The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

AllanStanglin.com

Category: Central Church Family (Page 28 of 54)

Becoming Like Christ For the Sake of ________

March 1, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Ephesians 1 says God has revealed his will to us. And his plan is to accomplish his will through Jesus Christ our Lord. And what is that will? “To bring all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ” (Ephesians 1:10).

We know what God is doing. God is gathering. He’s drawing together all things to himself through Christ. We are all being drawn into the life of God. We’re being brought together with his people to fulfill his purposes. We are called by God. And we live life responding to that call, reacting to his drawing and bringing together. It’s not about my choices. We live primarily in response to something and someone else. God is calling us and saving us so that we, his holy people, can participate in that bringing, so we can serve others and bless others and mediate his love and grace to the world.

We want to be a people, we want to be a church, that lives every moment of every day as if God really is who he says he is and he’s really doing every thing he’s promised to do. We want to be a people who are committed to change — holy change within ourselves and salvation change in the world. We want to know that God in Christ is doing magnificent things in us and doing incredible things through us. And we want to pay better attention to those things. We want to more faithfully expect those things and praise God for those things and jump into those things and participate with everything we’ve got.

So we need a God-honoring, mouth-watering, people-growing, church-exploding, own-this-thing-and-live-it vision statement.

“Becoming Like Christ For the Sake of _______.”

I’ll spend this week in this space fleshing out our new vision statement at Central. Both parts. What God is doing in us and what God is doing through us. And I’ll entertain all comments and answer any questions. We’re excited today about what our Father is doing in and through his people at Central. We believe this statement will serve as a lens through which we evaluate and measure our efforts in being God’s church. It’ll help us keep the priorities of transformation and ministry right in front of us. And it’ll provoke us to own and to live out our calling as children of God and devout disciples of his Son.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

What a great blessing to have my dear friend Jim Martin with us this weekend at Central. Jim wrote the curriculum for 1 Peter that our adult Bible classes began studying today. He trained our Bible class teachers and leaders yesterday, kicked off the series by teaching a combined Bible class this morning, and then spent lunch with our elders and ministers talking with us about mentoring. Regular readers of this space know Jim’s special place in my heart. Our common ground in Pleasant Grove and our partnership in the Gospel are only part of what makes him a cherished friend.

You can always get to Jim’s excellent and award-winning blog by clicking the link on the right side of this page. Or, for today, I’ll provide a link for you here. Jim’s blog is mostly geared toward ministers and lay leaders in the church, loaded with helpful links and book reviews, heavy with provocative questions and insights, and packed with encouragement. I highly recommend it. Especially on Mondays.

Peace,

Allan

Just Give It To Lynch!

February 2, 2015 / / 0 Comments

If you were on the one yard line and needed that one yard to score the touchdown that would win the Super Bowl and make you champions of the NFL; if you had fifty seconds on the clock and a timeout in your pocket and three tries to get it in; and if you could choose any running back in the whole league to attempt to run it in for you; what would you do?

You would choose Seattle’s Marshawn Lynch and you would hand the ball off to him three straight times and win the Super Bowl. You would do that. I would do that. All of us would do that. We wouldn’t even blink. Seattle coach Pete Carroll could have made that call in between smacks of gum.

But he didn’t. Because he inexplicably called the pass that was intercepted and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, Brady and Belichick and the Patriots are being heralded as one of the greatest franchises in NFL history. And it’s sickening to me. If Carroll chooses to win the game instead of giving it away, the Patriots today are in a conversation that includes the Bills and the Giants, not the Steelers and 49ers and Cowboys. If Lynch runs it in and wins the game, Brady is not being compared today to the likes of Bradshaw and Montana. He threw two really bad picks yesterday, for crying out loud. If Seattle does what all 70,000 people in the stadium and all 114-million TV viewers knew they should have done, Belichick today would not be classified with the likes of Bill Walsh and Chuck Noll. Man, one play like that — and it’s not fair — can change the whole national conversation and perception of entire franchises forever.

