The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Run It Back

January 6, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I’m making the call right now: Mike McCarthy will be back next season as the coach of the Cowboys. He shouldn’t be. Of course not. But Jerry’s painted himself into such a corner now, he really doesn’t have a choice.

If I had told you before the 2020 season that in five years as the Cowboys coach, McCarthy’s record would be 49-35, with two seasons of double-digit losses, and the team still would not have won a divisional playoff game, would you view that as a success? No. Neither would Jerry. He brought McCarthy in to win playoff games and compete for Super Bowls. But his five years look almost exactly like Jason Garrett’s last four years: 40-24, with no divisional playoff wins.

Nothing’s changed.

The problem here is Jerry Wayne. We all know this. But Jerry’s not going anywhere, so we talk about the coaches.

Jerry has spent all his money on two players: Dak and Lamb. In the next couple of months, whatever’s left of his money will go to Micah Parsons. He’s bet everything on this trio of superstars getting him to the Promised Land, but the window is quickly closing. The surgically repaired Prescott is entering his tenth season as the Cowboys quarterback. Firing McCarthy and bringing in a brand new coach with a brand new staff and a brand new scheme would mean starting over with a two or three year process and Jerry simply doesn’t have that much time. Giving NFL record-money to an oft-injured 31-year-old quarterback who’s never won a divisional playoff game wasn’t smart. But he’s stuck with him now and running it back with McCarthy is his only choice.

Plus, he can keep McCarthy for cheap. McCarthy is reportedly making $8-million per season, about half of what their teams pay Sean Payton, Mike Tomlin, Jim Harbaugh, and Sean McVay. With no other teams lining up to sign McCarthy, Jerry can leverage his coach into the middle of the pay scale and save money to sign Parsons.

I’m not sure how you excite the fan base for 2025 by bringing McCarthy back, especially when we know, because of the money crunch, it’ll be another offseason of limited free agent signings. This really is going to be a “run it back” and hope all your guys who are one year older won’t get hurt again. Again.

I did about five minutes of research this morning that resulted in a sobering truth. In the first 29 years of the franchise, when Landry and Tex Schramm ran the whole operation and the owner stayed in the background, the Cowboys suffered only three seasons of double-digit losses. That first 0-11-1 season when Dallas played without the benefit of a draft, the fourth season in franchise history, and Landry’s last in 1988–three times in 29-years. It’s been 29-years since the Cowboys won a divisional playoff game. During that time, Dallas has racked up a whopping nine seasons of double-digit losses and McCarthy has presided over two of them. The current General Manager has overseen all nine of them.

Jerry only knows how to sign two kinds of coaches: unemployed ones and ones from within the organization. He has no desire to gamble on a dynamic name from another team or to participate in a bidding war for the next young hotshot coordinator. Not that it matters. The coach is not the issue in Dallas. For three decades now, the coach is not the problem. So, yeah, Jerry, you’ve been talking yourself into it now for two months. Run it back.

Peace,

Allan

One Who is More Powerful

January 2, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I have no faith in the Longhorns. They did against Arizona State yesterday what they have done every week this season: turnovers and penalties. If Sark can’t get that team to tighten up the pre-snap infractions and if Quinn can’t put a little more zip on those long post routes, Texas has no chance against Ohio State in the Cotton Bowl. How many times did the announcers say, “That penalty is against the Outland Trophy winner” or “That flag is on the Jim Thorpe Award winner.” Typical Texas. They always have the best players on the field and, some would say, the very best players in the whole country, but they under-perform. They disappoint. The Longhorns are my only chance to win our office football pool. And, like the little kid at the end of the Dr Pepper “Playoffuary” commercial says, “The Longhorns stink.”

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“After me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit.” ~Matthew 3:11

What John the Baptist is preaching sounds a lot like the Old Testament prophets, calling God’s people into a right relationship with the Lord that must impact every part of their lives. Repentance is a change in your attitude toward God, which changes your attitude toward everything. And everybody. It’s a deep profound change that dramatically impacts your thoughts, actions, and the whole direction of your life. But as much as this sounds like the Old Testament, there’s a distinctly new element to this.

If I’m told over and over again that I need to repent, I need to change, I need to orient my life toward God, nothing significant ever happens. Nothing really changes. It’s like being told to exercise and eat right. I know these things, but I still wind up at Whataburger. I don’t need a preacher telling me to change. I don’t need some prophet telling me to get my life right, or else. I need some power from outside of myself to make me different. It’s got to be something besides me. Because I can ‘t do it!

Thank goodness this is not about New Year’s resolutions. This is about real, lasting, significant change.

This change you need is not about your willpower or your commitment or your resources. It’s not tied to your family or your nation or your church. It has nothing to do with your education or your zip code or your bank account. John the Baptist isn’t talking about some January resolution or a new self-help promotion. He is pointing us to the only source of legitimate change: the Holy Spirit.

The coming Lord, the one more powerful than me–he will baptize you with the promised Holy Spirit. A power who can make a new creation out of stubborn people like us, stones like us, who have no way to save ourselves. This power that is coming is not our power. It’s not the power of your good deeds or your inner resolve or your spiritual disciplines or even your faith and repentance. It’s God’s power. We are made able to repent and bear fruit because of God’s power in the coming Lord Jesus and his Holy Spirit.

