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Scattershooting while wondering whatever happened to Butch Johnson and the California Quake…
The “Lex Orandi Lex Credendi” post from last week was prompted by a conversation I’d had with one of our elders here at Legacy. He had read an article from another blog by another minister within our Church of Christ stream questioning our worship practices and how they do or do not match up with what we profess to believe. Our conversation centered on this man’s observation that PowerPoint probably does more harm than good in our worship assemblies. He names PowerPoint as something that, while introduced and used with noble intentions, “might form us in unhealthy or even ugly ways.”
I’ve had the chance to read the article now, and I recommend it to you. The young man’s name is Brad East. His blog is called “Resident Theology.” Here’s the link to that particularly provocative post.
It’s long been my contention that using PowerPoint in our worship assemblies actually works to destroy what our assemblies are intended by God and our Scriptures and our church leaders to do. The constantly changing slides projected on to the huge screens demand our undivided attention. We’ve stopped looking at each other. Instead, we stare at the slides.
If a congregation of a thousand were singing “Jesus Loves Me” and the words were up on the screen, we’d all — every one of us — be staring at the screen. Not because we don’t know the words to “Jesus Loves Me.” Of course we do! But because when a screen is on, we look at it. That’s what we do. We’re conditioned by our culture to look at screens. In our homes, at work, in line at Wal-Mart, driving down the road in our cars, we stare at screens. If there’s a TV up in the corner in a restaurant, you and I won’t be looking at each other. We’ll be looking at the screen. Even if we can’t hear the sound. Even if it’s an infomercial. It’s what we do.
As a preacher, I’ve noticed that I can’t make eye contact with anybody during an invitation song. Forget it. Smile at someone? Wink at somebody? Encourage someone? Acknowledge a tough time somebody may be experiencing? Impossible! No chance! Everybody’s looking at the screen!
One of the reasons (among many, I know) that nobody comes forward anymore for confession or prayer is that we’re all too busy looking at the screens. As long as the screens are on, we’re tuned out to anything that’s really happening around us. Or within us. The screens come on and our minds and bodies go into neutral. Just like they do on the couch in front of a ballgame, in a theater in front of a movie, or in line for a ride at Six Flags. Do we honestly expect anything different just because the projected words and images happen to be sacred?
But to question the use of technology and PowerPoint in our worship assemblies is taboo. To suggest a day or a month when we don’t use the screens would be heresy. Unfortunately, our churches are spending so much money on the leading technology, the constant cry is to use it more. So, with seemingly no thought to the obvious messages it sends or the ways it shapes us as a church family, we use it more.
When’s the last time you held the song book for your wife? We don’t do that anymore. When’s the last time you handed your book to a late-arriving brother or sister in front of you? There’s no need. When’s the last time you helped a young child, maybe your young child, find the number in the book? There’s a chance you’ve never done that.
I’m not saying that going back to song books is the answer. I’m not advocating that we rip all the screens out of the walls and pawn off all the projectors. I’m not saying there are not some advantages to using PowerPoint in our assemblies (I can think of one). What I beg of our preachers and worship leaders and elders is that we consider carefully why we do what we do and that we think through the long term effects of those things.
The most encouraging part of Brad’s post is that, by the looks of his picture, he’s probably not even 30-years-old. He’s young. Wow, very young! But he recognizes that something’s wrong, something’s inconsistent and disconnected between our gospel and our technology. At least he’s thinking. Not reacting. Not mindlessly following. He’s thinking.
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We sent Corey and Emily Mullins off with a prayer breakfast here Monday morning. The Mullins are spending the holidays with family in East Texas and Tennessee, and then heading out to Australia as part of the first Church of Christ missionary team to go down under in 25 years. Their commitment is to preach the gospel in Australia for at least five years. They’ve only been with us here at Legacy for about six months. But we’ve all come to love them as our own. And Monday’s “goodbye” was pretty neat.
We all told them how much we love them. We charged them with being strong and faithful. We reminded them that they 
are joining what our Father is already doing there in Wollengong, redeeming his creation, his people, back to him. And we recognized that we are joining them, too. We circled close around them, put our hands on them and our arms around them and each other and lifted them up to our Lord. We prayed for courage and faith and protection. And we committed them and their work to him. Our hearts and our prayers go with Corey and Emily as they head to Australia.
You can keep up with the Mullins by reading their blog here. I’ll also keep the link active on the right hand side of this page.
