AllanStanglin.com
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truths,
from the laziness that is content with half-truths,
and from the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
O God of Truth, deliver us!
~ Henlee H. Barnette, “The Minister as a Moral Role-Model,” 1989
“…to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the Body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” ~Ephesians 4:12-13
At the beginning of December, Legacy’s shepherds and ministers got together for a weekend leadership retreat in Glen Rose. We spent a couple of hours praying, by name, for every single individual and every family in our congregation. And as we discussed God’s purposes for his church and talked about Legacy’s future, our members’ pictures continually scrolled across the screen in front of us.
If you’re a Legacy member, you were at that meeting. You were.
We know that we are called by our God to work for and enjoy the unity we have in Christ. We know that we are to increase in our knowledge of Christ. And we know that we are to grow up spiritually to become more like our Savior every day. Fortunately for us, God’s Word makes it plain as to how a church achieves these holy objectives. By his grace, yes. By the saving blood of Jesus and the power of the Holy Spirit, yes. And by works of service.
Serving others. Sacrificing for others. Living our lives — giving our lives — for others in the manner of our Lord directly results in Christian unity and spiritual maturity. It’s all connected.
So Ephesians 4:12-13 is the perfect passage of Scripture to guide us as Legacy lives up to and in to the will of our Father.
Special thanks to Ronnie Bates who designed our new church logo that reflects this vision statement. Ronnie and Lance Parrish did a ton of work on this thing in a very short amount of time. Thank you, also, to Lisa Clifton, Suzanne West, and Sandy Hamilton for the beautiful lettering leading into and going out of our worship center. Seeing the three of them together on that lift Saturday night was as entertaining as it was inspiring.
2010 is going to be a year of transition for us here at Legacy. Growth. Maturity. Discipline. Accountability to one another and to our Lord. Some of the change won’t be easy. We’re going to be challenged to be more like Christ. We’re going to intentionally let go of some things and zero in with greater focus on other things. We’re going to be much more active in our community. We’re going to concentrate on completely giving ourselves to God in every imaginable context.
“Every Family in God’s Service” means every family, every member, every body. It means “attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.”
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Thanks to everyone who made our Legacy New Year’s Eve party a smashing success. Congratulations to the Simmons/Jones Small Group for winning Family Feud. In defense of the Byrnes/Stanglin Small Group, the integrity of the whole game is in doubt when the question is “Name a movie that had at least two sequels” and the survey does not say “Indiana Jones”
I’m not quite sure how Dillon and Shanna wound up winning our eight rounds of Pit, especially since Brian Gray went 
corner twice when he didn’t have the necessary cards — once when he was holding the Bear. Everybody was taking advantage of the sweetness of LuRee Proctor. It was brutal. And loud. David has the video. If he were ruthless and mean, he could probably blackmail Carrie-Anne.
Sparklers at midnight for all the kids is always a great idea. Until a couple of boys start lighting them and throwing them up in the air. Nobody died. Happy New Year.
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Thanks to the supreme generosity of Glenn and Karen Branscum, my family and I were able to enjoy Saturday’s Cotton Bowl in his suite at Jerry Wayne’s new stadium. The suite was filled with tons of Oklahoma State Aggies, including the likes of our new children’s minister, Jennifer Gambill, and her 
family; Larry and Deanna Tolleson and their boys; Ron Frost and his whole family from Stillwater; and our great friends Billy and Shannon Whiteley and their girls. It was quite possibly the worst football game I’ve ever watched. Ever. High school, college, pro. Ever. Twelve turnovers. Dropped passes. Missed tackles. It was ugly. It was so bad I was afraid the officials were going to step out onto the field during the third quarter and just cancel the rest of the game. Up in the suite, though, we had a marvelous time. Great hospitality, wonderful friends, and memories galore.
And, did you notice the new Cotton Bowl trophy is actually a silver and gold plated replica of Jerry Wayne’s stadium? No one’s better at destroying decades of history in a single self-centered moment than the Cowboys owner.
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By the way, I must admit, the Cowboys look great. Wow. Back-to-back shutouts for the first time in the 50-year history of the franchise. NFC East champs. Three-game winning streak heading into Saturday’s playoff opener at home against a team they just demoralized. They look very, very good. Romo’s making perfect decisions. Nobody’s missing tackles. Barber and Felix are both healthy and running strong at the same time, maybe, for the first time this year. Smiles Austin is catching everything. And I think Wade Phillips 
has gone 15-straight quarters now without spilling ketchup or relish on his shirt.
