Category: Legacy Church Family (Page 30 of 37)

$209K and Counting…

March 31, 2008 / Allan / 4 Comments

“God calls things that are not as though they were.” ~Romans 4:17

A red-letter day yesterday for the family of believers here at Legacy and in our history as a congregation of God’s people. The goal for Missions Sunday was to collect $150,000 to fund our local and foreign missions budget for 2008. And our Lord blessed us with over $209,000 in cash and pledges. And the number is still going up.

What a thrill it was to watch our little children parade with their Bible classes down to the front to announce and then to dump the money they’ve collected over the month of March for our missionaries. How amazing it was to be joined by our brothers and sisters at the Centerpoint church in Bagiuo City, Philippines via video and audio hookup and to see them and talk to them and wave to them and sing “We Love You With the Love of the Lord” to them, half a world away. And then to experience our Father opening our hearts and our spirits to sacrificially give like we never have before was beyond description.

Our God always out-imagines us. He always out-dreams us. We can’t think too big or plan too big for him. He always gives us much more than we can ever ask or imagine. How wonderful to consider the lives that will be saved, the souls that will be won, the people who will be reconciled to our God as a result of yesterday’s blessings.

And our Lord continued to pour out his blessings on us as he held back the rain and kept us high and dry at last night’s fellowship / assembly in our new, not-quite-finished-yet worship center. Nearly 700 of us ate dinner together in the new building and then worshiped our God in song and prayer. We read Scripture together. We confessed Jesus as the Christ and as Lord together. We imagined together all the baptisms that are going to take place in this building, all the weddings, all the singings, all the sermons, all the laughing, all the crying, all the seminars, all the love that’s going to be shared in this building. And then we asked our God to, again, blow us away.

I saw the Legacy church transformed yesterday. I saw all our same people, all our same brothers and sisters. But I saw us differently. There was a different spirit about us yesterday. The Lord was in our midst yesterday and he was working and blessing and inspiring and planning for things I can’t even begin to see yet. But he sees them. They already exist in his sight. Our God calls things that are not as though they were. And we’re beginning to see and to think like him more and more. And it’s exciting.

After we prayed together for all of the future things that would be happening for our Lord and for the Kingdom in this new place of worship, we wrote on the foundation. We wrote our favorites passages of Scripture. We wrote our prayers. We wrote our dreams for our church family. And we wrote the names of our children.

What an incredible day. What an incredible God!

It’s 10:30 pm Monday, my computer’s been down most of the day, and I’m still riding yesterday’s high. I just got out of a Small Groups Church Co-Leader training session with a bunch of couples who are leading new groups beginning this Sunday—new groups that are all multiplications of original groups who’ve grown beyond their capacities. And they’ve all experienced the love and the ministry and the sharing and the fellowship and the connection and the evangelism that takes place in a small group. And they’re all inspired to take what they have and spread it out into our congregation and into our communities.

And we give God the glory. He alone is worthy of praise for all the wonderful things that are happening here. He alone. In Romans 4, when Paul writes about our God who “gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were,” he says Abraham’s faith was strengthened and he “gave glory to God” because he was seeing the impossible-to-deny truth that our God has “power to do what he had promised.” Amen.

May our Father use us in his Kingdom. And may we submit our lives and our church family and our wills to him. May we be blessed with his Spirit and his vision. And may his will be done in the Legacy church as it is in heaven.

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And may UCLA beat Memphis Saturday night.

The only way I beat Whitney outright in my NCAA tournament bracket is if the Bruins beat those impossibly-loaded Tigers from Memphis State AND Kansas beats Carolina. I can salvage a tie if the Tarheels win and Tiger High loses. I can salvage a tie if Kansas and Memphis win and Kansas then takes the title. But if Memphis wins the championship or if Memphis and UNC both win their semi-final games, I’m toast. And then, I’m probably done. You can’t lose to your daughter in a college basketball tournament pool. I need Kevin Love to score about 40.

