The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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Eternal Perspective

March 30, 2010 / / 0 Comments

He is not here!!!We live differently when we live in the Risen Lord of Heaven and Earth. We act differently. We speak differently. And it’s obvious to those around us. Things of this world don’t matter as much. The fact that Jesus is alive today guarantees that we will defeat death, too. And it changes everything. Everything.

“The Resurrection addresses those who insist on protection and security of the individual, institutions, and country. Such persons set up mechanisms of defense along economic, racial, and national lines.

In sharp contrast, the life of the Spirit, with its hope in the Resurrection, does not, indeed cannot dwell on preservation of the flesh — personhood, institutions, nations. Rather the corporate life of the Christian becomes one of risk. A Christian hospital can accept more welfare patients than economically advisable because it knows God’s love for the poor does not depend on its continued existence. Christians can call for total disarmament in the midst of a cold war because they know the future of the world does not depend on the survival of their nation. A Christian can risk his or her life because a Christian knows this life is not the end.”     ~Graydon Snyder, 1992

A Christian church can take bolder risks in evangelizing its neighborhoods, bolder risks in giving to children’s homes and homeless shelters, bolder risks in denying self and sacrificing self knowing that the salvation of the world and the salvation of my soul is in the powerful and loving arms of the God who promises and delivers a Resurrection.  

The Resurrection of Jesus is at the heart of every sermon preached in the New Testament. The reality of the Resurrection is the cornerstone and proof of the divine goodness of the Kingdom of God. The Apostles preached the Resurrection boldly and joyfully even at the cost of their very lives. The Resurrection of Jesus is so strong. It’s so powerful. It’s our hope. It’s our trumpet call. It’s the compelling force behind our Christian lives and the imperative push driving our Christian mission.

The Resurrection of Jesus is a big deal in the Bible. And it’s a big deal today.

If we embrace the Resurrection, if we claim the power of the Resurrection as our own, it will radically impact the way we live. When we understand that the glory of the Resurrection and eternal life with the Father is what awaits us after death, then we have no problem risking our lives or our well-being for the Gospel. We don’t think twice about our feelings or our fate, our reputation or status or power or popularity, when we invite people to church or talk to them about our Lord.

May our God overwhelm you today with the peace and grace that comes from our Risen Lord. And may he grant you the blessings of an eternal perspective grounded in the Resurrection.

Peace,

Allan

Being Church

March 29, 2010 / / 2 Comments

Fourth Sundays at Rosa’sA year ago we challenged our Legacy Small Groups to act with one another the way they’d like to see the entire congregation act. We believe that what happens in our Small Groups will, eventually, over time, permeate our whole church family. So we started this past Small Groups cycle with this question: What if the whole church acted like my Small Group?

What if everybody at Legacy showed up for assemblies and church functions as consistently as I do for Small Groups? What if everybody at Legacy participated in church events as much as I do Small Groups? What if everybody at Legacy showed the same amount of grace and love to one another as is shared within our Small Group? What if the brothers and sisters at Legacy were as quick to understand and forgive? What if all of us at Legacy placed the same emphasis on hospital visits, delivering meals, helping others financially, and integrating visitors and new members just like we do it in my Small Group? What if Legacy worshiped and studied and prayed just like we do in my Small Group? What if Legacy looked exactly like my Small Group? Would that be a good thing or a bad thing?

In order to keep moving from simply doing church to actually and radically being church, we need to act individually and in small groups the way we’d like the whole congregation to act.

I’m so proud of my Small Group.

Sara’s Sweet HatOne year ago we met in David and Shanna’s living room and gave the upcoming twelve months to our God. We asked him to join us and move us and shape us through our Small Group. Carrie-Anne and I already had a great relationship with David & Shanna. But we really didn’t know anybody else in the room. I’d had only short, casual conversations with Doug & Phyllis. I knew Kirk, but I knew nothing of the great loss he’s suffered in his life. I’d shaken hands with Steve probably seven million times and talked with him about the Rangers for two years. But I didn’t know who he was. I didn’t know Brian and Julie and their Why do the kids always go first?five kids or Michael and Christy and their four kids at all. (Why would anybody with all those children sign up for a group that already had so many kids?) But through our shared experiences this year, I have come to love every one of them like family. Like real family.

Steve & DakotaOur group loved and served and blessed and encouraged one another through two surgeries, an aging parent moving in, Cowboys wins and losses, communion bread that tasted like old pretzels, job changes, birthdays, and the tragic death of a niece. We also worked together to rescue David from a sure trip to the state prison. We sang “Days of Elijah” and “Awesome God” exactly 52 times in our 52 meetings. We shared 52 meals in five different homes and everybody brought something every week. We all took turns holding the kids and fixing plates and cleaning up afterward. We hugged and laughed and cried and wrestled with our God and his will for our lives.

