Category: Discipleship (Page 27 of 30)

God-Hungry

December 4, 2008 / Allan / 6 Comments

What’s the over-under on the date Plaxico Burress becomes a Dallas Cowboy? Put me down for April 23, 2009. That’s a Thursday right before the spring mini-camps, giving the team enough time to get their new receiver on all the Sunday night sports shows.

Have you seen Dallas Stars coach Dave Tippett’s comments regarding his out-of-control winger, Sean Avery? Can you imagine Jerry Wayne ever reacting that way when a Cowboys player gets out of line? Are the Cowboys looking for a weakside linebacker? What’s the over-under on Avery showing up at Valley Ranch?

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My time with Lynn Anderson and the “Waco Alliance” this week was truly a blessing. I’m going to write much more tomorrow about some of our conversations in San Antonio. Today I’ll share with you something he said that captures completely the role and the heart of a preacher or an elder—any shepherd of God’s people. What’s our vision? What is our God calling us to be? How is he calling us to act?

At some point Tuesday afternoon, this is what Lynn said. Mostly. This is a paraphrase.

Those driven by success are drawn to people who orchestrate great programs. Those seeking applause are drawn to people who get good press. Those looking for pleasure are drawn to people who show them a good time. Vengeance-oriented people are drawn to angry gangs. God-hungry people are drawn to those who possess and exhibit a spiritual vision of what God is doing in this world.

It’s all summed up in the mission statement for Lynn’s Mentor Network: “A spiritual leader is the kind of person God-hungry people want to be like.”

Do disciples of Jesus want to be like me? Do dedicated Christians look at my life and see something worth imitating? How about you? Are you turning people on or off? Do people look at you and see Jesus?

Peace,

Allan

Quitting Church

October 27, 2008 / Allan / 5 Comments

Julia Duin, a religious reporter for the Washington Times, has written a book entitled Quitting Church: Why the Faithful Are Fleeing and What to Do About It. I haven’t read it. But a friend of mine recently sent me a review by the Wall Street Journal’s Terry Eastland.

According to Eastland, church-quitting in the United States is characterized by Duin in her book as “epidemic.” The problem though, in her view, is not in the souls of the church quitters but in the character of the churches they choose to leave. Relying on her own reporting and surveys, Duin lists several things that are wrong with a lot of America’s Christian Churches.

~a lack of a feeling of community among church members, inducing loneliness and boredom
~church teaching that fails to go beyond the basics of the faith
~church teaching that fails to reach members who are grappling with suffering or unanswered prayer
~pastors who are out of touch with their parishioners or themselves unhappy
~pastors who fail to shepherd their flocks or try to control the members in high-handed ways

Duin’s conclusion seems obvious, that our churches need to become places where people feel eager to be. This goes straight to the “community” aspect of what we do and why we do it. In this regard, she calls for better teaching, better preaching, and better pastors who are in touch with the lives of their worshippers. I agree. For two-thousand years we’ve called the Church a Christian community. We need to be much more intentional about cultivating that community. And while a large part of that falls to our elders and preachers and teachers, let’s not forget we are called by our God to be a Kingdom of priests. We serve each other. We sacrifice for each other. We put the needs of others ahead of our own. It’s on all of us to treat each other in ways that form and sustain community.

Two, Duin says churches hurt themselves when they view their organization or allow their own members to view the organization as primarily functioning to meet the members’ needs. (So, there is at least a little theology in the book. That’s good.) The Lord adds us to his Body of Believers in order to serve, not to be served. I had lunch last week with a couple who are considering placing their membership here with us at Legacy. And they asked me three or four times, “Allan, what can we do to serve here? Where’s a place, what’s a function, what’s a service we could really perform here that would help this church and the people?” Wow! How wonderfully refreshing!

It’s not, “What can this church do for me?” It’s always, “How can I serve in this church?”

According to Duin, churches dedicated to this kind of discipleship mindset, this sort of serving and sacrificing in the manner of Christ, will “do well in this era of dumbed-down, purpose-driven, seeker-friendly Christianity.” That means teaching and preaching beyond the five (or six. or seven. how many are there now?) steps of salvation and first principles and deeper than the Christianity-Lite we find in a lot of places.

She says churches will prosper if they concentrate on making disciples. And that’s where Eastland makes his point. Churches like this aren’t always going to prosper—if we judge prosperity by church membership alone. He says, “A church might conscientiously carry out its biblical tasks and yet, by measures of popularity, do poorly in this world. Such a church would not be doing right if it adjusted its mission for the sake of higher attendance records.”

