The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Golf Course Road Church (Page 1 of 25)

Act Justly, Love Mercy

October 30, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The federal government shutdown is creating immediate and significant financial strains for more than 40-million people in this country, many of them right here in Midland. There are potentially hundreds of families here in West Texas who, beginning this weekend, will not receive their SNAP benefits for groceries or their federally-funded childcare subsidies. These families are stressed. To say the least.

Our church’s local missions partners are already seeing greater needs and are working hard to respond to the crisis. And as a body of Christians here at GCR, we want to ensure they have the resources necessary to continue serving their families in practical and meaningful ways. Thanks to our forward-thinking Connections Minister, Ryan Rampton, and our shepherds, we have approved up to $50,000 in Breakthrough funds to support our local partners, engage our congregation in personal and relational ministry, and address the pressing needs of our community.

This is how we are distributing the funds:

Mission Agape – $26,000 to provide an additional 1,000 food boxes for families in need. We are gathering as a church to help pack some of those boxes on Wednesday November 12. One hundred of these boxes are being reserved for Opportunity Tribe families, to be distributed by GCR members.

Family Promise – $11,000 to cover increased grocery and childcare costs for families transitioning out of homelessness. GCR members are also serving meals at Family Promise November 10-13.

Emerson Elementary – we are providing $250 HEB gift cards for every teacher and staff member at our adopted school who is receiving SNAP benefits. And we are referring students and their families needing food assistance to Mission Agape.

Praise God that, by his grace and the generosity of our church three years ago, we are able to use Breakthrough money to respond quickly and meaningfully to the needs of our city. Please be in prayer for the families who are worried right now, and consider how you might be able to give of your time in the coming weeks to serve our neighbors, to love like Jesus.

Our sermon this Sunday is from one of GCR’s Core Scriptures, Micah 6:6-8, in which God tells us through his prophet that he is most concerned that we act justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with him. God’s people in Micah are living well while others in the community are suffering; God’s people are getting rich while their neighbors are hungry and poor; and God’s people are only concerned that their worship practices are in accordance with God’s commands. The Lord tells them they’ve broken the covenant, and they respond by asking how they should fix their corporate worship. That’s when God tells them they are missing the point–the most important thing is to act justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with him.

I think what GCR is doing in our local context during this national crisis, feeding our neighbors and providing for their needs, fits the spirit of acting justly and loving mercy. What this nation, what our city, needs from God’s people right now is not for us to be liberal or conservative, they don’t need us to be red or blue; they need us to be followers of Christ Jesus, they need us to operate in a certain way in our community because of our baptisms into the name of Jesus.

Peace,
Allan

Personal Relational Ministry

October 29, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Our vision statement at GCR Church is “Being Changed by God to Love Like Jesus.” It’s about both transformation and mission. It’s viewing everything through the lens of what God is doing both in us and through us. The vision emphasizes, without apology, the transformation of our people for the sake of loving others like our Lord. It’s our people doing ministry in personal and relational settings–being powerfully present with one another in our congregation and with others in our community.

We get that from our King. Thankfully, for us, it’s been part of our GCR DNA for several decades now.

 

 

 

 

 

Eugene Goudeau, in 1981, is one guy from GCR who said I must go to Brazil to help plant churches. That’s how SerCris Training School in Campo Grande got started.

John DeFore, 30 years ago, is one guy from GCR doing World Bible School correspondence courses with people in Kenya. He says I need to go meet these people, I need to do some personal follow-up with these new Christians. That’s how Kenya Widows and Orphans got started–KWO.

Jarrod Brown, 20 years ago, goes to Honduras with not much more than his Bible and a Toyota pickup. He said I want to live with these people, I want to do life with these people in their community. That’s how Mission Lazarus got started.

 

 

 

 

 

 

When we partner with our missionaries in foreign lands, it changes us. It transforms us. It informs and shapes the way we do missions here in Midland. Personal. Relational.

We don’t drop dinner off at Family Promise and leave. We sit down and we share a meal with the people at Family Promise.

We don’t do Harvest Party in our parking lot anymore. We take Harvest Party to the people at Family Promise and Midland FairHavens and Safe Place. I love the way we do Harvest Party now. All the pictures in this post are from the Harvest Party we threw for Family Promise this past Sunday evening.

