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Re-Thinking What You Believe

April 15, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Happy April 15. The day of the year we realize that taxation with representation ain’t that great, either.     ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We believe that Jesus is raised from the dead and is reigning right now at the right hand of God. We believe that salvation comes by no other name than Jesus. We’re very clear on the things we believe. But a lot of us have stopped talking. We haven’t stopped believing, we’ve just stopped talking. But in the Bible, believing IS talking. Why don’t we talk about Jesus with the people around us?

What’s happened? We sincerely believe all the right things. But I wonder if we also believe some wrong things. I wonder if there are some things we need to stop believing. Are there things in our heads and our hearts that we believe to be true, that really aren’t? And do these false things we believe contribute to a church culture in which we don’t talk about Jesus with others the way we used to? I think some of the false things we believe have the potential to shut us down as Gospel proclaiming followers of the risen Christ.

Allow me to present a short list of some things we need to stop believing so we can be more effective witnesses to the Good News.

We need to stop believing that the Church is in decline, that it’s getting smaller and weaker. That’s not true. We hear it, we read it, and we repeat it. But it’s just not true. Yes, the Church in America and in Texas is declining in membership and attendance. The Churches of Christ in this country are losing numbers at an alarming rate–that’s undeniable. But I wouldn’t call it smaller and weaker. I believe the Church is getting smarter and stronger.

Fewer people are going to church. But the ones who are going, generally speaking, seem to be deeply committed to our Lord and his cause. As the numbers go down, the dedicated disciples of Jesus are gearing up. They’re giving more, they’re volunteering and serving more. The Church is not getting smaller and weaker, the Church is getting leaner and meaner for the mission. We’re becoming better equipped and prepared and motivated to do what we are ordained by God to do.

Remember, this has always been our God’s preferred method. Gideon brought 32,000 men to God and said, “We’re ready to fight!” But God wouldn’t give Gideon the battle plans until he had trimmed his numbers down to 300. It was David, not Saul, who defeated Goliath. God told his kings not to count the numbers of people, not to measure the size of the armies. When the kings counted, everybody got in trouble. God’s preferred method is to use five little rolls and two fish to feed the multitudes. God likes to use a tiny mustard seed to shade all the birds.

The Church is not in decline. God is weeding us, sifting us, pruning us–he’s getting us ready for something truly spectacular in his Kingdom.

We also need to stop believing that the Church is irrelevant. We hear that the Church doesn’t know what’s going on in the world, the Church is out of touch, the Church doesn’t have a genuine impact on real people’s lives. That’s just not true. Don’t ever believe it.

The churches right now today are rebuilding Asheville, North Carolina and all those towns in the Carolinas that were devastated by Hurricane Helene. Not the government, not the Red Cross, not the insurance companies–they all left a long time ago. The churches are rebuilding those homes and restoring hope to those families. Same thing with the wildfires in California and the wildfires in the Texas panhandle. God’s Church is always first on the scene and God’s Church is always the last to leave.

Disciples of Jesus are the ones who provide free health care to the poor. God’s Church provides shelter for the homeless. Followers of Christ feed the hungry kids and furnish the transitional housing, and train the unwed mothers. God’s Church advocates for the immigrants and refugees and defends the wrongfully imprisoned. Christians build the schools in Kenya and run the clinics in Honduras.

Christians understand the physical, incarnational aspects of salvation–we always have. In the early days of the Church, the apostles healed the blind and crippled and fed the poor. In the first 150 years of American history, God’s Church established 90% of the colleges and universities and built 100% of the hospitals. Don’t let anybody ever tell you the Church is irrelevant or out of touch. It’s not true.

I’ll add three more things to this list tomorrow.

The point is that if we believe these false ideas about the Church then, yes, we can start believing that we’re hanging on to a dying idea, that our message has no power, that the world has passed us by, and that God’s not as interested in saving people as he used to be. We’ll stop talking. It’s time to re-think what we believe.

Peace,

Allan

Shooting While Scattered

April 8, 2025 / / 0 Comments

Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Bump Wills…

Thanks to Florida’s suffocating defense that kept Houston from even attempting a shot on their final two possessions, Tim Neale won our church office March Madness bracket challenge and I finished in second place. Tim is our back-to-back office champion, but we don’t know whether he qualifies for the free meal and dessert at our next staff lunch, or if we should buy it for his son, Seth. I finished as the runner-up. Andrew nailed down last place pretty decisively.

In other news, I won our Stanglin family bracket, finishing two points ahead of Whitney and six points ahead of last year’s champion, Carrie-Anne. That means Carrie-Anne’s bracket came off the front of the refrigerator first thing this morning and mine went up. It’ll be on full display in our kitchen for twelve glorious months. It’s just something we do. I’m not certain how healthy it is, but it’s just something we do.

