Category: Evangelism (Page 16 of 20)

Blessings For All!

September 28, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

There are people around the world every single day who receive great blessings from God without ever asking for them. These people don’t pray. And they don’t give God thanks when they receive these great blessings. The fact is, they enjoy the benefits of these wonderful gifts and never acknowledge the Giver.

“He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous.” ~Matthew 5:45

We joke sometimes about getting more rain than our friend who lives somewhere else because we must be “livin’ right.” Obviously, that’s not the way God works. He pours his merciful blessings on the good and the bad.

And he tells us to do the same.

“If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” ~Matthew 5:46-48

Be perfect in your indiscrimination. Be perfect in your unbiased grace toward others. Be perfect in the equality with which you share your love and good deeds. Like our God, be perfect in showing kindness and mercy to people who like you AND to people who don’t.

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What a wonderful five days in Fresno with my great friends, Jim Gardner and Jimmy Mitchell, at the 12th annual Spiritual Growth Workshop at the Woodward Park Church of Christ. What a time of encouragement and edification. What a time of renewal and re-energizing.

I strained several muscles from all the laughing. I gained several pounds from the late night Cookies-and-Cream milkshakes at Chick-Fil-A and the animal fries at In-and-Out Burgers. I threw grapes at friends sitting four tables away under a big tent at a lunch on the grounds. I was inspired by Evertt Huffard’s presentation on the honor of our God. I was moved by two women who gave their lives to Christ in baptism. I was the butt of Paul Methvin’s jokes. I was hugged by a hundred different people who really don’t know me at all. I met missionaries and homeless people (sorta the same thing). I talked with Brian and learned several new “words” in sign language. I slept in Tori’s room on her Cheetah Girls sheets. I was amazed to watch the Laotians keep coming and keep coming to pack the place to worship our God. Joann’s generosity. Dan’s parsing. Andy’s sarcasm. Jimmy’s tenor. John’s unique songleading. Mandy’s personality. John Ed’s wisdom. L. Jeeves’ nametag. Steve’s great attitude. Praying with Jim and Jimmy Sunday morning, just like old times.

What a blessing to see the Kingdom of God expressed in such clear ways among his people there in the California valley. Different colors. Different cultures. Different ethnic groups. Different languages. Different ages. Different socio-economic classes. Praising God with one voice. Communing around the same table and celebrating our one salvation through our one Lord and Savior.

Participating together in baptisms. Praying together for families who’ve lost jobs. Learning new songs together. Sharing meals together. It’s wonderful. It’s heaven.

The kingdoms of the world come with power. They come with violence and noise and fanfare and bloodshed. The kingdoms of the earth come with great force. God’s Kingdom comes with casseroles and rides to the doctor. The Kingdom of God comes with kind acts and loving mercy. Hugs and pats on the back. Sharing and bearing.

May God continue to bless our brothers and sisters in Fresno as they bring the Kingdom to the California valley. May his perfect will be done there as it is in heaven.

Peace,

Allan

Abreakening And Awakening

September 1, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

It’s impossible to put into words how my God moved me this past weekend. I can’t tell you — I wouldn’t even know where to start — all the ways God used people and events and his Holy Word and circumstances and songs and sermons and his Holy Spirit to break me, wake me, and shake me.

I wasn’t sure what I was expecting from Stream DFW. I’d never attended a Stream event. But I knew if the focus was on renewal and restoration through intentional worship and Jeff Walling was doing all the speaking I’d benefit greatly. It was actually much more than I had imagined. Through the use of congregational singing and dramatic readings and timely video dramas and silence and meditation and prayer, Ken Young and the Hallal Singers took all of us straight to God’s throne room, right into his presence. An hour of that and then another hour of Walling. Three times. A true focus on God’s surpassing love for us and our response to him through our own love for our Father and for one another and for the world.

Carrie-Anne and I wound up next to four dear friends from our Arlington days and right in front of seven wonderful friends from Legacy, and behind a couple of preacher friends from Waco. We sang together and laughed and cried and prayed and reflected together on our own motivations for doing what we do. Do we encourage our congregations out of a base of “obedience” or of “love?” Do I relate to my God and his people out of “obedience” or “love?”

God’s always been much more about “love” than “obedience.” Always. So why are we so hung up on “obedience?”

Stream was great. I highly recommend it.

Add to that our bi-lingual worship assembly Sunday morning (nearly a thousand gringos singing “In Moments Like These” in Spanish — and with gusto — and amen-ing Spanish prayers and Spanish Scripture readings); the commissioning and sending of our dear friends, the Calderons; witnessing our God save souls and rob hell with Annika’s baptism; participating as our church family prayed over and for the McCormicks and their brand new baby boy, home from Germany for a visit; a wonderful morning and afternoon visit with Jason & Tiersa Reeves and their awesome family; an all-church potluck and congregational dinner Sunday evening, sharing a common meal and the Lord’s Meal together around tables instead of in pews.