Amen.

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Trunk or Treat last night here at Legacy and there’s absolutely no way in the world to know how many people came through our parking lot and building. All four of the front sections of the worship center were full as we rehearsed together the story of David and Goliath from 1 Samuel 17 as a wild west shootout movie. Wade P saved the day when he provided the whistle soundtrack from The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly from his cellphone. Larry T blew it—or didn’t blow it—when I needed him most. And John W ad-libbed several lines during his evil Goliath laugh. Everybody, it seemed, had a great time with Sheriff Saul and “Ohhhh, David!” But hopefully we all left with a greater appreciation for the God of Israel, our God, who always delivers. He always wins. And those who belong to him always win. And we don’t win by sword or spear. We win by putting our faith and trust in the One who made us and promises to sustain us. David never doubted God’s deliverance. Because God always delivers. We should all feel so deeply and act so boldly.

After that, it was off to the parking lot where hundreds and hundreds of folks were already milling around the decorated cars, bounce houses, face-painters, balloon-sculptors, and food and drink booths. What a night! Cake walks and games and costume contests. Tons of people. I know we served over 1,100 hot dogs. And not everybody got one. I’ll bet 20% of the people here were not members of Legacy. It was fantastic. Truly a community event. Probably, including Give Away Day which brings in people from Fort Worth and points even further south and west, Trunk or Treat is our biggest annual event that draws the most people from our corner of Tarrant County. It’s probably time to do what we’ve done with Give Away Day the past couple of years and start concentrating on some outreach and follow up and evangelism with Trunk or Treat. Thanks to Kipi and Todd and all the dozens and dozens of volunteers!

I dressed up as Tony Romo for the Trunk or Treat, complete with the over-sized pinkie splint fashioned out of a toilet paper roll and lots of athletic tape. Instead of simply donning Valerie’s blond Hannah Montana wig, Carrie-Anne spent two-hours straightening her own hair to play Jessica Simpson. We were quite the pair.

Peace,

Allan

The Safest Road

January 15, 2008 / Allan / 2 Comments

“…who without any spectacular crimes are progressing quietly and comfortably towards Our Father’s house.” ~Screwtape.

Everytime I read C. S. Lewis’ The Screwtape Letters, I’m amazed at how contemporary it is. It always seems to have been written yesterday about Christians and the Church and me. I’m stimulated by the book, intellectually and spiritually, because the pictures he paints and the illustrations he uses always relate perfectly to my situation.

In the twelfth letter, though, Screwtape tells his nephew tempter, Wormwood, to allow his “patient” to be lulled to sleep in his relationship to “the Enemy.” Allow this Christian, Screwtape says, to pick up subtle habits and develop relationships here and there that give him only a vague feeling that “he hasn’t been doing very well lately” in his relationship to God. The advice is to handle those feelings carefully. You don’t want to wake the Christian up and spoil everything with his repentance. It’s best to help him to waste his time.

Screwtape says Wormwood can start distracting his patient with a good book or in conversation with his new friends. But then eventually, as his relationship to God begins to wane, the devil can lure him away with nothing more than a column of ads in the newspaper or a boring visit with people he doesn’t even like or just staring at a dead fire in a cold room.

“The only thing that matters is the extent to which you separate the man from the Enemy. It does not matter how small the sins are provided that their cumulative effect is to edge the man away from the Light and out into the Nothing.”

This is just about the only place in the book I think our society today is so very different from the world of the early 1940s that the text doesn’t have the same dramatic impact it did then. I believe now that instead of sitting and doing nothing, our relationships to God are much more threatened by the fact we never just sit and do nothing. The busy-ness with which we fill our lives today is killing us. And it’s destroying our discipleship to our King. Our precious time is scheduled to the minute with career, social, leisure, and family obligations that have us running from the moment we wake up until the second our heads hit the pillow at night. We’re so busy. We’re too busy. We’re too busy to spend any time with our kids and God because we’re spending all of our time driving our kids back and forth from practices and games to concerts and friends’ houses. We’re too busy to spend any time with our spouses and God because we’re spending all of our energy maintaining our houses and burying ourselves in entertainment. Church work and church programs and church business can also interfere with our relationships with God. We’re too busy. Way too busy. God and our commitments to him get edged further and further out. I’ll catch up on my Bible reading tomorrow. I’ll pray a little more seriously and fervently when I have more time. I’ll assemble with the church for worship next week once this project’s finished. And we’re so busy with our commitments and obligations we don’t think for a moment we’re slipping away. We don’t have time to notice.

