Category: 4 Amarillo (Page 2 of 9)

Central Church of Christ, First Baptist, First Presbyterian, and Polk Street United Methodist are all coming together this Sunday night at First Baptist to worship our Lord together. And it’s old hat!

The “4Amarillo” churches in downtown Amarillo have been worshiping and serving together for so long now, and so regularly, that it’s become kinda ordinary. Uneventful. Almost hum-drum.

I think that’s remarkable in and of itself. Over the past seven years, by the grace of God, we’ve made churches crossing denominational barriers to sing and pray together, share the Lord’s Meal, and serve our city as one group a commonplace occurrence in Amarillo. It doesn’t feel historic anymore when the Methodist guy preaches in the Church of Christ worship center. It doesn’t feel extraordinary when we pray for each other’s churches during our own worship assemblies. It feels very normal. Very natural. And I praise God for that.

But just when we begin to think the “4Amarillo” movement is not that big a deal, we’re reminded that it truly is.

Christianity Today, the national magazine for church leaders that reaches five-million readers a month, is highlighting “4Amarillo” in its current issue. I don’t know how they found out about it, I don’t know who tipped them off. Murray Gossett, the associate pastor at First Pres, is the one quoted in the story, and I haven’t spoken to him yet about how it all came about.

The article is about what CT calls the “inspirational, interdenominational, multi-congregational ministry movement.” There are other organizations in other cities featured along with “4Amarillo,” but we’ve got top billing. You can read the full story by clicking here.

This Sunday night is our seventh annual 4Amarillo Thanksgiving Service. There will be over a thousand of us from our four churches in attendance. The combined chorus will be more than a hundred men and women strong, made up of our individual praise teams and choirs. I’m in charge of the welcome and the call to worship. Our worship minister at Central, Kevin Schaffer, is singing a solo. Mark Welshimire, the lead pastor at Polk Street, is preaching the sermon. Our mayor, Ginger Nelson, is giving the benediction. We are gathering together in the presence of God, in the name of our Lord Jesus, and by the power of the Holy Spirit to continue tearing down the walls that divide God’s people and testify in word and deed to the healing, saving, reconciling, and uniting work of the risen and coming Prince of Peace.

As familiar as it is to us now, it’s not old hat. No, it’s the eternal will of our Father and the earnest prayer of our King. And it still seems like a pretty big deal.

Peace,

Allan

The “4 Amarillo” churches are meeting at First Presbyterian in downtown Amarillo this evening for our annual Maundy Thursday service. I am honored to read from Psalm 41 during the service and to lead the congregation in prayer. This is the prayer I will lift up to God tonight with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

Holy Father, we are reminded tonight by your Word we hear and the meal we share that your servant, our Lord Jesus, came to this earth not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life for the whole world.

Father, we pray together tonight for your people at First Baptist, at Polk Street Methodist, at First Presbyterian, and at Central Church of Christ. Would you bless our four churches with a continued spirit of unity and fellowship that honors you and points others to our Lord Jesus.

We pray together tonight for this city of Amarillo. Would you bless our city with increased cooperation and good will that brings healing and hope and joy to our neighbors.

We pray together tonight for this country. Would you bless this nation, God, with your mercy and justice to bring comfort and equality instead of oppression and inequity to our fellow man.

And we pray together tonight for every man, woman, and child created by you, in your image, and placed by you on this earth. We pray, holy God, for the whole world. Would you bless us with your peace and harmony, with your eternal life and matchless love. May every knee bow and every tongue confess, sooner rather than later, that your Son is Lord to your eternal glory and praise.

Amen.

We were blessed last night to host the 6th annual 4 Amarillo Thanksgiving Service at Central. Our brothers and sisters at First Baptist, First Presbyterian, and Polk Street United Methodist Churches joined us for an inspiring evening of combined choirs, ecumenical worship, sweet fellowship, and a powerful message on unity from my neighbor and partner in the Gospel, Howard Griffin from First Pres.