 

 

 

 

 

We go inside Emerson Elementary and read books to the kids during lunch. We stand at their door on Mondays and fist bump all those little kids as they begin their week.

We don’t just pass out Thanksgiving food boxes in a drive-thru in our church parking lot anymore. We take time to visit with those we’re feeding. We pray with people. We hold their kids. We share desserts. We try to connect.

That’s our vision at GCR Church.

Personal. Relational.

Peace,
Allan

Missions Sunday Miracle

October 27, 2025 / / 0 Comments

“My God will meet all your needs according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.
To our God and Father be glory for ever and ever. Amen.” ~Philippians 4:19-20

Going into yesterday’s first-ever GCR Missions Sunday, there were at least a half dozen reasons why we might not make our giving goal of $416,000. There were questions. Maybe a couple of doubts.

But by the grace of God and the power of his Holy Spirit, this community of faith answered the call by giving $538,286!

I’m still trying to wrap my brain and my heart around what it all means. What happened yesterday makes no earthly sense. None. There’s nothing to do but give glory to God. There’s no one else to thank, nothing else to credit, no other explanation. That’s the way our God works. He is truly the only one.

Following Eric West’s announcement of the grand total, as the church burst into celebratory applause, I almost took off my shoes. Holy ground. Sacred space. A powerfully miraculous thing had occurred. Our God was moving in and with and through his people. God had far exceeded our grandest plans.

Thank you to every member of our GCR Church family who sacrificed in October and gave to fund our global missions efforts in 2026. Thank you for being so open to what our Lord is doing through our missions partners and for trusting him with your resources. Thank you for your commitment to the cause and your great generosity.

As blessings pile on top of blessings, we are increasingly convinced that our Father is keeping his covenant promises to GCR and to all his creation. May he be glorified and may his Son be exalted and may his Spirit be praised for ever and ever. Amen!

Peace,
Allan

Holding On

October 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I thank God for refreshing my soul and rekindling my heart for his holy mission the way he does every single year at ACU’s Summit. My spirit is overflowing with gratitude today for our Lord and for the good people at Abilene Christian University who continue this annual gathering of church leaders despite the many challenges in providing physical space, brilliant content, inspiring worship, and relational opportunities for an increasingly digitized and individualized group of ministers and pastors.

We typically take seven or eight of our nine ministers on the team at GCR, but this year only four of us were able to make the two-hour drive for the event that covers parts of three days. We do our own tracks with our fellow preachers, youth ministers, children’s ministers, and formation ministers from all over Texas, the Southwest, and parts unknown. But we worship, take in the keynotes, and eat our meals together, sharing what we’ve learned, praying for each other, and laughing. On Thursday, we were honored to be joined for lunch at Twisted Root with Jason Minor, one of our amazing GCR teenagers who is enjoying the first weeks of his freshman year at ACU. We want to keep connections with our kids; what a joy to know that our kids want to maintain those connections with us.

I am at once dismayed and greatly encouraged to know that most preachers are dealing with all the same things when it comes to the current climates in our churches. Today, “Christian” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, both inside and outside the Church. Some of those things are decidedly un-Christian, which is killing our witness to a desperate and dying world.

I’ll paraphrase what the brilliant Mark Hamilton said during a session on Isaiah 40-55 and its message to our present time and culture. He said the greatest gift the Church can give to our communities and to our world, is calm, reasoned discourse. We should call the demagogues for what they are–in the government and in our society, who they are and what they are doing–we should be clear about it. We should tell our brothers and sisters who are in the rabbit holes to repent and, if they don’t repent, to leave our congregations. Because people who are searching for God will discern very quickly that the church is not the place to seek. This is not a hypothetical; this is real. It is happening with a majority of younger people right now today.

Jerry Taylor’s powerful homily on our fear of death and the spirit of Cain and of the anti-Christ that is so prevalent in our communities and our churches left me feeling incredibly inadequate and gutless. I know my church needs to hear these things, I know I am called by our God to proclaim the truth that Christ lives and that Jesus alone is Lord and that we are collectively losing our minds and our souls by employing the ways of the world and chasing after political power to remake society in our own images. When I asked Jerry afterwards if he had a word for preachers like me in the situations we’re in–there are hundreds of us–he said, “Allan, there are bigger things at stake than your employment.”

