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Category: Allan’s Journey (Page 22 of 31)

Much Will Be Demanded

May 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

“From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded.” ~Luke 12:48

Jesus fed the five thousand with some rolls and a couple of fish. Scripture tells us he gave the food to his disciples and they, in turn, passed it on to the crowds. But what if the disciples had just held on to the food?

“Hey, thanks for the lunch, Jesus.”

Then Jesus hands them more. “Oh! OK. Thanks for the dinner, too, Jesus.”

Then Jesus gives them more. “Wow! Allright! Thank you, Jesus.” What if the disciples started looking around for some to-go boxes? What if they began trying to figure out how to get all this food home? What if Jesus’ followers had just held onto the food for themselves when their Lord was giving them more than enough to share with everyone in the crowds who had need?

Along with God’s great gifts comes great responsibility.

I never could shake those words of Jesus at the end of Luke 12. They didn’t really give me a guilt trip; they didn’t knock me down every time I read them or thought about them. It was more like a heavy burden that followed me everywhere I went. Because I’ve been given much. Materially, financially, physically, I am blessed. I’m rich. More than that, God has completely forgiven me of every one of the horrible sins I’ve ever committed in my life. He’s totally restored me to a perfectly righteous relationship with him. By the death and resurrection of Christ Jesus, I am eternally wealthy. I’m Bill Gates and Donald Trump combined. With a great haircut and 50 lawyers! And because of his great gifts and his matchless grace, it is demanded of me that I use the abilities and talents and opportunities he gives me, not to talk about the Cowboys and Rangers and Mavs, but to boldly proclaim salvation from God in Christ! It’s required of me to declare his love and mercy that are available to all mankind and his will and his plan to redeem and restore all of creation forever.

After many years of dealing with Luke 12:48 — alternately ignoring it, wrestling with it, praying about it, trying to shake it — I finally got up the faith or the guts (or both) to act on what God was demanding of me. And I will never look back.

The truth is that when my crucified and risen Lord returns, I couldn’t bear the thought of explaining to him the way I used his gifts and grace for all of my adult life: camped out in press boxes and locked up in studios talking about and obsessing about things that don’t matter.

He is coming back. Right? Yes, you know that.

Peace,

Allan

Who Stands Fast?

March 3, 2011 / / 2 Comments

“Who stands fast? Only the man whose final standard is not his reason, his principles, his conscience, his freedom, or his virtue, but who is ready to sacrifice all this when he is called to obedient and responsible action in faith and in exclusive allegiance to God — the responsible man, who tries to make his whole life an answer to the question and call of God.” ~Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christmas Eve 1942

The life of a disciple is active, not reactive. It has nothing to do with just talking about faith or teaching religious principles or believing theological ideas or keeping biblical rules. It has everything to do with living one’s whole life in obedience to God’s call through personal action. It doesn’t just require a mind. It requires a body, too.

Ours is a life given to us by God to be lived not in some kind of rigid, cramped, crowded, small, compromised, legalistic way but in a full, wild, joyful, exuberant, cheerful, celebratory way. A way that apprehends and assimilates and then radiates the freedom we have from God in Christ.

The way I see it, a full grasp of the freedom we have in Christ and the grace and mercy we’ve received from our God will come to mean, eventually,  that we are no longer afraid of sin. We’re not worried about messing up. We don’t hold back because of an anxiety over doing something that might displease our God. At the very least — stay with me here — avoiding sin will not be the main thing that drives us as we follow our Lord.

Our Father wants his beloved children to operate out of joy and freedom to do what is good and right, not out of fear of making a mistake. Isn’t that one of the great lessons in Jesus’ story about the servants and the talents in Matthew 25?

We must be more zealous to please God than to avoid sin. We must act in faith that our God who calls us to live boldly and outrageously for him also promises us that if and when we do mess up in enthusiastic service to our King, he promises forgiveness and consolation and salvation.

The Christian life is an active life. Our God calls us to give our whole selves to him. Brakes off. No looking back. Full speed ahead. He’s not going to punish us when, in pursuit of his will, we might mess up.

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Last Sunday’s sermon on Christ’s return from Revelation 21-22 prompted many, many kind comments and encouragements from dozens of my brothers and sisters here at Legacy. Many had never thought about heaven and earth and God’s ultimate mission in the ways Scripture so plainly paints it. Many seemed refreshed at the biblical promises that God’s will is ultimately going to be done on earth just as it is in heaven. That’s why we’re told to pray it, right? And that’s why we join it. The mission. The salvation objective. Those are the things we’re going to be considering together during Missions Month throughout March.

