The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Church (Page 49 of 59)

Kids' Church

May 5, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Why Do I Have To Go To Church?

Involving Avery in our worship assembly at Legacy this past Sunday (see yesterday’s “Waiting On One Another”) is just one of the many ways we’re trying to be more intentional here of making our times together more interactive, more participatory, more inter-generational; something for every member of every age and life circumstance to grab, to own. We have a long, long way to go. But we’re trying.

As for the kids — our youngest young people — we need to be just as concerned with giving them a larger and more interesting view of God’s splendor in our assemblies as we are with our older folks.

I know a lot of the battle with a lot of our parents today is getting their kids into the worship assemblies to start with. Sometimes, they just don’t want to go. Most of you have heard it from your kids, “Why do I have to go to church?”

It’s a legitimate question that deserves real answers. It deserves much more than just “because I said so” or “because it’s good for you” or “because God wants us to” or “because we’re supposed to.” Our children deserve more than that.

Marva Dawn, in her excellent A Royal “Waste” of Time, supplies readers with ten answers she gives to the child’s question, “Why do I have to go to church?”

1)  We’re not going to church; YOU are the Church — and we go to worship so that we learn how to be Church.

2)  We need you with us in worship because those who are old and tired need your smiles and vitality.

3)  The congregation cannot get along without you. Just as your body needs every single part — like your eyes, your nose, your mouth, your hands and feet — so the church needs every single person to make it whole. Perhaps some Sunday some persons will need you to be eyes or hands for them.

4)  You need the gifts of worship because you will learn things there that will make sense later. Almost every week I learn something that comes up in the days to follow.

5)  If you pay close attention to the words of the songs and the Scripture readings and the liturgy, you will learn all kinds of new things about God. Since God is infinitely incomprehensible, all of life is an adventure in getting to know him better, but worship is especially rich with his presence.

6)  Attending worship will teach you skills for your Christian life — skills like how to pray, how to sing, how to sit quietly in God’s presence, how to study the Bible.

7)  I need you to come to worship because I have cancer and am taking chemotherapy, which makes me too sick to sing, so I need you to stand beside me and sing for the both of us.

8)  The congregation needs the talents you bring to worship — your singing voice in the hymns, your ability to learn new songs quickly, your ability to read the Scriptures well, your help with the ushering, your warmth and friendliness in the “Passing of the Peace,” the answers you give during the children’s sermon, your modeling of reverence for the other children.

9)  When I preach, I need to watch you to see if what I am saying is understandable to people your age. I need you to give me critiques when the worship service is over.

10)  Most important, God needs you there because he loves to be with you among his people.

Hmmmm. Come to think of it, those reasons work equally well with us older people, too.

Peace,

Allan

Waiting For One Another

May 4, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I am so proud of our congregation.

Yesterday one of our wonderful ten-year-old boys, Avery Caddell, led us during three of our songs. Avery won a gold medal in song leading at last month’s LTC event at DFW. One of Avery’s dreams is to someday be a worship leader in God’s Church. He talks about it a lot. And Lance pretty much decided that someday was yesterday!

And I’m so proud of our congregation.

Lance introduced Avery right at the start, told the church Avery was going to be leading us in three of our songs, and then handed him the reins. (He already had a microphone.) And I was so nervous for him. I was grinning from ear to ear — and not just because Avery and Lance were wearing almost identical striped shirts (coincidentally, I’m told). But because I was nervous. I thought back to my very first times to lead singing, lead prayers, serve on the table, and read Scripture in front of the whole church. Just about at the same age. And I got the butterflies all over again. For Avery.

And I’m so proud of our congregation.

We sang our hearts out with Avery. Our God, He Is Alive! He is our God, the great I AM!

Have I mentioned yet how proud I am of our congregation?

It was during the second song Avery led that I was moved by our church family. See, Avery paused between verses during Our God, He Is Alive. It was just a couple of beats or so, but it was a definite pause. It caught all of us off guard. We didn’t really start the verses together because most of us were singing a very familiar song in a very familiar pattern. But by the second song, He Lives!, we started waiting.

As a congregation. All 858 of us. Together. Waiting for Avery to lead us.

You ask me how I know he lives? He lives…………(breath)…..within…(pause)…my heart.

Beat-one-two-three. Wait.

In all the world around me I see his loving care….

It was beautiful. It was amazing. It was moving.

We weren’t just singing with Avery. We were also singing for Avery.

All 858 of us. I didn’t see a single soul not singing. And not singing loudly. And we were all smiling. Smiling big. And focused on Avery. Really tuned in. Zeroed in singing with and for Avery. And waiting on him.