God did that thing he always does. He’s moving in mighty ways in this place. Give him praise! It’s so exhilerating to be in partnership with all this. The grumpy email and the grouchy member can’t touch me today!

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Our Legacy assembly time Sunday was highlighted by our commissioning and charging and sending of Manuel and Yvina Calderon and their sweet girls, Sofia and Natalia, to Siempre Familia Iglesia de Cristo in South Fort Worth. Introducing Manuel to our church family and watching and listening to him share our Lord’s vision for the Hispanic Church was so inspiring.

Legacy is partnering with Continent of Great Cities and Missions Resource Network to begin this Hispanic church at the old Rosemont building in the Seminary Avenue area of Fort Worth. And we’re not only sending the Calderons to be a part of the leadership group there. We’re also sending our 30-35 Spanish-speaking brothers and sisters from Legacy to join that great work. Our plan is to take the gospel to the tens of thousands of Hispanics there and then plant subsequent churches in Dallas, Houston, and other metropolitan cities in Texas and the Southwest.

And if I know Manuel — and I do — he and our God are going to be an unstoppable force.

I can’t tell you how many times Manuel and I have poured our hearts out to each other about our God’s mission and our roles in partnering with him to fulfill that mission. How many times we’ve prayed together for each other and our families. He’s such an encouragement to me. I want to be more like him. I want just half his fire. I want just half his enthusiasm for our Lord and his people. Just half his dedication and commitment to God’s Church. I want just half his faith. Manuel’s something else.

I’m invested in Manuel. Big time. I’m invested in him spiritually. Emotionally. Financially. Physically. If you’ve ever been hugged by Manuel, you know what I mean by “physically.” When he hugs you, he crushes your vertebrae. You come away from a hug by Manuel a couple of inches shorter than before.

May our Father bless the Calderons and all those working to bring God’s salvation to South Fort Worth.

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Only 12 days remain until the Cowboys begin their regular NFL season. And I’ve missed a bunch of days in our Red Ribbon Review. So, in an effort to catch up on recognizing the second-best players in Cowboys history according to jersey number, here they are:

Today’s #12 is punter Ron Widby. He wore #12 when he came into the league with Dallas as a free agent out of Tennessee in 1968. His best year with Dallas was in ’69 when he averaged 43.4 yards per kick. And then he had to give his number to Roger Staubach, some Heisman Trophy winner coming off a four-year stint in the Navy. No one else has worn the number since.

Yesterday’s #13 has only been worn by one Dallas Cowboy in the fifty year history of the franchise: quarterback Jerry Rhome. Mainly a backup from Tulsa. Longtime offensive assistant coach. At one time considered somewhat of a quarterback guru.

Sunday’s #14 belongs to Craig Morton, whose real first name is (I’m not kidding) Larry. Morton was the first quarterback in NFL history to start at quarterback in two Super Bowls for two different teams, Dallas in Super Bowl V and for the Broncos against Dallas in Super Bowl XII, both sloppy, sloppy losses. Morton was the Cowboys’ first round pick (5th overall) out of Cal in 1965. Staubach took over in ’70.

Finally, the second-best player to ever wear #15 for Dallas is wide receiver Tom Crowder. He was just a practice squad guy in 2004-05. No picture. I don’t think one exists.

Peace,

Allan

Abreakening And Awakening

September 1, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

God’s always been much more about “love” than “obedience.” Always. So why are we so hung up on “obedience?”

Stream was great. I highly recommend it.

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And if I know Manuel — and I do — he and our God are going to be an unstoppable force.

May our Father bless the Calderons and all those working to bring God’s salvation to South Fort Worth.

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Finally, the second-best player to ever wear #15 for Dallas is wide receiver Tom Crowder. He was just a practice squad guy in 2004-05. No picture. I don’t think one exists.

Peace,

Allan

Not Christian Enough

June 30, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

I’m in the middle of reading The Reason for God by Timothy Keller. It’s an apologetics, of sorts. I’m not certain he would classify it that way. But that’s what it feels like. I’m also in the middle of re-reading C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity with our Tuesday morning group. And the two works cross over at almost every other paragraph. The idea I’m writing about today comes from Keller’s chapter entitled The Church Is Responsible for So Much Injustice.

We all know people we would call religious fanatics. We’ve all been impacted by them. These are people who express very clearly and very loudly their calling as Christians. But they live it — manifest it — by lashing out against society. They spend a great deal of time and energy screaming against the other political party, against homosexuality, against evolution, against abortion, against other religions, against the doctrines and practices of other Christians, against the world’s values, against anything and everything — anybody and everybody — who doesn’t conform strictly to their idea of “truth” and Christianity. In your face!

