The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Buckling

October 13, 2025 / / 0 Comments

It’s funny that the Cowboys stood their ground during Micah Parsons’ revenge game but couldn’t handle the revenge game for Rico Dowdle.

After telling several former Cowboys teammates last week that he was going to run angry and violently, after warning the Cowboys they had “better buckle up,” and after his grandstanding cautions went public, Rico went off yesterday for 183 yards rushing, 56 more yards receiving, and a touchdown in Carolina’s victory over Jerry’s team. It seems that if an opponent makes those kinds of statements, you do everything in your power to keep it from happening. You let Bryce Young throw for 500 yards and five touchdowns before you let Dowdle make good on his claims. That’s what must be so terrifying for Cowboys fans: Rico called his shot and delivered. Easily. Rico knows how bad the Cowboys defense is, called it out, and then ran around, over, and through it in dominating fashion.

The Cowboys defense is digressing. And that’s saying something. Michael Irvin posted yesterday, “I’ve never seen an NFL defense with so many people running wide open!” The six quarterbacks who have played against Dallas this year are averaging 287 yards per game with a total of 15 TDs.

Rico said after the game that the Cowboys “were not buckled up.” No, sir. They are buckling.

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I’ve been getting about one text per week for the past two months from friends with no ties to Dallas Christian High School sending me screen shots of this Facebook post, asking me if I played on that 1985 football team. That team won the TAPPS State Championship, the first in school history, and the first of three straight state titles. This post / meme / graphic / whatever is evidently making the rounds as members of that team celebrate the 40th anniversary of their historic achievement. And as my friends see it, they shoot me a text. “Did you play on that team?” “Are you in this picture?”

No! I am not in that picture and I did not play on that football team!

I was the class of ’85, which means I graduated in the spring of 1985. That football team won the state championship in the fall of 1985, which means they won three straight championships as soon as I graduated. We lost in the state championship game my sophomore year, got bounced in the second round of both my junior and senior seasons, and then the boys behind us sealed the deal by earning those huge gold footballs over the next three straight campaigns.

They honored that 1985 team at last Friday’s game at DC, gathering up mostly the seniors, it seems, for a nice tribute at halftime. I did play with all the guys in this picture, all of them during the two years before their title, some of them in junior high and JV. More than that, in that little private school, I did life with every one of them, and I remember them fondly. Randy Hill’s outsized personality, his dead-on impersonations of Coach Richmond, and his ability to always make us laugh. Jeff “Low Budget” Majors’ loyalty and friendship and understated compassion and care for others. Mark Cawyer’s leadership and his awesome tenor singing voice. Kyle Douthit’s unmistakable good-natured grumpiness. Robbie Beene’s squirrely penchant for pranks. And our beloved Coach T (“Settle down, little bodies”), who is still driving the team bus today.

Congratulations to the 1985 Dallas Christian Chargers on the 40th anniversary of our school’s first ever state championship.

“Skitta Bop.”
Allan

Peace. Please.

October 12, 2025 / / 0 Comments

We thank God for these first significant steps toward peace in the Middle East. We pray for the Palestinians as they grieve and mourn and attempt to rebuild. We pray for Israel as they reunite with loved ones. We pray that God’s holy will be done in Gaza and in Tel Aviv just as it is in heaven.

We pray for peace in Eastern Europe between Russia and Ukraine. We pray for peace in our own country. Between reds and blues. Between rich and poor. Between Black and White.

We praise and we continue to appeal to our God whose eternal Kingdom knows no national boundaries and whose limitless love does not distinguish between races, cultures, languages, or citizenship status.

Peace. Truly.
Allan

House Divided

October 11, 2025 / / 0 Comments

It’s the first Texas-OU game for the boys and David and Valerie have them decked out in opposing unis. Elliott is wearing Sooners red while Samuel is sporting the burnt orange of UT. Val sent us the picture this morning from their home in Tulsa and labeled it “House Divided.” But I’m not sure how divided it really is. It looks to me in this picture that Elliott is attempting to “Hook ‘Em” with his right hand.

C-A and I think the onesies should be switched. Elliott looks more like our side of the family, while Sammy looks more like David’s side.

Here’s hoping Arch Manning looks more like his uncles today.

Hook ‘Em,
Allan

Holding On

October 10, 2025 / / 0 Comments

I thank God for refreshing my soul and rekindling my heart for his holy mission the way he does every single year at ACU’s Summit. My spirit is overflowing with gratitude today for our Lord and for the good people at Abilene Christian University who continue this annual gathering of church leaders despite the many challenges in providing physical space, brilliant content, inspiring worship, and relational opportunities for an increasingly digitized and individualized group of ministers and pastors.

