Category: Preaching (Page 23 of 25)

The Gospel AND Our Lives

June 4, 2008 / Allan / 2 Comments

“We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the Gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” ~1 Thessalonians 1:8

We spent a few moments yesterday in our monthly meeting of the Waco Alliance continuing a weeks-long discussion of how, as preachers, we should strive to be transparent to our congregations. It’s a position I’ve taken since I entered the ministry.

No holding back. Hiding nothing. Sharing with my church family all my best and worst. My greatest moments and my most awful. My great faith and my serious doubts. The things I know and the things about which I know nothing. What you see is what you get. Warts and all.

When friends of mine who were on the preacher search committee here or any one of our elders have mentioned to me that’s one of the reasons they hired me—“You’re so open!”— I always counter with, “And it’ll wind up being one of the reasons you fire me.”

Paul’s words to the congregation in Thessalonica reveal his love for the brothers and sisters. Yes, he shared the Gospel of Salvation with them. But he had grown to love them so much he shared with them his very life. No holding back. He gave them everything he had. All of it.

Yes, we get disappointed with our churches. Sometimes the only appropriate response to the things our people do and say is, “What a knucklehead!”

But, like family, he’s my knucklehead. And I love them and I defend them and I protect them with everything I have. Like with my little sisters. I can tease them and get frustrated with them at times. But don’t you dare come in here talking bad about them or treating them improperly.

Paul’s words in this short verse reveal a lot about him. He was commited to that congregation and to those families. He didn’t preach to them because they had a nice building or he enjoyed the town or the pay was right. He wasn’t looking elsewhere. He loved them. They were his family. And he shared with them his very life.

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I’ve added a new link to the Resource page of this blog. It’s part of the one year anniversary celebration of The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys. (Next year there’s going to be a huge mattress sale at one of the shops on Davis.) This link gets you to the page on the Legacy Church website that stores the streaming audio from our ten latest sermons. The Habakkuk series is still all there. And both of the first installments from the current Servant Songs series are there. You might also notice a couple of new links to the right hand side of this blog’s home page that take you to the blogs of Jim Martin at Crestview in Waco, Terry Rush up at Memorial in Tulsa, and William Willimon.

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Terry Rush’s post from yesterday’s Morning Rush is about the progression of praise during their corporate worship at Memorial. He writes about their congregation learning to really praise God. When they assemble now on Sundays, according to Terry, they “robustly cut loose and get lost in his wonder. We do stand in awe! We do mean it when we say ‘Thank You, Lord!'”

Terry writes, “we have shifted from worshiping and wondering who is upset with ‘over that move’ to wondering if God is loving our gifts of vocal / mindful worship of him.”

He closes his post with this:

“We enter his presence…really. Was it not being done before? I can’t answer that for anyone but myself. For me? It wasn’t being done. I was too focused on who did or didn’t like what was sung, prayed, or preached. I was too interrupted by singing a song and hearing comments regarding observing this note and that chorus. It seems to me the more the church learns to voice the praises of God, whether through song or testimony, the more God unleashes his grand grace upon our gatherings.”

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I was listening to Jerry Wayne and Terrell Owens announce the receiver’s new four-year contract during a 35-minute press conference driving home from Waco yesterday afternoon. Toward the end of the session, a reporter asked Owens about new Cowboys cornerback Adam “Pacman” Jones. Owens said Jones needs to turn his life around, he knows he needs to turn his life around, he understands he needs to turn his life around, and he WILL turn his life around because he’s being cared for and mentored by………..

And I just assumed Terrell was going to say Calvin Hill.

If not Calvin Hill, maybe somebody else on the Cowboys staff who helps troubled players. Maybe the team chaplain. Maybe even Drew Pearson or Everson Walls.

No.

Terrell Owens is certain that Pacman Jones is going to be fine because he’s being cared for and mentored by Deion Sanders.

And as far as I could tell from listening to the live audio, nobody in that crowded room of team officials and reporters gasped or recoiled in shock and horror or fell down laughing.

Peace,

Allan

Back In The Saddle

May 27, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

Now, where were we?

I can’t say enough about the Sermon Seminar at Austin Grad. Sitting at the feet of great preachers and great teachers of preachers is refreshing and rejuvenating and a lot of hard work. Dwight Robarts, the preacher at the Skillman Church in Dallas took us through the wonderful book of Hebrews and showed us how to remind our congregations to keep the main things as the main things. Rick Marrs from Pepperdine guided us through Genesis 12-50 and revealed to us some provocative themes and concepts found in the stories of Abraham and Joseph. Austin Grad’s own Jeff Peterson walked us through a study of Galatians and drew rich comparisons between us and the Church in Galatia. And Mark Hamilton, from ACU, presented the grace and the will of God as it’s discovered in Amos.

