The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Category: Golf Course Road Church (Page 19 of 27)

Accurate Interpretation

November 13, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I need to offer a disclaimer as we make this shift from viewing the Bible primarily as a collection of God’s commands to reading and understanding the Bible more as the Story of God. This narrative lens is not going to suddenly give us easy answers to all the issues. We’ll actually find there are fewer rules, the lines are not as black and white, and it leads to more questions and more wrestling and more reflection. It’s not a system. It’s not an owners manual. It’s much more art than science. It can be messy. But I believe understanding the Scriptures as a broad, sweeping, epic story of who God is and what he is doing will help us better connect the dots in the Bible, make us better able to see ourselves in the drama so we can play our parts and say our lines, and enable us to more accurately interpret God’s will.

“All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness, so that the child of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.” ~2 Timothy 3:16-17

A lot of us have taken passages like the above and developed a theology about the Bible, but not a biblical theology.

We’ll read Jonah and spend four weeks researching whether a human can live inside a fish for three days and never once think about God. The story is about God and what he is doing, not about the whale and what he or she can or cannot do.

We’ll argue about Paul’s words concerning divorce and remarriage and look for legal loopholes instead of dwelling on the covenant loyalty of our God who intends our marriages to reflect and witness to his perfect love and faithfulness.

Esther is not about “you need to be more courageous.” If that’s the point of Esther, it may as well be “you need to be prettier,” too. The point of Esther is that our God is at work to redeem everything and he uses every opportunity – even our darkest moments in exile when we feel weak and powerless and trapped in circumstances beyond our control – to save us and redeem us. We are not forgotten. We are never out of God’s reach or too far away from his salvation. That’s the story.

For a long time, we have read and studied the Bible looking for commands, examples, and necessary inferences. We no longer assume that this method works consistently, if at all, or if it’s even healthy. Does anybody really believe that in the grand, sweeping narrative of Scripture, the strange fire of Nadab and Abihu belongs in a central and controlling place? Reading the Bible as a book of laws to be obeyed or as a constitution to be defended is what led to some Christians affirming that slavery must be okay because the Bible doesn’t explicitly prohibit it.

Reading the Bible as a system of laws, people take every single verse that mentions slavery and notice that none of the verses condemns slavery as sinful or prohibitive. God didn’t say it’s a sin, so it must be alright as long as you don’t violate your conscience. Yes, Christians have done this in the past, and some Christians still do. Yes.

Reading the Bible as the story of who God is and what he’s  doing in Jesus Christ makes it obviously clear that all women and men are created equal in the image of God and that all people belong to each other as complete equals. Slavery is a result of the Fall; it’s sin. Jesus destroyed all the barriers between people at the cross. In Christ, there is no slave or free, male or female, Jew or Greek – we are one and slavery is a reprehensible evil.

That’s the difference. What’s the story?

The beatitudes are not telling us to be better peacemakers or to grow in humility. It’s not that you have to develop these virtues in order to receive the blessings. Why do we try to make mourning/weeping sound good or desirable? Well, it’s mourning over sin, right? I don’t know, the text doesn’t say that. The point of the beatitudes is to express how radically present the Kingdom of God is, even and especially among those who are grieving. People in their brokenness and grief often feel like they’re left out of God’s blessings. But Jesus is telling us, “No! God’s Kingdom is bigger and better than we ever dreamed. And it’s here right now!”

What God is doing is a story. It’s a narrative. When we see the pattern of God’s Kingdom in Creation and how it went wrong, when we understand how everything God is doing through Jesus Christ is to restore our righteous relationships with him, with one another, and with all of nature, we can much more easily, consistently, and accurately interpret his will and purposes for us.

Peace,

Allan

Connecting the Dots

November 9, 2022 / / 2 Comments

We’re making a significant shift at the GCR Church in our hermeneutic, the lens through which we read and interpret the Scriptures. We’re intentionally moving away from viewing the Bible primarily as a collection of commands and laws and toward seeing the Bible as the grand, sweeping, epic narrative of who God is and what he is doing in the world. We’re introducing it to the church over these seven weeks in what we’re calling The Story of God.

