Category: College Football (Page 11 of 12)

Building Faith

Lance and Kipi and I are in the middle of our three-day Faith Builders Day Camp with our 5th, 6th, and 7th graders here at Legacy. And I’m exhausted. From 9:00 to 11:30 am, we’re teaching these kids — 44 of them — the fundamentals of our faith in God through Christ Jesus. Yesterday the theme was “Sin: The Problem.” Today it was “Jesus: The Solution.” And tomorrow we wrap it all up with “Faith: The Response.” We play games together from 11:30 to 12:00 noon. And then Lance and Kipi take the kids in vans to NRH2O today, Main Event yesterday, and a movie tomorrow.

It’s crazy. So much energy in here. 44 of those 10-12 year-olds. Non-stop. Constant. Loud. Interactive. Responsive. Hilarious. And soaking everything up like a bunch of little sponges. It’s funny that we can be talking about what it really means to be made in the image of God and wind up in a riveting discussion about dinosaurs. We can be deeply involved in Jesus as the perfect lamb for our redemption and 30-seconds later arguing about whether our pets are going to be in heaven. But through it all, they’re getting it. When we talk about Jesus radically changing the life of the demon-possessed man in Luke 8, taking Peter back at that beach-side breakfast in John 21, dying for us while we were still sinners, they get it. I love watching all the little lightbulbs go off. I love the interaction with the kids during lunch or inbetween sessions.

They’re all doing 30-minutes of Faith Builders homework each night with their parents. The conversations are happening. The Bibles are being read. God is reaching out to his children. And the faith is being passed on from generation to generation.

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I can’t imagine a week much busier than this one. Ever. And it’s only Tuesday afternoon. I wish it were Tuesday last week. I’m running out of time.

Faith Builders Day Camp through tomorrow afternoon. Oasis tomorrow evening and then a dry-run in our new worship center. Thursday morning at 6:45 we’re going to hold a ceremony outside while construction workers place the giant metal cross on the exterior of our building facing west on Mid Cities Boulevard. At 7:00 that morning the Legacy Bible Reading will begin. Our whole church family — men, women, and children — will read from Genesis through Revelation in 15-minute shifts. The reading will be carried on video and audio monitors all over our campus here. It’ll be streamed live on our church website. And it’ll conclude at 8:45 Sunday morning with a congregational reading of Revelation 22:12-21. After that, Jim teaches our combined adult class at 9:00. Our first worship assembly begins at 10:00. And that’s followed by a catered all-church lunch, a Tarrant-County-wide singing at 2:00, and an Open House at 3:00.

And then we go home and crash on the couch.

What an amazing week. What an inspirational week. Passing the faith on to our kids together. Reading God’s Word together. Worshiping together. Eating together. Singing together.

For well over a year now we’ve been calling things that are not as though they were.

Now they are.

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Thanks so much to Scott Beard, Brittany Bankhead-Kendall, and David Watson for submitting logo designs for “The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys Top 20 College Football Poll.” Here are the three logos. Now I need a vote. It’ll be one of these three. Vote now as a comment on this post. Or email me at astanglin@legacychurchofchrist.org  Winner will be announced Friday.

Top20ScottBeard

Top20BrittanyBankheadKendall

Top20DavidWatson”Football Pole”

Peace,

Allan

I Need A Logo!

Someone said I should be more assertive. Here goes:

I’m Serious!!!Allright, readers. I give and I give and I give. Day after day I slave over this keyboard doing everything in my power to encourage you, to provoke you to meaningful thought, to entertain you, to make you laugh, to build you up as we walk together in the footsteps of our Savior. I give and I give and I give. And what do I ask in return? Have I ever asked for anything from you?

I need a logo.

You think I’m kidding. I’m not.

Design a logo for The Kingdom, The Kids, And The Cowboys College Football Top 20 Poll this weekend. Get it to me before Monday.

I mean it.

Click on the green “KK&C Top 20” tab at the top of this page for more info.

Dude, I’m serious.

Allan

The Church Is The Building, Too

PewsFromFront

They’re in the middle of the impressive task of installing the pews in our new worship center. And in just two weeks we’ll be assembling together in this beautiful building to worship our God and spur one another on in our lives of faith.  PewsFromBack

We say all the time that the Church is not the building, it’s the people.