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Michael Young drove one deep to put Texas up 1-0 in the Rangers half of the first inning in Seattle. And Millwood looked good into the 6th. But the Rangers lose their opener (SHOCKING!!) 5-2 to the M’s. Now, Kipi, they’re tied for last place in the American League.

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Tomorrow (Tuesday) is my day in Waco with Jim Martin and some of the other central Texas preachers down there. So I probably won’t write again until Wednesday morning. I’ll reflect a little bit on this year’s Tulsa Workshop then.

Peace,

Allan

Thinking Theologically

March 25, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

Last night I read Henri Nouwen’s In the Name of Jesus: Reflections on Christian Leadership. It’s required reading for our little group of preachers that meets in Waco once a month. We’ve all read it this month and we’re going to break it down one week from today. It’s short—I read it in about 45 minutes—but it packs a powerful punch.

Nouwen uses two stories from the gospels, Jesus’ temptation in the desert and his commissioning of Peter to feed the sheep in John 21, to lead the reader in a discourse on Christian leadership. Most of the book centers around the idea of Christian leaders being servant leaders, seeking to be led by Christ’s Spirit into areas of service and sacrifice and submission instead of seeking power and popularity and relevance. He paints a Christ-centered life of “downward mobility ending on the cross.” And it’s all very good. But I was especially touched by the author’s angle on theological reflection as a spiritual discipline.

Thinking theologically, the way I understand it, is to recognize the salvation work our God has been doing in his world since the beginning of time and will continue to do until time ends and then using that as the guiding force behind everything we do and say. It’s realizing that every single thing relates to and goes back to God’s eternal plan for the reconciliation of the world and then jumping all the way into that plan and work with everything we have. It’s seeing how it all connects to redemption and salvation and deliverance and making sure the things we do connect to those things as well.

Even though we speak and teach in Scriptural terms, most ministers and preachers today are raising psychological and sociological questions. Thinking with the mind of Christ is more difficult. Nouwen writes,

“Without solid theological reflection, Christian leaders are little more than pseudo-psychologists, pseudo-sociologists, pseudo-social workers. They think of themselves as enablers, facilitators, role models, father or mother figures, big brothers or big sisters, and so on, and thus join the countless men and women who make a living by trying to help their fellow human beings cope with the stresses and strains of everyday living.

The task of Christian leaders is not to make a little contribution to the solution of the pains and tribulations of their time, but to identify and announce the ways in which Jesus is leading God’s people out of slavery, through the desert to a new land of freedom.”

Thinking theologically, which I was first introduced to at Austin Grad and which still does not come easily to me, is seeing God’s saving work in everything around us and seeing our efforts as nothing more and nothing less than joining that divine work. Thinking that way and being guided by that careful reflection serves us well as leaders; it keeps us focused on the things that truly matter and diverts our attention away from the peripheral things that take up way too much of our time and energy.

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Carrie-Anne and I are leaving in the morning for the annual Soul Winning Workshop in Tulsa. And I can’t wait. I love Tulsa. I love the four days of get-away-time with my wonderful wife. I love getting re-acquainted with old friends from Mesquite, Arlington, and Oklahoma and making new friends from all over the country. I love worshiping in song with hundreds and hundreds of other saints. I love the great collection of powerful speakers and the opportunity to sit at their feet from morning to night. It’s exhausting. It’s exhilarating.

We always come back from Tulsa wishing there were a way to bring back to our home congregation that same spirit and fire we see and feel and experience up there. What are the differences? Why is being in Tulsa so radically different from being in our home churches? Is it because Jeff Walling and Terry Rush and Rubel Shelly and Randy Harris are preaching? Is it because Keith Lancaster is leading singing? Is it because there are so many people there? Is it because 99-percent of the people there are all going there for pretty much the same reasons? Is it just because we’re in a different location? There is an unmistakable fire and energy there that feeds me. And I can’t wait.