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Got this picture from Mark Richardson this week.
Thanks, brother. I’ll see you down front Sunday!
Peace,
“The days are coming,” declares the Lord, “when I will fulfill the gracious promise I made to the house of Israel and to the house of Judah.” ~Jeremiah 33:14
The poinsettias and candles are in place. The songs have been chosen, the Bible passages have been selected, and we know exactly how bright (dim) we want the lights to be. At 10:00 tonight the Legacy church family will come together to celebrate the incarnation of God. We’ll lift our voices and our hearts to our Father in song and in prayer to praise him for putting on flesh and becoming one of us in order to save us. We’ll give thanks to God for taking on our humanity and our sins in order to reconcile us back to him. We’ll rejoice that God came to us in the form of a human baby to show us what a completely helpless, totally dependent, perfectly innocent child of his looks like.
Israel and the prophets longed for the coming of the Messiah. They prayed for it and wrote songs about it. For centuries, they passed that longing on to their children.
Today we rejoice in that coming. But we also anticipate the second coming of the Christ. We pray for it and we write songs about it: that glorious day when the Kingdom is finally and fully established, when every knee will bow and every tongue confess, when God fulfills the gracious promise, when our King comes to reclaim his own.
Lord, come quickly.
Allan
Whitney was released from the hospital at 1:00 Saturday afternoon. Wheelchair. Walker. Pain meds. Lots of cards and balloons. By 5:30 I had her in a luxury suite at Texas Stadium, getting ready for the last Cowboys game ever at their historic football home. Thanks to Doug Deere, a good friend here at Legacy, Whitney and I were able to take in the excitement of the game, the history of the evening, and the time spent together doing something we both love: watching the Cowboys.
As most of you know, Whitney’s a huge Cowboys fan. She doesn’t remember any of the Super Bowls of the ’90s — she was born 18 days after Super Bowl XXVII — but she knows enough to be huge fans of Troy, Emmitt, and Michael. Of course, she adores all the current crew (I keep telling her she’ll grow out of it) and knows everything about every one of them. She ate up every moment of our night together. And she made her usual lame excuses for Romo and Terrell Owens and Jerry Wayne throughout.
Glen and Karen and Crystal and Lexi, Doug’s great friends who actually own the suite, were outstanding hosts. What a great family. They pampered Whitney and catered to her every need. 
Plenty of Ruffles and Dr Pepper. A corner seat down front. And somehow Glen even arranged to have two Cowboys cheerleaders come up to the suite during the third quarter and take pictures with Whitney and sign her cast. (She would have been more impressed had it been Brady James or Anthony Henry. I didn’t notice them doing anything on the field that would have kept them from coming up for a quick visit.) With all of that PLUS!!! Dallas getting to within two points twice in the final four minutes and those huge gut-wrenching, record-breaking runs that sealed it at the end, I don’t think Whitney blinked for five hours.
Thank you, Doug! Thank you Glen! Thank you, everybody in the suite.
My interest in the event was in recalling my childhood and early adult memories made at Texas Stadium. My first ever Cowboys game with my Aunt LouAnn against the Saints when I was eleven. Paul Baron taking me there to see Steve Grogan and the Patriots, the man sitting in front of us asking Paul to tell me to stop cheering so loudly. A Sunday night game against the Raiders with my high school friends. A high-profile Thanksgiving Day duel between Glenn Carano and Chicago’s Vince Evans with my whole family. A freezing, sleeting, Saturday afternoon playoff loss to the Rams with Todd Johnson two months after I got my drivers license. A loss to the Dolphins in 1989 with my college buddies, but a free dinner from Mike Osburn because Aikman threw for over 300 yards (the last time I bet on anything).
I’m blessed to have had a mediocre broadcasting career that allowed me for almost five years to be at Texas Stadium for another 30-or-so games. Roaming the sidelines before kickoff. Watching the stadium fill. Visiting with assistant coaches. Hanging out in the locker room before and after games. Being overly rude and sarcastic with other reporters and hosts. Watching up close the drama of what’s said and not said during postgame news conferences. What a privilege to be there the day Emmitt passed Payton. Only time I’ve ever seen a pressbox give anybody a standing ovation. What a blessing to be there for all those games, to make all those memories, from the endzone nosebleeds in 1977 to the sidelines and up and down the players’ tunnel in 2004.