Wade has never, ever won a playoff game in his NFL head coaching career. Andy Reid has never, ever lost a playoff opener in his NFL head coaching career. The Cowboys have lost every single time they’ve faced a team in the playoffs they had already defeated twice during the regular season.
But the Cowboys look young and athletic and confident while the Eagles look old and slow and uncertain. Saturday’s game should be extremely entertaining. I can’t wait. 
Go Frogs!
Allan
I’ve heard people talk about church like they talk about the gym. They think about going to church like they think about going to the gym. You know, a person who regularly goes to a gym is more likely to stay in shape than a person who doesn’t. At the same time, though, you don’t absolutely have to go to the gym to stay in shape. There are other ways. So, the logic goes, you don’t have to go to church to be spiritual. You don’t have to be an active member of a church in order to have a right relationship with God. A lot of people think — some people even say out loud — that church is a nice addition to personal salvation, but certainly it’s not essential to that salvation.
Wrong answer.
As we say goodbye to 2009 and anticipate God’s gifts for us in 2010, we need to understand that his church is far too important to his purposes and his plan for the world he created to be thought of as some kind of optional, personal, spiritual gym. The Gospel has never, ever been just about saving individuals. The Gospel has always been about creating a community where walls are broken down and human beings are reconciled not only to God, but also to one another.
We are a people. A holy people. A saved people. A people brought together by God to serve his purposes and fulfill his mission in the world. The church as a people, as a community of faith, as a family of God, a family of brothers and sisters connected to one another by the blood of Christ, and actively engaging the world is critical to God’s eternal plans.
The New Testament Scriptures do not recognize a disciple of Christ who is not an active, involved, all-in member of a community of faith. One of the many facets of baptism is initiation into that Body of Christ, his Kingdom, made up of saved and sanctified people. There are no such things as pew-sitters or occasional attendees in the Bible. We are all holy brothers and sisters, made holy by the poured out blood of Jesus, called to live together before the world as an alternative community.
I know you’re going to lose weight in 2010. I know you’re going to give more and spend more quality time with your family in the New Year. I know. Why don’t you also commit to getting more plugged in to what God is doing with his Church? Why don’t you jump in with everything you have to realize all of what God has in store for you? Live up to your God-created and God-ordained potential. Live into everything God intends when he creates in you that brand new person, full of his Holy Spirit, made to experience everything in a brand new way! Show up everytime the doors are open. Give more of your money than you’ve ever given before. Get connected in a Small Group. Study and pray with your brothers and sisters. Join a ministry. Create a new ministry.
God’s Church is not anybody’s personal spiritual gym. You don’t just show up when you need a boost and plug in your ear buds and work out on your own. It’s the community — the family — in which God placed you when he saved you. It’s where he intends for you to live.
Peace,
Allan
Our Tuesday morning men’s Bible study group is right in the middle of 1 Corinthians. Today it was chapter eight: Now, about food sacrificed to idols. The conversation in Scripture and in the church library this morning was all about strong brothers and weak brothers, disputable matters and matters of salvation, knowledge and love, freedom and stumbling blocks. Of course, the apostle Paul makes the whole thing rather clear in the first couple of sentences:
“We know that we all possess knowledge. Knowledge puffs up, but love builds up. The man who thinks he knows something does not yet know as he ought to know.”
Christian love is always the key. Always. No exceptions. Christ-like love. Considering others better than yourselves. Putting the needs of others ahead of your own. Love is more important than knowledge, even correct knowledge. Love is more important than right or wrong. Love, Paul says elsewhere in this letter, supercedes even hope and faith. Love is everything. And love, not knowledge, has to form the foundation of our Christian behavior.
Regarding our contemporary church issues, it’s much easier and requires much less thought and work to just issue blanket prohibitions of certain practices or to indiscriminately accept anything. The hard thing — the correct thing — is to maintain a proper perspective through Christian love. This way, Paul’s way, rings true. It makes much more sense in reality and according to God’s revelation in Christ.
Jerome Murphy-O’Connor writes about 1 Corinthians 8 in an article from 1978 entitled “Freedom or the Ghetto.”
“Through fear the Weak would have forced the community into a self-imposed ghetto. Through a destructive use of freedom the Strong would have committed the church to a pattern of behavior indistinguishable from that of its environment. If either group had prevailed, the identity and mission of the church would have been gravely compromised. Paul’s response was to focus the vision of the Corinthians on their roots in Christ and on their responsibility to each other and to a wider world. His passionate prudence is a perfect illustration of ‘love builds up.'”