Tomorrow is also our Day of Prayer and Fasting at Legacy in preparation for Missions Sunday. And, be assured, I’m holding off on the jalapeno potato chips, the Whoppers, and the Little Debbies until Thursday morning. Those are my traveling foods. But I’m fasting with the rest of our church body during this day of prayer and preparation.

Please remember to encourage each other tomorrow. Call or email your friends. Keep in touch. Get together sometime during the day for an hour of prayer. Use the building here for those times. Or just kneel with a buddy in your living room or kitchen. The prayer meeting here at Legacy Wednesday night at 6:00 will also be a wonderful time for mutual encouragement. And while you’re breaking your fast with a bagel and coffee here at the building Thursday morning, I’ll be doing the same with a continental breakfast at the Hampton Inn.

The blogging will be short and sporadic for the next few days. May our God bless us all with his vision and his passion for lost souls as we pray and prepare for Missions Sunday.

Peace,

Allan

One Of The 99

March 19, 2008 / Allan / 2 Comments

Thank you, Chris (Rob’s Dad).

In a comment regarding yesterday’s post, Chris writes, “What happens if one of the 99 is really not safe? Everything looks good on the outside but they are broken and hurt on the inside.”

Something happened in our Small Group Sunday night that hit me in the face like a Kenny Rogers uppercut. I’ve been thinking about it and talking it about for the past two and a half days. But I’ve been double-clutching like Dirk at the buzzer, apprehensive about sharing it on the blog. (OK, no more sports references.) Chris’ comment has pushed me now to share this. If you’re impacted by it half as much as I was, it’ll radically change the way you see things. And hopefully the way we act.

In looking at Luke 15 again, our group was exploring the subtle forms of “muttering” (Luke 15:2) that take place in the Church today against “tax collectors and sinners.” We discussed the hard-hitting question of whether Legacy attracts or repels those who are lost. Do the way we act and the things we do reach out to those marginalized by society or drive them away?

And Virginia is right there in the middle of us, sitting at my dining room table.

Virginia and Bobby were spending the night in their car in the Walgreen’s parking lot down the street from our church building when they showed up here looking for some help six weeks ago. Tatoos on their arms and necks. Smoking. Out of work and out of luck. Pregnant. Again. And carrying with them, in addition to all their wordly possessions in the back of their car, a history of alcohol and drug abuse, physical abuse, prison time, rejection, dejection, and all the physical and emotional scars that come from a life most of us reading this blog can never imagine.

And she’s crying.

She’s been coming to our Small Group for the past four or five weeks. (We still can’t get Bobby there, but we’re not giving up.) She’s been helped and encouraged and loved by everybody in our group for over a month.

And she’s crying.

And so I just asked her. Virginia, you know what it’s like to be an outsider. You know what it’s like to be left out. Pushed aside. Ignored. Please tell us what it’s like. What’s it like when you and Bobby walk into our church building on Sundays and Wednesdays. What’s it like to walk our halls and sit in the auditorium and share the Wednesday meal with us? How do people treat you? Look at you? Make you feel? Help us understand what it’s like to be an outsider, the very kind of person Jesus came to seek and save.

She told us everything, I guess, most of us expected to hear. She gets the looks from a lot of us. People are polite and kind, but they keep their distance. Bobby, especially, she said, feels singled-out. He feels like people treat him as if he’s about to steal their wallets. However, she also said that she’s never felt as warmly received by any church family in her whole life as she has here at Legacy. She’s overwhelmed by the love and acceptance that she does feel. And she told us that being invited to our homes as part of our Small Group is the nicest thing anyone’s done for her in her entire life.

And she kept crying.

And then Matt said, “I know exactly how she feels.”

And I did a double-take.

Matt and Rechele are upper-middle class white people like the rest of us in our group, like most of us in our church. Matt’s a highly-decorated police officer. Rechele’s a respected school teacher. Theirs is a “blended” family due to divorce and remarriage, again, not unlike nearly half of our church families. On the surface they don’t stick out in any discernible way. And I called him on it. Out loud. In front of the whole group. Boldly and confidently.