Wild finish for sure. If you were watching, you’ll never forget where you were and who you were with when Wilson threw that goal line pick.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Last night’s Jericho / Jars of Clay Super Bowl Party at John Todd’s place saw another dynasty in the making take a tremendous fall from grace. Two-time defending champion of our proposition bets contest, Scott Bentley, went down hard to new champion James Vaughan. James squeaked out a dramatic one-point win over Kristi Landon when Tom Brady, in his MVP acceptance speech, mentioned his teammates before he mentioned the Patriots fans. Since Scott won the first two Super Bowl prop contests, the trophy will forever be called the Bentley Trophy in the same way they named the Super Bowl trophy after the guy who won the first two. But today it resides in the office of James Vaughan. For the record, Roger Kysar came in third and Wendy Miller finished dead last. And the upstairs meeting space at Premier Vision is an excellent place to watch a football game.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

When your daughter’s a Senior, almost everything that happens has that “this-is-the-last-time-this-will-ever-happen” feel to it. So it was with the annual Sandie Revue this past weekend. The annual variety show is the largest and most extravagant of the Amarillo High School choirs’ programs. And Valerie not only wound up in the loudest yellow dress at the very front and center of the major numbers, but she and three of her choir mates teamed up to perform a wonderfully moving rendition of “Something in the Water.” The song is about the transformation that occurs at baptism. They ended it with a beautifully blended a cappella verse from “Amazing Grace” that captivated the audience until the very last note. I don’t think it was just the dad holding the cam-corder who had tears in his eyes.

Before and after the water song, Valerie was all smiles and even a few laughs while she sang and danced with her choir mates to a bunch of Motown Classics that all the kids think are cool again. Nice. We love watching our girls do things they really enjoy and that they’re really good at. Watching Valerie sing is one of those great joys for her parents.

Peace,

Allan

Snow Day!

January 22, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Well, our biggest snowman ever actually became the biggest and creepiest snowman ever. I was mainly the muscle for the project while Carley provided the artistic inspiration and interesting touches. As big as it is and as much snow is packed into that thing, I’m afraid I’ll be mowing around it in May.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Carley and I finished him up late this afternoon following our sledding adventure with the Dowells and the Schaffers and all their kids at Medi-Park. Nobody slid all the way into the pond a la It’s a Wonderful Life (“Not my sore ear!”) And I only plowed over one four-year-old kid while we were there. There’s nothing quite like screaming completely out of control down a steep hill with fifty other persons all around you, some of them quite large in their 40s and 50s, some of them quite tiny little pre-Kingergardeners, and every size and age in between. We didn’t lose anybody out there today. When everybody makes it home, it’s a good day.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Peace,

Allan

The Midlife Church Crisis

January 19, 2015 / / 1 Comment

I’ve read an article this past week in Christianity Today about the growing number of folks in their 50s and 60s who are leaving their churches. As faith communities focus increasingly more on programs for children and activities for the youth and targeting young families, older Christians around us are experiencing a midlife crisis of faith. But they’re not wrestling with their beliefs, they’re struggling with their role now in the body of Christ. Empty nesters are facing different challenges now: relationship shifts, loneliness, health issues, death. And they’re attending and participating less and less in the life of their churches because they’re feeling more and more like their particular place in life is being ignored.

The author of the short article, Michelle Van Loon, took an informal survey of 500 Christians about their church experiences as they had grown older. Almost half of the respondents said they had scaled back their involvement from what it had been a decade earlier. Those who had downshifted or left their churches cited several reasons: weariness with church politics, increased career demands, significant time devoted to caring for parents or grandchildren, health issues, and a sense that somehow they had outgrown their church.

“I’m tired of the same programs year after year,” one said. “I want deeper relationships with fewer people, more spiritual exercises like prayer and meditation than the canned studies our church offers.”

Now, here’s the part of the article that really spoke to me and confirmed for me a whole lot of what we’re doing here at Central:

“Anecdotally speaking, it seemed that those over 40 who discovered meaningful service, worship, and connections reported that their church was committed to intergenerational ministry rather than family-centered, child-focused programming. Though there is some overlap between the two ministry philosophies, the congregations that concentrate on families with children under 18 unintentionally marginalize those who don’t fit the profile. Churches with intergenerational ministry have invested in building connections between members of different ages and nurturing fruitfulness in every season of life.”