And we brought in and loved and served a middle-school teacher who’s going through an incredibly horrible divorce right now. She’s letting us take care of her and her four children in the name of our Savior. We’re ministering to them through the sufficiency and competency of Christ. She’s become a member at Legacy and is doing her best to trust our God to deliver her through this dark valley.

I’m so proud of our group.

Last night we finalized our plans to become two groups for this next cycle in order to take what we’ve experienced by the grace of God to others at Legacy who haven’t tasted it yet. We’ve become four sets of co-leaders now instead of two. And we’re praying that our Father will use us in mighty ways to benefit his people and his Kingdom.

What if everybody at Legacy looked and acted just like your Small Group?

They will. Eventually.

Peace,

Allan

Tulsa Time

March 24, 2010 / / 0 Comments

If I’m ever going to hear any good preaching, I’ve got to get away from Legacy.

C-A and I are headed up to Tulsa today for the annual Soul Winning Workshop. We will spend the next four days praising God with thousands, sitting at the feet of our tribe’s best speakers, and fellowshipping with dear friends. When we return, I fully expect to be sung out and wrung out. And renewed. And re-energized.

Have a great week!

Allan

God's Determined Persistence

March 19, 2010 / / 0 Comments

Hound of Heaven 

“I will search for the lost and bring back the strays.” ~Ezekiel 34:16

Our God will go to whatever lengths are necessary, he’ll do whatever it takes, he will not ever give up on saving his people. Even when we resist, he keeps on pursuing. Even when we rebel, he keeps on forgiving. Even when we run away, he keeps chasing. He won’t be stopped in his goal of redeeming his children.

“Does he not leave the ninety-nine in the open country
and go after the lost sheep until he finds it?” ~Luke 15:4

Our merciful Father used the power of a violent storm and the weak witness of a runaway prophet to save the pagan sailors in Jonah 1. He created and commanded the great fish to rescue his rebellious servant in Jonah 2. And in Jonah 3, our faithful God put five Hebrew words into the hearts of a wicked people and turned an entire kingdom upside down for him.

“I take no pleasure in the death of anyone,” declares the Sovereign Lord.
“Repent and live!” ~Ezekiel 18:32

Our God is that relentless hound of heaven C. S. Lewis writes about. He’s on the trail to save and he won’t be stopped. May we see the world as our Father sees the world. May we light the lamps and sweep the floors. May we leave the 99 and go into the wilderness to save the one. May we go into the “streets and alleys of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.” May our will and our mindset match that of our Righteous Creator who moves heaven and earth so that all the men and women of the world, all the men and women of your community, will be saved. And may we allow nothing — absolutely nothing! — to get in our way.

Peace,

Allan

Hoops and Harms

March 18, 2010 / / 1 Comment

March Madness starts today!

I don’t know why I filled out my NCAA bracket last night. The farther away I get from my former life, the less and less qualified I am to write in the names of the winners and losers. I used to spend the whole six or seven weeks following the Super Bowl watching nothing but college basketball. I watched every minute of every conference tournament. I recorded the selection show and poured over the newspaper articles. My bracket wasn’t always right, but it was always good.

Now, I have no clue. I can’t even pretend to know anything.

I watched about 20 minutes of a Texas-Baylor game a few weeks ago. That’s it. That’s the only college hoops I’ve watched all season. I have no idea how New Mexico is a #3 seed or how Wofford got in at all. I don’t know who Murray State’s played or whether K-State has great guards or a big front court. I have no idea.

But I’ve still filled out a bracket. Part of it is habit. Part of it is spring ritual. I’ve been faithfully filling out a bracket and watching the tournament for at least 25 or 26 years now. Usually it takes me two or three days.

I did it in about ten minutes at 9:45 last night. Not a good sign.

I won our family “Bracket Racket” five or six years in a row. But now I’m on a two year skid. Whitney unseated me two years ago and Carrie-Anne won it last year. I had intended for this year to be the year I regain my crown. But it’s not going to happen. I have no faith in my picks. But, for the record, here they are:

I’m going with Kansas, K-State, Kentucky, and Baylor in the Final Four. I’ve got an all-Wildcats final with Kentucky beating K-State in Indianapolis. There’s so much wrong with that, I don’t even know where to begin. Three Big XII teams in the Final Four is crazy. It’ll never happen. How could it? Kansas will probably choke somewhere along the way. They normally do. Rolando Blackman is no longer playing for K-State, I know. And is Baylor really going to beat Duke? Nevermind that. Is Baylor really going to beat Notre Dame this weekend? I know they don’t make sense, but there they are.