The Bible is a story. God reveals himself to us in history, through incarnation, Gospel, mighty acts, relationship, and promise. He could have given us a systematic theology or a constitution if he wanted to. He very easily could have prepared the checklists and the bullet points of what he wants out of his people. But he didn’t reveal the truth of himself or his mission that way. Instead, he chose to give us a story. He gives us poetry and prose, songs and parables – all of it in a narrative form. It’s a story.

The Story of God has a beginning and an end. It has a catastrophe that threatens the story and a plan and a mission to set everything right. It has a main stage and a main character. And from start to finish, it’s beautiful and inspirational. Eternal.

Act One – Creation: The Pattern of the Kingdom (Genesis 1-2)
Act Two – Crash: The Perished Kingdom (Genesis 3-11)
Act Three – Covenant: The Promised Kingdom (Genesis 12-Malachi 4)
Act Four – Christ: The Present Kingdom (Matthew 1-John 21)
Act Five – Church: The Proclaimed Kingdom (Acts 1-Revelation 20)
Act Six – New Creation: The Perfected Kingdom (Revelation 21-22)

We believe reading and understanding the Scriptures as one holy narrative will help us better connect the dots in the Bible, better identify with the story and find our own place in the mission of God, and more accurately interpret God’s purposes and will.

Let’s take that first one today. Connecting the dots.

We connect with one another through our stories. In a room of strangers, we tell stories about our hometown or our first job, trying to find some common ground around which to begin a relationship. You’re from Clovis? I have an aunt who lives in Clovis! Do you know Pam Lewis? That’s how we do it. And that’s how our Lord does it.

Jesus connects all the dots in the story. That’s what he told the religious leaders in John 5: “The Scriptures all point to me; the story is about me.”

In Exodus 24, Moses and the priests, representing all of God’s people, are eating and drinking with God on Mt. Sinai because they have been washed in blood. Moses says “the blood of the covenant.” At the last supper with his disciples, Jesus quotes Moses from Exodus 24 and says, “This is my blood of the covenant.”

The Hebrews sacrifice a Passover lamb on the night of God’s great deliverance. The Gospels say Jesus is the Lamb of God and he was sacrificed on Passover.

The Gospel of John takes the beautiful language of Creation from Genesis 1 and the spectacular imagery of New Creation from Revelation 21 and ties it all together in Jesus. He was with God “in the beginning.” He is the light shining in the darkness.

The story tells us that when you pass through the waters, everything changes. When you walk through the waters of the Red Sea, God is moving you from slavery to freedom. When you cross the waters of the Jordan River, God is moving you from wandering in the wilderness to settling in the land of promise. When you go through the waters of baptism, you pass from death to eternal life.

The Story of God connects all the dots in the Bible and gives us a common language and common touch points and experiences to connect us to the Lord and to one another.

All of life is a story. Everybody is living their story and finding their identity and basing their actions on the story they’re in. Everyone’s looking for the big story, the one Great Story that’s above the others and helps us make sense of all the others. The Story of God is that story. It’s large enough to be bigger than you, it calls you to something and someone beyond yourself. But it’s also intimate enough to involve you personally. God so loved the whole world that he gave his one and only Son. And that Son who came for the whole world also came for you. He knows you by name. Outside the garden tomb: Mary. Inside your fishing boat: Peter, Son of Jonah.

Peace,

Allan

All That Noise

November 2, 2022 / / 0 Comments

By God’s grace, our GCR Church gave $6,151,300 last Sunday in cash, checks, and pledges to fund our congregational emphasis on transformation and mission – that’s more than two-million-dollars above our goal! The money and pledge cards continue trickling in this week and I’m assuming by the time you’re reading this letter the total might be closer to $6.2-million!