OK. I’ll buy that. I believe that. Up to a point.

We shouldn’t carry that statement or that position so far that it discounts or nullifies the sacred nature of the actual place where God’s children meet him in sacred assembly.

The building is important. It’s OK to feel that way. There’s nothing wrong with feeling the way you do when you walk into our new worship center or into the old church building in Arkansas where you were baptized or into the church buildings in Tulsa or Abilene where you meet and worship with dear friends once a year.

Our church buildings are vital to our faith. Our buildings collect stories and develop associations that give great depth and breadth to our experience of following Jesus together. It’s in our new worship center where our two younger daughters will put on their Lord in baptism. A couple of them may wind up getting married in there. We’ll sing and pray together in there during the funeral of some very dear sweet person reading (or writing!) this article right now. We’ll send off missionaries PewsFromSidetogether in there. We’ll laugh and we’ll cry together in there. We’ll experience birth and death and everything in between together in there. We’ll hear the Word of our Lord together in there. We’ll share the communion meal together in there. We’ll be convicted and moved, we’ll confess and repent, we’ll chase little kids around the aisles together in there.

And we’ll do all those things together in the presence of each other and in the presence of our Holy God.

Your grandmother’s house is full of stories. Your childhood home is full of memories. Your current space of residence serves as the comforting and stabilizing center of your family’s hectic schedule. Our church buildings serve the same important function of reminding us of who and what has gone before and pointing ahead to who and what is to come, all in the presence of and by the power of our eternal God.

Yes, the Church is the people. But the building represents the people and the stories and the memories and the provision and care of the God we serve.

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Our 20 pollsters for the inaugural The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys Top 20 College Football Poll are all in. 19 Texas residents and one from California. Eighteen men and two women whose formative years were spent in places as widely varied as Chicago and Broken Arrow and Mississippi and Ohio. Judging from our pollsters’ list of favorite teams, it looks like we have the Big XII, Big 10, SEC, C-USA, Mountain West, WAC, and Pac-10 Conferences completely covered. It should be a totally comprehensive poll. And legitimate. Until the first time ACU or Harding or UTA receives votes. Then it’s over.

I still need a logo for this thing. Submit your entries now. Design a logo for the KK&C Top 20 and email it to me at astanglin@legacychurchofchrist.org

Thanks for jumping in. Much more later.

Peace,

Allan

ONE More Slot!

There is only one more opening for weekly voters in the inaugural “The Kingdom, The Kids, and The Cowboys College Football Top 20 Poll,” or as it’s commonly known, “The KK&C Top 20.” Click on the green “KK&C Top 20” tab in the upper right corner of this page for more info. Nineteen are in. One to go. I’ll get all of you much more information once we nail down the last one.

 Have a great weekend,

 Allan

Sovereign Lord

“Sovereign Lord, you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them.” ~Acts 4:24

The Scriptures point clearly to the fact that our God uses governments and wars and elections and political manuverings and the rising and falling of empires to work his will in our world. Whatever the powers of this earth decide or do, our Father uses for the purposes of his eternal Kingdom. Those early Jerusalem Christians in Acts 4 understood this principle. After they’d been ordered to stop teaching and speaking about the resurrected Christ, they appealed to their Sovereign Lord to “stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.” They pointed back to Psalm 2 in this prayer to acknowledge that the powers and authorities of this world are always opposed to God and his mission but that God uses those very powers and authorities to do his will.

Maybe they didn’t even realize how true their prayer was.

Shortly after the unified wording of this prayer, the powers of the world carried out the execution of Steven and scattered the new Church with persecution. And God used it to spread the Gospel and expand the borders of his eternal Kingdom. And our Father is doing the same thing today.

This coming Sunday, for the first time ever, our brothers and sisters in Christ will assemble in a public building in the capital city of the people’s republic of China. This Sunday, the legally sanctioned Beijing Church of Christ will meet to worship our Sovereign Lord.

God uses the Olympics.

There are over 15-million people in Beijing. There are over a billion people in China. And starting Sunday our own brother Aubrey Johnson from the Peachtree City Church of Christ outside Atlanta is going to be teaching and preaching salvation from God in Christ Jesus for seven straight weeks! In Beijing, China! Under government sanction! Under government protection! Bible class at 9:30! Worship at 10:30! Are you kidding me?!?