I know courage thrives in community and in collaboration. That’s why I am so thankful for my pastor friends in Midland; for my longtime friendships with preachers I’ve known for 25-plus years; for Jason, with whom I study and pray and argue and laugh; and with guys and gals in our unique fraternity I’m just now meeting and getting to know. We hold on to Scripture. We hold on to justice. We hold on to love. We hold on to our Lord and the promises of our God. And we hold on to each other.

Peace,
Allan

Don’t Fight, Invite

October 7, 2025 / / 0 Comments

We are having so much fun with Breno and Gabi Escobar and Jose Luiz and Isabel Siqueira, two professors and their wives from SerCris Training School in Campo Grande, Brazil. Our GCR Church has partnered with SerCris since its founding in 2002, and the two couples are in Midland for a week to help us kick off our first-ever Missions Month. Whitney and I took Breno to a Texas high school football game Friday, a clash between two state-ranked teams in Greenwood, which also served as the Rangers’ homecoming and a huge Greenwood win. The event provided everything Breno needed to experience at his first ever in-person American football game: the entire community in attendance, sitting shoulder to shoulder on aluminum bleachers, unbelievably large homecoming mums, two undefeated teams making big plays on the field, cheerleaders, two marching bands, and a homecoming queen.

On Saturday, we took Breno and Gabi to Green Acres Miniature Golf, the site of George and Laura Bush’s first date a long, long time ago. Breno kept us in stitches with his unorthodox play–golf balls were flying all over the place–and his soccer-style celebrations. He wound up in the drink once–not in the water hazard that runs across the field of play, but in the waterfall behind the hole! Carrie-Anne destroyed us by hitting three holes-in-one and finishing with a one-under-par 47. She was absolutely on fire! Breno finished by hitting the ball OVER the barn on the last hole, not THROUGH it.

We had both couples over Saturday night to watch college football, shoot pool, eat a massive dinner, and play our favorite card game, 99. Turns out, you can play 99 without knowing any English at all!

 

 

 

 

 

At church Sunday, Breno led our communion time by reading from Jesus’ story of the great feast in Luke 14 and Jose Luiz spoke during the sermon time about all that our God is doing in them and through them in Campo Grande. GCR’s relationship with SerCris goes back to some early church plants in the 1980s and Jose Luiz connected all the dots for us very well. After church, we enjoyed a big lunch together with GCR friends at La Bodega, celebrating a fabulous kickoff to Missions Month.

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We’re using the Travel Narrative in the Gospel of Luke as our guiding text during Missions Month. As Jesus is “on the way” to Jerusalem, as he travels from Galilee to the capital city, as he walks from the place where his ministry began to the place where it will all be ultimately accomplished, he remains focused on the mission. Critical to the mission, Jesus purposefully travels through Samaria, unfriendly territory. And as we watch Jesus interact with people, handle circumstances, and explain things in the mission field of Samaria, we can learn how to interact with people, handle circumstances, and explain things in the mission fields of Midland and Brazil, in West Texas and Kenya and Honduras.

One of the first things we learn as Jesus embarks on his mission journey “along the way” is that his mission is an invitation, it’s not a fight. It’s not about judgment or force. We don’t motivate by fear and we don’t fight; we invite.

The very first Samaritan village Jesus and his disciples encounter rejects them outright. “We don’t want you or your message! Hit the road, bub!” And the Zebedee boys are ticked. James and John, the Sons of Thunder, know exactly how they should respond: “Let’s call fire down from heaven! Do it, Jesus! Let’s incinerate all these hicks! Don’t they know who we are?! Boom! Fire! Straight outta heaven!”

And our Lord Jesus rebuked them. Immediately. Non-negotiable.

It is never our task as disciples on a mission with Christ along the way to destroy the opposition. This is not a fight and we are not warriors! Jesus-followers do not bash people who are not on our side. We don’t judge or annihilate or own anybody created by God in the image of God.

