I Owe You a Post

It’s been a full eleven days since my last post. Sorry. Thank you. Let’s get caught up.

(As always, click on the images to get the full size)

We had a fantastic couple of days at LTC over the April 2-3 weekend. Lots of gold, silver, and bronze brought back to Legacy from the DFW Hyatt. My favorite part of Leadership Training for Christ is going to as many of the events as possible and cheering on all our kids. Encouraging them. Telling them what a great job they did. Recognizing in them the great gifts they have from God and seeing in them all the wonderful ways our Father will use them to his eternal glory. I love laughing with them and patting them on the back and hugging them after a job well done. Our teachers and volunteers do a great job with LTC here at Legacy. And the kids always respond with award-winning performances.

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Our four-day Resurrection Renewal was a God-glorifying, Church-edifying, Gospel-verifying event that started Easter Sunday morning with 1,200 men, women, and children lifting our hearts and voices to God in praise and thanksgiving for the empty tomb. Four days of participating in the Resurrection accounts from Holy Scripture. Four days of basking in the power of the Resurrection and gaining new strength in our Resurrection hope.

Two brand new souls experienced their own resurrections Wednesday evening as they were buried with Christ and raised to walk in newness of eternal life. Five of our brothers and sisters publicly confessed their sins and asked for the prayers of their church family as they declared their own new beginnings.

I’m so proud of my Legacy family. We baked cookies and served refreshments. We greeted visitors and held doors. We organized and taught fun interactive children’s classes. We invited our friends. We wore empty tomb T-shirts and passed out flyers. We were/are the kind of church family — the kind of Resurrection Community — to which anyone would want to belong.

And it’s not over.

I’m so encouraged by the conversations I’m overhearing in the hallways during and following our Resurrection Renewal. We’re thinking and talking about the right things. Our attention at Legacy is shifting from an inward to an outward focus, from one of being served to one of serving others. This is just the start. We’re going to keep inviting our friends to Legacy. We’re going to keep talking about the Resurrection. We’re going to keep paying more attention to the lost than to the saved. And we’re going to remember that the Resurrection is not simply something we sing about or teach. It’s not something we merely believe. The Resurrection is who we are.

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By the way, many of you have been asking about the three-minute video we showed at the end of the sermon Easter Sunday morning. The audio was from a sermon preached by S. M. Lockridge called “The Seven-Way King.” The video images were produced and edited by Albert Martin. Jeff Walling has used the video on several ocassions at WinterFest and the Tulsa Workshop. You can check out the video again by clicking here.

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For the second time in three years, Whitney wound up winning the annual Stanglin Bracket Racket. She correctly picked Duke to win it all and edged me out by a total of six points in our family college basketball pool.

I kept hoping and waiting for the Hoosiers miracle. I kept wishing for Shooter to show up and coach the Butler Bulldogs into a picket fence play with Jimmy Chitwood / Gordon Hayward hitting the game-winner at the buzzer. Only in the movies, I guess.

Whitney also, last January, correctly predicted the winner and the final score of the Super Bowl. Seriously! She not only chose the double-digit underdog Saints to beat the Colts, she picked the exact final score! We’re taking her to Vegas tomorrow. Or maybe to the QT to at least buy a couple of lottery tickets.

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We got to see lots of old friends this past Saturday night at the annual Oklahoma Christian University Alumni and Fundraising dinner here at Legacy. It was the biggest North Texas dinner to date. Tons of money raised and pledged for the new Bobby Murcer Athletics center and for scholarships to deserving DFW kids. The highlight for me was catching up with my old Delta buddies and reliving our quests for All-Sports trophies and Spring Sing laughs. What OC event would be complete without a Delta Alumni photo?

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Whitney and Valerie were in Glenrose for a youth retreat. Carrie-Anne stayed in bed. So Carley accompanied me early, early, early Sunday morning to the Red Lot on the northeast side of Texas Stadium to witness in person the implosion of that iconic landmark. We woke up at 4:00am, got there at 5:15, (we handed the parking lot attendant $25, he handed us four boxes of Kraft macaroni and cheese) and worked our way to the front of the barricades to hear — and feel — the concussions of the dynamite and suck the concrete and steel dust into our lungs.

I still can’t really imagine that Texas Stadium doesn’t exist anymore. My aunt LouAnn took me to my first ever Cowboys game in that building when I was twelve. I saw Drew Pearson’s consecutive-games-with-a-catch streak end in a close win over the Patriots there with Paul Barron. I wore my blue Roger Staubach jersey. Paul politely asked me to stop yelling so much through my Cowboys popcorn container which doubled as an effective megaphone. I think the people in front of us were giving us looks. When I was 15, Mike Cunningham and I got thrown out of an SMU-Texas Tech game there for dropping ice cubes off the second deck. When I was 16, Todd Johnson and I froze to death there in a miserable January Cowboys playoff loss to the Rams. I remember a two-touchdown fourth quarter performance by Chuck McSwain there in a pre-season win over the Dolphins. I remember a wild Sunday night shootout with the Raiders with five other high school friends. We jeered Marc Wilson and I ate too many bugles. And I was in the stands when a rookie Troy Aikman outpassed Dan Marino in a close loss in ’89.

I was also blessed to roam the sidelines, pressboxes, and underground tunnels at Texas Stadium for four seasons as a radio reporter for KRLD and AM 990. I ate my meals across the hall from the locker room. I ticked off Bill Parcells and made Terrence Newman laugh. I squeezed through the crowds to interview quarterbacks and linebackers and enjoyed leisurely conversations with offensive linemen and kickers. I rode elevators with movie stars and singers. I met Tex Schramm there. I shared work space with the giants in the sports media industry, some of them my heroes of the past and present. I was there when a Thanksgiving Day halftime performer caught on fire. And I was part of the standing ovation when Emmitt Smith passed Walter Payton.

Even after watching it completely collapse into a pile of debris yesterday, I still can’t really imagine that Texas Stadium is gone. I saw Tom Landry coach there. I saw Staubach throw and Tony run. I can still see the end zone scoreboard flash “Martinized!” after a huge Harvey Martin sack. I can still hear Tanya Tucker’s “When I Die” after every Cowboys touchdown. And I can still hear Tommy Loy’s trumpet playing the national anthem.

Thank you, Carley, for going with me and for screaming, “That was awesome!” at the top of your lungs when Texas Stadium was demolished. Forgive your dad for not feeling the same way.

Peace,

Allan