Screwtape delights in this.

“Murder is no better than cards if cards can do the trick. Indeed the safest road to Hell is the gradual one—the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.”

I have found in my own life (here’s a confession so, what happens on the blog stays on the blog) that I spent more time with my God in his Scriptures and in fervent prayer before I went to Austin Grad and then began preaching full-time. I just assumed that studying the Word and preparing to preach the Word and praying to God about his Word and my delivery of that Word meant I was closer and stronger in those spiritual disciplines than ever before.

I’m not.

It was always very easy for me to set aside one hour a day to pray and to meditate on Scripture. Now I find myself getting behind on my Bible reading because I’m spending so much time studying for my sermon. Does that make sense? My alone time with God is compromised because of a church meeting or a devotional. Is that crazy? My great friend, Jason Reeves, told me it happened to him when he went to school. He warned me about it when he began preaching. At the time, I didn’t understand. Now I do.

In some ways I’m with my God and his people every waking moment. In other ways, I’m not as close to him as I was when I was in radio.

Let’s just all be careful with our busy-ness. Me included. We’re fully aware that work and family and recreation can edge us away from God. But let’s be aware that Kingdom work can also.

Peace,

Allan

The Full Picture

January 11, 2008 / Allan / 6 Comments

“If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” ~Mark 8:34

Consider the impact of what Jesus was telling his disciples at Caesarea Philippi before he had been killed on the cross. Before Jesus actually sacrificed his life at Golgotha it was inconceivable to his followers that he would suffer and die. In the Gospel of Mark only two people understood the concept; only two people saw the entire picture of what it meant for Jesus to be the Christ: blind Bartimaeus beside the road as Jesus entered Jerusalem to lay down his life and the Centurion at the cross the moment the Son of God died.

Sometimes we don’t see the complete picture of the Christ. We embrace the Jesus who heals and forgives and feeds and loves and accepts and saves. We want to follow that Jesus and live like that Jesus. But a Jesus who suffers and dies? Sometimes we don’t see it. And our picture of the Messiah is woefully incomplete. The Savior we teach is less than whole. The Gospel we preach is only partial truth.

Thomas a Kempis wrote in The Imitation of Christ:

“Jesus has many who love his heavenly Kingdom, but few who carry his cross; many who yearn for comfort, few who long for distress. Plenty of people he finds to share his banquet, few to share his fast. Everyone desires to take part in his rejoicing, but few are willing to suffer anything for his sake. There are many that follow Jesus as far as the breaking of the bread, few as far as drinking the cup of suffering; many that revere his morality, few that follow him in the indignity of his cross.”

Jesus didn’t die so I don’t have to; he died to show me how to.

May we get in line at the back of the procession Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 4, “like men condemned to die in the arena” with our crosses on our backs. Following Jesus.

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The final numbers are in from Sunday night: 654 meeting in our Small Groups Church; 94 more here at the building; and 30 deaf brothers and sisters, for a grand total of 778 coming together in each others’ homes and at our Legacy campus here to Apply the Word, Connect as a Family, and Evangelize the Community!

778! As far as we can tell up here, it’s the largest Sunday night attendance number in Pipeline-Legacy history! That’s 82% of our Sunday morning attendance! That very well could be the highest Sunday night, percentage-wise, in the brotherhood!

Praise God! And give him all the glory and honor!

Now, what do we do with this?

We should all rejoice that so many of us are obviously commiting to being serious about our Christian walk with our Savior and with each other. It appears that we’re truly ready to open up ourselves and our homes and our families and our very lives to the transforming work of God in Jesus through his Holy Spirit in Christian community.

Now, let’s remain focused on the purpose. Let’s not lose sight of the goal. Let’s continue, knowing it will take time and consistency, to allow our God to change us by his Word, to minister through us by our connections, and to redeem the world through our efforts to evangelize our friends and neighbors.

Peace,

Allan

Living Like Jesus

December 31, 2007 / Allan / 1 Comment

Living like Jesus is not something we do to get salvation. It is our salvation!