He’s ten-years-old, right? So of course, without exception, every single person in the room is intent on encouraging Avery, supporting Avery, doing everything in our collective power to make sure Avery’s experience is a good one. There’s not a person in the room who would ever criticize Avery or say anything that might discourage him. The whole church body was determined to lift him up. Oh, we exercised such grace. Such patience. Such love. Such encouragement. Such acceptance. Such….

What if we showed that exact same grace and patience and love and encouragement and acceptance to every brother and sister in our churches? What if we focused on lifting one another up? What if we absolutely refused to ever criticize? Ever? What if we concentrated on encouraging everybody? What if we each totally zeroed in on making sure I worship in a way, and respond to everybody in a way, that guarantees the people around me and up in front have a great experience?

We do it for Avery, we wait on him, because he’s ten-years-old. We support him and encourage him and love him and are patient with him and we shower him with well-deserved praise because he’s ten.

What makes us think the 53-year-old among us doesn’t need and deserve that exact same level of kindness and love? Don’t you believe the 19-year-old and the 61-year-old brothers and sisters in our churches need support? Don’t they need encouragement, too? Aren’t we required to treat every single person the same way we treat Avery? Isn’t it demanded of Christ’s disciples?

I know it’s mostly out of context, but I couldn’t help thinking yesterday and into today about Paul’s admonitions in 1 Corinthians 11. He got on to the church in Corinth because they refused to wait on one another. “Each one of you goes ahead without waiting for anybody else.” At the end of the chapter he encourages them, when they come together, to “wait for each other.”

I am so proud of our congregation.

Yesterday we waited on Avery. Today, a lot of us are learning to wait on one another.

Peace,

Allan

What Does God Want To Do?

April 30, 2009 / / 0 Comments

VisionI know what you want to do at your church. Your shepherds know what they want to do. Your preacher also has some great ideas. The leaders at your church attend seminars and retreats, they plan and they pray, they know what their vision is.

Probably.

But what does God want to do with your church? What do you think God sees at your church for the next 20, 30, or even 50 years? What’s his vision? When God “calls things that are not as though they are,” what is he seeing for your congregation?

Well…what would be really huge? What would seem nearly impossible?

How about a Body of Believers that really reflects the message of the Gospel? A church that brings together and unites all colors, all social classes, all economic groups, all ethnic peoples in one congregation? Impossible?

How about a church that has a 24-hour presence of people praying and ministering at your local hospital? How about a church that operates a 24-hour soup kitchen or homeless shelter? How about a church that establishes congregations at apartment complexes? More than we can ask or imagine?

How about a church that holds annual revivals and baptizes hundreds? How about a church that offers free oil changes in the parking lot every month? How about a church that buys TV time or sponsors a community-wide dodgeball tournament to raise money for an at-risk school or sends Christian missionaries to every nation on the planet?

Is that too big? It it too much? Is it outside the box?

Good! Because those are exactly the kinds of areas where our God really likes to operate!

We can’t out-think our God. We can’t over-shoot him. We can’t out-imagine, out-dream, or out-vision our mighty and sovereign Lord.

Just try.

Peace,

Allan

Salvation Issues

April 29, 2009 / / 0 Comments

MereChristianityOK, one more thing from the preface to C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity.

You know how we love to classify things as “salvation issues?” Don’t act like you don’t. I know you do. We call things that we believe are hugely important, non-debatable matters “salvation issues.” The implication is that if you mess with these things, if you don’t follow these rules, if you omit any of these teachings or traditions, you will not be granted salvation from God. On the flip side, the things we deem less important, the things we consider to be peripheral matters, we call “disputable” or “opinions.”

The problem occurs — and we’ve all been there — when two Christian disciples disagree about what’s a “salvation issue” and what’s not.

Here’s Lewis:

One of the things Christians are disagreed about is the importance of their disagreements. When two Christians of different denominations start arguing, it is usually not long before one asks whether such-and-such a point ‘really matters’ and the other replies, ‘Matter? Why, it’s absolutely essential.’

(I would have said “When two Christians start arguing…” and left out “of different denominations.” I mean, we have these kinds of discussions within our own faith traditions all the time.)

Lewis goes on to explain why he left specific “church issues” out of his book. Like Hicks explains at the end of A Gathered People, Lewis believes a discussion of church issues is secondary to the basic point. Directing attention to controversial questions tends to polarize instead of pointing in the direction of fellowship and unity.

So, let me tackle it. I’m not writing a book or anything.

I believe Scripture teaches us that EVERYTHING is a salvation issue.

Everything matters. Everything’s important. Everything’s critical. Everything we do and say and teach and practice. Every way we act and worship and work and serve. Everywhere we go, everyone we go with, every when we go. It’s all a salvation issue. Everything.

