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Category: 4 Amarillo (Page 5 of 9)

Maundy Thursday

April 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

On this fifth day of Holy Week, the “4 Amarillo” churches are assembling together at Polk Street United Methodist Church this evening for a traditional Maundy Thursday service. “Maundy” comes from an old French word (mande) and a Latin term (mandatum) that mean “command,” and point to Jesus’ words around the table with his disciples on that night he was betrayed: “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.”  Tonight we are reminded of the sacrificial and self-giving love demonstrated by our Lord as he washed the feet of his followers. We’re reminded of his faithfulness and obedience as he went willingly to his death that very night. And we’re inspired to imitate our Savior in living lives of service to others, considering their needs more important than our own.

And they’ve asked me to preach it again.

Still not sure why. It probably has something to do with the fact that Howie and Howard and Burt all have Good Friday services and multiple Easter Sunday services they’re preaching this weekend. And I don’t. So I get the Maundy Thursday gig.

Regardless, I’m very, very honored and excited to do it. This is a communion service. And there’s nothing more distinctly Christian we can do than to share the Lord’s Meal with a bunch of different disciples from a bunch of different denominations and backgrounds and interpretations. Christ died to destroy all the things that separate us from God and from one another. He died to tear down the walls, to annihilate the barriers, to rip the veil in two from top to bottom so that we all have equal access to the Creator of Heaven and Earth and all his people. So that we can all eat and drink together in his everlasting face-to-face presence. That’s why he died. And the only thing that keeps us from enjoying little slivers of that eternal feast here in this life is our refusal to love one another as Christ loved us.

Our own prejudices. Man-made lines of distinction. Our own arrogance and pride. Our unwillingness to practice the same love and acceptance and forgiveness and grace to other Christians that God in Christ showed and continues to show to us — that’s the only thing that keeps all God’s churches from expressing and practicing the kind of unity that would flat-out change the world.

I am grateful to belong to a faith community that understands this. I praise God that the leadership of our four downtown churches is pushing us to do more together, not less. And I cherish my partnership and friendship with Burt, Howard, and Howie. I pray that our Maundy Thursday gathering tonight encourages our churches, that it testifies boldly to the transforming work of Christ Jesus, and that it results in praise and glory to God.

Peace,

Allan

 

 

We Use the Same Book

January 14, 2015 / / 0 Comments

I was reminded again last weekend that our God is a God of reconciliation and that our Lord’s great prayer is that his people be unified. Further, I was awakened all over again to the great joy we feel when one of the last holdouts of Christian one-ness, our denominationalism, is put aside for the sake of unity and faithful witness.

At the ACU preacher’s workshop in Abilene, I found myself in energetic conversation with Ken Holsberry, the preacher at the Edgemere CofC in Wichita Falls. The severe drought in their city, which made them a national punch line of sorts when they began treating toilet water for use as drinking water, has led to a cooperative prayer and ministry partnership between them and other Christian churches. Edgemere has helped orchestrate a couple of prayer services at a downtown theater and a community worship service at gigantic Memorial Stadium in collaboration with a Presbyterian, a Baptist, and a community church congregation.

Wes Crawford, the preacher at the Glenwood CofC in Tyler, reminded me that in the tiny town of Stamford, Texas, the small churches there have gone in together to pay for a youth minister. The CofC, the Baptist, Presbyterian, and Methodist churches are funding a collaborative youth group that worships and learns, plays and ministers together. They’ve been doing it for years.

And it’s fun. It’s exciting. It just feels right — it feels like the Gospel — to put aside our differences, to tear down the walls that divide us, to come together as children of God and disciples of his Son to better witness to an unbelieving world.

Those of us who haven’t quite figured out how to transition from “We’re the only ones who’ve got it right” to “By the grace of God, all those who follow Christ are brothers and sisters in the Lord” focus mainly on our differences. Those who want to make the move but don’t know where to start, also, I think, are hung up on the differences.

The differences are minor and few. The things we have in common as those redeemed by the love and grace of God are many and huge.

I would suggest just starting with the Bible. You know, we all use the exact same Book. Methodists, Presbyterians, Baptists, all the grace churches and community churches, Disciples of Christ, and Christian churches, and the Churches of Christ — we all use the exact same Old Testament and New Testament Scriptures as the authority and guide in the ways we submit to God and follow his Christ.

