Category: Central Church Family (Page 14 of 54)

Central’s Fall Festival gets a little bit bigger and better every year. Last night’s shindig saw nearly 700 — Mary’s count, not a preacher’s count — of our members and tons of people from our downtown neighborhoods share costumes and candy, games and activities, and about four tons of Frito Pie.

We had our usual game booths and food items and Karaoke stage. Steve Nordyke was covered in cotton candy for the tenth year in a row, Pat Treat painted dozens of faces, and Mark Love refused to sing. The Amarillo Discovery Center stole the evening, though, with the animals they brought: two massive pythons, a chameleon, hedgehogs, rabbits, and a giant hissing cockroach. Their corner of Sneed Hall was packed all night.

The intergenerational focus of the fun is an important highlight for us. And meeting so many people who’ve never been inside our building before is such a joy.

Congratulations to Mary and Sarah and all the volunteers who pulled off another stellar event.

Peace,
Allan

The movie “Same Kind of Different As Me” opened up Friday night and Central enjoyed the local premiere with thirty clients from The PARC. The new movie is based on the 2007 book by the same name about the unlikely friendship of Fort Worth art dealer Ron Hall and a homeless man named Denver Moore. Panhandle Adult Rebuilding Center (PARC), one of our local ministry partners here at Central, is an Amarillo organization dedicated to bringing more of our city’s homeless population into Christian community. As a fundraiser, our church at Central rented out the biggest theater at Hollywood 16 here in Amarillo and invited all the men and women from The PARC to watch the new movie with us. And we had a blast.

The evening began at the Cerulean Gallery downtown where we viewed many of Denver Moore’s original paintings and a whole bunch of other high-priced art. Mainly, most of us just walked around saying, “I could do that!”

But then it was off to the movies where about a hundred of us from Central hung out with PARC members eating popcorn, drinking cokes, and watching the show.

It was interesting how parts of the movie made the church people laugh and other parts of the movie made the homeless people laugh. Parts of the movie — and maybe parts of the whole evening — were a little uncomfortable. But it was a good “uncomfortable,” like we knew this was good for us, like we’re working in some small way to break down the walls between all of God’s children, like some of us are recognizing that what we have in common far outweighs our differences, like being together, even in these short spurts, is a really good thing.

Thank you so much to Valerie and Jenna and Robert and everybody at The PARC for inviting us to participate with them Friday night. Thank you to all the folks from Central who made it happen. And may our Father continue to bless us with more opportunities to serve, more boldness to act, and more faith to believe that he is powerfully at work when we jump out of our comfort zones to be present with others.

Peace,

Allan