See, when we start labeling things as salvation issues, we always bring up baptism, proper communion observance, and other corporate worship practices about which we feel very strongly. Very strongly. We’ll debate and argue, cuss and discuss, “die on this hill” and as-surely-as-the-Lord-lives some of these things ’til the cows come home. But in all of our red-faced, hard-nosed, do-or-die demonstrations, nobody ever brings up the way we treat the service representative behind the counter at the post office. Nobody ever wants to talk about feeding the poor. Nobody ever puts defending the alien or encouraging one another in the same list as all these “salvation issues.”

Why? You ever thought about that?

What does it matter if you’re baptized by complete immersion in a holy hot tub in a Church of Christ sanctuary “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit for the forgiveness of sins and to receive the gift of the Holy Spirit,” if you treat service people in your neighborhood with contempt. What does it matter if you worship God by singing holy hymns, accompanied only by a pitch-pipe to get you going, if you completely ignore the homeless guy under the bridge at 183 and Precinct Line? What does it matter if you partake of the Lord’s Supper each Lord’s Day in the Lord’s prescribed manner if you forward racist jokes by email to everybody in your office?

Aren’t these the “weightier matters?”

Why is it that Jesus can call these kinds of things “salvation issues” but we don’t?

They are all salvation issues. There is no ascending or descending scale of importance when it comes to living like Christ in newness of eternal life. It’s all or nothing. Heart, soul, mind, and body.

But how do we tell who’s a Christian and who’s not? How do we know with whom to fellowship? How do we know who’s in our group and does things our way and those who don’t. How do we know who’s in the Church?

“If by ‘the Church’ you mean the mystical Church (which is partly in Heaven), then of course, no man can identify her. But if you mean the visible Church, then we all know her. She is a ‘sensibly known company’ of all those throughout the world who profess one Lord, one faith, and one baptism.”

Mere Christianity.

Peace,

Allan

Mere Christianity

April 28, 2009 / / 0 Comments

MereChristianity“Ever since I became a Christian I have thought that the best, perhaps the only, service I could do for my unbelieving neighbours was to explain and defend the belief that has been common to nearly all Christians at all times…that there is one God and that Jesus Christ is His only Son.” ~ C. S. Lewis, from the preface to Mere Christianity, 1952.

Our Tuesday morning men’s Bible study group today began what promises to be a rich discussion of C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. Rich and contemporary and provocative and difficult. Based on today’s session which covered only the book’s preface, our study will be all those things.

Today, I want to comment on something in the preface that, as disciples of our Savior, we should carefully consider. Of course, you can’t really get the full context of Lewis’ thoughts without reading the book yourself. But check this out:

Lewis writes that the questions which divide Christians from one another — and I’d say even divide Christians and congregations within the same faith tradition — are usually points of high theology or even ecclesiastical history. These points have very little, if anything, to do with the pure Gospel of Jesus. Lewis writes, “I think we must admit that the discussion of these disputed points has no tendency at all to bring an outsider into the Christian fold.” Who can argue?

My thought here is that, while our petty disagreements and arguments actually turn people off and repel them from our Lord’s Church — Jesus said it would — don’t they also stifle our own evangelistic efforts? When we draw lines of fellowship and put lids on boxes and erect other boundaries that are nowhere to be found in Holy Scripture, it keeps us from actively seeking and saving the lost. Because we can’t keep it all straight. We’ve complicated things to the point that only the perfectly schooled in our tradition or heritage can confidently teach others.

What if somebody I’m talking to about Jesus asks me a question about worship? Well, we’ve drawn so many lines and made up so many rules about what constitutes worship and what doesn’t, what is a worship service and what isn’t, depending on what room we’re in and what time of day, where the prayers fall and at what point we allow the LTC chorus to perform, we can’t confidently answer the questions. We’re afraid of contradicting ourselves.

How do I teach Jesus to a person who asks me about women’s roles in the Church? What about church music? How about communion practices? Bible versions and translations? Doctrine versus culture? Inference versus example? Innovation versus aid? How do I explain that we do this or that because of Scripture but we also do this or that despite Scripture? We’re afraid we don’t understand all the lines and the logic behind them.

What if somebody asks me why we claim we’re not a denomination but everything about the way we speak and act and teach, regarding one another and those outside our faith stream, looks and sounds denominational? I don’t know. That’s a good question.

The farther away we move from “Mere Christianity,” the harder it is to seek and save the lost. The harder it is to talk to my unbelieving neighbor. I don’t want to mess it up. I don’t want to give the wrong answers. So I don’t even try.

Mere Christianity. Unity among all disciples of the Christ. Is it impossible? Should we even make the effort?

