Category: Evangelism (Page 20 of 21)

The Church's First Prayer

July 21, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

“Enable your servants to speak your Word with great boldness.” ~Acts 4:29

In Acts 4 we find the very first ever prayer recorded in Scripture after the establishment of God’s Church on the Day of Pentecost. Acts 4:24-30 is the Church’s first prayer. It was worded by an assembly of God’s people, all raising their voices together in united and passionate petition to the “Sovereign Lord” of the universe in the midst of government oppression against the teaching and preaching of Christ Jesus.

The prayer occurs in the immediate aftermath of Peter and John being arrested and jailed and questioned by the authorities and commanded to stop speaking in the name of Jesus. It’s important to note that this group of baptized disciples didn’t ask God for relief from the oppression or for judgment on the oppressors. They request only two things.

1) They ask for strength to obey during the oppression, to have the nerve and the guts and the faith to continue to speak boldly about the Christ even though it had been outlawed.

2) They ask for God to act in his mighty power to do what he needs to do to advance the Kingdom of Heaven and bring glory to Jesus.

In the face of tremendous opposition, when the persecution and government resistance to Christianity was escalating and getting worse, the Church didn’t pray for wisdom or protection or for favor with the authorities. They didn’t pray that the next election would go their way so their situation would change. And I’m not saying those are inappropriate things for which to pray. But this prayer during this crisis was for the ability to be obedient to Christ’s command to continue to teach the Gospel. The concern here is not for safety or deliverance from persecution. It’s for the Word to go forth and for Christ to be glorified.

What an amazing response! What a counter-cultural, Christ-like response! This prayer as a response to the problem is so totally opposite of what was happening in their world. This prayer goes so against the prevailing thought. And John used to be caught up in that culture. When Jesus and the apostles faced opposition in a Samaritan village, it was John and his brother James who said, “Lord, do you want us to call down fire from heaven to destroy them?” Scripture says Jesus turned and rebuked them. Peter used to be caught up in the culture. He had actually pulled out a sword in the garden the night his Lord was betrayed. He tried to chop a guy’s head off! But Jesus rebuked him and actually healed the man who’d been injured.

By Acts 4, as evidenced by this beautiful prayer, we see how Peter and John have grown. We see how they’ve changed. We see how the Holy Spirit inside them was transforming them into the image of Jesus. In the face of opposition and persecution, they lash out in unified prayer together with all the saints and they ask for boldness to obey and to continue to speak about their risen Lord and they ask that God be glorified.

If resistance to the Kingdom and opposition to the Kingdom gets worse in our land—or I should say WHEN it gets worse—may we find our comfort and strength with each other, may we be bold to continue speaking about Jesus, and may our Father act in powerful ways to bring glory to his holy servant Jesus.

Peace,

Allan

Tell Them How Much The Lord Has Done For You

June 25, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

“Go home to your family and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” ~Mark 5:19

I’ve been convinced for a while now that the reason we are not particularly evangelistic is that we’ve tried to convert people to the Church instead of to Jesus. We think people should be taught how to be members of the Church instead of being taught how to be followers of the Christ. And we’re so bogged down with all the rules and regulations and details of the faith that our story has become so complicated—DISTORTED—that we’re too afraid to tell it.

I can’t talk to my neighbor about Jesus or about my faith. What if he asks me a question I can’t answer? What is our church’s stand on this issue or that? What are we saying now about that topic that’s a little different from we were saying about it ten years ago? What are the reasons again we do or don’t do these certain things differently from everyone else? How do those Scriptures work that get me from Point A to Point B in those arguments we’re always having? I can’t remember all that. I might get something wrong.

So we don’t evangelize. We’ve made it so complicated—you can be a Christian, but I have to teach you how to be the right kind of Christian—that we’d rather not bother. Better to keep my mouth shut than to risk not knowing all the right arguments.

Terry Rush has articulated these thoughts so much better in his blog post from yesterday:

Loaded down with multiple and conflicting proof-texts while being well-warned of all those many false prophets, our people have become convinced we will not remember how it goes and most likely will get it wrong if we dare try. Therefore, the general population of the church lives frozen and mute; unable to move with confidence to extend their faith to another. We have concluded that refusing to share the life in Christ with others is a better option than taking a stab at sharing and getting it fouled up.