The study and the learning and the insights and information is overwhelming. But when I attend the Sermon Seminar, I also come away with a great sense of belonging. I’m not the only one. We’re not the only ones. There are preachers of the Word, proclaimers of the Gospel, all doing the very best we can from D.C. to California, from Florida to Michigan, and everywhere in between. We’re all motivated by the same call of our God and we’re all driven by the same will to preach salvation through Christ and to equip people to better serve God and their fellow man. We’re also frustrated by the same things and disappointed by the same things. And it’s just so great to be with each other for those four days. What a blessing.

I began my 25-minute presentation to these preachers on Things I’ve Learned After One Year Of Preaching this way:

“I’ve learned that there are people in the church who love me and people who don’t. There are people there who support me and people who don’t. There are people who want me to succeed and people who don’t.

But, enough about my elders….!”

OK. OK. It was good for a cheap laugh. In fact, everybody laughed. I got exactly the response I wanted. The truth is, I can’t imagine working with a better group of church leaders than the elders who serve at Legacy. They’re open with each other and the church family, they’re honest about their own strengths and weaknesses, they’re committed to our Lord and his people, and they carefully and prayerfully consider everything that comes to them.

I spoke about learning to expect the unexpected and used stories from my first year to illustrate it. My first baptism at Legacy wound up with my baptisee sprawled out on the wet baptistry floor with a twisted knee. My first wedding was for a couple who already had a combined 120 years of marriage between them. One of the first couples to place membership after I arrived told me a joke about exorcism during the invitation song.

But then I talked about the Baileys and the Browns.

My first sermon as the full-time preacher at Legacy was going to be perfect. It was going to be inspirational. So much energy. So much enthusiasm. So much excitement. I’d been planning it and praying about it and working to perfect it for two years. People were going to write poems and sing songs about this sermon.

And then the Baileys and the Browns suffered that tragedy on Memorial Day that no parent, grandparent, uncle, aunt, brother, sister, or cousin should have to endure. And instead of planning the perfect sermon, I wound up at Parkland Hospital in Dallas that Thursday praying with our church’s most beloved family as they planned a funeral for one child and begged God to heal another.

And that very first Sunday at Legacy was not about me. It had nothing to do with me. The new preacher that had finally arrived was the last thing on anybody’s mind. Everybody was thinking about John and Rose and J and Laurie and all the kids who weren’t there. I was powerless. Helpless. I was an intruder.

And I didn’t expect any of that.

But, through those events, God has worked in their lives and in my life and in the life of the Legacy family to make us stronger and closer to him and to each other.

The other thing I talked about was that God uses wholly inadequate people (me) to do holy amazing things.

People I don’t know very well, people I’ve barely met, will talk to me about their innermost fears and anxieties, their sins and struggles with faith and hope. We’ll cry together. We’ll pray together. They tell me things they wouldn’t tell their dearest friends. Because I’m their preacher. I represent God and the Word of God to these people. To the church, I represent a deeper relationship with God. I’m expected to give them spiritual direction and comfort and hope straight from the Lord.

And when I’m finished with these conversations, I feel so small and insignificant. I feel like I haven’t helped at all. I haven’t said anything they couldn’t have heard from almost anyone else. I look at my own selfishness and sin and inclinations to evil. I look at all the things I don’t know and don’t understand about my God and his ways and his will. And he still uses me. And that completely blows me away.

I’m so burdened sometimes by the things I know I’m supposed to say. I’m so relieved when they come out right. So discouraged when they don’t. The calling is so demanding and so satisfying. It’s the hardest work I’ve ever done and the most rewarding. It’s so right for me in that I feel capeable of study and public speaking. So wrong in that I’m so selfish and sinful and weak.

It’s so up and down. It’s so exhilerating and terrifying. All at the same time. All the time.

But the grace for me—the thing I’ve learned—is that it’s not me. It’s God in me. It’s God through me. It’s God for me. And that’s where I get my courage and my confidence.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer: “I expect naught from myself, everything from the work of Christ. My service has its objectivity in that expectation and by it I am freed from all anxiety about my insufficiency and failure.”

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I got home at 2:45 Thursday afternoon. Carrie-Anne and I got reacquainted briefly and then sped out to pick up the girls to take in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

I won’t ruin the movie for you. I’ll talk about the plot and the ending of a movie from 1963 in the pulpit and get accused of ruining it for somebody. So I won’t do that here. Let’s just say that the characters in the movie are not developed at all. The dialogue is much less clever and much less comfortable than what we’ve come to expect from Spielberg and Lucas. A lot of the adventure and chase scenes were ripoffs from the previous flicks. And there weren’t any surprises.