In a related item, Patrick Mead has posted a hilarious re-cap of all the individuals and groups throughout history who have predicted the return of Christ and the end of the world. Of course, mankind has a 100% fail rate in this useless undeavor. But the list is hilarious. I especially like the parenthetical comments in his list. One mentions the possibility that Van Halen may be the anti-Christ which may or may not, combined with Orwells’ vision, have led to the speculation about the year 1984. There’s a group called the Sword of God Brotherhood that is claiming the end of the world will come in 2017. They say that they alone will be spared and tasked to repopulate the earth. Here’s hoping there’s a Sword of God Sisterhood, too.

You can read the complete list by clicking here.

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I’m 24 hours away from my annual camping trip with my Four Horsemen friends. A weekend of encouragement, prayer, meditation, food, bonding, and at least one unforeseen near-catastophic incident to remember forever. These are the guys. These are the ones. They are my closest friends. They keep me going. They keep me accountable. They challenge me and they exhort me. They mature me in our faith. They inspire me to be a better man, a better husband and dad, a better preacher, a better disciple. Even while we’re throwing rocks at raccoons and making fun of Dan’s always-on survival mode, Jason’s tough guy facade (what a fake!), and Kevin’s wardrobe.

I can’t wait.

Peace,

Allan

A Tidbit After Bread

January 10, 2011 / / 2 Comments

Regular readers of this blog will know of my deep respect and admiration for German theologian and Christian martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer. No books have had more of an impact on my walk with Christ, my calling as a congregational preacher, and my faith in God than Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship and Life Together. Costly grace. True discipleship. Christian community. These are all concepts that Bonhoeffer not only wrote about brilliantly, but also lived out genuinely.

So you can imagine my delight at receiving over the Christmas holidays the first Bonhoeffer biography in almost 50 years. Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy by New York author Eric Metaxas. I took a big bite out of this massive 542-page volume last night. And I intend to have it completed by the end of the week. It is excellent.

In the several books on Bonhoeffer I’ve read, I’ve seen his “tidbit” quote about complete commitment to Christ.

“The religion of Christ is not a tidbit after one’s bread; on the contrary, it is the bread or nothing. People should at least understand and concede this if they call themselves Christian.”

I knew the quote was taken from a lecture on the essence of Christianity that Bonhoeffer delivered early on his career. But this new book tells me it was part of a three-lecture series to a group of teenage boys he was mentoring in Barcelona in the winter of 1928. Bonhoeffer was 22-years-old. But he already had a firm grip on what Jesus meant when he said, “Follow me.”

The title of the lecture is “Jesus Christ and the Essence of Christianity.” It was number two in his series, preached to the teens on December 11, 1928. And this new book has published a pretty big chunk of it.

Bonhoeffer begins by talking about the fact that most Christians have actually exiled Christ from their lives. He says, “Of course we build him a temple, but we live in our own houses.” Bonhoeffer points out that we only take Jesus seriously on Sunday mornings. Our religion only has meaning on the first day of the week where one “gladly withdraws for a couple of hours, but only to get back to one’s place of work immediately afterward.”

OK, now here’s the really good stuff about taking Christ and his call seriously:

“One admires Christ according to aesthetic categories as an aesthetic genius, calls him the greatest ethicist; one admires his going to his death as a heroic sacrifice for his ideas. Only one thing one doesn’t do: one doesn’t take him seriously. That is, one doesn’t bring the center of his or her own life into contact with the claim of Christ to speak the revelation of God and to be that revelation. One maintains a distance between himself or herself and the word of Christ, and allows no serious encounter to take place. I can doubtless live with or without Jesus as a religious genius, as an ethicist, as a gentleman — just as, after all, I can also live without Plato and Kant. Should, however, there be something in Christ that claims my life entirely with the full seriousness that here God himself speaks and if the word of God once become present only in Christ, then Christ has not only relative but absolute, urgent significance for me. Understanding Christ means taking Christ seriously. Understanding this claim means taking seriously his absolute claim on our commitment. And it is now of importance for us to clarify the seriousness of this matter and to extricate Christ from the secularization process in which he has been incorporated since the Enlightenment.”

Yes, Christ Jesus is an all-or-nothing proposition. Yes, we have a long way to go in our understanding and our practice.

Peace,

Allan

This Is Not God’s Way

December 15, 2010 / / 5 Comments

Winston Churchill told a story about a little boy who was playing on a pier and tumbled over into the water. The boy couldn’t swim and began to cry out for help. A soldier working at a nearby dock heard the desperate screams and dove into the sea. This brave young man swam out to the child, put him on his back, and brought him safely back to shore and into the loving and nurturing arms of the cheering crowd. The next day, the little boy’s mother came back to the docks looking for the courageous soldier. When the pier workers pointed her toward her child’s rescuer, she walked right up to him and asked, “Young man, are you the one who saved my little boy?”

The soldier stood up. His chest began to swell and a smile broke out on his face as he answered her, “Yes, ma’am, I am.”