Please click here to read Terry’s wonderful little article on this problem. (His portrait of Barney Fife as the church cop who nervously paces with his whistle and badge, looking to bust somebody for getting part of the arguments wrong is classic.) And be encouraged to forget all the anxieties of the arguments and the details and just share with people what our God through Jesus is doing with you.

Peace,

Allan

$209K and Counting…

March 31, 2008 / Allan / 4 Comments

“God calls things that are not as though they were.” ~Romans 4:17

A red-letter day yesterday for the family of believers here at Legacy and in our history as a congregation of God’s people. The goal for Missions Sunday was to collect $150,000 to fund our local and foreign missions budget for 2008. And our Lord blessed us with over $209,000 in cash and pledges. And the number is still going up.

What a thrill it was to watch our little children parade with their Bible classes down to the front to announce and then to dump the money they’ve collected over the month of March for our missionaries. How amazing it was to be joined by our brothers and sisters at the Centerpoint church in Bagiuo City, Philippines via video and audio hookup and to see them and talk to them and wave to them and sing “We Love You With the Love of the Lord” to them, half a world away. And then to experience our Father opening our hearts and our spirits to sacrificially give like we never have before was beyond description.

Our God always out-imagines us. He always out-dreams us. We can’t think too big or plan too big for him. He always gives us much more than we can ever ask or imagine. How wonderful to consider the lives that will be saved, the souls that will be won, the people who will be reconciled to our God as a result of yesterday’s blessings.

And our Lord continued to pour out his blessings on us as he held back the rain and kept us high and dry at last night’s fellowship / assembly in our new, not-quite-finished-yet worship center. Nearly 700 of us ate dinner together in the new building and then worshiped our God in song and prayer. We read Scripture together. We confessed Jesus as the Christ and as Lord together. We imagined together all the baptisms that are going to take place in this building, all the weddings, all the singings, all the sermons, all the laughing, all the crying, all the seminars, all the love that’s going to be shared in this building. And then we asked our God to, again, blow us away.

I saw the Legacy church transformed yesterday. I saw all our same people, all our same brothers and sisters. But I saw us differently. There was a different spirit about us yesterday. The Lord was in our midst yesterday and he was working and blessing and inspiring and planning for things I can’t even begin to see yet. But he sees them. They already exist in his sight. Our God calls things that are not as though they were. And we’re beginning to see and to think like him more and more. And it’s exciting.

After we prayed together for all of the future things that would be happening for our Lord and for the Kingdom in this new place of worship, we wrote on the foundation. We wrote our favorites passages of Scripture. We wrote our prayers. We wrote our dreams for our church family. And we wrote the names of our children.

What an incredible day. What an incredible God!

It’s 10:30 pm Monday, my computer’s been down most of the day, and I’m still riding yesterday’s high. I just got out of a Small Groups Church Co-Leader training session with a bunch of couples who are leading new groups beginning this Sunday—new groups that are all multiplications of original groups who’ve grown beyond their capacities. And they’ve all experienced the love and the ministry and the sharing and the fellowship and the connection and the evangelism that takes place in a small group. And they’re all inspired to take what they have and spread it out into our congregation and into our communities.

And we give God the glory. He alone is worthy of praise for all the wonderful things that are happening here. He alone. In Romans 4, when Paul writes about our God who “gives life to the dead and calls things that are not as though they were,” he says Abraham’s faith was strengthened and he “gave glory to God” because he was seeing the impossible-to-deny truth that our God has “power to do what he had promised.” Amen.

May our Father use us in his Kingdom. And may we submit our lives and our church family and our wills to him. May we be blessed with his Spirit and his vision. And may his will be done in the Legacy church as it is in heaven.

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And may UCLA beat Memphis Saturday night.