Bonhoeffer points to the Bible as the great starting point for Christian unity:

“It is really the biblical text as such that binds the whole Christian community into a unity. It assures us of our being bound together in one family of brothers and sisters not only with the Christian community of all past and future ages but with the whole church of the present. As such, the biblical text is of enormous unifying, ecumenical significance. This consciousness of being bound together into one family is clearly strengthened among hearers of the biblical text, since this is an awareness that every deep insight and experience they encounter in this text is the agelong substance of Christian thought and life and so is heard and learned with gratitude and profound awe.”

When you listen to a Methodist preacher and then think, “Why, that could have been a Church of Christ sermon!” don’t be so surprised. When a Baptist minister talks about faith and grace and good works, don’t be shocked. When the Presbyterian guy speaks passionately about the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, don’t be caught off guard. We’re all using the same book. We all hold it tightly and defend it fiercely as the revealed and holy Word of the Creator of Heaven and Earth. And, in a run-down of the many things all Christian churches and all disciples of Jesus have in common, this one’s very near the top of the list.

Peace,

Allan

Ordained by the Community of Christ

January 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Larry Lemmons of channel 7, the ABC affiliate here in Amarillo, produced a nice piece on the “4 Amarillo” churches that aired on Christmas night. You can view the three minute video by clicking here.

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Worshiping with the Legacy church last Sunday got me to thinking all this week about my ordination as a proclaimer of God’s Word. Yeah, I believe with all my heart that our God has been preparing me my whole life to preach the gospel. Yes, I went to seminary and studied Greek. And, of course, I do feel ordained by the Lord to do what I’m doing. But I don’t think those things alone give anyone the right to preach. I’m beginning to understand more and more that the community of faith must ordain its preacher in order for the relationship between proclaimer and listener, preacher and congregation, to work.

So, who ordained me? The elders hired me and prayed over me. But how does a preacher really become ordained to minister with a particular church family? It has become clear to me this week, especially since seeing all those wonderful people at Legacy and visiting with all those dear friends. It’s both a one time event and a lifetime progression. It’s both formal and relational.

At Legacy, Tom ordained me when he asked me to baptize his daughter Sarah. She was the first person I baptized at Legacy. I asked him why he wanted me to do it and he replied, “She needs to be baptized by the preacher; and you’re our preacher.” A similar thing happened with Brooklyn, who greeted me this past Sunday with happy tears in her eyes. Don ordained me when, after a particularly tough sermon in which I challenged a couple of long-held practices of ours, he told me, “Allan, you are my friend, you’re my brother, and you’re my preacher!” Louise ordained me from her wheelchair when she promised me, “I pray for you every single morning.” And I believed her. Jim and Elvera ordained me when they asked me to marry them. This widow and widower had more than 90 years of marriage experience between them when they asked me to preside over their wedding. Dan ordained me when he walked in to my office one day and asked if I could help him with some specific spiritual questions he had. He’s older than me, been a Christian much longer than me, but he said he needed my wisdom. Paul and Jean ordained me when their son was killed in that car accident. Alene ordained me when she asked me to do Bob’s funeral.

I think ordination is both positional and relational — it must be both. Tom didn’t really know me when he asked me to baptize Sarah, but he trusted it was the right thing to do because I was the preacher. Louise didn’t really know me at the time, but she vowed to pray for me every day. Don and I had disagreed about several things during my first couple of years at Legacy, but when he called me his preacher, it was a sign of love and respect that had taken some time. Brooklyn’s ordination of me was in relationship. So was Jim and Elvera’s. Paul and Jean’s was through a shared experience of tragedy. Alene’s affirmation and trust was forged in hours of prayer together.

It’s both. I think the congregation has to say — collectively and individually — this is my preacher, given to us by God, and we’re going to support him and love him and trust him because he’s been placed here with us by Christ. In the same way, the preacher must make the same commitments: these are my people, my church family, given to me by God, and I’m going to support and love and trust these people because Christ has brought us together for his purposes. It’s both formal and relational.

It’s been very helpful to me this week to recognize the many ways I’ve been ordained. Here at Central, Eldrena anointed me with oil one hour before I preached my first sermon here. John Todd and Kami ordained me by bringing us dinner and providing a microwave for our apartment the first night we spent in Amarillo. Lanny ordained me by asking me to perform Judy’s funeral. Nick and Sara ordained me by asking me to do their wedding. Jim and Becky ordained me through some tough conversation and prayer in their kitchen. Wesley ordained me by reflecting on our sermons with emails and cards. Every week I’m ordained by these faithful Christians at Central in living rooms and hospital wards, at lunch and in my study, through phone calls and emails.