You should always pick at least one #12 seed to beat a #5, and mine is UTEP over Butler. I have Tennessee upsetting Georgetown for no real reason. And there’s no logic as to why I’ve picked the Aggies to beat Purdue. My picks just have to be better than Whitney’s and Carrie-Anne’s. That’s all.

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What do we do about Ron Washington and the Texas Rangers? Why is the manager of the Texas Rangers the first Ron Washingtonmanager or coach in professional sports history to fail a drug test? For cocaine? Why didn’t Nolan Ryan and Tom Hicks and Jon Daniels fire Washington when they found out about it last July?

Washington and the Rangers are telling us that this was Washington’s first ever time to experiment with cocaine. First time ever. I find that impossible to believe, don’t you? Major League Baseball randomly tests all its managers once per season. Cocaine only shows up in these tests for four or five days after use. After that, it reportedly can’t be detected. And the Rangers want us to believe the odds that the only time Washington was tested all year was within 72-hours of Washington’s first-ever experimentation with the drug?

Even if it’s true, how could the Rangers trust the organization’s decision-maker after he made the decision to use cocaine in the middle of the baseball season? I don’t get it.

The cynical part of me (when Myles Brand was the president of the NCAA, he told me to be a critic, not a cynic; sorry) believes that the Rangers didn’t fire Washington when they found out about this last July because they had just extended his contract a few weeks earlier. Hicks is out of money, MLB was floating the team loans just to cover payroll, and they couldn’t afford to fire Washington. They thought they could cover it up. They thought it would disappear. It was a money decision. It was a calculated PR move.

Now it’s too late. They can’t fire him now. They already made the decision to stick by him. And now the Rangers (including Josh Hamilton who admits to struggling with his various addictions every single day) are being managed by a guy who didn’t think it was crazy to use cocaine last July.

What do we do with that? I feel weird about Nolan Ryan today. He’s supposed to be above all this stuff.

Peace,

Allan

By All Possible Means

March 17, 2010 / / 5 Comments

“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some.” ~1 Corinthians 9:22

Clearing the stumbling blocksThere are stumbling blocks in the Gospel message. Big-time stumbling blocks. The cross of Christ is a huge one. The call to sacrifice and service messes people up. The Resurrection can get in the way. The requirement to surrender is a problem. The directive to die is another one. The Lordship of Jesus can be a real issue.

Those are all certainly necessary components to the Good News. But if we’re not consistently preaching and teaching and living those things, then it’s not Christianity. It’s another religion, entirely.

Our mission as God’s Church is to remove each and every unnecessary obstacle, to strip away the things that would prevent an unbelieving world from accepting the grace and forgiveness of Christ. That doesn’t mean running away from our traditions or carelessly discarding our practices. It doesn’t mean we treat our heritage flippantly.

It does mean we are constantly evaluating the things we do and the reasons we do them. It means we are always thinking and reflecting. And we measure our message against the will of our God and the mind of our Christ: not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.

It means that when we consider a change, we don’t ask, “How will this affect me?” or “What if this upsets one of our members?” We ask, “How will this reach someone on the outside?” And if it might, we take the risk and we do it. Boldly.

We need to be less concerned with our own congregations and church structure and organization and worship practices and much more concerned with understanding our culture, getting inside the heads of the people around us and determining what makes them tick. We should be eaten up with trying to figure out their access points to the Gospel.

We should never ask, “How many Church of Christ people live within ten miles of our building and how do we get them here?” We should ask, “How many lost people live within ten miles of our building? And how do we win them for Christ?”

Yes, we need to be faithful to our past. But we also need to be faithful to our future. That’s a God-ordained responsibility, too.

Paul says “by all possible means.”

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More empty tomb “tags” from around our community:

from Olivia W.    from Jason B    Annika B in The Rock    from Paul B

 How about that “tag” on the grave marker there? Paul Brightwell’s dad died almost a year ago. He sent me that picture last night with these words: “I laughed; then I cried, thinking, someday, because of the empty tomb, we will see each other again; and then I rejoiced.”

That’s what Resurrection Conversations are all about. That’s what the power of the Resurrection and the hope of the Resurrection is all about.

Keep applying those decals. Keep dropping those cards. And when people ask, tell them that the tomb is empty. And tell them that means death has nothing on you. And neither does sin.

Peace,

Allan

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