I am completely sold, and have been for a while, on fostering an intergenerational culture in our churches. From our Running the Race series a couple of summers ago to our Sticky Buddy initiatives today, we’re trying to do more and more of this here at Central. But it’s tough. It goes against our human nature; it certainly goes against the grain of our culture. It’s hard work trying to integrate our small groups. It’s not easy to get older people to outdoor family picnics and activities or to get our younger families and students to attend potlucks or game nights with our older crowd. It takes careful planning and a high commitment to the importance of intergenerational relationships to come up with new and better ways of getting our people together.

We’re trying to do it in our worship assemblies with more interactive time during the Lord’s meal, with more storytelling and sharing, with more prayer time together in the pews. Our student ministry is in its second year of discipleship “tracks” that pair our teens up with a couple of adults to explore knowledge, community, inner life, and mission avenues of spiritual growth together. Our current “Holy Sexuality” series is a carefully scheduled “congregational conversation” about everything from raising holy kids to identifying and working on sexuality issues in our own marriages to recovering from sexual abuse. Our purity ceremony is an event for the whole church family. Our second Sticky Buddy event is coming up next month.

Some of our ideas are better than others. Not everything we try wildly succeeds. But we believe that if we spend most of our “church time” only with our peers and people of our own age and stage of life, we’ll produce shallow, inwardly-focused Christians. Intergenerational churches willing to do the hard work that’s required, we think, will turn out Christians who understand sacrifice and service, who have a much broader view of the Kingdom of God and who’s in it, and who are appreciated and highly valued at every stage of life. We’re committed to it here at Central.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The process of de-DFW’ing my children has not been slow and steady; it’s been rapid and sure. Valerie bought a pair of cowboy boots less than six months after our move to Amarillo. All the pre-sets in her truck are on country music stations, and have been for a while. All three of the girls prefer the locally owned restaurants and coffee shops instead of the national chains — The Palace and Texas Tea are the favorites — and they’ll defend them like they’re members of the family. They complain about a long travel distance to the other side of town (ten minutes) and they praise the big sky and the beautiful sunsets.

It was seriously hammered home to me this weekend just how “rural” we’ve all become when we spent more than three hours with Carley as she showed her rabbit at the Randall County Junior Livestock Show. Oliver, a six-month-old cinnamon breed who’s been living in a large cage in my garage since September, didn’t take first place. But both Carley and Ollie did us proud in their own understated ways. She didn’t drop Oliver while moving him from the carrier to the judge’s boxes in front of the crowd like a few of the participants did. And Ollie behaved himself very well for the awkward manipulations he had to endure and for the pictures afterward.

Yes, my youngest daughter is in FFA. No, I never would have imagined that four years ago. And, of course, I couldn’t be more proud of her and more grateful that we live with such wonderful people in Amarillo.

Peace,

Allan

Returning to the Lord

January 7, 2015 / / 2 Comments

The first Sunday in January is a good time for a congregation of God’s people to renew our dedication to the Lord. It’s the perfect day to start over, to renew vows, to make fresh commitments. And in Scripture, a lot of the time, when God’s people seek renewed relationship with the Lord, they begin with corporate confession and repentance.

Using biblical texts from 1 Samuel 7, Ezra 9, and Daniel 9, we spent this past Sunday together at Central confessing our corporate sins as a 107-year-old body of believers. We talked about the sins of pride and racism, legalism and sexism, self-reliance and apathy, consumerism, materialism, sectarianism. We haven’t committed all these sins ourselves. Our leadership and our church today are not guilty of all those sins. But in the history of our congregation and in the history of Churches of Christ, we have all been guilty of all of it. Some of these sins we still commit. All of them still impact us to some degree. So, in the manner of God’s people as described in Scripture, we confessed.

One of our shepherds, Tim McMenamy, worded a heart-felt, gut-wrenching prayer of confession from his knees on behalf of the church, recalling the sins of our past and the sins of our present. Another of our elders, Steve Rogers, led a prayer of corporate repentance from his knees, making vows to God on behalf of the congregation that we would renounce the sins of our past and present and seek only the Lord and his ways. And then we offered the church some time to confess their own sins, sins in their families, sins from their distant past, or sins that have them ensnared in the present. Our elders and ministers and our spouses were positioned all around the worship center to graciously receive and pray for our people. We lifted them up to God and begged him to provide his promised forgiveness and righteousness and peace.