“Matt, that’s not what we’re talking about. You’re just like everybody else. Bobby and Virginia stick out. They’re outsiders. They’re the ones Jesus is talking about in Luke 15.”

And then Matt and Rechele explained. Because of their divorces and the circumstances surrounding their divorces, they had suffered the pain and rejection of their own Christian brothers and sisters. They had been told by church leaders over the past 13 or 14 months at two or three different churches that they weren’t welcome. They were told they could drop their children off at the front door on Sundays and Wednesdays but that they would have to keep driving. They themselves would have to go somewhere else. They were told they were sinners, living in sin. They were kicked to the curb by their own best friends. They asked God to forgive them. They wrote letters and made phone calls asking for forgiveness from the Church. They’ve humbly confessed. They’ve done everything they know how to do. But they were still rejected. Singled out. Pushed away.

And Matt said being invited into our homes as part of our Small Group was the nicest thing anyone’s done for Rechele and him in over a year. They live in Carrollton. It takes them 40-minutes to get to church. But he said he’d drive all day and night to be with the family at Legacy. Because they finally feel loved and accepted.

By this time he’s crying, Rechele’s crying, Virginia’s crying, Carrie-Anne’s crying, Tim’s crying, Beth’s crying, everybody’s crying. And I’m just sitting there soaking in the amazing revelation that is dramatically changing the way I see people.

Bobby & Virginia and Matt & Rechelle couldn’t be more different. I don’t have the time or the space here to adequately tell you how different they are. And they both told the same story. They both have experienced the same things. They’ve shared the same feelings and thoughts. They’ve both been outsiders. Marginalized. One is way outside our flock and very obvious. The other is part of our 99.

May our God bless us with his eyes and his vision to see the people around us who are dying for love and acceptance and relationships. And may we better understand that some of the people buried under the dirt in the dark corners of our messy world or wandering desperately in the vast wilderness of rejection are on our church rolls and in our classrooms and pews.

Peace,

Allan

More Than I Could Ask Or Imagine

March 11, 2008 / Allan / 4 Comments

I spent most of last Tuesday down in Waco with seven other preachers / ministers in a classroom at the Crestview Church of Christ talking with each other about Christian ministry. We told our stories, we read and prayed through a few of the Psalms, we visited about pressure points in our ministries and the temptations that naturally come during those times. We shared with each other the things that give us stress. It seems I’m not the only preacher who doesn’t have enough time during the week to do what he knows he ought to be doing. There’s the fear or the stress of feeling like I’m just spinning my wheels and nobody’s really paying attention or applying the things I’m preaching; the worry that we’re not changing into the image of Christ—we’re all staying the same. And there’s also the stress of everyone expecting the preacher to know everything and do everything and be in charge of everything—just as long as he doesn’t act like it.

One of the nicest parts of the day for me was when Jim asked us what specifically was encouraging to us in our ministries. I quickly ran through several things in my mind: a fantastic office staff, a supportive group of elders, an encouraging wife, wonderful friends who push me and challenge me, my Sunday morning prayer time with a couple of brothers here at Legacy, our Tuesday morning group, and our Small Groups Churches.

And then I spent 20 minutes talking about how amazed I am by our Small Groups Churches.

I never expected our Small Groups Churches to be acting in the ways they’re acting so quickly. I imagined it would take several months for our groups to bond and study and pray and minister to each other before they began to realize the ultimate goals of reaching out and ministering to others. But, praise God! His vision and his plans are so much bigger and more wonderful than mine.

It seems that every week another of our Small Groups is doing something else in a sacrificial way to take the love of Christ to others. I’ve told you before that several of our groups began writing letters and cards to misssionaries the day we kicked off our Missions Sunday push last month. A couple of our groups are planning huge garage sales and will donate all of the money to our Missions Sunday. Two groups have collected money for gift cards and donated other items to at least two local families who have suffered through house fires. One of our groups is taking a mission trip to Honduras together in June. One group has begun an open Prayer Meeting at one of their houses twice a month. And these are just the things I’ve heard about in the past couple of weeks.