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One of the several reasons we chose Emerson Elementary as a GCR local missions partner is that they are the MISD campus for “medically fragile” students. All Midland public school students from 7th grade down who have special physical needs go to Emerson where they have trained staff and facilities to take care of them. That part of the campus is equipped with hospital beds, oxygen, lifts, and everything that’s needed to support these most vulnerable in our community. They do incredible work at Emerson, work that most people know nothing about.

Our church recently purchased a special set of swings for the Emerson playground that meets the particular needs of those sweet kids. GCR bought the swings and paid for the playground expansion and the installation of the swings as just another piece of our partnership together. The swings were completed and unveiled last week, and our ministry team was invited to play with the kids on the new equipment this morning.

The sun was shining, the winds were calm, and the swings were swinging. The kids squealed with absolute delight and more than a couple of us joined them in being sad when it was over.

We are so thankful to God for our partnership with Emerson and so blessed by him to know so many wonderful teachers and staff who take such loving care of these precious children. We’re considering building into our work schedule some daily P.E. time at Emerson.

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Our youth minister, Jadyn Martinez, has been on mandatory bed rest for the past three weeks or so while she endures the final laps of a high-risk pregnancy. We’re missing her terribly around here, so yesterday we surprised her by showing up at her house for lunch. There was some fear that the surprise might raise her blood pressure and liver counts so that little Zion might come a week or two earlier than we need. But her doctor’s appointment late yesterday confirmed that everything’s still really good.

Except for Jim eating most of Jadyn’s chips, I think she enjoyed the surprise and getting to spend a loud lunch laughing together and getting caught up. Or she faked it really well.

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It was 34-degrees at Wrigley Field last night when the Rangers started their game against the Cubs. The wind chill was 23. And the Rangers were not good. Nasty Nate was uncharacteristically wild–two walks, two plunks, two stolen bases–and the Rangers bats were frozen in the 7-0 shutout loss. I’m not sure if that game has anything at all to say about where Texas might be in a month or two, or even at the end of the year. We’re not reading anything into an April game that was the second coldest in Rangers history. But how they respond tonight in equally frigid circumstances? What they learn and how they bounce back or not? That might could tell us something.

Josh Jung is off the DL and should be in the lineup tonight. I’m hoping that can help get this team over the Mendoza line.

Peace,

Allan

Partners with Emerson

February 14, 2025 / / 0 Comments

The Golf Course Road Church was honored by the Midland School District last night as one of their outstanding Partners in Education. Our work with Emerson Elementary is just one part of our recently renewed focus on doing ministry right here in the community where God has placed us. But it’s certainly the one that gets the most attention and energy from our congregation. Dozens of our church family are on the Emerson campus every month fist-bumping on Monday mornings, reading to kids at lunch, and encouraging teachers and staff with meals and gifts. We’ve also completely remodeled two courtyards so that parents can eat lunch with their kids in a comfortable setting. And when there’s a special need for a student or an Emerson family, the counselors there call GCR first.

Several of our GCR family attended the dinner last night to receive the. award, including Gordon, seen above shaking hands with one of the MISD school board members, followed by J.E. and Jim. Ryan, Kristin, and April were also there to represent Golf Course Road.

It’s not a competition, of course, but we’re winning.

I attend a quarterly “Pastors for MISD” meeting with Dr. Howard and several other school district administrators, and three times they have singled out GCR for our work with Emerson as an example for the other churches. Golf Course Road Church has been featured on the back of the past two handouts for these pastors meetings and it’s kind of become a little joke.

I thank God for our leadership at GCR and our whole church as we invest Christ’s love and grace into our local schools. And I praise the Lord for the work he is doing in and with these Emerson kids and their families.

Peace,

Allan

GCR’s Theophanies

September 24, 2024 / / 2 Comments

In Acts 4, the early Church is facing cultural opposition and political oppression in Jerusalem. Peter and John have been jailed, interrogated, and ordered to cease speaking and teaching about the resurrected Jesus. So they go “back to their own people,” they gather with the Church, and they pray for God to give them even more boldness to continue speaking about Jesus and they ask God to stretch out his hand to heal and perform even more miracles and wonders to glorify Jesus.

Our God responds to the prayer immediately by shaking the building and filling them all with Holy Spirit courage.

It’s called a theophany. it’s a visible appearance of God. God revealing his presence in a real, physical way you can see or feel.

God did this for Moses at the burning bush. The fire and the smoke got Moses’ attention and our Lord told him, “I am with you.” God said, “I will be with you,” and he gave Moses the boldness he needed to speak to Pharaoh.

God revealed himself this way to his people on Mount Sinai. There’s thunder and lightning, smoke and fire and noise, and the whole mountain is shaking. “I am with you,” God says. “You are my people and I am your God.” His presence gives them the increased courage and faith they need to obey the commands he gives them on the mountain.