After Jesus was born we know that he grew in wisdom and stature in a normal God-designed way. We see in the life of Jesus decisions made and actions taken as a result of his education in Scripture. His regular fasting. His continual praying. The time alone he spent with God. The time he spent in Scripture. The time he spent in the synagogues, helping the needy, healing the sick, blessing the downtrodden, teaching his disciples. All of these things were formative experiences for Jesus.

And if we’re going to look like that, individually and as a church, we have to realize that there aren’t any shortcuts. Prayer, study, reflection, instruction, and experience all play a vital role in maturing us and transforming us more and more into the image of Christ. God designed these processes. And he’s so commited to them that he became human and went through them himself. To show us how.

We have to take very seriously the call to collaborate with God in this. We have to design and pursue on-going programs of spiritual formation.

Baptism should never be seen nor ever taught as the last rung on the steps to salvation. We have to go beyond simple conversion and ask the church to commit — to be resolved — to a lifetime of growing in our relationship with our Father; growing in prayer and study and the other spiritual disciplines; growing in our love and service to one another in Christ. Living like Jesus. This is our salvation.

I know you’re going to lose weight. I know you’re going to give more. You’re going to spend more quality time with your family in 2008. I know. But as we’re making our spiritual resolutions for the coming year, let’s find ways to join our God as partners in redeeming the world back to him.

May we pursue God’s Kingdom plans in humility and submission. May we reach out to others without distinction. May we honor and celebrate our differences in the Body of Christ. May we grow and mature in the faith through the spiritual disciplines of prayer and study and service to others. And may our God bless us by completing in us his work of salvation.

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The Cowboys needed to win yesterday to achieve the highest single-season victory total in club history. They lost. Jason Witten needed six catches to reach 100 for the year. He got two. Marion Barber needed 19 yards to hit a thousand for the season. He lost six. The Cowboys lost their regular season finale for the eighth year in a row in miserable fashion. They finished with a franchise record low one total yard rushing on 16 carries against the Redskins. They went 0-11 on third downs, eight of those tries needing at least eight yards for the conversion. They allowed a one hundred yard rusher for the first time all year with Clinton Portis’ 104.

Yuck.

It’s been weeks since this team looked any good. Wade Phillips said they were uninspired and took the blame himself. But yesterday’s loss in Landover reflects the poor-to-mediocre play of this team for the past month and a half. You always want to be playing your best ball heading into the playoffs, but the Cowboys are in the middle of their worst four week stretch of the season.

And there aren’t any more warm up games before the postseason. They go into the next two weeks with a horrible taste in their mouths and nagging doubts about their legitimacy as a Super Bowl contender. Five weeks ago they were a lock to represent the NFC in Arizona. Now nobody would be shocked if they lose in the divisional round to Seattle or these same Redskins.

Romo’s thumb. The Gurode, Newman, Ratliff, and Owens injuries. The disappearance of the running game. Poor tackling in the secondary. Wade Phillips’ record as a playoff coach. All of these things now become magnified in the wake of yet another December swoon.

And to think (this is the part I really love!): most of all this hinges on Terrell Owens.

The Cowboys have not scored a single touchdown since he was injured against Carolina. Without Owens, Jason Witten’s drawing double coverage. Patrick Crayton’s drawing attention. Defenses are stacking the box to stop the run, unconcerned with the prospect of Austin Miles or Sam Hurd beating anybody deep. Without Owens, the Cowboys offense can’t go. And Phillips said last night that Owens is “iffy” to make it back onto the field for that first playoff game on the 13th.

That’s usually how it happens, Jerry. When you sell your soul to the devil, the payback usually comes at the end.

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Congrats to the Patriots for their 16-0 season. It’s very difficult to get wins in the NFL. And they put 16 of them together in a row. That is an amazing accomplishment. In fact, it’s a unique accomplishment. And I don’t want to take anything away from that. But I do want to make this observation: the Pats racked up six of those wins within their own division, the lousy AFC East. That division would have to improve just to stink. The Bills, Jets, and Dolphins combined to win only 12 games this year. The Pats won 16, six of them against these awful teams.

They do not belong in the same class as that 1972 Miami team that went undefeated and won the Super Bowl. Not yet. That Don Shula squad is still the only frachise in the nearly 100 year history of the league to go without a loss all the way through to the championship. When Brady and Co. overcome the tremendous pressure and fight through the impossible expectations that do appear to be giving them trouble lately to win the Super Bowl, then and only then can the argument be made that they are the best team ever.

