It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.
I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of a church family that embraces the vision and the mission of our God to seek and save the lost. Missions giving, missionary support, local community outreach, and benevolence all play central roles in what’s planned and what’s done here at Legacy.
I wish everybody could come up here just once before the week’s over and spend just half an hour in the Church Planting Movements Conference. Missions Resource Network is hosting the event here at Legacy. It started yesterday and it continues through Saturday. Between 80 and 90 church planters from every single continent on this planet are meeting upstairs right now praying, planning, networking, teaching, and learning how to better evangelize the lost of this world.
You should see our upstairs youth center! An inspiring blend of different colors, cultures, languages, ages, backgrounds, worldviews, political systems, economic situations, and talents. All together in one room, in one place, with one common goal to spread the good news of salvation for the one world in the one Lord and Savior, the crucified and resurrected Christ!
I’ve had a chance up there to visit with George Hall, a friend of mine who’s planting churches all over Guatemala, dozens of them in the past ten years. Yesterday I caught up with Brian Robinson and his wife, Kristen, old friends from Oklahoma Christian. They’ve just sold their house in Tyler and are taking their family of six to Rwanda for a 14-year missionary commitment. We helped them here in the office yesterday with faxing and notarizing some of the paperwork on their house. Every person has an amazing story. Every family up there has a godly vision, an unquenchable fire to seek and save the lost.
Mark Hooper tells me the potential exists for several thousand churches to be planted all over the world in the next 20 years due to the efforts upstairs here this week! Praise God!
What a jarring reminder, what a much-needed wake-up call, that this eternal Kingdom of which we claim to be citizens has no national borders. The Kingdom we belong to knows no political boundaries, no cultural walls, no language barriers. Christ died for all. Period. And his love compels us to take that great news of salvation to every man, woman, and child on the globe.
It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.
When I was at Austin Grad, part of the requirements in Allan McNicol’s worship class was to visit three churches, three different worship assemblies, from different faith streams, and provide an analysis. I’ll never forget the Assembly of God service we attended in a modest area of North Austin. I can tell you everything about that morning. In detail. Come on, I wrote a six-page paper on it. But the thing that stuck out the most to me that day and still inspires me to this moment were the flags hanging from the ceiling in their worship center.
There was an American flag. And a Canadian flag. And a Mexican flag. There was a flag representing Brazil. Puerto Rico flags and Venezuela flags and Japanese flags. Flags representing countries in Africa and Asia. Not just flags from countries in which they had supported missionaries. Not just flags from countries in which there were Assembly of God congregations. They were proudly displaying flags from every nation on the planet. Yes, Iranian flags, Iraqui flags, Afghanistan flags. Over 300 different flags. Every flag from every country. An unmistakeable reminder, a multi-colored impossible-to-miss message that we are one in Christ, that his Kingdom knows no national borders.
I’d love to hang 300 flags from the ceiling at Legacy.
Because when God adds us to his Kingdom, we join a Kingdom that has outposts in Iraq and China and Russia. They belong to us and we belong to them. Disciples of the King. Past, present, and future. Every nation, every tribe, every language, every people. Spanning the four corners of the globe.
It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.
Peace,
Allan
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