Yet, despite our Lord’s unqualified, uncompromising rebuke, so many of us continue to act like Zebedees. We’re following Jesus, full of devotion and zeal, but some of us will not tolerate any opposition. We won’t tolerate rejection. And we get our feelings hurt or we get angry and we rise up in a show of force to judge and destroy.

Boom! Fire! Straight outta my email!
Boom! Fire! Straight outta my prideful mouth!
Boom! Fire! Straight outta my Facebook post or my forwarded video!

With words and attitudes and digital weapons, we destroy anybody who rejects Jesus as the Savior of the World. Or our understandings of Jesus. Our our other beliefs and practices.

As ambassadors of Jesus, with Jesus, our message and our mission is never one of judgment or force. It’s invitation. It’s an invitation to share in the love and the blessings and the promises of God. An invitation to an abundant life in and with Christ Jesus. And invitation to be the Good Samaritan. An invitation to pray, to ask God. An invitation to serve others. An invitation to be healed, to be made whole. An invitation to take one’s place at the feast in the Kingdom of God.

“Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full!” ~Luke 14:13-23

It’s an invitation mission. Not judgment. Not force. We don’t fight, we invite. In Midland and India. In West Texas and Western Brazil.

Peace,

Allan

 

CrocktoberFest at GCR

October 3, 2025 / / 0 Comments

We kicked off our first-ever Missions Month at GCR Church Wednesday night with what we called “CrocktoberFest.” It was an all-church crockpot potluck and it was fabulous on all fronts. We packed right at 200 of us in the Family Center Gym and there must have been almost a hundred crockpots on the four serving lines. The crockpots contained the usual–soups, pasta dishes, beans, potatoes, lasagna, taco meat, and all kinds of seasoned chicken and pork. But lots of folks got creative, too. There were crockpots with Chick-fil-A nuggets and sauces, Oreo cookies, and — as requested from the Sunday morning pulpit at least twice — ice cream!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After we shared that amazing dinner together, we gathered all our kids–where are all these kids at GCR coming from?!?– and spent about 15-minutes talking about our congregation’s foreign missions works. We introduced our church family to the missionaries and the organizations that represent our six largest global partnerships, and then we spent a few minutes at each table reading God’s Word and praying for these missionaries by name and place.

We’re spending the entire month of October showcasing our global missions partners because we want our church to see the pictures, to meet the missionaries, the hear the stories. We want our people to know it, to experience it, to own it.

In a lot of churches, “Missions” is just a special Sunday for a special offering for something that other people are doing a long way from here. There’s no engagement. So, the church budget determines, or limits, the mission of God instead of God’s mission setting the budget.

Or, “Missions” is just something the missions committee oversees–a half-dozen people managing the missions budget and staying in touch with the missionaries. And there’s no relationship with the church body. It’s not a partnership as much as it’s a holy banking service for a good cause.

We want all of GCR to get to know our missionaries and our partnerships. We want them to meet the people, to hear their stories, to be inspired by their courage and commitment, to learn to really love these people and organizations.

We engage in partnerships with these people and groups because we can do so much more together than we can as individuals. We’re partners. This kind of partnership brings us great joy when we do our part. And our part in these partnerships is to give our money, to encourage, and to pray.

It’s Missions Month at GCR. I know it’s going to become my favorite time of the year.

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Carrie-Anne, Whitney, and I took in the Zack Williams concert at the Ector County Coliseum in Odessa last night. C-A bought the tickets, so they were on the floor, tenth row, dead center. Outstanding seats and a pretty good show. Zack didn’t seem to have as much energy as he typically brings. He didn’t sing as many of his “hits” and played way too many from his brand new album that just came out like three weeks ago. And he only played 70-minutes. A little bit of a disappointment for Carrie-Anne.

I was most impressed with the band that performed right before Zack, a high-energy, hard-rocking group called We The Kingdom. Evidently, they’ve been around a while–C-A knew many of their songs. Either way, they way outperformed the headliner. It reminded of Van Halen touring to promote their debut album in 1978, opening for Black Sabbath, and famously blowing them away every night.

Peace,

Allan

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