Plus, I do have a difficult time rooting for Bill Belichick, mainly due to his background with Bill Parcells.

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Speaking of the Dolphins, Bill Parcells met with the team’s GM, Randy Mueller, this morning and promptly fired him. He also canned the director of player personnel and the college scouting coorinator. He’s meeting with the coach tomorrow. If I were Cam Cameron, I’d be spending all day today updating the resume and downloading files. Won’t the Almighty Tuna conduct a three-month coach search and then declare at the end of the Spring that he’s actually the best man for the job himself? Won’t he use some sort of variation of the cooking-dinner-and-buying-the-groceries explanation?

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Finally, two more Cowboys notes: my otherwise sane little sister, Rhonda, gave me a Tony Romo jersey for Christmas. It’s the super nice one, too. Everything’s stitched on. And it’s the 1961-63 bright blue and white throwback style with the single star on the shoulders that I absolutely love. But I can’t wear it. It doesn’t say Lilly or Staubach or Howley on the back. It says Romo. And while I have nothing against Romo, he does represent the current configuration of the franchise which I cannot support. I’m not sure what she was thinking. But here’s the deal. If they win the Super Bowl, I’ll wear it for a week. Every day for a week. But that’s it. That’s the deal.

And if you’re still super bummed about the Cowboys loss yesterday and the fact that the Redskins are going into the postseason as the NFC’s hottest team, click here. It’s the old Tom Landry American Express commercial from 1982. Classic. If that doesn’t put a smile on your face, you’re hopeless.

Hidey,

Allan

Little Replicas of Himself

December 19, 2007 / Allan / 1 Comment

“One must face the fact that all the talk about His love for men, and His service being perfect freedom, is not (as one would gladly believe) mere propaganda, but an appalling truth. He really does want to fill the universe with a lot of loathsome little replicas of Himself—creatures whose life, on its miniature scale, will be qualitatively like His own, not because He has absorbed them but because their wills freely conform to His.” ~Screwtape

It’s easy to sense the senior tempter’s frustration in C. S. Lewis’ masterpiece. Screwtape and the other devils in Hell can’t comprehend why in the world God would expend so much energy on loving and caring for all these dispicable humans. Instead of using people and exploiting people and sucking them dry of all energy and life, God nurtures them and provides for them and longs for actual relationship with them. We are God’s children and he wants us to be just like him. But he wants us to make those decisions on our own. He doesn’t “override a human will.” As Screwtape observes about God, “He cannot ravish. He can only woo. For his ignoble idea is to eat the cake and have it; the creatures are to be one with him, but yet themselves; merely to cancel them, or assimilate them, will not serve.” And the devils don’t get it.

In working to conform our wills to our Father’s and in striving to be like him, his perfect son, Jesus, is our example. When we look at Jesus in the flesh, incarnate God, we see what God created when he created us. Or at least we see God’s intent. And we see our own high potential, our high calling.

As a baby in the manger in Bethlehem, Jesus is completely helpless, vulnerable, needy, dependent. A newborn baby is the absolute picture of total dependence. And as all the political and religious and military powers in Judea scheme to murder this innocent child, Jesus, as a baby, is completely dependent on his Father to protect him. What chance does Jesus have against the ruthless King Herod and the chief priests? His young peasant mother and his impoverished and unproven dad from the insignificant town of Nazareth are way overmatched. But we see clearly that the Father provides and protects. He thwarts the enemy’s plans. He rescues his child. He carries the child and his parents to a safe place and then destroys the enemies.

Our calling is to be just as dependent on our Father as Jesus was. The life of the Christ is a beautiful portrait of complete surrender to God, from the manger in Bethlehem and the temple courts in Jerusalem to the garden in Gethsemane and the cross at Golgotha. Total surrender. Complete dependence. Confidence that God will deliver. He will save.

“…we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord.” ~2 Corinthians 3:18

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Excellent column by Gene Wojciechowski today asking the same questions I asked last night regarding Roger Clemens telling us he’ll address the steroid and HGH allegations in baseball’s Mitchell Report in “an appropriate way at the appropriate time.” What time could be more appropriate than right now? What way could be more appropriate than a common news conference? Click here to read the column.

Peace,

Allan

Category: Discipleship (Page 27 of 30)

God-Hungry

Quitting Church

The Safest Road

The Full Picture

Living Like Jesus

Little Replicas of Himself

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