Praise God for his faithfulness and gracious provision! The supreme generosity of our church family means all the Breakthrough initiatives are fully funded. Thank you so much for your deep faith in our Lord, your confidence in our vision, and your commitments to the mission at Golf Course Road.

Allow me to remind all of us that when we give our money to the Lord, when we invest our dollars and dimes in the Kingdom of God, it’s not gone. The tray goes down the pew and your check is in the tray and the tray disappears into a counting room and your check gets deposited with a bank. But it’s not gone.

It’s like a pinball machine. Whatever you give works like a pinball machine.

You know, you’re playing pinball and that little silver ball is moving right down the middle, headed for the bottom, and it looks like it’s lost. The ball is gone. The game goes dark. It’s over.

But then you hit the flipper. That blessed flipper! And the ball pops up and now it’s bouncing and pinging all over the place. It touches off an exciting set of strobe lights over there. It bangs into a bunch of noisemakers over here. It gets a bonus ball and some extra points up there. That ball is just going and going and bouncing and beeping and buzzing and there’s excitement and electricity and energy…!

Almost out of nowhere! How cool!

Because of Breakthrough, some of our folks at GCR put really large sums of money into the plate on Sunday. Because of Breakthrough, some of our people put ten dollars into the plate when they haven’t given money to church in years. Or never.

Your money’s not gone. You’re throwing it into God’s pinball machine and it’s about to come into contact with that flipper. Now you just watch what God’s going to do with it!

Everything you do for God makes a difference. It bounces and pings all over eternity.

Even one cup of cold water given in the name of Jesus makes a lot of noise in heaven.

Peace,

Allan

Breakthrough Sunday!

October 31, 2022 / / 0 Comments

The goal was to give four-million-dollars to jump start our vision and mission at the GCR Church. Four-million-dollars over the next two years would fund our Gospel work with our five local missions partners, adopt three new church plants, send one hundred of our church members on mission trips, remodel our worship center, restructure our adult Bible classes, start twelve new small groups, and host a dozen Christian Practices retreats. The goal was four-million-dollars. We prayerfully and worshipfully expected God to provide four-million-dollars.

Turns out, God thinks we can do more than we think we can.

By the grace of God, the generosity of the GCR Church resulted in an outpouring of more than six-million-dollars yesterday to fund our ambitious vision. The cash and pledges that were offered yesterday totaled more than $6.1-million dollars, and the number is growing by the hour with every check that’s delivered to the church offices today and every pledge that’s made online.

Six-million-dollars!

Yesterday’s Breakthrough results are the culmination of many things: a lot of hard work by a great ministry team, congregational confidence in the leadership of our church and the vision from our God, and the amazing grace of our merciful Lord. Our God is moving among us. God was ready for this church to take this step, he is ready for us to move on this. God’s timing was and is perfect with this in so many ways. I’m convinced he was always going to do this again with Golf Course Road, and I feel blessed by God and privileged by him to be in the middle of it with our church family together. All of us at GCR should feel very favored by the Lord to be in the situation we’re in together.

We are a ten talent church. We’re in the upper tier in the amount of gifts, money, resources, and blessings we have received from our Father. And that comes with serious responsibilities to God and to his mission. He’s given us ten talents, and he expects us to use them. That’s a heavy burden to consider and a tremendous opportunity to undertake with no fear and great faith.

Praise the Lord for days like yesterday and the obvious outpouring of his grace on us. May his will be done in and through his people at GCR just as it is in heaven.

Peace,

Allan

Fun Club

October 19, 2022 / / 0 Comments

As part of GCR’s “Breakthrough,” our church is partnering with Emerson Elementary School to provide needed resources and support for the teachers, staff, and the 420 students there and their families. We’re planning for our church members to serve as crossing guards and cafeteria aids on campus, to stock and organize the Care Closet, and to staple papers and make copies for the teachers. We’re providing teacher lunches and weekend food packages for the kids. We’re putting together a “Fist Bump Crew” to greet the students as they enter the campus on Monday mornings. And we’re committed to completely renovate their interior courtyard, to provide a beautiful space where kids can eat breakfast or lunch with their parents and where we can read with them through Fun Club.