We typically take seven or eight of our nine ministers on the team at GCR, but this year only four of us were able to make the two-hour drive for the event that covers parts of three days. We do our own tracks with our fellow preachers, youth ministers, children’s ministers, and formation ministers from all over Texas, the Southwest, and parts unknown. But we worship, take in the keynotes, and eat our meals together, sharing what we’ve learned, praying for each other, and laughing. On Thursday, we were honored to be joined for lunch at Twisted Root with Jason Minor, one of our amazing GCR teenagers who is enjoying the first weeks of his freshman year at ACU. We want to keep connections with our kids; what a joy to know that our kids want to maintain those connections with us.

I am at once dismayed and greatly encouraged to know that most preachers are dealing with all the same things when it comes to the current climates in our churches. Today, “Christian” means a lot of different things to a lot of different people, both inside and outside the Church. Some of those things are decidedly un-Christian, which is killing our witness to a desperate and dying world.

I’ll paraphrase what the brilliant Mark Hamilton said during a session on Isaiah 40-55 and its message to our present time and culture. He said the greatest gift the Church can give to our communities and to our world, is calm, reasoned discourse. We should call the demagogues for what they are–in the government and in our society, who they are and what they are doing–we should be clear about it. We should tell our brothers and sisters who are in the rabbit holes to repent and, if they don’t repent, to leave our congregations. Because people who are searching for God will discern very quickly that the church is not the place to seek. This is not a hypothetical; this is real. It is happening with a majority of younger people right now today.

Jerry Taylor’s powerful homily on our fear of death and the spirit of Cain and of the anti-Christ that is so prevalent in our communities and our churches left me feeling incredibly inadequate and gutless. I know my church needs to hear these things, I know I am called by our God to proclaim the truth that Christ lives and that Jesus alone is Lord and that we are collectively losing our minds and our souls by employing the ways of the world and chasing after political power to remake society in our own images. When I asked Jerry afterwards if he had a word for preachers like me in the situations we’re in–there are hundreds of us–he said, “Allan, there are bigger things at stake than your employment.”

I know courage thrives in community and in collaboration. That’s why I am so thankful for my pastor friends in Midland; for my longtime friendships with preachers I’ve known for 25-plus years; for Jason, with whom I study and pray and argue and laugh; and with guys and gals in our unique fraternity I’m just now meeting and getting to know. We hold on to Scripture. We hold on to justice. We hold on to love. We hold on to our Lord and the promises of our God. And we hold on to each other.

Peace,
Allan

Hard-Found Humility

October 8, 2025 / / 1 Comment

Pastoring a church can sometimes be a brutal business. Congregational ministry is richly satisfying for me, but it’s also by far the hardest work I’ve ever done and sometimes kicks the stuffing completely out of me. Being the preacher means getting cut. Deeply. By people you love very much. Such sharp and painful cuts. Friends who leave. People who are lost. Unfounded accusations. Jumped conclusions. Confusing complaints. A million different betrayals. When I encountered one of my first set backs in my first year of preaching, a long time ago, someone told me that the church never loves the preacher as much as the preacher loves the church. I didn’t know what he meant back then. Stan Reid, the president of my seminary, wrote on my graduation card in 2007, God will use the good times to encourage you and the bad times to keep you humble; both are needed. Indeed.

But it’s not just what others do to us, it’s our own mistakes and mess-ups that keep us humble. Eugene Peterson wrote this in a letter to his son about being a pastor:

“We make far more mistakes in our line of work than other so-called professionals. If physicians and engineers and lawyers and military officers made as many mistakes as we do in our line of work, they would be out on the street in no time. It amazes me still how much of the time I simply don’t know what I’m doing, don’t know what to say, don’t know what the next move is… But I had a sense much of the time (but not by any means continuously) that ‘not knowing what I am doing’ is more or less what it feels like when I am ‘trusting in God’ and ‘following Jesus.’ 

I’ve never been so dependent on my time alone with our Lord in Word and Prayer every single day than since he’s called me to be a preacher. I find that more and more of what God is asking me to do and what the church expects me to do is completely impossible for me to do. I cannot do it. I have already messed it up. I am listening to you, Lord. I am following you. And we both know only you can do this.

Lastly, we preachers are humbled by trying to shepherd our churches in the name and manner of Jesus. He teaches us how to stoop, how to give, how to work with a bowl and a towel. He teaches us to lean in to the interruptions, to make the hospital visits, to listen for a really long time, to write the card or the letter, to ask for forgiveness, to show mercy, to exercise patience–the whole time looking for that little opening into someone’s soul.

I was invited to speak at First Baptist’s annual minister appreciation lunch here in Midland on Monday. Those pastors I already knew and some of the ones I met on Monday all concur that right now today may be the most difficult time to be a pastor in our lifetimes. It kills some guys. It makes them hard. They wear masks and lose their authenticity. They get guarded and stiff. Others graciously embrace the hard-found humility. They become more patient, more kind, more full of grace for others and for themselves.

I thank my God for the tremendous honor and for the lessons in humility. May my gentleness be evident to all. The Lord is near.

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Our most wonderful grandsons are three-months old today and they are even more incredibly awesome than you can begin to imagine. Look at these guys!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those two pictures were taken yesterday. The official  month-day pictures are always on the giraffe. Those came today.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

They’re gonna need a bigger giraffe.