The woman leaned in and looked right into his eyes, “Where’s his cap?!?”

We preachers and ministers and elders and other church staff believe we are called by God. We believe we are charged by God to do the things we do in the name of his Son. It’s a high calling. It’s a noble vocation. It’s not a nine-to-five gig. It’s an all-consuming passion that compels us to preach and teach and pray and serve.

So when we answer that call from our Lord and move into the ministry, we all believe we’re entering a holy, God-sanctified realm. But the reality for most of us is that we’ve entered a system, a man-created and human-perpetuated system that grinds up and spits out preachers and elders. Broken preachers and elders are all around us. A lot of them are still working. A lot of them are not. Burned out. Trashed. Used. Abused. Walked all over. Stomped on. Chewed up and spit out like the gunk on the floor of a major league dugout.

The expectations we place on preachers and elders, the ways we treat them, the things we say to them and about them — behind their backs and even to their faces! — the things we demand of them, the attitudes of ownership and entitlement that guide our interactions with them, none of that is from God. We’ve been a part of this sick system for so long, we think it’s God’s way. But it’s not. It’s the human way. It’s the world’s way. The way we generally treat preachers and elders is not God’s way.

The reason wives and families of ministers and elders resent the church, the reason so many of our best and strongest and most faithful men refuse to serve when the church calls, the reason so few of our most gifted young people are interested in the call to preach and minister is that they all know they’re not entering into a holy partnership with God and his people as much as they’re entering into a life-sucking, soul-robbing, energy-draining system.

It’s not supposed to be this way. It doesn’t have to be this way.

It needs to change. We can do better. And we should.

The call from our God is for us to live in mutually-encouraging relationships in Christ. We are to “fan into flame” the gifts from God we see in our preachers and elders, not explode all over them with soaking wet, white fire extinguisher foam.

We are all holy people, set apart by our God to serve his holy purposes. Our interactions with one another should also be holy. They should encourage and inspire, not discourage and depress. We should express gratitude, not attitude. Instead of arguing and complaining and criticizing, our words and actions toward those who serve us should be motivated by the Spirit who lives inside us, the Spirit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law. And no system.

Peace,

Allan

Preacher to Preacher

November 22, 2010 / / 0 Comments

In Friday’s post I mentioned a few rules-to-live-by for preachers that our mentoring group down in Waco had discussed last week. Jim Martin presented these regular practices to us as paramount to his preaching ministry. And he had asked us to bring a few of our own.

These are the three that I brought:

Pray with everybody – nobody comes to see me in my study without spending some of that time in prayer. If you’re coming to my office to complain or confess or to ask questions or to share something personal or to ask for advice, I believe my number one job is to give spiritual guidance. I must speak to you out of my knowledge of the Scriptures, out of my relationship with God, and out of the love I have for you as a brother or sister in Christ. And that conversation must be bathed in prayer. The same is true if I come visit you. I will not leave your home or your office or your hospital room without praying to God with you.

Together prayer. Intercessory prayer. Community prayer. It sets the tone, it prepares our hearts and minds, it centers us on what’s really important as we talk about whatever needs to be talked about. I believe prayer very clearly communicates to my conversation partners my priorities in giving counsel from a spiritual perspective, not a worldly one. It also communicates that I, myself, understand I’m not qualified to be giving any counsel at all. Whatever wisdom I have comes directly from our gracious Father.

Be transparent – some of our shepherds at Legacy say one of the reasons they brought me to this church is because I’m so open with everybody. When I hear that, I’m quick to say — mostly joking — that the openness will also be the reason they fire me.

I don’t hide anything from anybody. I’m honest with my feelings, with my sins, with my dreams, with my frustrations, with my love for God and for this church, and with my opinions. By the grace of God, as Paul says, I am what I am. I’m a work in progress. I’m trying really hard. I’m inadequate in many ways. But I’ve got Holy Spirit power inside me. I’m not afraid of that.

If we’re really going to live in Christian community with one another, if we’re really going to love each other like brothers and sisters, if we’re really going to accept and trust and defend and respect one another, if we’re really going to confess and share and be open with one another — and I preach all those things — then I must be the one to model it. And I do. You never have to wonder where I stand or what I think. I’m out there. Vulnerable. Open. Honest. It does rub some people the wrong way, I know. Not because they don’t like it, I think, but because they’re not used to it.

Acknowledge wins for the elders – I’ll never forget listening to Eddie Sharp talk about preachers and elders several years ago at an Austin Grad Sermon Seminar. (I think I know why elders and preachers have historically butted heads. I understand what causes it. It’s wrong. There’s nothing right about it. But I get it.) Eddie made it crystal clear to me in an afternoon session in May 2006 that, of all the people in our congregations, elders have the job description that most closely matches that of the preachers. Elders have the same frustrations, the same feelings, the same dreams, the same struggles, the same gifts, the same doubts, the same everything.