It’s almost like they knew they could throw almost anything together with these names and characters and plot lines and make a ton of money off ticket prices, product placement, and merchandising without even trying. And they did. And they are.

But it’s still Indiana Jones. And we still eat it up at Stanglin Manor.

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We got together Sunday night at Chisholm Park in Hurst with all the members of the three Small Groups that formed from our original Small Group that first started meeting in January. There were almost 50 of us. Matt & Rechelle cooked the fajitas. We sang and prayed in the big pavilion. And the kids played together all afternoon. We plan to do this probably once a quarter as our groups keep growing bigger and bigger and multiply into even more groups. May our Father continue to bless us with more people and more opportunities to grow and to serve and to share with our Christian brothers and sisters.

Peace,

Allan

Preacher AND Pastor

May 16, 2008 / Allan / 1 Comment

I want to be both.

Preaching is not pastoring. And pastoring is not preaching. Two different things. But a pastor can be a preacher. And a preacher can be (should be, must be, has to be) a pastor.

I want to be both.

John Frye comments on being both in a post earlier this week on The Jesus Creed:

“In my early years a lingering value still suggested that pastors shouldn’t get too close to people because the pastor might not be able to maintain his “objectivity.” All of this created a low church liturgy where the Sunday sermon was what mattered most. Preaching was the big thing in the service. Getting to know the Book was more important than getting to know God. Mistakenly in the minds of most, the one equaled the other. I became a theological technician, not a pastor. Put me in a white lab coat and I would have been mistaken for a social scientist. Then in the midst of modern American evangelical pastoring, I met Jesus the Pastor. He is the good pastor, the great pastor, the chief pastor (see John 10, Hebrews 13, and 1 Peter 5). Jesus undeniably cared deeply for people and got close to them. He even led a small group. The Apostle Paul said that he became like a nursing mother and caring father to his people (1 Thessalonians 2). This sounds like very close relationships to me. Jesus cared about little things, too, like a widow’s two mites, a fallen sparrow, a cup of water, a coin, five loaves and two fish. Jesus’ ministry didn’t turn on his synagogue exegetical sermons. He mixed it up with people outside the “church walls” at Matthew’s house, a Samaritan well, a roof top, a wedding, a garden, the lake shore, a Pharisee’s house, long dusty roads, and a graveyard.

Preaching is not pastoring. Preaching is part of the liturgy for the community of believers. Pastoring is about the individually named people who have individual stories, with their individual dreams and wounds, their particular gains and losses, their anxieties and hopes, their longings for and fears of God. Pastors live within God’s grand Story of salvation and help others see how their individual stories can get caught up into God’s Story. I like the image Eugene H. Peterson uses for pastors: pastors are detectives searching out the slightest evidence of God’s grace in peoples’ lives. I’ve learned that pastors are artists of the soul, not religious scientists.”

Caring about the little things. Ministry in the interruptions. Intercession and encouragement. Proclamation and submission. Teaching and reaching. Studying and hugging. Preacher AND Pastor.

I want to be both.

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Check out Mark’s comment there on the right side of this page, and up a bit, for three links to three video clips from It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. If you’re a fan of the movie, you’ll enjoy all three. If you just want to see Ethel Merman yelling and screaming and insulting everybody, the first link is best. She especially gives it to Jonathon Winters. If you want to view the original two-minute promotional trailer, that’s the second link. If you just want to see Ethel Merman slip and fall on the banana peel, that’s 1:31 into the third clip. Thanks, Mark.

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I auditioned last night for Kipi and our VBS production of “Bound for Holy Ground.” I read for the parts of Moses and an Egyptian taskmaster and a Hebrew slave. Since I won’t shave my head (I’m not willing to risk it-it may not come back), I know I won’t be playing Pharaoh. Other than that, we’re just all going to find out Sunday morning where Kipi’s placing us. I don’t think I’m compassionate or sympathetic enough to play Moses. Plus, I’m not sure he gets any funny lines.

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Peace,

Allan

Train Yourself To Be Godly

April 9, 2008 / Allan / 1 Comment

Absolutely nothing is more critical to a Christian leader than the growth and maturing of his heart and mind. Paul’s words to the young preacher in 1 Timothy 4:7, “train yourself to be godly,” describe an intentional lifestyle. Our hearts have to be regularly nurtered and fed. Our minds need to be cultivated as we think through what it means to be a faithful leader in God’s Kingdom. Paul uses the words “godly” and “godliness” only eight times in all of Scripture. And all eight instances are found in Timothy and Titus, encouraging the preachers to live good and holy lives, grounded in the source of their holiness, Almighty God.