Fun Club is a program through which an adult or two eats lunch once a week with a group or four or five students and reads to them during the meal. You eat with this small group of kids, you laugh together and bond a little bit, and you read. That’s it.

Our children’s minister, Kristin Rampton, and our oldest daughter, Whitney, are already plugged into Fun Club at Emerson. This picture is of Whitney reading to a small group of second-graders earlier today. Does that warm your heart, or what?

Are you telling me you can’t do something like this once a week? Don’t tell me. Tell Whitney.

Peace,

Allan

GCR at ACU

October 15, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Road trip! We jumped into J.E.’s Suburban Thursday morning and headed east to Abilene for some team-building and the restructured Summit. Cory, Kristin, Ryan, J.E., and I were eager to hang out with groups of ministers in our own areas of interests, to reconnect with old friends, and to hear Andrew Root, the theologian and author of last year’s “Churches and the Crisis of Decline.” But a beautiful side benefit was the bonding a group experiences on even a two-hour road trip.

You can learn a lot about people when you get them together away from their regular day-to-day contexts: the extremes Ryan goes to in planning every detail of our adventure, Cory’s shaving habits, Kristin’s chewing gum obsession, J.E.’s questionable tastes in music. The things that make us laugh and Ryan’s “bit” about Jerry Seinfeld not being that funny. The things that stir our hearts to action. The love we share for Christ and God’s people at Golf Course Road. The pressures and stresses that come with congregational ministry in a time like ours. The varying levels of concern we shared about the lack of a good late night ice cream place in Abilene.

 

 

 

 

 

We were overjoyed to see some of our GCR kids who are attending school at ACU. We ran into sweet Callie Doke and her boyfriend, Gabe, after chapel at the newly remodeled Moody Coliseum. The super-fun Emma Daman drove us around campus in her golf cart with supreme skill and professionalism – five stars! I was blessed to see a couple of our Central kids from our church in Amarillo: Chelsea Flow and her new husband, Riley, who are now ministering in San Antonio, and an exuberant Eli McCall who seems to be truly loving his Wildcat life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It was great seeing Todd Lewis and Lance Parrish. Todd and I served on the city council together in Marble Falls a million years ago and worshiped and served and raised young children together in that wonderful Marble Falls church during the ’90s. Lance and I began our congregational ministries together at Legacy – he was our Junior High Youth Minister and I was a first time preacher in 2007. I enjoyed sitting at the feet of Randy Harris again. It was at once terribly sobering and wonderfully encouraging – just like every session with Randy. I was thrilled to hug Judy Siburt’s neck and catch up with Carson Reed. I ran into Jake Perkins and Wes Crawford. It was really good to be in a familiar place with so many familiar people, worshiping together, talking about ministry together, praying together. Our gracious Lord has been very kind to put so many of his best people in front of me over the past 20 years, to walk with me and help me, to teach me and encourage me in this task for which I’ve been divinely called, but for which I am so horribly ill-equipped. None of that is lost on me. Some of the very brightest and best people in our Christian tribe have poured themselves into me over the years. I have been highly favored by our God. And I am forever shocked and eternally grateful.

 

 

 

 

 

Back to our ministry gang at GCR. Another tremendous blessing for me from our Lord. Carrie-Anne and I have been in Midland now for about 14-months. That’s long enough to learn enough about where we’ve landed, the people we’re with, and what’s probably ahead. And it’s good. It’s very good. It was just two hours in a Suburban to Abilene there and back, a few meals together, an impulsive hour at Minter Park, and some conversations about ministry and our current culture. But it confirmed my love for this group our God has put together at Golf Course Road. We’re committed to the vision and direction the Lord has mapped out for our church, to the relationships within our ministry team and our families, and to working and serving together in Midland, Texas by his grace. God can work with a ministry team like ours. And he is.

Peace,

Allan

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