The Next Two Years
Allan's Journey, Legacy Church Family, Legacy Construction June 13th, 2008In addition to naming our dreams and visions for the Legacy Church of Christ at our recent elders / ministers retreat, we were each asked to share our goals for the rest of 2008 and our goals for 2009. Most of mine reflect my overall dreams and visions. They’re specific ways, or at least time-frames, for doing what I’m convinced God is calling me/us to do.
The goals are up on the wall in my study as daily reminders of what I’ve pledged to do. And, again, in an effort maybe to encourage or inspire you—and at the least to help in holding me accountable—here they are:
Goals for the rest of 2008—
To explore as a church family the multi-faceted aspects of communion and the Lord’s Supper
To make communion time the highlight and climax of our Sunday morning assemblies
to work harder to foster more relationship and trust between the elders and me
make more hospital visits and send more cards and letters to Legacy members
use more examples and illustrations in my sermons from what God is doing with our people at Legacy
plan a 24 Hours of Prayer event this summer in conjunction with the opening of our new worship center
plan a Friends Day in the fall
Goals for 2009—
plan a four-day gospel meeting at Legacy, for our community, themed around the power of the resurrection; I’d like to call it a Resurrection Revival or something like that
full integration of our Spanish-speaking and deaf brothers and sisters into our Sunday morning assemblies
plan a Tarrant County unity event—some kind of singing and/or worship assembly—for all our Christian brothers and sisters in the area
Please join me in praying about these things as God works in and through me and us together to reconcile the world back to him.
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The temporary plywood wall that’s been separating the west side of our concourse from the new worship center construction has been taken down. You can see the brand new doors leading into the worship center now from almost anywhere on this side of Pod B.
And they’ve begun painting the inside of the worship center now.
Will it be late July or early August?
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Speaking of painting, yesterday marked the annual Legacy Youth Group Messy Games Day. Disgusting. Much more messy than last year. Much more food and food products involved. Egg-tosses. Wrestling in jello for whipped-cream covered watermelons. Human ice-cream sundaes. Yuck. I only got close enough to take pictures but still wound up with caramel and strawberry syrup on my shoes and pants.
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We’re studying the fourth and final Servant Song in Isaiah this Sunday, Isaiah 52:13-53:12. The cross-event is unrepeatable. But cross-bearing is not!
Peace,
Allan
June 14th, 2008 at 2:12 pm
allan,
i’m so excited for my senior year as i get to lead the youth group, but also as our church is growing. i’m glad to see that our eldership and ministers have made goals for our church that i think are well within our reach. thank you for the wonderful job that you do and the effort and dedication you show to bring people to christ. i appreciate the last year that you have devoted to preaching and hope that even after i go to college, i can still return to the wonderful church we have created. have a great summer.
June 16th, 2008 at 8:13 am
I really appreciate and agree with your 2009 goal of fully integrating our Hispanic and Deaf congregations with ours on Sunday mornings. Maybe this is because I grew up in such a small town, but I’ve never understood being segregrated into having “our own” services with whichever group that may be, including the youth group. I’ve worshipped in congregations where the deaf worshipped with us. It was many months of attending Legacy before I even knew we had a deaf population. It was more than that before I knew we had spanish speaking Christians with us. And I was never given the impression as a youth that I should be granted time to worship in my own way and sing only new songs in place of attending worship with everyone else. I’m not sure worshipping the same God but in separate rooms of the same building is quite what Jesus had in mind when he prayed for unity.
That’s just my two cents worth, but I got excited when I saw that as a goal because I really believe we can become unified in our worship and overcome differences in languages (deaf, Spanish, and youth) through our commonality in God.
June 16th, 2008 at 11:14 am
What an amazing picture of the Gospel that would be! It’s the blood of Christ that unites all of us. People of different heritage, different color, different background, different viewpoints, different ages, and different languages are all united in Jesus. Doesn’t a worship center filled with different colors and languages and different economic, social, and ethnic histories communicate the one-ness of the Body of Christ? What a powerful message! Salvation from God in Christ breaking down all the barriers! Truly one in Jesus! Can we start on this today?