Back Story
When I was a child I was raised in the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church. I was baptized as a baby and confirmed as a young teenager. I then stopped going to church. In high school, I started learning science, history, and Social Studies. Where I discovered a whole world on what appeared to me to be in conflict with what I was taught in church. I would like to say that this is why I stopped going to church but in reality, I had already stopped because it was boring and irrelevant to my life.
In my late teens and early 20′s I was working as a roadie for various shows including rock and roll, television, and tele-evangilist. One summer I did a series of revivals with the tele-evangilist James Robertson. Here I learned a lot about what “Christians” supposedly believed. This caused me to run even further from the church. This was in the late 80′s and early 90′s and I lived in the heart of the bible belt at the hight of the tele-evangilist heydays and eventual downfalls. This time colored my view of Christians and the church or at least the Christians and churches that were in the media and in front of us daily.
As the years past I got married and we had our first son. We didn’t think about religion much, but did attempt to find a church we “liked” on occasion, to no success. When it was time for my son to be baptized, we went back to the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church and had a very disturbing conversation with the pastor where we were basically told the evils of having a woman pastor and that we could only commune with people who have been vetted by the pastor to his standards. We had our son baptized, but vowed to never return to that type of church.
Through all of this I maintained core beliefs – I believed in God. I believed that he sent his son to die for me. I believed in grace thru faith. I believed that we are called as humans to take care of Gods creation, including all of God’s people, whether we agree with them or not. I believed that Jesus set the standard for our way of living. But it seemed that although we could find churches that talked this way, it was hard to find one that acted that way.
I also had no clue what a lot of these things really meant and how to live my life in accordance with these beliefs and I still don’t have it figured out. We finally found a church that we like and seems to talk and act as Jesus called to, we still struggle with it, but that is part of the journey. What I have learned is that there are a lot of people out there that are trying to follow Jesus and that are trying to make sence of how to live like Jesus in today’s world. I learned that we will never be perfect at it and that we must keep trying and little by little we will get closer.
This is my struggle, how to live as Jesus is calling us to live? How would Jesus live my life? How do we as a family live our lives as Jesus is calling us to. These questions affect every aspect of our lives.
This blog is about putting this struggle out in the open to help others and to hopefully get help from others as we all try to figure this out together. My goal for this blog is to not only document the struggle, but for it to be a resource for others to find inspiration. Here is some of what I plan to do:
- Weekly updates on the struggle.
- Inspirational material such as books, music, articles, webpages, organizations and events.
- Weekly song choice – This will be a song, christian or otherwise that inspires me.
- Beliefs – As I solidify my thinking on core beliefs I will record what they are and how I got to that belief.
- Rituals – Monthly I will be introducing a new ritual that can be used as an individual or with your family to implement faith at home on a daily basis.
- Questions – I will post a question at least monthly of something that we are struggling with and ask for you help.
This is just a plan to get me going and over time I am sure that it will evolve and take on some sort of life on its own. I hope you will join me on the struggle and together we can get closer to being Jesus in the world.
About Steven Ricks
My name is Steven Ricks. I’ve been married to my wife Stephanie for 15 years and we have two sons, Andrew and Simon. We moved to beautiful Lodi Wisconsin 10 years ago, from the great state of Texas where Stephanie and I where both born and raised. Although we love Wisconsin we will always have Texas in our heart.
I started my career in the entertainment industry as a teen ager where I worked as a drummer in a small traveling circus called the Fossett Family Circus. After the circus and a small stint as a kangaroo trainer, a majority of my teen years where spent working at Six Flags Over Texas in the Theatre Department doing sound and lighting. When not working at the Park, I started my own company, Stage Tech International, where as a 17 year old I got a contract to provide the sound, lighting and staging for The Incredible Acrobats of China national tour. This catapulted me into the business and entertainment world as I started doing work for the likes of the Dixie Chicks (when they were a local band), Ronnie Milsap, Lee Greenwood, and Ringo Star. I also found a nitch doing technical direction for magic shows. As a Technical Director I worked on such productions as Mark Wilson’s World of Magic, and the UK’s television show “The Best of Magic”, A Japanese Magic TV Series, and various theme park and cruise ship magic shows.
In my early 20′s I finally landed a full time gig with Vari-Lite the automated lighting company. From 1991- 1993, I toured with bands such as Genesis, Paul McCartney, George Michael, and Def Leopard. After the road, I moved into the Research and Development group managing the development of new products. In 1998, the latest project was the development of automated architectural lighting product line. The line was eventually sold to Electronic Theatre Controls (ETC) in Middleton WI. Since both my wife and I worked for the the Architectural Division of the company, we were offered the chance to move to Wisconsin. Even though we were seven months pregnant with our first son, Drew, we decided to make the move. I am now a Product Development Manager, developing new products with a great team of people at ETC.
Over the years I have picked up many interests and hobbies. The one that has stuck the longest is woodworking. I started working wood when I was thirteen. Mostly small projects. When I bought my first house I built a majority of the furniture. (however, once I was married, most of the furniture moved out). Later, I took a stab at building kitchen cabinets. At the time, I thought they were really great, but as I look back now, I can see a whole lot that I would do different. Now I spend most of my woodworking time building furniture.
In addition to woodworking, I am the local coordinator the Lodi Community Action Team a group focused on eliminating teen access to alcohol and other drugs. I am on the Council of my church and play drums in the church band.
If you like this post subscribe to receive email updates here.