As proclaimers of the Word, we are to live as models in the Kingdom. Our very lives should reflect what it means to be transformed into the image of Christ Jesus. Others must see God in us. If salvation from God through Christ hasn’t changed me, if it hasn’t impacted the way I live my life, then how could it possibly appeal to anyone else? How would I ever expect the believers in our church here to allow the Spirit to transform them if the one proclaiming this transformation to them week after week is himself the same?

I must live a godly life.

And that takes strong self-discipline. It demands a constant concentration, a consistent focus on thinking and talking and acting like God. It requires on-going evaluation and continual correction. It means realizing I am a very self-centered person, and deciding to die to self all over again, several times a day. It’s understanding my weakness with certain temptations and consciously avoiding those situations, several times a day. It takes a devotion to study and prayer and meditation. It takes a dedication to service and sacrifice. And it’s realizing that all those times I fall short, God’s Spirit is living inside me to lift me up, to encourage me, and to empower me to live a godly life.

In that way, my failures and my shortcomings actually serve to move me closer to God, not destroy me. And my life serves as an example to others, not as a barricade between people and the Gospel.

Peace,

Allan

Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

March 13, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

“This evil generation hath labored to take away from God the sword of his justice; they have endeavored to prove to themselves that God will clear the guilty and will by no means punish iniquity, transgression, and sin.” ~from “Turn or Burn,” a sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon in 1883

I suppose things really haven’t changed that much in 125 years. While we (I) gravitate quickly and fiercely to Christ’s love, we (I) tend to overlook or ignore the righteousness of our God that demands justice and judgment. But the truth is there is no need for salvation through Christ Jesus if there’s no coming judgment. God’s grace is entirely unnecessary if there’s no coming punishment. We can’t begin to comprehend the magnitude of God’s love in Christ and the enormity of our deliverance through his death, burial, and resurrection until we set it against the reality of God’s holy judgment.

In studying for last night’s “Oasis” lesson on 2 Corinthians 5, I came across a couple of very, very old sermons: the Spurgeon homily on Psalm 7:11-12 quoted above and a classic preached by Jonathon Edwards during the Great Awakening in 1741. The title of Edwards’ sermon was “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” It’s probably the most famous sermon ever preached in America.

“The God that holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect, over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked; his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire; he is of purer eyes than to bear to have you in his sight; you are ten thousand times more abominable in his eyes than the most hateful venomous serpent is in ours. (He’s just getting warmed up here) You have offended him infinitely more than ever a stubborn rebel did his prince; and yet, it is nothing but his hand that holds you from falling into the fire every moment.

It is to be ascribed to nothing else, that you did not go to hell last night; that you were suffered to awake in this world, after you closed your eyes to sleep. And there is no other reason to be given, why you have not dropped into hell since you arose this morning, but that God’s hand has held you up. There is no other reason to be given why you have not gone to hell, since you have sat here in this house of God, provoking his pure eyes by your sinful wicked manner of attending his solemn worship. Yea, there is nothing else to be given as a reason why you do not at this very moment drop down into hell. (At this point, if one of us were attempting to preach this sermon today, an emergency session of the elders would already be gathering and a couple of deacons would have already dialed 9-1-1)

O Sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in; it is a great furnace of wrath, that you are held over in the hand of that God, whose wrath is provoked and incensed as much against you, as against any of the damned in hell. You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder; and you have nothing to lay hold of to save yourself, nothing to keep off the flames of wrath, nothing of your own, nothing that you have ever done, nothing that you can do, to induce God to spare you one moment.”

Wow. And that’s just a part of the introduction.

Ever heard a sermon like that? I never have. I doubt I ever will.

Maybe we’re too sophisticated now. Maybe it’s too blunt for our sensitivities. It’s not loving enough or tolerant enough for us today.

Or, maybe in this country in this age, we’re caught in a deadly and eternally damning cycle. As our sense of self grows larger and larger and our sense of God becomes smaller and smaller, maybe we fear God so little that we don’t understand the seriousness of our sin. And we sense the seriousness of our sin so little that we seldom fear God.

The words of the old hellfire and brimstone preachers are true. And that’s what makes the love and the mercy and the grace and the forgiveness of our holy and righteous God through Christ Jesus all the more wonderful and amazing. That’s what makes the words of the old apostle John so powerful:

“And now, dear children, continue in him, so that when he appears we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming.” ~1 John 2:28

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

Category: Preaching (Page 23 of 25)

The Gospel AND Our Lives

Back In The Saddle

Preacher AND Pastor

Train Yourself To Be Godly

Sinners In The Hands Of An Angry God

Getting My Goat

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