And I could keep going. All the dozens of people throughout my childhood and teenage years who told me how wonderful my prayer or my sermonette or my devo talk or my communion meditation or my song leading was, even when it really wasn’t very good at all. The Room 208 class in Mesquite. Kevin’s pushing me to leave radio and pursue preaching and putting his money where his mouth was. Jason and Dan encouraging me through that stressful transition. Donna Steward asking me to baptize her gardener, my first. Lee Ann Clark asking me to do her mother’s funeral, my first. God himself ordaining me by thrusting me into pastoral situations whether I was ready or not: praying over an unconscious Berrilyn Daniel at that WinterFest, moving David Griffin out of that horrible situation in south Marble Falls.

Play with the semantics all you want: God ordains and the congregation affirms, the elders ordain and the church family confirms, whatever. But I know now that it’s both a one time event and a lifetime progression. It’s both formal and relational. And a preacher in God’s Church couldn’t do the job with it being any other way.

Peace,

Allan

It Can’t Get Old

November 24, 2014 / / 1 Comment

Last night we participated in the future. Last night we all joined together in the fulfillment of prophesy. We actually became an answer to our Lord’s prayers in Scripture last night. The four downtown churches — First Baptist, First Presbyterian, Polk Street Methodist, and Central Church of Christ — gathered at our building last night as an undeniable witness to God’s power and grace and as his partners in the great work of reconciliation. All of that wonder and promise took place within the very comfortable confines of our worship center here at Central last night where the walls between our denominations are coming down and the things that divide us are being erased for the sake of the Kingdom.

People began arriving a full hour and a half before the joint worship service began to hear the 130-member combined choir rehearse in our balcony. There were warm welcomes in the concourse, friendships renewed in the pews, and a strong sense of anticipation that you just don’t get before most worship services. By the time Howie jumped up to welcome everyone and lead our invocation, the house was just about full — nearly a thousand of us lifting our voices and our hearts to God together as one people.

Before I led us in a responsive reading of Jesus’ great prayer for unity in John 17, I reminded all of us that we can’t ever let this grow old; we can’t ever take this for granted. Not every church — and you know this, too — gets to experience the tangible breaking down of barriers between Christian denominations and the sweet fellowship that results from a gracious understanding that our Lord is bigger than our differences. We can’t let this partnership with the downtown churches ever become old hat. We need to continue to embrace this coalition of congregations in the hope and prayer that our coming together to do anything — especially to worship! — provides a powerful testimony to our city that Christ Jesus really is the Prince of Peace.

Kevin led the congregational singing of mostly older and familiar hymns: “Come, Thou Almighty King,” “All Hail the Power of Jesus’ Name,” and “It Is Well With My Soul.” He even got us all to sing “Love, Love, Love, Love,” in around, a very Church of Christ thing to do. Dan Baker and Norman Goad directed the choir in special selections “We Believe” and “We Are the Body of Christ.” And it was just good. Rich. Robust. Inspirational. One voice. One body. All disciples of our Lord Jesus. And the music just filled our massive worship center. I believe even our “vortex of death,” where all our songs go to die, was powerless against the enthusiastic praise of our God. Four or five people told me afterward, “You don’t need an organ in here; the singing is so beautiful.”

Then Burt preached. After taking a panoramic picture of the packed worship center with his phone. After making a joke about our super thin steel pulpit. After disparaging the good name of Howie Batson. Burt preached from Mark 2 where the story of the four friends lowering their paralytic friend down through the roof to Jesus is recorded. Burt said our four churches are the four friends. We have each grabbed a corner of the mat and we are together bringing people to the only One who can heal, Christ Jesus our Lord. And just as the roof proved to be no obstacle to the determined friends, we four churches will not be deterred by our denominational differences in working together for the sake of the Kingdom in Amarillo.

In the middle of the sermon, Burt did actually try to call a public vote on putting a clock in our worship center. Ours is the only sanctuary of the four churches without a big clock on the back wall. And Burt’s always been jealous of that. It didn’t help that he declared all Central votes counted as three or that Kevin stood up when Burt made the call for a vote and shouted a long and loud “AAAAAAA-MEN!!!” I protested, but my voice was drowned out by the will of the people. I’m not sure if the motion carried or not. But it was fun.

Howard Griffin challenged us with an inspirational and very Presbyterian benediction, calling us to remember that as we leave this place God is the One sending us. And that we are to be his witnesses, his instruments, his willing partners in the redemption work he wants to do.