It was different. It was very quiet in there. And powerful. Only a few, it appeared, actually took advantage of the opportunity. But those who did experienced those blessings of forgiveness and righteousness and peace.

Immediately after the service concluded, several people came to me to thank me for the special focus of the morning and for the way the assembly had been planned. And I think I must have expressed — non-verbally — some disappointment in the visible response from our congregation during the time of confession and repentance. One of my many, many faults — one I should probably confess regularly before the church — is my sin of impatience. I’m terrible with that. I don’t very much of the time practice what I preach there. And I do a lousy job of hiding it. But, good grief, of all people the preacher should know that God is at work in powerful ways that we don’t always get to see.

And Clay Harper reminded me of that Monday.

Clay called me on the carpet for my disappointment. That’s what good and faithful Christian brothers do; that’s what happens in genuine Christian community. And then he reminded me of the truth I had preached the day before, that God answered the prayers and provided the promised blessings regardless of how engaged the people were in what was happening.

In Samuel, the people approached the prophet looking for ways to fix their relationship with God. They begged him to intercede for them and participated fully as a congregation in the prayers of confession and repentance. In Ezra, the leaders of the people came to the prophet and the people (a lot of them, but maybe not all of them) eventually followed and participated in the confession and repentance, some of them under the threat of loss of their property. In Daniel, it doesn’t look like anybody else is there. The prophet prays confession and repentance to God on behalf of the people, but there’s no indication anybody has any idea he’s doing it.

More than likely, we have people in our church family located at every point on that continuum. From begging to make things right with God and willingly putting away their idols and sins, to almost being forced to confess and repent and reluctantly participating, to not taking part in the exercises at all, we’ve got folks all over the map there. All those different reactions and responses were present in our assembly Sunday.

The good news is that in all three scenarios in Scripture, God answered the prayers immediately, while the prayers were still being prayed, and provided the forgiveness and peace.

In Samuel, while the people are in the middle of confessing and repenting, God answered. God showered his people with victory. He destroyed their enemies right there on the spot and blessed them with peace. Same thing in Daniel. While he was in the middle of his prayer of corporate confession and repentance, God spoke to Daniel about forgiveness of sin, about everlasting righteousness, and peace. In Ezra, God provided his grace immediately and withdrew his anger.

I don’t know where you are with confession and repentance before God. I think if you’ve made some New Year’s resolutions to our Lord, they have to begin with confession and repentance. I don’t know where your church is with that. I don’t know how your elders might feel about corporate confession in a church assembly. I don’t know how many in your family or your congregation would enter in to that kind of exercise willingly, how many would have to be dragged into it kicking and screaming, and how many just wouldn’t participate. I don’t know.

But I do know this: the common thread in all three stories of corporate confession and repentance in Scripture is that God answered. He responded immediately, as soon as the prayers began. He did it consistently then and he’s doing it faithfully right now. Why don’t you and/or your church give it a try?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Congratulations to Central’s own Joe Bain who will be inducted tomorrow into the Panhandle Sports Hall of Fame here in Amarillo. Coach Bain was the boys track coach at Amarillo High School for 30 years, winning 15 district championships, including one in his last season in 2006. He also served as a long time assistant coach for the Golden Sandstorm football team under Larry Dippel, coaching the defensive backs in 1992 when the Sandies advanced to the state semi-finals.

Coach Bain poured his heart into hundreds of young men in this region, constantly encouraging them, consistently challenging them to be better, always leading to greatness by the example of his own deep character and integrity. Lots and lots of young men are thanking Coach Bain this week for the tremendous influence of godliness he had on their lives. And at least one older guy who only just met Coach Bain three years ago is thanking him for that same leadership and influence he has on my life right now.

Peace,

Allan

« Older posts Newer posts »

© 2026 The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

Theme by Anders Noren — Up ↑