But here’s the line that nailed me, the line I’ll never forget: “You preachers are always looking for affirmation and respect from your elders; you have no idea that your elders are all looking for affirmation and respect from you.”

Really? Sometimes I can’t hardly believe that. But what if it’s true?

I always try to compliment our shepherds, to congratulate them on jobs well done, to point out to the church when they do something special. When I recognize compassion in an elder, I point it out to him and thank him. When I see generosity or kindness in one of my shepherds, I acknowledge it and tell him how wonderful it is. See, in church ministry, it’s really difficult to judge wins and losses. It’s not like looking at numbers or balancing ledgers or meeting goals. How do you know if you’re becoming more like Christ? How can you tell if your congregation is growing spiritually? They need to be congratulated for the “wins” that you see. I tell them that I love them. I tell them I appreciate their hard work and their dedication to our flock. And I tell them I support them and that I have their back. If you’re a preacher, I think your elders need that from you.

Preaching for a local congregation is a difficult job. I still don’t feel very good at it. I’m certain I’ll never stop learning how to do it better. I often tell people it’s the hardest work I’ve ever done, but absolutely the most rewarding. Those rewards and blessings come from our God who calls us and equips us for the task. It all comes from him. And it’s done in order to bring him eternal glory and praise.

Peace,

Allan

I Think God's Messing With Me

October 11, 2010 / / 1 Comment

I think God’s messing with me.

A few months ago I was asked by Chance Vanover at Oklahoma Christian University to speak at OC’s chapel. Anybody who had any connection to that school back in the mid to late ’80s understands full well how improbable that is. Me? Speaking at OC’s chapel? If you had told me 20 years ago that I would be standing on stage at Hardeman Auditorium this morning preaching the Word of God, I would have said the Rangers have a better chance of winning the World Series. The men of Delta would have a better shot of winning a social service award (inside joke). But our God is the God who breathes life into the dead and calls things that are not as though they are. So, of course, I agreed.

A few weeks later, Chance sent me the text. 2 Corinthians 3:18. “And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”

Chance wanted me to talk about a changed life, a new life in Christ.

Probably just a coincidence.

Part of me wanted to just read the passage to the students and then declare, “Exhibit A!” and point to myself and then sit down. That would probably greatly please the faculty and staff. But their collective sigh of relief would collapse some walls and endanger the lives of hundreds of tuition-paying students. So, I preached.

While I preached this morning, my sister, Rhonda, who lives in Edmond with her husband, Geoff, and their three kids, was standing in the back. She updated her Facebook status while I spoke. “Listening to my brother, Allan, speaking at OC’s chapel.” Almost immediately, a common friend of ours replied, “Does OC security know?”

The moment I finished, Dr. Larry Jurney made a bee-line to the front. Dr. Jurney was our Radio-TV department head at OC. I hadn’t seen him in a dozen years. He greeted me and then, in front of eight or nine others, said, “Here’s what I remember about Allan Stanglin! Allan Stanglin is the reason I had to serve on the school’s disciplinary board! They put me on the board when Allan got in trouble. And after we dealt with him, I asked to be removed. But Dean Mock said as long as Allan was at OCC, they needed me on the board!”

Nice.

I was so pleased to see Jamie and Charley Jo, two of our Legacy kids, at OC today. I’m hoping we can have lunch together tomorrow and catch up. I was glad to see Dr. Jurney and so many others who had a great influence on me so many years ago. I think about Stafford North. Philip Patterson. Tod Brown. Bailey McBride. Even Dean Mock. They loved me. They pushed me. They disciplined me. And they did their dead-level best to keep me on the right track. They gave me every chance. They extended to me every grace. They gave me much more than I ever deserved.

And I didn’t see it at the time. I didn’t recognize it then. I wouldn’t have even admitted it ten years ago. But I see very clearly now how true are the things they told me. How wise is the counsel they gave me. How loving was the rod they applied and the mercy they showed.

I’m thankful for the nearly two days and a night I get to spend with Rhonda. We ate Mexican food at Ted’s today, we picked up the kids from basketball practice, and we’re getting ready for a youth group devo at their house tonight. Maryn played and sang for me a beautiful song she wrote a year ago. She’s a genius. I’m listening to Asa right now playfully argue with his guitar instructor in the living room. He’s hilarious. And Caleb’s hitting the books. Homework and hoops: that’s his whole life. Geoff will be home from work in a few minutes. The Cowboys play his Vikings this weekend. He’ll rag Dallas. I’ll rag Favre.

I’m giving one more message at OC chapel in the morning about what it means to live a new life in Christ and to be transformed by his Spirit. Coincidence, right? At the very least, it’s incredibly ironic.

I think God’s messing with me.

Peace,

Allan

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