Our elders looked at Small Groups Church as a more effective way to shepherd this rapidly-growing flock. And I can’t describe to you how wonderful it is to overhear elders talking to each other about something that happened at Tom & Mary’s house or something that was said at Dave & Linda’s house or something that the people at George & Sue’s house are doing or thinking about. Our elders are regularly in our people’s houses now. And it’s fostering a beautiful sense of mutual trust and love, absolutely paramount when it comes to healthy relationships and a healthy congregation.

Most of our groups are wanting to do more, not less. Most of our groups are inviting visitors and new members every week. Of the ten meetings we’ve had so far, our group has had somebody brand new at seven of them. And I know a lot of other groups enjoy the same kind of energy. I’m encouraged by Aaron and Jennifer Green’s group’s eagerness to multiply and infiltrate the rest of our congregation and community. I’m thrilled with Richard and Joanna Ashlock’s group’s vision for inviting new people in. (You can read Jennifer’s blog-post about their “multiply” here and Joanna’s blog-post about their vision here.)

Of course, these things are all a part of the long-term goals of all our Small Groups. These things are presented at each of our training classes and are talked about all the time in a variety of ways here at Legacy. I just assumed it would be a while before we actually started seeing some of these things happen. But it’s happening all the time.

And it’s our Small Groups Churches that lift me up and encourage me through the pressure points of my ministry here. The people at Legacy are listening. The brothers and sisters at Legacy are applying the Word into their everyday lives. The Christians at Legacy are making a difference. Lives are being changed. Lives are being impacted by the love and grace of our God through Christ Jesus. And our Father receives all the power and wealth and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and praise forever and ever. He always delivers more than I can ask or imagine.

Peace,

Allan

Getting My Goat

March 3, 2008 / Allan / 5 Comments

Warning to preachers: Be very careful with what you say in the pulpit!

Note to self: Be very, very, very, very, very, very careful with what you say in the pulpit!

One of the many things I love about our church family at Legacy is the sense of humor here. Everyone—especially here in the office—seems to be equally as comfortable on the giving and receiving end of good natured barbs and ribbing. I found myself on the butt end of it this morning. And I’m not certain yet as to the individuals who actually instigated it. But, I’ve got a general idea. And, rest assured, the revenge plotting has begun.

In our push up to Missions Sunday on March 30, we’ve been asking a few of our missionaries to address the assembly the past couple of Sunday mornings. Yesterday I had asked Salvador Cariaga, our main man in Cebu, Philippines, to speak for five or six minutes in the middle of our sermon about being God’s fellow workers. Salvador passionately spoke to us about the preacher-training and the church-planting that’s taking place in the Philippines. And he mentioned that they’re giving goats to the new preachers and to the churches there with the aim of becoming self-sufficient. They can give a preacher there one pregnant female goat and within a few months turn it into a real money-maker. After Salvador sat down and I got back up to finish our sermon, I noticed Jack Roseberry, one of our elders, sitting in the back. And I flippantly said, “Jack, don’t get any ideas. I don’t want a goat.”

I got the obligatory laughter I wanted and proceeded to finish the lesson.

At 11:00 this morning, Jack and Kent and Barbara McAlister and Bette Lowry and John and Betty Royse and Chris Courtney and several others paraded right into the offices with a giant metal cage containing a large goat and a sign that said, “To Allan Stanglin, C/O Legacy Church of Christ, Here’s Your Goat!”

Jack said the goal is to have a self-sufficient preacher.

Everybody was having their laughs and taking their pictures. I mentioned goat fajitas in connection with our Wednesday night dinners. I threatened to leave it tied up to a tree outside to meet the coyotes later this evening. But I was getting more than a little nervous. They kept telling me it really was my goat. Jack teaches one of our Sunday morning Bible classes and they had taken up a collection following my comments, jumped on line, and found this goat in Azle for about $30. And they kept saying, “It’s a gift. It’s yours. We really did buy it for you.” I don’t even let the secretaries’ dogs come into my office. And now I’ve got this huge goat! And I’m out of candle!