I wanted Whitney to remember this night as much as I will. I kept pointing to all the names in the Ring of Honor and 
telling her about each player. I talked to her about the differences between Tom Landry and every other coach the Cowboys have ever employed. I explained the significance of the hole in the roof. We talked about the championship banners and those Super Bowl teams from the ’70s and ’90s. The white stars that rim the field. The big blue star in the middle. The pressbox where I sat as the Sports Director at KRLD.
She looked up at me at the two-minute warning and said, “Dad, even if they lose, I still had a good time.”
Yes!
So they’re tearing it down. After 37 years, Texas Stadium’s not big enough, not fancy enough, not new enough. In about four months, the only ties the current Cowboys will have to the Clint Murchison-Tex Schramm-Tom Landry beginnings will be at their office headquarters and practice facilities at Valley Ranch. But nobody ever sees that. The offices are being moved to Jerry’s new place in Arlington. So is the little museum and the five Super Bowl trophies. The championship banners are being moved. And it’s only a matter of time, maybe just three or four years, until Valley Ranch is abandoned, too.
That new stadium in Arlington is amazing, no doubt. And for at least two or three generations of Cowboys fans, it’ll become a great place of lifelong memories. For me, though, that new stadium is one more reason not to like the Cowboys.
Peace,
Allan
Whitney came through her surgery yesterday with flying colors! Dr. Herring beeped us an hour-and-a-half in and declared everything a major success. He almost sounded surprised himself at how well it went! They took some bone from Whitney’s hip and grafted it into her left foot to straighten out some irregularities she’s dealt with for over ten years. “That bone,” Dr. Herring, the chief of staff told us, “did exactly what we wanted it to. It brought that foot right in where it needs to be.” She was back in her room by 10:30 am. And by 2:00 pm she was back to her normal self, talking a million miles an hour about sports and games and food.
There’s a pin sticking out from her heel underneath the cast. She’ll be in the cast that runs from just below her knee down to her toes for six weeks. And she can’t put any weight on it whatsoever. So she’ll spend most of these six weeks in a wheelchair. We’ve done it once before, when she had both feet operated on seven years ago. But we were in a one-story house then. I think the downstairs study is about to be converted into Whitney’s temporary quarters.
About three weeks ago, Doug Deere, one of our friends here at Legacy, gave me two tickets to his company’s suite at Texas Stadium for tomorrow night’s last Cowboys game ever at the historic football shrine. And my heart melted, knowing that I had no choice but to take Whitney, but realizing it would be a close call with her Thursday surgery. We got the news yesterday that they weren’t planning to take the epidural out until Saturday and that she wouldn’t be released until Sunday or Monday. They’re much more concerned with the pain in her hip than in her foot. I was devastated. Whitney’s been begging us to take her to a game in this final season at Texas Stadium since last year. It’ll make her decade to get to go. But it wasn’t looking good.
Until this morning. Carrie-Anne told Dr. Herring all the details of what had been planned. Knowing Whitney like he does—he’s been seeing her for seven years and operated on her now four times—he concluded there’s no way she can miss the game. So he conferred with a couple of other doctors and got everything moved up 24 hours. The epidural’s coming out this afternoon and she’s going home tomorrow at noon. And we’re going to the Cowboys game together tomorrow night! Dr. Herring said even if it sets her back a couple of days in recovery, she can’t miss that game.
So, they’re working out her pain meds and getting all of that regulated today. I’m picking up Valerie and Carley from school in about an hour and heading back over to Scottish Rite. And I can’t wait to tell Whitney about the game. She doesn’t know yet. We haven’t told her because we weren’t sure she was going to get to go. She’s going to flip. I can’t wait.
The experience has been marvelous, as it always is at Scottish Rite. We love that place. They take such great care of their patients and their families. Whitney won’t even need a Christmas after all the gifts and goodies she’s received from the hospital this week. And your prayers and calls and cards and visits have done wonders for us and our family. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
Our church family at Legacy is so wonderful. Our friends and family spread out all over the southwest are wonderful. And our God is so great. Once again, he shows us his love and concern, his provision and protection, through his people. And once again he delivers us. He walks with us through the valleys. He rescues us. What an amazing Father!
Go Ravens.
Allan
The Latin phrase “lex orandi lex credendi” means, loosely I suppose, “we worship as we believe” and / or “we believe as we worship.” There is a strong, unbreakable relationship between what we believe about our God and the Gospel of Jesus and the manner in which we worship. Christ’s Church has for centuries used this formula in shaping worship liturgies and assembly practices. But the fact is, the formula stands as true whether the Church and its various and scattered congregations recognize it or not.