Whew! After all that, you would think “The Lord Bless You and Keep You” would be anti-climactic. But it wasn’t. As Kevin led us in this beautiful closing song, everyone in the worship center began to spontaneously hold hands and put their arms around each other. Across the aisles and up and down the room, by the time the song was over, we were all holding hands in a physical demonstration of our unity in Christ.

What a night! What an honor to host it here in our place. A blessed honor.

I still believe it is good for different denominations to come together in service projects to build houses and feed the poor and clean up the parks. I think God is praised and the Kingdom is advanced when different groups of Christians join forces to provide medical assistance and Snack Pak for kids. But I think the most powerful thing we can do is worship together. I believe our most effective witness comes when we worship together in one another’s buildings on Sundays. We don’t have to set aside any theological differences when we pick up trash together, but we do when we read the Bible and pray. We don’t have to necessarily sacrifice or show grace to anyone when we serve together in a soup line, but we do when we sing and preach. Your particular views on salvation and atonement, your particular practices in worship and church structure don’t impact me at all when we’re standing side by side working on a Habitat for Humanity House. But it matters a great deal when we’re sitting next to one another in your church building.

When we can put those things aside, when we can discount our differences and accentuate our oneness, when we can come together in perfect harmony and unity in the name of Jesus, I believe that sends a powerful message to our world that Jesus really is the Prince of Peace,

Oh, what fun last night! Oh, what a blessed privilege to belong to a church family that is so eager to embrace all who follow Jesus as Lord. What a thrill to live into God’s promised future right now today. Let’s not ever let this get old.

Peace,

Allan

ACU Summit: Day Two

September 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

I know what Summit Director Brady Brice means now when he says, “Wow… we’ve reached the peak. And the view from up here is spectacular.” It’s been a great past 24-hours. Kevin Schaffer and several members of our Central praise team led our time of worship last night in Moody Coliseum leading up to the evening’s keynote. What a great job they did. And I found myself increasing in gratitude to God that I am blessed by their gifts every week in our church assemblies. I spent a wonderful six or seven minutes today talking with one of my theological heroes, Stanley Hauerwas, about our common upbringing in the Grove. (When I introduced myself and told him I was a fellow Grove-Rat, he looked me over and said, “You’re kidding!”) We talked about Conner Drive and Wyatt’s Cafeteria and the old Pleasant Grove Shopping Center on Buckner Boulevard and Big Town Mall and Samuel High School and how all the houses in the Grove now have little rod iron fences around them. What a thrill!

But today’s panel discussion with the lead ministers from the 4 Amarillo churches in Hart Auditorium was by far the highlight of the week for me. It was so much fun. It was so encouraging. So well received by all in attendance. And so significant.

A jet-lagged Burt, who interprets “business casual” as a suit and tie, made it in to Abilene late last night to join Howie, who’s getting ready for First Baptist’s 125th anniversary this Sunday, Howard, and me for day two of the “That the World May Believe” classes I’m presenting on our 4 Amarillo project. We began by recounting how our partnership began with Howie taking Howard to lunch to welcome him to town as a new pastor back in the fall of 2010. Howard forwarded the favor to Burt and then to me when we arrived at our respective churches in Amarillo just a couple of months apart in the summer of 2011. And through those lunches, which quickly became a monthly ritual at the Burger Bar on Polk Street, grew a deep friendship and mutual respect for one another, supported by our common faith in Christ Jesus.

We talked today about the perfect storm of conditions and timing, dropped in our laps by our God, that made 4 Amarillo possible. We talked about our individual churches, about the response from the community, about the transformation occurring among our own members, and even gave a couple of suggestions for those who might consider some first baby-steps engagement with the church down the street from their own congregations. We poked fun at our own traditions and at each other. We laughed together and we challenged our audience; we acknowledged the hurdles and we pointed to our Lord. We spent the last 15-minutes fielding questions from the crowd and pausing several times for the enthusiastic clapping and “amens” to our responses.

It was received so well.

I believe there are many reasons our people are so receptive to this kind of thing. The spiritual maturity of our 220-year-old movement coupled with a better understanding of the grace of God in the middle of the prevailing post-denominational culture means we’re thinking more in Kingdom terms than “Church of Christ” terms. So many of our children and grandchildren have left the CofCs to join other denominations. We all have friends — godly friends, Christian people, sincere disciples of our Lord — in other denominations. And we’ve all needed some way to articulate with our words what we feel in our hearts about them. And about their own relationships with God. We’ve also needed some officially church-sanctioned way of expressing it; a practical, tangible method of experiencing what we read in the Scriptures but what runs counter to what most of us have been taught for most of our lives.