What Lewis writes is at the very heart of our Restoration roots in Churches of Christ. We’re coming up on the 200 year anniversary of Thomas Campbell‘s Declaration and Address  in which he states, “Division among Christians is a horrid evil filled with many devils. All who are enabled through grace to make a profession of faith in Christ should consider each other the precious saints of God, and should love each other as children of the same family and Father.”

That founding document of our faith tradition claims that it’s heresy to pray for “that happy event, where there shall be but one fold, as there is but one Chief Shepherd” and not strive to obtain it.

Ending division among Christians was, at one time, the chief aim of our movement. It should be still. Mere Christianity.

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StephenMcGeeI don’t know Stephen McGee, the Aggies QB who just got drafted in the 4th round by the Cowboys. But I’m happy for him. Not because of Stephen. I’ve never met the guy. But because of his dad, Rodney. Rodney McGee was the head varsity basketball coach in Burnet during the seven years I served as the News & Sports Director at KHLB in Marble Falls. He had some great teams during those years, taking the Bulldogs all the way to the regional tournament down in Kingsville in ’96. Coach McGee also served on the football staff and helped lead the team to the 3A State Championship game in ’91. That year, the Bulldogs overcame Vernon, Marble Falls, and Southlake Carroll in back-to-back-to-back dramatic come-from-behind-ties (before the days of OT in Texas high school football) to finally come up one miracle short in a 7-0 title game loss to Groesbeck in the Astrodome.

And I love Coach McGee. He was the Fellowship of Christian Athletes coordinator for the Burnet School District. The kids always knew there was a Wednesday night devotional at Coach McGee’s house. And we all knew he was dedicated to our King. He was forever positive, optimistic about everything. Laid back. Always smiling (nearly always). Fair to a fault. Patient with everyone. Forgiving and kind.

I don’t know Stephen. I’m a little disappointed in his statements this past weekend guaranteeing he would have been a first-round pick if he hadn’t been forced to run Franchione’s option offense in College Station. I’m chalking it up to what has to be a mountain of frustration he’s been running his head against with the coaching changes and the injuries during his college career. And he’s young.

I don’t know Stephen. But if he’s ANYTHING like his dad, he’s a guy you can feel good rooting for.

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Go Mavs. Why not?  DallasMavericks

Allan

Regarding a Poor Post

April 22, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I received two emails and one phone call yesterday afternoon from great friends who know me very well, asking me if everything was OK. They were concerned about my well-being after reading yesterday’s post, “Slugging It Out With The Preacher.” I was initially surprised. It was a passage from Paul and two quotes from great theologians on the great role of the preacher within God’s Church. I was trying to convey, to other preachers maybe, as an encouragement, the great honor it is to be a preacher of God’s Holy Word. The great responsibility. The great burden. The high calling.

It was a poor post. I should have written some other comments around it, setting it up or explaining it or something. But the three quotes, I thought, stand alone as eloquent reminders of the great privilege of preaching.

To answer the question, I’m fine. In fact, the past two months in my ministry here at Legacy — all of March and April — have been more than wonderful. God has shown me not just little glimpses, but huge blaring, glaring, high-definition proofs of his working with and among and in his people here. I’m greatly encouraged by what I see. More baptisms. More families jumping in to join us. More sacrifice. More service. More giving. More love. More joy. More openness to study. More conversation between generations. More trust. More willingness to grow. More answered prayer. More understanding.

Legacy seems to be alive with the love of our God, the grace of his Son, and the power of his Spirit.

Terry Rush, the king of encouragers, the Barnabas of blogs, says there are two kinds of churches: congregations that reach in and congregations that reach out. Quoting from his blog post, Churches: Sharp or Dull, from last week:

A church is sharp when it reaches out. It is dull when it focuses inwardly. Churches possessing a mission to keep everyone in the herd corrected become top-heavy with pseudo-truth. Such a church falls into the same trap as the religious leaders of Jesus’ day when he wouldn’t do church stuff the way they saw it.

What was it he did so glaringly errant in their sight? He disregarded religious law for the benefit of healing non-religious people. He loved the injured more than he feared the threats of the church.

I see a big difference in churches when one of the other of dispositions is present: reaching in or reaching out. One is sharp. One is dull. One is alive. One is dead. One is praising. The other is complaining. One is daring. The other cowers in fear. One is saved. One is afraid it isn’t. One is grateful for grace. The other is aggravated at those grateful for grace.

Legacy is celebrating its 50th anniversary this Sunday. Seems like a great time for reflection. What kind of a church are we? I see us, by the grace of our God, moving toward him in the right direction. Being much more concerned about the lost than the saved. Considering others more important than ourselves. Less of self and more of Thee.

Am I OK? Oh, yeah!

Thanks for asking.

Peace,

Allan

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