Peace,
Allan

Don’t Fight, Invite

October 7, 2025 / / 0 Comments

We are having so much fun with Breno and Gabi Escobar and Jose Luiz and Isabel Siqueira, two professors and their wives from SerCris Training School in Campo Grande, Brazil. Our GCR Church has partnered with SerCris since its founding in 2002, and the two couples are in Midland for a week to help us kick off our first-ever Missions Month. Whitney and I took Breno to a Texas high school football game Friday, a clash between two state-ranked teams in Greenwood, which also served as the Rangers’ homecoming and a huge Greenwood win. The event provided everything Breno needed to experience at his first ever in-person American football game: the entire community in attendance, sitting shoulder to shoulder on aluminum bleachers, unbelievably large homecoming mums, two undefeated teams making big plays on the field, cheerleaders, two marching bands, and a homecoming queen.

On Saturday, we took Breno and Gabi to Green Acres Miniature Golf, the site of George and Laura Bush’s first date a long, long time ago. Breno kept us in stitches with his unorthodox play–golf balls were flying all over the place–and his soccer-style celebrations. He wound up in the drink once–not in the water hazard that runs across the field of play, but in the waterfall behind the hole! Carrie-Anne destroyed us by hitting three holes-in-one and finishing with a one-under-par 47. She was absolutely on fire! Breno finished by hitting the ball OVER the barn on the last hole, not THROUGH it.

We had both couples over Saturday night to watch college football, shoot pool, eat a massive dinner, and play our favorite card game, 99. Turns out, you can play 99 without knowing any English at all!

 

 

 

 

 

At church Sunday, Breno led our communion time by reading from Jesus’ story of the great feast in Luke 14 and Jose Luiz spoke during the sermon time about all that our God is doing in them and through them in Campo Grande. GCR’s relationship with SerCris goes back to some early church plants in the 1980s and Jose Luiz connected all the dots for us very well. After church, we enjoyed a big lunch together with GCR friends at La Bodega, celebrating a fabulous kickoff to Missions Month.

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We’re using the Travel Narrative in the Gospel of Luke as our guiding text during Missions Month. As Jesus is “on the way” to Jerusalem, as he travels from Galilee to the capital city, as he walks from the place where his ministry began to the place where it will all be ultimately accomplished, he remains focused on the mission. Critical to the mission, Jesus purposefully travels through Samaria, unfriendly territory. And as we watch Jesus interact with people, handle circumstances, and explain things in the mission field of Samaria, we can learn how to interact with people, handle circumstances, and explain things in the mission fields of Midland and Brazil, in West Texas and Kenya and Honduras.

One of the first things we learn as Jesus embarks on his mission journey “along the way” is that his mission is an invitation, it’s not a fight. It’s not about judgment or force. We don’t motivate by fear and we don’t fight; we invite.

The very first Samaritan village Jesus and his disciples encounter rejects them outright. “We don’t want you or your message! Hit the road, bub!” And the Zebedee boys are ticked. James and John, the Sons of Thunder, know exactly how they should respond: “Let’s call fire down from heaven! Do it, Jesus! Let’s incinerate all these hicks! Don’t they know who we are?! Boom! Fire! Straight outta heaven!”

And our Lord Jesus rebuked them. Immediately. Non-negotiable.

It is never our task as disciples on a mission with Christ along the way to destroy the opposition. This is not a fight and we are not warriors! Jesus-followers do not bash people who are not on our side. We don’t judge or annihilate or own anybody created by God in the image of God.

Yet, despite our Lord’s unqualified, uncompromising rebuke, so many of us continue to act like Zebedees. We’re following Jesus, full of devotion and zeal, but some of us will not tolerate any opposition. We won’t tolerate rejection. And we get our feelings hurt or we get angry and we rise up in a show of force to judge and destroy.

Boom! Fire! Straight outta my email!
Boom! Fire! Straight outta my prideful mouth!
Boom! Fire! Straight outta my Facebook post or my forwarded video!

With words and attitudes and digital weapons, we destroy anybody who rejects Jesus as the Savior of the World. Or our understandings of Jesus. Our our other beliefs and practices.

As ambassadors of Jesus, with Jesus, our message and our mission is never one of judgment or force. It’s invitation. It’s an invitation to share in the love and the blessings and the promises of God. An invitation to an abundant life in and with Christ Jesus. And invitation to be the Good Samaritan. An invitation to pray, to ask God. An invitation to serve others. An invitation to be healed, to be made whole. An invitation to take one’s place at the feast in the Kingdom of God.

“Invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Go out quickly into the streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame. Go out to the roads and country lanes and make them come in, so that my house will be full!” ~Luke 14:13-23

It’s an invitation mission. Not judgment. Not force. We don’t fight, we invite. In Midland and India. In West Texas and Western Brazil.

Peace,

Allan

 

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