Think about it.
Is our understanding of the Gospel reflected in the ways we worship? Do the ways we worship communicate to the church family and to non-members our understanding of God’s plan to redeem the world?
Most theologians and all church historians would say our Christian assemblies are intended to “rehearse the Gospel.” When we come together we re-tell the story, we re-enact the history of our God and his people. And how we worship is a fairly accurate indicator of how clearly we get it.
If we understand the Gospel as an all-inclusive effort by God to reach out to the entire world in all its diversity to forgive and redeem—all cultures, all peoples, all nations, all languages, all social classes, all ages, all backgrounds—does our worship assembly reflect that? If we see God’s plan as calling his people to live together in communities of faith and to be transformed more into the image of Jesus in the ways we sacrifice and serve each other, does our time together on Sundays communicate that? If we sing praises to God with great joy and enthusiasm, what does that say about our understanding of God’s grace? Do multiple cups and pre-broken bread at communion time say more than we want it to about our comprehension of community at the Lord’s table? Do our attitudes toward others—in an opposite corner of the worship center or in the pew directly in front of me—reflect our grasp of what Jesus has done for us? If we understand that to be like Christ is to die to ourselves and serve others, is that our practice and mindset when it comes to the assembly?
What if every single thing we did together as a community of faith were viewed through the lens of what Jesus’ birth, life, teachings, ministry, suffering, death, burial, resurrection, and eternal reign means for the child of God.
Jeff Childers and Frederick Aquino, in their great book Unveiling Glory, claim this is the only way to make decisions and form policies regarding our congregational worship.
“What if a community of believers paid such close attention to the meaning of Jesus’ coming into the world that they were gripped by the mission of God? They would have a guiding vision, a driving purpose that helps them make decisions fitting their sense of destiny. What if a preacher helped his church meditate on the deeper mysteries about Jesus, such as the significance of his being both human and divine? That church might develop some new attitudes about such things as diversity in the church or the place of tradition. What if a church’s leaders regularly talked together about the Apostles’ teachings on Christ? They might get excited about the Apostles’ basic aim of transformation into Christlikeness. This is a clear agenda, a Christ-centered ideal they could use to measure ministry decisions. They would look for worship policies that helped form a church environment that nurtures spiritual growth and maturity.
When we reflect carefully on a subject — like worship — in light of the meaning of Christ, we can come to see it in Christ-centered ways, to talk about it in Christ-focused language, and to keep our conclusions about it grounded in the central matters of the gospel.
Ultimately then, the aim is the same as that of our salvation: transformation. Done well, it forms us into the image of Jesus.”
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No new “KK&C Top 20” college football poll today. The next and final poll will be released on January 9 following the BCS national championship game.
While vacationing in Branson recently, pollster David Byrnes noticed and commented on the striking similarity between fellow pollster Mark Hooper and Moe Bandy. After reviewing the photos, I must agree. Hooper’s out of town a lot. He’s emailed his weekly poll from all over the world. I’m going to have to go back through all the old records to see if we ever received a poll from Missouri. Nice wig, Hooper. We’re on to you.
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If anyone ever — EVER — throws anything at me while I’m preaching, I hope I exhibit the same calm presence as President Bush. I’ve watched the video a hundred times. And I can’t get enough. He stared the guy down like Nolan Ryan facing Robin Ventura. It was like he was daring him to throw his camera or his hat. He dodged and then popped back up for another. Incredible. Hilarious. Bring it on!
I can’t see anyone in the pulpit really acting that way, though, except maybe John Bailey. The man throwing anything at John would be terrified if he actually hit him.
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The blogging may be sporadic, if not entirely shut down, for the rest of the week. Whitney, our oldest, goes into Scottish Rite Hospital in Dallas tomorrow morning for Thursday’s surgery. She’s having reconstructive surgery on her left foot to fix a couple of issues she’s been dealing with for a little over ten years. They’re actually taking some bone out of her hip and grafting it into her foot to straighten it out and give it a little more regular shape. She’ll be in the hospital until at least Saturday. And she’ll wear a cast and be on crutches and in a wheelchair for six weeks.
She finally admitted Sunday that she’s “a little nervous.” But she’s also looking very forward to getting everything fixed. Her parents are a little anxious, too. Please keep our precious angel in your prayers to our gracious Father this week.
Peace,
Allan
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