The goat did relieve itself at one point. Thankfully it was on the tile in the kitchen, not on the carpet in my office. Still, I’m sure we’ve violated several health and safety codes.

Carrie-Anne happened to show up to make some copies for school tomorrow. She was less than thrilled with the prospect of loading that thing up in the van and taking it home.

But I couldn’t get anybody to admit that it was all a big joke and that they really had a place for the goat. For 45-minutes this morning I wasn’t 100% sure it wasn’t really my responsibility. I spent most of that time preparing in my mind how I was going to ask Vic Akers to take it for me.

Finally, Barbara confessed that she was taking it back to their place. They had gotten my goat. Figuratively and literally.

Next Sunday I’m telling the congregation I don’t want a new truck.

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Regarding yesterday’s sermon, a couple of you have asked for a copy of the passage I read from Eugene Peterson’s Working the Angles. I used a couple of paragraphs from the beginning of his book to describe the Church when, instead of looking at what God is doing in the world and jumping in to join him in that work, we decide what we want to do and ask God to join us. We ask God to bless us in our works even if those works have very little or anything to do with God’s eternal work of salvation.

Written from a Presbyterian point of view, the passage is critical of pastors. In our Church of Christ heritage, I would apply it to preachers and elders and anybody who’s a leader in the Lord’s Body. And I’d apply it seriously. Here it is:

“It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of pastors whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scripture are not grist for their mills.

The pastors of America have metamorphosed into a company of shopkeepers, and the shops they keep are churches. They are preoccupied with shopkeepers’ concerns—how to keep the customers happy, how to lure customers away from competitors down the street, how to package the good so that the customers will lay out more money.

Some of them are very good shopkeepers. They attract a lot of customers, pull in great sums of money, develop splendid reputations. Yet it is still shopkeeping; religious shopkeeping, to be sure, but shopkeeping all the same. They’re concerned with image and standing, with what they can measure, with what produces successful church-building programs and impressive attendance charts. The marketing strategies of the fast-food franchise occupy the waking minds of these entrepreneurs; while asleep they dream of the kind of success that will get the attention of journalists.”

And the CareerBuilders.com TV commercial I referenced? I used it to illustrate how sometimes the Church can be like the monkeys swinging on the light fixtures; that just because we’re Christians and children of God in a Christian Church that belongs to God doesn’t always necessarily mean we’re doing the work of God. Here’s the commercial I had in mind.

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Jack, I don’t want a clothing allowance.

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I need to reverse a position I took out on the flag football field Saturday morning. Darryn Pope, needing some support and encouragement following the last of his three wide-open drops of certain touchdown tosses, asked if Jesus would have dropped those passes. I immediately said, “Yes. Jesus would have dropped passes. Of course Jesus would have dropped passes. Jesus was human.”

Upon further reflection, I must correct that opinion. Darryn’s drops were so bad they were sinful. And the Scriptures are clear that Jesus was without sin. So, Darryn, no. Sorry. Jesus would never, ever, have dropped those passes.

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I’m out tomorrow. Jim Martin, a long-time family friend and the preaching minister at the Crestview Church of Christ in Waco, has invited me to a preacher’s forum at their building all day Tuesday. Jim and I ran into each other a couple of years ago at the Austin Grad Sermon Seminar and promised to keep in touch. His blog, A Place For The God-Hungry, is a weekly source of encouragement to me.

There will be a dozen or so preachers at this event tomorrow. And we’re not really sure what we’re going to do or what’s going to result. I do know it’ll be a time of mutual encouragement, and that’ll be enough for me. Plus, I’ll be the only one there with a goat story.

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Jack, I don’t want Cowboys season tickets. Or a suite at the Rangers game.

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Nice free throw, Kidd!