The only way I beat Whitney outright in my NCAA tournament bracket is if the Bruins beat those impossibly-loaded Tigers from Memphis State AND Kansas beats Carolina. I can salvage a tie if the Tarheels win and Tiger High loses. I can salvage a tie if Kansas and Memphis win and Kansas then takes the title. But if Memphis wins the championship or if Memphis and UNC both win their semi-final games, I’m toast. And then, I’m probably done. You can’t lose to your daughter in a college basketball tournament pool. I need Kevin Love to score about 40.

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Michael Young drove one deep to put Texas up 1-0 in the Rangers half of the first inning in Seattle. And Millwood looked good into the 6th. But the Rangers lose their opener (SHOCKING!!) 5-2 to the M’s. Now, Kipi, they’re tied for last place in the American League.

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Tomorrow (Tuesday) is my day in Waco with Jim Martin and some of the other central Texas preachers down there. So I probably won’t write again until Wednesday morning. I’ll reflect a little bit on this year’s Tulsa Workshop then.

Peace,

Allan

The Net

March 21, 2008 / Allan / 0 Comments

One more week here at Legacy to pray and plan and prepare for Missions Sunday, March 30. Wednesday is our Day of Prayer and Fasting. Our prayer service begins at 6:00 Wednesday evening. And then our adult classes are meeting in the auditorium at 7:00 for a missions-themed time of worship. Thursday morning we’ll break the fast together with a come and go break-fast here at the building from 6:00 to 8:00. And then Sunday is Missions Sunday.

John Wesley once said, “The Church has nothing to do but to save souls. Therefore, spend and be spent in this work.”

And I’ve been trying for the past six weeks to preach that message to our family at Legacy. I want us to see ourselves—each of us—as Christian missionaries. Ambassadors for Christ. Ministers of reconciliation. God’s fellow workers. We’re not all preachers or teachers or Bible study leaders. But we’re all co-workers with God.

Yesterday Terry Rush, in his blog Morning Rush, nailed the idea. He paints a beautiful picture of our involvement with God in his saving work that began before time and continues through eternity. Everything we do and say today connects with all the things that have been done and said before us and connects, too, with all the things that will be done and said after us to win souls to heaven. I urge you to read his article here.

Hope the Easter Bunny’s good to you.

Peace,

Allan

Attractional v. Missional

March 18, 2008 / Allan / 2 Comments

I know. I know. I try my very best to stay far away from Church Buzzwords. You know, words that we use that automatically end the conversation. Words that, once used out loud, label the user so that everybody else in the discussion stops listening to the actual conversation because they’ve already drawn their conclusions.

But try to hear me out.

In a column on mission-minded churches by Kent Marcum in the latest Christian Chronicle, he writes,

“Many congregations suffering from problems could probably attribute their internal struggles to an internal focus.”

It’s easy, perhaps, for some to see that in our churches. But I’ve also recently begun to witness this phenomenon in our Small Groups here at Legacy. (Now, please recongize that the following couple of statements are broad, general observations.)

It seems to me the groups that were built around friendships and strong existing relationships are struggling. These are the groups that started out so strong and so big and with so much promise. But these are the groups now that are fighting and arguing and getting feelings hurt and not growing and not inviting visitors and not really achieving what the groups are meant to achieve. People in these groups report that they almost dread Sunday nights. They’re walking on eggshells. Attendance is sporadic and the tension is real.

On the other hand, it seems that our groups that began with a few families who didn’t really know each other are doing so much better. These are the groups that started with doubt and uncertainty and lots of questions. I wasn’t sure about a couple of them. But now these are the very groups that are growing and inviting visitors and reaching out to the community and serving other people. Every week they report new people coming in, new projects they’re taking on, and new ways they’re getting to know each other. They love their Sunday night meetings together and they can’t wait to multiply and share what they have and what they’re doing with others. They seem to be achieving what the Small Groups are built to achieve.

Again, I don’t mean to paint our entire Legacy Small Groups Church with a broad stroke. But there is something important in the mindset of the groups in the same way there’s something significant about the mindset of an entire congregation. When the focus is on “us,” we struggle. When the focus is on “others,” we excel.

Whether in our Small Groups or in our congregations, it’s the difference between being attractional versus being missional.

