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Welcome J.E. to GCR!

July 15, 2021 / / 1 Comment

Carrie-Anne and I join the celebration as J.E. Bundy and his family are making the move across Midland to join the work at Golf Course Road Church of Christ! J.E. is our new Youth Minister at GCR and he’ll begin his full-time work with us on August 15. He and his wife, Megan, have three great kids: Will (16), Kadee (14), and Clark (12 next week).

Here’s what I know about J.E. He is a thoughtful and engaging teacher, a deep thinker who connects with young people, and a reflective man who takes his relationship with our Lord and his people seriously. J.E. has strong Gospel convictions and he is passionate about what our God is calling him to do. His wide-spread reputation as a dynamic speaker stems from his years of work at various youth camps and Christian conferences throughout Texas. I have thoroughly enjoyed my conversations with J.E. and am anxious to begin working with him soon.

We’re putting together a pretty good team down at GCR. The Youth Minister position is solid now and we’re close, I believe, to securing the next great worship minister at GCR. God be praised. And may his will be done at Golf Course Road and throughout Midland just as it is in heaven.

Peace,

Allan

Moving Week

July 14, 2021 / / 0 Comments

We moved our youngest daughter Carley into her on-campus apartment for her Senior Year at Oklahoma Christian University yesterday. For reasons I’ll never understand, she continues to insist on third floor apartments. I think she wants to be the one disturbing the people below with her noise, not the one being disturbed. So, for one last time, we hauled the couch and all those heavy tubs up three flights of stairs in Edmond’s July heat.

The moving ritual is well established for us. I assemble everything that needs assembling, perform a minor plumbing task, and hang stuff on the walls while Carrie-Anne directs the cleaning and installs the shelf paper. Of course, my sister Rhonda met us for lunch for delicious cheeseburgers at The Garage. And we took Carley to the grocery store to load up her fridge and pantry.

Valerie made the drive down from Tulsa to join the moving festivities. And we delivered to her the top of her wedding cake that’s been in the back of our freezer since July 24 last year. We’ve told her that she and David have to eat some of their wedding cake on their one year anniversary for good luck or something. She didn’t seem that thrilled. Maybe she doesn’t think a Sugar Momma’s cake from LeeAnn Clark will be as good a year later.

Our movers are arriving tomorrow, packing the trucks, and meeting us in our temporary house in Midland on Friday. Today is a day for tying up all the loose ends here in Amarillo: notifying the utility companies of our move, sending the change of address notifications, cancelling the memberships, mowing the yard for the very last time, and trying to find the keys to the front door for the new owners.

Peace,

Allan

Ranger Hangar

July 12, 2021 / / 1 Comment

It’s not really baseball if it’s played inside a dome.

The girls and I took a quick five day vacation to a couple of our favorite places in Texas last week, wrapping it up with our first visit to the Rangers new ballpark in Arlington – the hideous dome they built to replace the most beautiful stadium in the state. It’s an awful thing. It looks like a massive airplane hangar. It looks like a gargantuan temporary metal building somebody erected over a weekend so they could sell knockoff Nikes or bootleg T-shirts. Situated directly across the street from the gorgeous Ballpark in Arlington, the contrast between the two venues is striking. And terribly sad.

Yes, the seats are cushioned in the new place and, unlike with Jerry’s Death Star next door, they’re all a bit closer to the on-field action. And it’s cooler, of course. It was 94-degrees outside and 70-degrees inside. I wasn’t sweating. Carley reported feeling a bit chilly. Yes, it was very, very comfortable. But it didn’t feel like a baseball game. Walking around the concourse felt more like getting ready for a hockey or basketball game, or a concert, not a baseball game. Aren’t you supposed to be sweating your lips off at a Rangers game? Isn’t that part of what makes the Lemon Chill so great?

And no fireworks. It was a Friday night game, but you can’t do fireworks indoors.

But they still do the wave. I was hoping the new stadium would be wave-less. It’s not. New stadium, same wave-happy fans.

It turned out to be a really fun night. Before the game, I had the great joy of introducing Whitney to longtime Rangers Public Address Announcer Chuck Morgan. The inventor of the dot race. The voice of Arlington Stadium, the Ballpark, and now this Ranger Hangar. We met him in his PA booth right behind home plate and he autographed Whitney’s hat with his famous, “It’s baseball time in Texas!”

The Rangers went hitless through five innings but then scored three runs in an explosive sixth inning to beat the A’s 3-2. A good, clean, well-played baseball game. In a dome.

And they didn’t play Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “If the House is a-Rockin'” after the final out. I was puzzled by that. We lose the song but we keep the wave? Who made that call?