The fanatic is the extreme. A fanatic is one who over-believes or over-practices his Christianity, a major turn-off to those on the outside of our faith looking in. These fanatics do great damage to our efforts to expand the borders of God’s Kingdom. Nobody wants to be around people like that. Who can blame them? To the world, especially to someone who’s experienced these fanatics personally or seen them on TV or read about them in the papers, “the best kind of Christian would be someone who doesn’t go all the way with it, who believes it but is not too devoted to it.”

The problem with viewing Christianity that way is that it assumes the Christian faith is basically a form of moral improvement. If that’s what Christianity is — a way of improving your life and/or living your life in the right way — then the fanatics would certainly be those who are intense moralists (Keller’s term). Pharisees.

Pharisees are people who “assume they are right with God because of their moral behavior and right doctrine. This leads naturally to feelings of superiority toward those who do not share their religiosity, and from there to various forms of abuse, exclusion, and oppression. This is the essence of what we think of as fanaticism.”

But what if Christianity is really all about salvation from God in Christ? What if our faith is really all about grace and love and forgiveness? What if Christianity is really all about being saved not because of what we do but because of what God through Christ has done for us? A belief that you are forgiven and accepted by God only by his sheer love and grace alone (the essence of our faith) is profoundly humbling. So, the people we would call fanatics are not that way because they are too committed to the Gospel but because they’re not committed enough.

“Think of people you consider fanatical. They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive, and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving, or understanding — as Christ was…What strikes us as overly fanatical is actually a failure to be fully committed to Christ and his gospel.” (emphasis mine)

I know I’ve thought about this many times. I’ve thought this about other people. And in moments of true reflection and scary clarity, I’ve noticed it in myself. How empowering, though, to point out to doubters and skeptics that these rigid, hard, insensitive, loud, overbearing people who call themselves Christians do not represent the teachings or the purpose or the goals of Christianity. That ain’t us! That person claiming to be right about everything does not represent Christianity. That person who refuses to bend is not acting like Christ. That person standing on the street corner and screaming condemnation to passers-by is not what our Lord and Savior is all about.

Those people are not too Christian. They’re not Christian enough.

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There are 75 more days until the Dallas Cowboys kick off their historic 2009 football season — historic only in that this is their 50th NFL season, not historic in that anybody’s predicting great things. To help us count down to that first game in Tampa Bay on September 13, we’re recognizing the second-best players in Cowboys history by jersey number.

Today’s #75 is defensive tackle Tony Casillas. He only played in Dallas five years. But he was a vital part of that super quick defensive line in the early ’90s and was in on the two Jimmy Johnson Super Bowl wins. He left for bigger money and two weird years with the Jets, which cost him a third Super Bowl ring and a lot of respect. But he did wrap up his career in Dallas with a couple of mediocre seasons in ’96 and ’97.

(Phil Pozderac was never a possibility. Besides, if I’d named Pozderac and Flozell Adams in back to back days, I’d be looking at 3rd and 20 and a quick-kick.)

Peace,

Allan

Church "Aliveness"

May 28, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

Wondering if the seamstresses at Nike headquarters in Eugene, Oregon are busy today sewing together Dwight Howard and Carmelo Anthony puppets…………

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Philip Yancey and his wife recently visited all 24 different churches in their town on 24 consecutive weekends. They just went through the phone book (does anybody use the phone book anymore?) and went in alphabetical order. They visited churches with organs and choirs, churches with praise bands and electric guitars, and even a Church of Christ that featured acappella singing of songs projected on PowerPoint slides. They found churches full of suits and ties and others with blue jeans and cowboy boots.

Based on what Yancey is calling an unexplainable intuition, he says he could tell the “aliveness” of a church within just about five minutes. He bases some of this on the noise level in the foyer, laughter in the conversations, and activities promoted in the bulletin. He’s trying to put this “health-of-a-church-formula” into better organized thoughts and words. But most of it, he admits, is just a gut feel.

So far, Yancey’s come up with three main attributes of a healthy church, a congregation that’s alive. I’m quoting now from his November ’08 article in Christianity Today:

1) Diversity. As I read accounts of the New Testament Church, no characteristic stands out more sharply than this one. Beginning with Pentecost, the Christian Church dismantled the barriers of gender, race, and social class that had marked Jewish congregations. Paul, who as a rabbi had given thanks daily that he was not born a woman, slave, or Gentile, marveled over the radical change: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Diversity complicates rather than simplifies life. Perhaps for this reason we tend to surround ourselves with people of similar age, economic class, and opinion. Church offers a place where infants and grandparents, unemployed and executives, immigrants and blue bloods can come together. Just yesterday I sat sandwiched between an elderly man hooked up to a puffing oxygen tank and a breastfeeding baby who grunted loudly and contentedly throughout the sermon. Where else can we go to find that mixture?