Our 4 Amarillo partnership  in worship and service is intended to remind one another that we are all united by the common blessings we share together in our Lord Jesus Christ. We also gather to proclaim to the city of Amarillo and to the world that our Lord Jesus really is the Prince of Peace and we gratefully join him in tearing down the walls that separate the children of God and divide his eternal Church.

Howie Batson, the “Amarillo Pope” from First Baptist, opened us up with a call to worship reminding us that we all live by the same Christian confession: Jesus is Lord. I was privileged to lead us in a robust recitation of the ancient Apostles’ Creed, the tried-and-true litany of the non-negotiable elements of our common faith. Howard brought a stirring word from the opening lines of 1 Corinthians, pointing to the message of the cross as the truth that unites us. And before we closed with a congregational rendition of “The Lord Bless You and Keep You,” Polk Street’s Terry Tamplen blessed the assembly with Paul’s prayer from Ephesians 3, encouraging us to live in and through the power of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I am deeply thankful to belong to a church that is so committed to breaking down the denominational walls that divide Christians. I praise God that my family gets to experience this regular glimpse of heaven. And I continue to pray that 4 Amarillo proclaims the truth and faithfully lives into the holy will of our eternal Father for the sake of our city and the whole world.

Peace,

Allan

I’ve told you before how much I love our annual “4 Amarillo” week. This past week was our fifth annual week of service projects, worship, and ice cream with the combined membership of the Christian families at First Baptist, First Presbyterian, Polk Street United Methodist, and us Church of Christers at Central. And it just never gets old.

This year we came together to host Bible block parties for the kids at the Astoria Park apartments in the San Jacinto neighborhood and at the Baptist church community center in the Eastridge neighborhood. And the more hearty among us transformed a vacant lot on South Kentucky Street into a community garden.

What a blessed joy to work side-by-side with these faithful disciples of Jesus. Our congregations worship a little differently, our churches are structured a little differently, and our denominations have different understandings of some key points of doctrine. But none of that keeps us from being united in spirit and purpose, in working together so that more of God’s will is done in Amarillo as it is in heaven, and pointing as one people to our Lord Jesus as the hope of the world.

I thank God for the blessings of being at Central in Amarillo, Texas at this exact time in history. I praise him that my children are being raised in a church that sees beyond our worship preferences and doctrinal differences and looks to the unity of all followers of Christ. I’m so grateful and blessed to participate in these ecumenical partnerships that we might not be able to pull off in many other places. And I hope and pray our “4 Amarillo” alliance serves as an inspiring witness to our city and beyond that our God really is who he says he is, that he’s bigger than all our differences, and that his Son truly is the Prince of Peace.

I miss having Burt Palmer around. The senior pastor at Polk Street has become a dear friend to me. His quick humor and dry wit, his awkward bike shorts, those nasty half-water-half-diet-coke cocktails he ordered at Burger Bar, his focused leadership, his faithful encouragement and spot-on advice, his commitment to our “4 Amarillo” partnership — all of that matters deeply to me. But the Lord has moved him to Kingwood down in Houston (If you want to be a blessing to Burt, you might send him mosquito nets, a case of OFF!, and a dehumidifier). Burt was a vital part of our friendship among the four pastors and an ardent pusher of “4 Amarillo.” I jokingly told the Polk Street UMC leadership group at one of their meetings that their new guy would have to agree to eat with us once a month and pick up the tab every fourth time. They assured me that their commitment to “4 Amarillo” was bigger and went deeper than Burt’s presence in their pulpit.

Wow. That’s a great thing, huh?

My hope is that what we’re doing together among our four churches is much bigger and deeper than any of us; that this kind of unity and purpose as a testimony to the truth of Christ Jesus transcends all our personalities and leadership styles and subsequent generations of disciples; that this somehow serves as an example for other groups of churches to follow in the future, all over the Texas panhandle, throughout the Southwest, and around the world.

Peace,

Allan