Isaiah experiences the same thing. He goes into the Temple and sees our holy God on his eternal throne. There is smoke and noise and the whole Temple begins to shake. God asks, “Who will go for us?” And Isaiah goes from “Woe is me; I am ruined,” to “Here I am! Send me!”

Go and tell the people. I am with you. Go and speak. I’m right here. Go and live. I am with you. Go and proclaim.

It happens to the first Church on the Day of Pentecost. Those 120 disciples of Jesus praying in the upper room are blown away by the noise, the wind, and the fire. God is here with us! All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit, Scripture says, both the men and the women, and they began to speak.

I suggest to you that these kinds of things are still happening today if we’ll pay attention and notice. Our spiritual God is still making himself known in physical ways in order to assure us of his presence and fill us with Holy Spirit boldness. We get these theophanies here at Golf Course Road all the time.

In the past 22 months since we launched our vision of transformation and mission–just a little less than two years ago–we’ve had 174 people place membership at GCR. That’s 174 men, women, and children who are jumping in with our church family. And we don’t know how they’re getting here or why they’re coming. With a lot of our new members, there’s no real connection, no personal invitation, or particular event. They’re just showing up and forming relationships and embracing the mission and becoming important parts of what God is doing in us and through us here. It’s a physical reminder that our God is the one who gathers his people and brings them together for his holy purposes. We’re seeing it here. It’s real.

In that same time frame, in a little less than two years, we’ve had 61 baptisms here at GCR. That reminds us that, yes, God is still saving people. God is still at work in people’s lives. God is still rescuing people and snatching souls from hell! We’re seeing it all the time.

Last May, there were about 30 kids at Emerson Elementary who had lunch debt in the school cafeteria  and were about to be cut off. They were going to be served inferior lunches in special bags for the last month of the school year. It would mark these students as different. It would make them stick out. So we paid off their debt. We didn’t ask any questions, we didn’t ask anybody to fill out a form. Did you know you were in debt? How much debt do you owe? Are you trying to pay off the debt? Would you meet us halfway with your debt? No! We didn’t do any of that, we just paid it all off. Just like Jesus. Just like our God in Christ who forgives our debt and pays off our sin and rescues us from bondage. These students and their parents got a physical, tangible, living parable or proof of God’s grace that sets us free.

Those one hundred Mission Agape boxes we provide every Thanksgiving. Our people buy the food and pack the boxes, and we distribute them to families in need in Midland County. That’s physical proof that our God is still providing what people need through our community of faith.

The “4 Midland” worship services with First Methodist, First Presbyterian, and First Baptist. There are always 800-1,000 of us in each other’s buildings, singing with our combined choirs, praying together in our different traditions, loving and accepting one another in the name of Jesus, putting aside our denominational differences to unite for the sake of our city.

That takes Holy Spirit courage! That’s Holy Spirit community! That’s proof that our God is determined to bring all things and all people together in Christ, and he’s doing it in us and through us at GCR! Yes, our God is still stretching out his hand to heal, he is still performing miracles and wonders through the name of his holy servant Jesus! And we’re experiencing it here all the time!

Our spiritual God is constantly making himself known to us in physical ways. We know our God lives inside us and we know his Son is our Lord. So we are not defined by the times. The government does not control how we live our lives. Technology does not define our existence. Postmodernism does not determine how we think. News and entertainment does not account for who we are. We must break the faithless and ignorant habit of letting the journalists tell us what’s doing on. We need to at least give the Holy Spirit equal time!

Peace,

Allan

Share the Pain

September 19, 2024 / / 0 Comments

We’re looking at the middle part of Romans 8 as it answers three fundamental questions for us today: Where are we? What are we called to do? How is it going to go? Yesterday, we noted that the world is in pain. The world is groaning in frustration over the curse of sin and death. Today, I suggest that all Christians are called to share that pain. As children of God and followers of his Son Jesus, we are called to share the world’s pain.

“We ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies.” ~Romans 8:23

We are called to share the world’s pain. To join the world’s pain. To bear the world’s pain. Not to ignore it, not to isolate ourselves from it, not to look the other way and pretend it’s not happening. The Church is called to share the world’s pain. We ourselves who have the firstfruits of the Spirit groan inwardly.

Wait. Why us?

Because we know. We know things are not the way they are supposed to be. Because we have the firstfruits. We have seen glimpses of the eternal glory. We’ve tasted the way things are supposed to be. We’ve experienced a little bit of what God is doing.

As a church, when we come together to worship, we get a sense of what’s coming. We join that great throng of heavenly witnesses around the throne of God, we’re united together with all the saints–past, present, and future. There’s another scene, there’s another city, there’s another reality beyond our time and space. And sometimes we see it. Sometimes we feel it, if only for a moment.