When I walk into a church, the more its members resemble each other — and resemble me — the more uncomfortable I feel.

2) Unity. Of course, diversity only succeeds in a group who share a common vision. In his great prayer in John 17, Jesus stressed one request above all others: “that they may be one.” The existence of 38,000 denominations worldwide demonstrates how poorly we have fulfilled Jesus’ request. I wonder how different the Church would look to a watching world, not to mention how different history would look, if Christians were more deeply marked by love and unity. Perhaps a whiff of the fragrance of unity is what I detect when I visit a church and sense its “aliveness.”

3) Mission. The Church, said Archbishop William Temple, is “the only cooperative society in the world that exists for the benefit of its non-members.” Some churches, especially those located in urban areas, focus on the needs of immediate neighborhoods. Others adopt sister churches in other countries, support relief and development agencies, and send mission teams abroad. Saddest of all are those churches whose vision does not extend beyond their own facilities and parking lots.

Yancey’s list is, obviously, not complete. But, we can all agree that these three characteristics are huge for churches striving to reflect our Savior and his Gospel. And it’s not a stretch to see that all of our churches have work to do in all three areas.

This should not be a disappointment to us. We should view this as a challenge. And a great blessing and privilege — that our God would allow people like us to embody his presence on earth.

Peace,

Allan

Bigger Than We Think

May 14, 2009 / Allan / 0 Comments

It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be a part of a church family that embraces the vision and the mission of our God to seek and save the lost. Missions giving, missionary support, local community outreach, and benevolence all play central roles in what’s planned and what’s done here at Legacy.

I wish everybody could come up here just once before the week’s over and spend just half an hour in the Church Planting Movements Conference. Missions Resource Network is hosting the event here at Legacy. It started yesterday and it continues through Saturday. Between 80 and 90 church planters from every single continent on this planet are meeting upstairs right now praying, planning, networking, teaching, and learning how to better evangelize the lost of this world.

You should see our upstairs youth center! An inspiring blend of different colors, cultures, languages, ages, backgrounds, worldviews, political systems, economic situations, and talents. All together in one room, in one place, with one common goal to spread the good news of salvation for the one world in the one Lord and Savior, the crucified and resurrected Christ!

I’ve had a chance up there to visit with George Hall, a friend of mine who’s planting churches all over Guatemala, dozens of them in the past ten years. Yesterday I caught up with Brian Robinson and his wife, Kristen, old friends from Oklahoma Christian. They’ve just sold their house in Tyler and are taking their family of six to Rwanda for a 14-year missionary commitment. We helped them here in the office yesterday with faxing and notarizing some of the paperwork on their house. Every person has an amazing story. Every family up there has a godly vision, an unquenchable fire to seek and save the lost.

Mark Hooper tells me the potential exists for several thousand churches to be planted all over the world in the next 20 years due to the efforts upstairs here this week! Praise God!

What a jarring reminder, what a much-needed wake-up call, that this eternal Kingdom of which we claim to be citizens has no national borders. The Kingdom we belong to knows no political boundaries, no cultural walls, no language barriers. Christ died for all. Period. And his love compels us to take that great news of salvation to every man, woman, and child on the globe.

It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.

When I was at Austin Grad, part of the requirements in Allan McNicol’s worship class was to visit three churches, three different worship assemblies, from different faith streams, and provide an analysis. I’ll never forget the Assembly of God service we attended in a modest area of North Austin. I can tell you everything about that morning. In detail. Come on, I wrote a six-page paper on it. But the thing that stuck out the most to me that day and still inspires me to this moment were the flags hanging from the ceiling in their worship center.

There was an American flag. And a Canadian flag. And a Mexican flag. There was a flag representing Brazil. Puerto Rico flags and Venezuela flags and Japanese flags. Flags representing countries in Africa and Asia. Not just flags from countries in which they had supported missionaries. Not just flags from countries in which there were Assembly of God congregations. They were proudly displaying flags from every nation on the planet. Yes, Iranian flags, Iraqui flags, Afghanistan flags. Over 300 different flags. Every flag from every country. An unmistakeable reminder, a multi-colored impossible-to-miss message that we are one in Christ, that his Kingdom knows no national borders.

I’d love to hang 300 flags from the ceiling at Legacy.

Because when God adds us to his Kingdom, we join a Kingdom that has outposts in Iraq and China and Russia. They belong to us and we belong to them. Disciples of the King. Past, present, and future. Every nation, every tribe, every language, every people. Spanning the four corners of the globe.

It’s bigger than we think it is. It’s good to be reminded.

Peace,

Allan

Category: Evangelism (Page 16 of 20)

Blessings For All!

Abreakening And Awakening

Abreakening And Awakening

Not Christian Enough

Church "Aliveness"

Bigger Than We Think

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