Peace,

Allan

Building Faith At Home

February 26, 2008 / Allan / 13 Comments

Jason and Kipi have been on me for some time to read Mark Holmen’s latest work, Building Faith at Home. The premise of the book is that what we as followers of Jesus do in our homes is much more important to passing on the Christian faith than what we do in our churches. And I believe that with all my heart. Amen. The focus and the attention and the emphasis we place on what we do together during our weekly assemblies is not just overshadowing what parents should be doing with their kids at home, it’s in some ways undermining it. And until we begin again to live our lives of faith in front of our children and with our children, what we’re doing in our churches isn’t really helping. We’re raising generations of kids now—I’d say even people my age and younger, maybe beginning with the first generation to be raised with a Youth Minister—who are sold on church programs and faithful to church activities but who have no real depth of commitment to our God in Christ Jesus.

I believe all that. I see the impact of it everyday. It’s evident in the things we talk about and argue about and the choices we make within our own congregation here at Legacy.

And as I cracked open Building Faith at Home for the first time Saturday night, I was struck by the statistics Holmen uses to back up what we’ve suspected all along.

*Since 1991, the population in the U.S. has grown by 15% but the number of adults who don’t attend church has increased 92%, from 39-million to 75-million.

*In 1990, 86.2% of Americans claimed to be Christian. Today that number is less than 75%. It’s going down by nearly a full percentage point per year. It that trend continues, non-Christians will outnumber Christians in this country by the year 2042.

*Search Institute conducted a survey of more than 11,000 young people from 561 congregations across six different Christian denominations. Keep in mind, these are all church kids! According to their responses: only 12% of youth have a regular dialogue with their mothers on faith issues; only 5% have a regular faith dialogue with their fathers; only 9% of youth experience regular reading of the Bible and devotions at home; and only 12% of youth have ever experienced a faith-based service event with a parent.

*In Transforming Children into Spiritual Champions, George Barna claims “fewer than ten percent of parents who regularly attend church with their kids read the Bible together, pray together (other than at meal times), or participate in an act of service as a family unit. Even fewer families—1 out of every 20—have any type of worship experience together with their kids other than while they are at church.”

It seems that religious life in the home is just about nonexistent. It’s nearly extinct.

And the Church is called to teach our families how to share their faith, how to live their faith, how to exhibit their faith with each other.

I’m only halfway through Holmen’s book. And it’s pretty good. He gives very practical ideas for helping parents and kids grow and mature their faith at home. And I think we can very easily implement a lot of those things here at Legacy. It’s not so much overhauling what we do, it’s just looking at what we do through a different lens. It’ll require only some minor, yet critical, tweaking and adjusting as we encourage families to worship together and study together in their homes.

I especially appreciate Holmen’s emphasis throughout this first part of his book on involving all the different generations in our churches with each other in faith-building exercises. So much, if not most, of what we do as a congregation is segregated by age-group. Bible classes, retreats, fellowships, even our Small Groups are mostly divided along generational lines. And that’s not healthy for anybody. A truly healthy church will be intergenerational almost everywhere. Having young marrieds without children and parents of teenagers and empty-nesters and 85-year-old widows in the same classes and groups and pews and small groups should be the norm, not the exception. So when Holmen mentions baby blessings and involving much more of the whole church family in those ceremonies, I think we can apply baptisms along the same lines, much like what we did with the Dennis grandkids on Sunday. When new members come to the church I’m trying to involve the whole church family in vowing publicly to love them and take care of them and work with them as we follow Jesus. Weddings and funerals, high school and college graduations, anniversaries and other rites of passage should be celebrated by the whole church family together.

But everything we do should be geared toward getting our members to actually live out their faith in their homes with their spouses and kids and cousins and grandchildren.

Read a Bible story to your kids tonight. Pray with your spouse tonight. Plan to do something together as a family that will serve someone else.

Peace,

Allan

Category: Legacy Church Family (Page 30 of 37)

$209K and Counting…

Thinking Theologically

One Of The 99

More Than I Could Ask Or Imagine

Getting My Goat

Building Faith At Home

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