The rationale offered to the public for this abomination has been two-fold: that the summer heat wears the team out so they’re not as strong down the stretch of a baseball season and that more people will attend Rangers games if it’s more comfortable. These are loser arguments from a loser mentality. It’s so disappointing. My response continues to be 1) a winning organization uses the local weather to its benefit. You don’t see the Chicago Bears or the Green Bay Packers putting roofs on their stadiums. They wear short sleeves in sub-freezing blizzards and intimidate the opponent. The weather is part of the home field advantage for an outfit with a winner’s mindset. And 2) it’s not the weather keeping fans away, it’s the inferior on-field product. When the Rangers are winning the division and contending for the pennant, the stadium is packed even in 100-degree heat, even in 88% humidity. I don’t care how cool it is inside the dome, nobody’s coming to watch a last place team.

Peace,

Allan

GCR Family Update

June 25, 2021 / / 1 Comment

The Golf Course Road church family officially welcomed us to Midland Wednesday night with  – what else? – an ice cream social featuring Marble Slab sundaes! Carrie-Anne and I spent the better part of two days down there looking for houses, eating lunch with the GCR ministers and staff, moving some boxes into my new study/office, and, most importantly, finally getting to personally meet more than a hundred of the good people at this very good church.

GCR live-streams a monthly “Family Update” hosted by Ryan Rampton from the worship center. It’s a 45-minute conversation intended to keep the congregation in the loop on important church news and developments, especially as it relates to changes within the ministry team. So it was a blast to do the Family Update live, in person, on the stage in that historic sanctuary. You can see the entire video with Ryan and me and a special cameo by Carrie-Anne by clicking here.

 

 

 

 

It was really good to see Amber Weems and her girls there Wednesday – familiar faces in our brand new setting. It was such a blessing to participate as Charlotte Siemer put on our Lord Jesus in baptism. It was fun to make so many connections with all these brand new people. We met the self-proclaimed deacon of coffee who has promised to provide my Diet Dr Pepper on Sunday mornings, Tod Brown’s sister who may have once dated a minister friend of mine in Amarillo, Trish-like-Fish who claims to be the shortest woman at GCR, and lots of generous people who are truly thankful and ready for us to move in and get settled with them there. Carrie-Anne and I feel very warmly welcomed and received by this church family in the middle of the West Texas desert and we can’t wait to experience all that the Lord has planned for us together.

The latest development on our housing situation is that we do have a signed contract on our house here in Amarillo. Praise the Lord! We signed the papers yesterday and should close on it before July 22. We’re selling it to a wonderful young couple with three really young kids who have lots of energy. Everything here is perfect for them and it’s working out really well for us, too. As for Midland, we’ve seen 29 houses and feel like one of them might be a possibility. Maybe. The housing market down there can be really discouraging. But we’ve got good people looking out for us and a faithful Father who is providing for us every step of the way. So, we’re not panicking. No way.

My new email address is allan.stanglin@gcrcc.org. Yes, that’s right, both names – two opportunities to misspell the address so I won’t receive your message. You can email me anytime or, of course, just comment on a post on this blog. 

Peace,

Allan

RockHounds Fans

June 21, 2021 / / 0 Comments

We officially turned the corner as a family last night in becoming Midland RockHounds baseball fans, openly cheering for our new team in the friendly confines of the Sod Poodles ballpark in downtown Amarillo. Whitney and I wore our new RockHounds t-shirts and we loudly rooted for the Midland Nine as they routed Amarillo 13-3.

Stan Cox, our favorite usher who runs a very tight Section 109, told me he didn’t know what was more disappointing: that we were leaving Central or how quickly my baseball allegiance had changed. He agreed that my quick switch shows a real lack of personal integrity and character. When Stan came around with the garbage bag in between innings, he asked me to take off my RockHounds shirt and kindly place it in the trash.

Stan and Susan are two more of the really great people I’ve had the privilege to live, worship, and serve with here in Amarillo. I was honored to perform the wedding for their daughter Sara to Nick Lewis and I was blessed to spend ten thrilling days with them in Israel. Susan kindly volunteers at the church office when Gail is out. Nick and Sara’s beautiful daughters were both born here and are being raised in and by Central – one of the many wonderful families we’re really going to miss.

Needless to say, we were the only ones cheering for the RockHounds last night – we stuck out a little bit in the partisan Poodles crowd. Whitney came away with a foul ball generously tossed up by a Sod Poodles player and Midland pitcher Jared Koenig autographed it for her after the game – nice on both counts. As a family, we agree that the Sod Poodles name continues to be a disgrace to the very idea of professional baseball, but we do love their logos and fonts so much more than the late-80s vibe of the cartoonish RockHounds logos and fonts. And this downtown ballpark in Amarillo is the crown jewel of all AA stadiums – it’s the standard.

We’ll miss the insane Sod Poodles song during the seventh inning stretch (Sod Poodles! Sod Poodles! That’s right, they’re called the Sod Poodles!). The free parking on Fillmore. Dale Cooper’s awesome seats behind home plate. Ruckus entering the stadium to ZZ Top’s “Sharp Dressed Man.” The line for three-dollar refills at H-Tea-O. Frozen t-shirts and blindfolded Chick-fil-a cows. But we’re looking forward to everything minor league baseball in Midland has in store for us later this summer. When is Jared Koenig’s next start?

Peace,

Allan

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