Prove our God is sovereign? He just did!

Again!

David and Olivia Nelson tell me Christians are fleeing Moscow by the hundreds because of new government restrictions there. God is going to use that. Manuel Calderon baptized eleven people into Jesus last week in Venezuela. He’s using that. Our teenagers here delivered over 700 lightbulbs last week to families in an apartment complex near our church. God’s using that. Dan Miller and Bruce Archer have established two congregations of new Christians at two apartment complexes in Mesquite. And God’s using that.

That smile you gave the clerk at the post office. That kind word you delivered to your waiter. The check you wrote. The cake you baked. The hours you volunteered. The child you helped. The senior you assisted. The big stuff and the little stuff. Our God is sovereign over all. All of it. And he’s using it for his purposes and his Kingdom.

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 I have 17 spots available for college football pollsters to participate in The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys Top 20 College Football Poll. You can be a pollster. You only have to be a college football fan and commit to emailing me your Top 20 every Monday through the football season. Please see yesterday’s post or click the “KKC Top 20” tab at the upper right corner of this page for more information.

Happy Milestone-Birthday, Ro! Are you tired? Are you involved? Is that why you’re so tired? I love you.

Peace,

Allan

Information And Invitation

We were looking at 1 Samuel 3 in our men’s Bible Study this morning and contemplating God’s message to the boy prophet in the temple. God is calling Samuel in the early morning hours and Scripture says, after the second misunderstood call, “Samuel did not yet know the Lord.” It’s an explanation, really, of why Samuel wasn’t recognizing the call. What strikes me is that, although Samuel didn’t yet know God, God certainly knew Samuel.

And he called him.

And we see a dual purpose of the Word of God as the Lord speaks to him in the temple. God tells Samuel of the judgment against Eli and he invites Samuel into a relationship with him. God gives Samuel information, revealing himself and his will to Samuel. And he gives him an invitation to join him in what he’s doing with his people.

God speaks both to inform us and to form us, for information and formation. God’s words come to us as sovereign command. But they also teach us and draw us closer to him.

J. I. Packer wrote this about God’s Word in his 1973 book Knowing God:

“God, our Maker, knows all about us before we say anything; but we can know nothing about him unless he tells us. Here, therefore, is a further reason why God speaks to us; not only to move us to do what he wants, but to enable us to know him so that we may love him. Therefore God sends his Word to us in the character of both information and invitation. It comes to woo us as well as to instruct us; it not merely puts us in the picture of what God has done and is doing, but also calls us into personal communion with the loving Lord himself.”

God’s Word as fellowship invites us into personal relationship with him. As government, God’s Word maintains the relationship by telling us how to live.

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FootballThis next part of today’s post also serves as both information and invitation. I’m announcing today the formation of The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys Top 20 College Football Poll, or as it will come to be known, The KKC College Football Poll.

Here’s the information: 20 pollsters, regular readers of this blog, will submit their weekly Top 20 football teams to the poll by noon every Monday. The ballots will be counted, the votes tallied, and the KKC College Football Poll will be released to the public on the blog each Tuesday.

Here’s the invitation: you can be one of the 20 pollsters! The only requirements are that you are a college football fan and that you faithfully submit your votes by noon every Monday during the college football season. I’m taking the first 20 who respond to me by email.

Just email me the following information about yourself:

name
current city of residence
where you spent your formative years (from 6-12 years old)
the college you attended
your favorite college football team
the college football team you hate

Just email that info to me at astanglin@legacychurchofchrist.org

Again, I’m taking the first 20 pollsters. Once I get 20 emails, I’ll get in touch with you and give you a few more details. If I get more than 20, I could use the extras for alternates that we may need a couple of times during the season. The college football season begins in one month. On Thursday August 28, North Carolina plays South Carolina in Columbia, Oregon State is at Stanford, and Baylor’s hosting Wake. The next day SMU actually plays on ESPN against Rice in Houston. And then it’s a full slate that Saturday including TCU at New Mexico, Texas against Florida Atlantic, and home games for A&M and Texas Tech. So the very first poll, the preseason poll, needs to be out in a couple of weeks. The deadline for you to get your email to me to become an official pollster is Friday August 8.

I’m also looking for a logo we can use for The KKC College Football Poll. If you want to design one, email it to me at the same address.

Peace,

Allan

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