When we come together around the table and share the communion meal, we are one with God in Christ and we are one with one another. Perfect fellowship. Perfect unity. Perfect forgiveness and acceptance and love and peace. And it’s not ordinary. It’s Christian.

We don’t groan despite having the firstfruits; we groan because we have them. Because we’ve seen it. We know the glory that’s coming. Baby blessings and baptisms. Mission trip sendoffs. Harvest parties and fistbumps. 4 Midland. Small groups. We see and hear and touch and taste God’s healing and cleansing, his joy and unity and forgiveness, his life-changing power and reconciliation and compassion and love. We all experience up close and personal these firstfruits of the Spirit. And it’s not what you find in the ways of this broken world. It’s uniquely Gospel.

To accomplish what’s coming for us, our Lord Jesus had to get out of his comfort zone and put on our pain. That’s the Gospel truth. Christ Jesus left his home in glory, he sacrificed his position and his power, he gave up his rights and his status, and he joined us in our pain. He came to where we are and he put on our flesh and blood, he suffered in the dirt with us. The Bible says he became familiar with our sufferings. He carried our burdens. He became our sin for us, to rescue us from the corruption and decay.

We all share the common human predicament of pain. Of groaning. So, like our Lord Jesus, we intentionally seek out that pain in others. Where is that pain? You look for it. And you don’t have to look hard–we’re all surrounded by it. And we join the pain. We embrace the pain. We live in it. We share it. We stand for and with those who are in pain. We speak up for and with those who are suffering. The Church is called to share the world’s pain. Who else is going to? And if we don’t do it right now, when will we?

Some of you, I know, the pain is too far away. The problems are just on TV. You’ve never been shot by a police officer. You’ve never been discriminated against at work or school or had opportunities taken from you because of your skin color or your accent or where your parents were born. And maybe you don’t know anybody who has. It’s not something you think about or talk about unless it’s on TV.

For some of you, the pain is very close and very real. You do know someone. You’ve experienced it yourself. You think about it and talk about it all the time.

And, yeah, there’s no doubt, you’re all over the map in your own church. You have lots of different viewpoints and opinions, you probably don’t all agree on what should be done and what ought to work and the steps that need to be taken. You’re not all going to be on the same page.

But here’s what the Bible tells us. The world is in pain. The whole world is broken and suffering because of sin. It’s groaning. And, like our Lord Jesus, his Church is called to share that pain.

And you might say, well, I don’t know anything about racism. I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know anything about homelessness or sexual identity. I can’t relate to people wrapped up in CPS cases or losing their jobs. I’ve never been to a prison. I’ve never even been in a hospital.

Well, you do know how to love people. You do know how to sacrifice and serve people. You know how to just sit with people, to just be present with people in their pain. To just listen. If it were your daughter, you’d do it.

I’ve seen you. I’ve seen you move heaven and earth, I’ve seen you sacrifice and suffer for the sake of being with your son or daughter. I’ve seen you struggle to build bridges, I’ve seen you lay aside your rights and your feelings to reconcile relationships with people you love. I’ve seen you work so hard and give up so much to heal and restore what’s broken in your own families. To just sit and be present and listen. Yes, you do know how to love people and share pain.

The world is in pain right now. That’s where we are. The Church shares the world’s pain. That’s what you and I are called to do.

Tomorrow, how is the sharing of this global pain going to work out?

Peace,

Allan

On the Move with Jesus

August 14, 2024 / / 0 Comments

One of the difficulties with trying to get closer and closer to Jesus is that he is always on the move. Just when you think you’re there, right when you believe you’ve achieved nearness to Christ, he moves on you.

He jumps to be with those other people on that other side of town. Surprising.  He slides over to the homeless shelter. Didn’t see that coming. He’s eating with the registered sex offender, he’s praying with the Presbyterian, he’s laughing with the Democrat, he’s hugging the prostitute, he’s preaching at the prison, he’s helping a family of immigrants.

It’s uncomfortable. It’s unexpected. Different. New. Edgy. Scandalous. Hard.

It’s exciting. It’s exhilarating. Refreshing. Life-giving. Wonderful. Beautiful. Glorious.

It’s Gospel.

The closer you get to Jesus, the more you think like Jesus and act like Jesus, the more you’ll begin to see people and places the way Jesus sees them. The more you’ll love and serve those people and places. The more you’ll react and respond like Christ and the less you’ll care about your own reputation or status. The more you’ll let your guard down to be with the people in the places where our Lord spends his most important time. The more you’ll gladly follow Jesus “outside the city gates” where your friends would never expect you to go.

Get closer to Jesus. Keep following him closer and closer. And see if it doesn’t change everything.

Peace,

Allan

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