I believe 4 Amarillo does that. It provides the language, the logic, and the church-ordained ways of expressing the unity that all baptized disciples of Jesus have been given by the grace of God.

I’m forever indebted to my good friends who took a day-and-a-half out of their busy ministry weeks to drive five hours twice to talk to the people in our tribe about our partnership. They honored me today with their valuable time. They honored us CofCers with their grace. And they honored a true commitment to our great desires to serve the city of Amarillo together with the love, peace, and joy of Christ Jesus. I’m so glad we did this together today. I’m so grateful to God for the opportunity. And I’m so encouraged by the positive response that has followed me around campus all afternoon.

I finish the class tomorrow morning with a look at how this Kingdom way of looking at and behaving with one another in our different faith traditions shapes us more into the image of Christ, how it gives us a much better understanding of God’s grace, and how it probably fits with a whole lot of things our churches are already doing.

Father, may we be one. May we all — all of your Son’s followers, all the disciples in every Christian church all over the world — until that day when you send Jesus back to bring us home, be brought to complete unity so the world will sit up and take notice. So the world will say “Oh. My. Word. He really is the Holy Son of God! He really is the Prince of Peace! He really does transcend all of our differences!” And then the whole world will give you, Father, all the glory and all the praise for ever and ever. Amen.

Peace,

Allan

4 Amarillo at ACU Summit

September 22, 2014 / / 0 Comments

The early church astonished the world because of the way these dedicated disciples of Jesus refused to be identified by the social barriers of the day. The church astonished the world because it encouraged Jews and Gentiles to meet and eat together. It encouraged men and women to both worship and serve in the same houses. It gave slaves and masters, rich and poor, the well-connected and the barely-functioning the same seats at the same table, the same status in the same living Body of our Lord.

4 Amarillo, I suppose, is sort of doing the same thing. Presbyterians and Baptists worshiping and working together generates big news. The Church of Christ cooperating with anybody on anything seems to elicit surprised gasps of shock. So, I think, that’s how I wound up presenting three class sessions at this year’s ACU Summit. What we’re doing together in our little city is apparently fairly big news. And I’m so honored and blessed to be doing this.

This morning I laid out the theology for Christian unity among different denominations and traditions from our Lord’s beautiful — and loaded! — prayer in John 17, bolstered by Paul’s arguments in Romans 14-15 and Ephesians 4. Wednesday morning, I’ll wrap up the series by looking at how a commitment to this kind of unity is good for your church and the people in your church and how it probably would fit right in with most of the things your church is already doing anyway. But tomorrow, I’m especially looking forward to having all three of my co-downtown pastors join me here at ACU for a panel discussion regarding the origins of our 4 Amarillo partnership and the impact it’s having on our community for the sake of God’s Kingdom.

Howard, Burt, Howie, and I will discuss how this whole thing started long before any of us arrived on the scene, how God brought us four together to form an unshakable alliance of friends and partners in the Gospel, how we first presented the idea of 4 Amarillo to our four churches and church leadership groups, and the many ways God is using this cooperative effort to reach the downtown Amarillo area with his good news of salvation through Jesus Christ. The other three guys will spend a little time at the end telling all us CofCers everything we need to know about their churches and their people if we have any hopes of engaging them in any cooperative worship and/or ministry together. And then we’ll stay for audience participation and Q & A for as long as anybody wants to keep talking.

This morning’s session went well. The room was packed to the walls, a few people were forced to sit and listen from out in the hallway, everyone seemed to be tracking with the theology, the logic, and the heart of what we’re doing with 4 Amarillo, and the conversations afterward were rich with curiosity and grace. A lot of grace.

I’m very grateful that my friends in downtown Amarillo would agree to drive down to Abilene to do this with me. They don’t have a clue as to what we’re dealing with in the Churches of Christ as far as our rigid sectarian past and, sadly, still in a lot of cases, our present. Wait. Maybe Howie gets it. Every now and then when I’m making some apology about our CofC history, the long-time pastor of First Baptist Amarillo leans in to me and says, “Allan, you guys aren’t the only ones.”

Grace. See, grace is the only way you were accepted by God as his child. Grace is the only thing that makes your relationship with God possible. Grace. And it’s the very thing that’s demanded of us to extend to others. Grace.

May our God be glorified through these sessions this week at ACU Summit. May he be given all the glory and praise. And may our cooperative efforts, our Christian unity, be used by him as he works to redeem all of creation back to himself.

Peace,

Allan

 

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