The powers of this world are never going to make us into Abraham’s children. We can’t tell ourselves we have better genes or better morals or better theology. We can’t say we were raised better or we have better attitudes or better works. It is God through Christ who is making children of Abraham. God is changing people and making people brand new for his Kingdom.

And it’s happening. It’s already in motion. We are being changed. If we’ll just submit to it. Pay attention to it. Embrace it.

Peace,

Allan

The Kingdom is Coming

December 30, 2024 / / 0 Comments

“Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is near!” ~John the Baptist

The prayer of the early church was “Marana tha.” “Lord, come quickly.” That is not a prayer for Jesus to come again as a helpless infant, it’s the longing of God’s people for Christ to return to earth in the fullness of his divine power and glory. It’s the desperate cry of God’s people for the coming of that day when every knee will bow in heaven and on earth and under the earth and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father. When Jesus comes again to finally put an end to all sin and wickedness forever, when Jesus makes right all the things that are wrong, and he fixes everything that’s broken.

That’s not so scary to the poor and oppressed of our world. That’s not scary to the marginalized and mistreated. But for those of us with a lot to lose? It’s maybe a little scary.

John the Baptist is proclaiming a reality that’s coming, a reality that’s going to expose what you and I sometimes think is reality. This coming eternal reality is going to reveal what we think nobody knows about. It’s going to show just how false our earthly conditions and our human endeavors really are. The Holy One of Israel is going to expose all our pretensions for what they really are. In him is life, and that life is the light of all people. And that light is going to shine in the darkness.

“Judge nothing before the appointed time; wait til the Lord comes. He will bring to light what is hidden in darkness and will expose the motives of human hearts.” ~1 Corinthians 4:5

There is nothing hidden that won’t be exposed. Everything that’s concealed is going to be known and brought out into the open. All things are going to be revealed for what they really are. What’s in the dark will be brought out into the light. What’s kept in secret will be announced out loud for all to hear.

So.

Repent! For the Kingdom of Heaven is near!

John sees right through the selfish charades of the world and the games we play and the lines we say and the hypocritical loopholes we construct and how precious all of it is to us. He sees right through all of it to the sheer power and holiness of our coming Christ. John is pointing to the future, not the past. He’s orienting us away from our religious rituals and our rights and privileges toward the person of Jesus. He’s turning us away from our present systems and structures and all our values and positions to the utterly brand new authority and dominion of our coming Lord and his Kingdom.

It’s happening.

John the Baptist is standing out in the desert, right there in the Jordan River, where the world’s resistance to God is meeting the irresistible force of his certain coming. The ax is already at the foot of the trees. This thing’s already in motion. It’s happening. And you’d better get ready. You’d better re-think your priorities. You’d better re-order your life.

The Hope of Grace

December 28, 2024 / / 0 Comments

Comfort yourselves.
It is not from yourselves that you should expect grace.
But on the contrary, it is in expecting nothing from yourselves.
That is where you receive the hope of grace.

~ Pascal

4 Midland’s Christmas Day Message

December 26, 2024 / / 0 Comments

They managed to scrub all Christian thought and words completely out of the story, but last night’s “Eye on America” feature on the CBS Evening News highlighting our “4 Midland” partnership was still a positive message of unity in our divided world. And I thank God for it.

You know, our Lord told us that if we’ll love one another and come together in him, the world will take notice. Well, there’s nothing more worldly than the national news media, and they have noticed.

They used the word “tolerance” instead of “unity,” and they didn’t use any of what all four of us asserted as the motivation for our worship and service partnership: the fellowship we all share by the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. We’re not coming together out of a desire for tolerance, we’re uniting because our Lord told us to, because that’s his desire, his will, because that’s what he prayed on that last night, that all his followers would be as united as he is with the Father, so the world will know. That’s all we talked about with the CBS crew, but they didn’t use any of it.

The problem is that you have a very difficult time using the world’s methods to express the Gospel. The world is never going to preach Jesus or the ways of our God. It’s up to us, it’s up to followers of Christ. As we told the reporter, Jason Allen, on camera many times, if God’s people won’t unite in Christ Jesus, who will? As God’s children and disciples of Jesus, we are called, ordained by God, to express this unity in Christ to our world as a divine alternative to the way societies typically operate. I’m disappointed that Jesus was not the center of the story, as it is certainly the center of the friendship between us four pastors and the fellowship we share between our four congregations. Disappointed. Not surprised.

But, we can certainly celebrate small steps, little victories. Overall, it’s a very positive thing. It’s a start. And I’m grateful to Jason and his whole entourage for coming to Midland and spending parts of two days with us in order to tell our story. I pray that this helps affirm the things we are doing at GCR and, by God’s grace, the kind of church we want to become. And I pray the story can serve as an encouragement to our city and, who knows, maybe even widespread parts of the country. It’s a start.

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Here’s a photo of the three of us at the GCR Christmas Eve service Tuesday. We heard the bells! And then we went to Texas Roadhouse before going home to watch Albert Finney’s A Christmas Carol.

I’m writing to you from Carley and Collin’s kitchen in Flower Mound, the hub of our continued Christmas festivities. Carrie-Anne, Whitney, and I spent all day yesterday in Arlington with C-A’s side of the family and today we’re driving to Liberty City for quality time with my side. Since Carley and Collin moved back to DFW, their house has become a hotel for us: Kennedy Estates. I’m not sure it’s a blessing to them like it is to us.

Peace,

Allan

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