sense. Because of this, I am going to continue writing on my blog (and importing the feed to Facebook) but I am disabling comments (unless a specific post warrants it). If people want to comment, they can do so on Facebook.

I’d love your thoughts on this, but of course you’ll have to give them to me over on Facebook.

Tags: facebook, personal, social media, twitter

I’m Back!

Aug 2, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

I’m back from my month long Social Media Fast. Did you miss me?

I figured my first post should be a little look at what this month has been like without Twitter, Facebook, and blogs.

Week 1
Countless times a day, I found myself starting to log into Facebook. It made me realize the number of “breaks” I take during the average day to consume Social Media. Once I began to eliminate that urge, I learned something: I am much much more productive when I don’t have Facebook as a distraction. As I re-enter the Facebook world, I am going to have to seriously discipline myself to only login a few times a day.

Week 2
This was when my need to Twitter really emerged. All of these little things kept happening that I wanted to tell the world about: the day I hiccuped for 8 hours straight, when one of my boys said, “Dad, do we HAVE to listen to rock music?”, when a flash flood almost washed away our tent when camping, etc. etc. etc. I don’t think it’s a bad thing to want to share this, I like the community it builds with people, it was just hard for me not to go there.

Week 3-4
These were vacation weeks for me so the temptation to blog, Facebook, and Twitter weren’t very strong except when I took pictures I really wanted to share.

Week 5
Last week was perhaps the hardest week because I was back from vacation and really trying to get things planned out for the fall. It felt like everything was “back to normal” except my social media stuff. I found myself craving normalcy.

Summary
This was a great thing for me in many ways and I think I may make a habit of doing this each July. Here were the best things about the month:

• My family vacation was truly that: a FAMILY vacation. I wasn’t consumed with having to share all the details with the world, and a lot of the time I would just leave my gadgets (including my phone) in the hotel room or van.
• I got a lot of reading done (which was one of my goals).
• The fast helped me to be less narcissistic. That’s one of the great downfalls about social media: we share every detail of our lives with other people and it makes is feel so dang important. It tends to place us in the center of the universe.

Anyhoo…tomorrow I am going to post a few thoughts on what happens next with me and Social Media.

Tags: facebook, personal, social media, twitter

iFast

Jul 1, 2010 Uncategorized Hodge Podge

Everyone who knows me knows that I am a tech-junky. In particular, I’m a bit of an Apple Fanboy. I am always tapping away at my MacBook Pro or iPhone or iPad. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it can become a bit obsessive.

In fact, I’ve been thinking about my social media consumption and production lately and I think it’s time for a break. Conveniently for me, my iPhone is dead and I’m not going to replace it until next month.

So, for the month of July I’m fasting from social media. Here are the parameters I am laying out for myself:

No Twitter. No tweeting, no reading other people’s tweets. A lot of time I’m not really living in the moment, rather I’m trying to capture the moment to share with others in 140 characters or less.

No Facebook. I don’t need to catch up on everyone’s lives, photos, and status updates this month. I also don’t need to share everything from my world. Sorry to everyone with July birthdays…you’ll just have to live without me saying “happy birthday.”

No Blogging. Most of the time, I love writing for my blog. Sometimes it’s a chore. This month, it doesn’t matter because I won’t be doing any of it.

No Reading Blogs. This one might be the hardest for me, since I have a lot of blogs I like to keep up on and no one would know if I snuck a peak. But it’s time for some offline thinking.

Limited Email. I’ll periodically check my personal email, but for the most part I’m going to let my assistant handle my work email. If something earth-shattering is happening that needs my attention, I’ll have her let me know but for the most part I don’t think the world will end if I don’t respond to email. To this end, I’m going to disconnect my iPad from my work email account so it’s harder for me to access. Maybe I’ll let my assistant change my password too. Yeah, I think I will.

So what will I do with all of the time / mental energy I save?

Read books. I have a whole lot of books I want to catch up on (and yes, a bunch of them are on my iPad…not giving that up).

Read the Bible, pray, and plan for the fall.

Vacation with the Fam. This month I have the coolest vacation plans ever but I don’t need to share every detail of them online.

That’s about it. My plan is to be back online in August. Who knows, though, I may like this offline world more than I think…

Tags: facebook, fasting, personal, social media, twitter