A church with an attractional viewpoint says if we build it, they will come. If we do church better, they will come. If we sing newer songs (or older songs) they will come. If we take an appealing position on the hot church topic of the day they will come (or, they won’t leave). If we start more exciting programs, they will come. Bigger screens, cushier chairs, and a coffee bar! They will come!

A church with a missional mindset is different. It infiltrates its community. A missional viewpoint says it’s not what we do but, rather, what we do for you in the manner of God. Our Father through Christ shows grace, our God through Christ forgives, our God through Christ heals and loves and comforts. Jesus teaches and restores and shows compassion and brings justice. God, through his Son and by the power of the Holy Spirit, is today, right now, reconciling all of creation back to himself. And a missional church models that Good News. We go out from our places and, like our Savior, we show mercy and grace and compassion and forgiveness to a lost and dying world.

This is what I’ve learned from Luke 15 over the past week and what I’m trying to communicate to my brothers and sisters at Legacy.

Forget the nine coins in the jar on the counter. As long as there’s even one single lost coin buried in the dirt in the corner of a dark house, I’m not going to stop until it’s found. Forget the 99 sheep safe in the nurturing and loving environment of the flock. As long as there’s even one solitary sheep wandering out there alone in the wilderness, I will not quit until it’s found. Every single sheep. Every single coin. Every single person. Everyone is significant. Everybody matters.

Luke 15 says clearly to forget the church building and the contribution and the worship traditions and the programs and the committees. Forget the ones already in. Don’t worry about them. Worry about the ones who aren’t in. Worry about the outsiders. Worry about the lost. And do something about it.

In Luke 15 the religious people are muttering. “Those kind of people don’t give. Those lost people don’t speak English. Their kids are not well-behaved. Have you seen what they wear? They’ll just mess things up. They’re on welfare. He just got out of prison. She has AIDS. He cusses. She smokes. We have to protect our kids. We have to be careful. Maybe those kind of people should just go somewhere else.”

Stop looking in. Start looking out. Forget the nine meeting in your house on Sunday night. Forget the 99 meeting in your church buildings on Sunday mornings. Go seek and save the lost.

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I must share this with you. Alvin Jennings sent me this video. Watch it once and you’ll watch it half a dozen times. If this little two-year-old girl can sing this beautiful classic hymn, why can’t we? What a precious angel.

And after you watch it, ask yourself this question: the way I’m smiling right now, does God smile like this when I sing to him?

Peace,

Allan

Suppose One Of You…

March 14, 2008 / Allan / 3 Comments

It’s shocking to find Jesus in Luke 15 having to defend to the religious leaders of God’s people his actions of welcoming and eating with “sinners.” The contrast in attitudes between the Pharisees and teachers of the Law with that of Jesus is obvious. But understanding that contrast and the manifestations of it is paramount to Christ’s Church accomplishing its God-ordained mission.

Jesus attracted sinners while the Pharisees repelled them.

Lost sinners came to Jesus, not because he catered to them or compromised his message, but because he cared for them. He understood their needs and tried to help them, while the Pharisees criticized them and kept their distance.

Jesus’ implicit rebuke of that approach to sinners by the Pharisess is timeless. His every word and deed challenges that self-centered mindset. Jesus invested his time and energy in sinners. He associated freely with them. He ate with them. He became personally and intimately involved in their lives and in their struggles. And then in order to restore them to a right relationship with God, he died for them.

Jesus pursued sinners with such enthusiasm and commitment that the religious community questioned his character and his motives. And the parables in Luke 15 explain why that pursuit of sinners meant so much to him. He knew that rescue was possible. And love compelled him to go after them with everything he had.

If Jesus’ worldview and perspective is informed by this powerful theology of the lost, so should ours.

To hear the Luke 15 parables today is to be unavoidably challenged by them. It’s a direct challenge from our Savior to his Church as he says, “Suppose one of you…”

Peace,

Allan

Category: Evangelism (Page 20 of 21)

The Church's First Prayer

Tell Them How Much The Lord Has Done For You

$209K and Counting…

The Net

Attractional v. Missional

Suppose One Of You…

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