Love is always at the center of Paul’s ethics. Without love, Paul maintains that all our spiritual blessings from God are worthless. And this love grows as Christians mature in the faith. The more we mature, the more we understand how little we measure up to God’s standards and how much depends on him and not us. That kind of humility naturally leads to the kind of love Paul’s writing about. Without it…
…the Christian who still thinks he knows something, doesn’t really know anything.
Peace,
Allan
I’m a sucker for old church directories. I can crack open an old pictorial directory and be in it for a couple of hours before I realize it. Is it just me? Or can you also lose track of time flipping through an old church directory? I love it. Do you keep old church directories or do you throw them away as soon as the new one comes out? You keep them all, don’t you.
For the past three weeks or so I’ve been looking through old Legacy Church of Christ pictorial directories. We’re in the middle of the picture-making process for a new directory right now. And to encourage our people to sign up for the 20-minute procedure, I’ve been pulling old pictures of long-time members to show to the congregation on Sunday mornings. The old photos give us something to laugh about. The bald men in our church family used to sport a bunch of dark hair. The distinguished men among us used to wear huge, round glasses. Some of our ladies….
…Come on, I’m not an idiot.
I love looking through the old directories. It reminds me that we are a family.
We are.
We are a family with a shared history, shared stories, inter-twined lives.
Some of us have died. And we mourned the loss together. Some of our children have married each other. And we celebrated the union together. Some of the little kids in these old pictures are now ministry leaders in this church. And, no doubt, some of those now gone would marvel at which ones. Some of us have moved away. Some of us have gone and then come back. Some of us have suffered great loss. We’ve written and performed puppet shows together. We’ve cried together at baptisms and cried together at funerals. We’ve set up and taken down Give Away Day racks and shelves dozens of times together. We’ve fought. And we’ve made up. We’ve grown. We’ve discovered with great joy that God is working mightily in our weaknesses. We’ve been stunned by what he does for us and with us and through us. We have prayed together, had kids together, attended graduations and weddings together, and played Spades and Forty-Two.
Together.
I love old pictorial directories. They bring back floods of memories. Rod Stewart and Janis Joplin say every picture tells a story, don’t it? Every page brings a rush of sounds and emotions and images and places in our collective history with our God and his people.
And they remind me that Christians never do anything alone. We belong to our Father and we belong to one another. Through thick and thin, in good times and bad, when the sun’s shining down on us and on the road marked with suffering, we walk together.
The impersonal wasteland that is today’s electronic technology has obliterated personal visitation and replaced our song books. It’s killed off phone trees and made obsolete our sympathy and get well cards. It’s working on eliminating our Bibles. May it never touch our pictorial directories.
Peace,
Allan
I have the opportunity here to talk to lots of people. Lots of people. Every day. Every week. People in my study. People in the hallways between Bible class and worship. People on the phone. People in the parking lot. Every day.
Some people come by to encourage me. Some are here to complain. Some are cheerful. Some are grumpy. Some come to confess. To question. To praise. To get advice. To give advice. Some people are hurt. Some just come by to hang out.
What I must remember is that every single person I run in to — without exception — is a person created by our God, made in the image of our God, for our God’s purposes. They are all, each one of them, a child of our Father. And I must approach every single interaction with these people with that specific mindset.
Eugene Peterson, in his outstanding book Working the Angles, says we have to view every one of these meetings — planned or chance, positive or negative — as a great privilege.
“This face before me, its loveliness scored with stress, is in the image of God. This fidgety and slouching body that I am looking at is a temple of the Holy Ghost. This awkward, slightly asymmetrical assemblage of legs and arms, ears and mouth, is part of the body of Christ. Am I ready to be amazed at what God hath wrought, or am I industriously absorbed in pigeon-holing my observations?
The significance of what I see before me is not what I see before me but what Christ has said and done. Far more relevant than what I feel or think, or what this person feels or thinks, is what Christ has said and done. This is a person for whom Christ died, a person he loves: an awesome fact! Am I prepared to admire? Am I prepared to respect? Am I prepared to be in reverence?
Every meeting with another person is a privilege. In pastoral conversation I have chances that many never get as easily or as frequently — chances to spy out suppressed glory, ignored blessing, forgotten grace. I had better not miss them.”
Peace,
Allan
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