The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

(This post contains an exclusive offer for Legacy members only! Read on!)

God’s Church here at Legacy has really taken to this empty tomb promotion for our Resurrection Renewal coming up Easter week. We’re beginning to see the empty tomb decals showing up now all over the community. About three thousand of the stickers have flown out the doors here. And several folks have emailed me pictures of their “tags.”

This past Sunday we made available to our church family 5,000 little laminate cards, 3-1/2″ x 2″, with the empty tomb logo boldly emblazoned on each side. We’re asking our members to just leave these cards everywhere they go. I realize there are some of us who are not as apt to put stickers around town as others. These people among us have a far greater respect for the property of others. Putting stickers on things goes against the very fabric of their upbringing. I respect that. Placing these little cards around town is much, much easier.

Friday night we took the family to the movies and I dropped about 20 of these cards all over the place. I put half a dozen or so on the pinball machines and token dispensers in the arcade. I placed five or six in the middle of the tables at the snack bar. I put one on the counter where I purchased our popcorn and another near the register where I paid for Carley’s Sourpatch candy. On the way out, I placed another three or four cards in other various places: in a picture frame, on top of the booster seats display, and on a water fountain. Later that night I left three cards at Arby’s: one at the counter, one near the napkins and Horsey Sauce, and one on the window sill next to our table.

I left three at What-a-burger yesterday afternoon: in the gift card slot on the counter, near the drinks dispenser, and on the window next to my seat.

Last night, Carrie-Anne asked me to run to Wal-Mart on my way home to pick up something she needed for dinner. I wound up buying three things. I left these empty tomb cards on the shelves where I picked up each of those three items, I left one on a Coke display in the middle of an aisle, another on top of the jewelry counter as I walked by, and another at the register where I paid. On the way out the door, I left another card on a desk at the optical center.

This morning, while picking up the donuts for our weekly men’s Bible study, I left one on each of the three tables inside the donut shop, one at the register, and I pinned another one to the bulletin board with everybody’s business cards.

I keep them with me and just drop them wherever I go. And we’re hoping that everybody at Legacy is doing the same thing. The idea is to so saturate our community with these images that it creates a curiosity — an intrigue. We want people to think to themselves, “Something’s happening. What’s happening?” Then we believe that when these people see the image on our T-shirts or our cell phones or on our cars, they’ll ask us what it means, and we’ll have an opportunity to share with them the power of the Resurrection and invite them to Legacy for our four-day event Easter week.

Now, here’s the offer: I’ll give empty tomb caps to the three people who email me the best pictures of their best “tags.” This offer is for the stickers only (Hey, anybody can drop the cards). Just take a picture of your “tag” and email it to me at astanglin@legacychurchofchrist.org and I’ll judge the best three. It’s completely subjective, I know. And I’m the one making the call. The deadline for entry is noon Tuesday March 16, one week from today. All the pictures will go up on the big screens during our assembly time Sunday morning March 21. And we’ll announce the winners then, too.

Peace,

Allan

The story of Jonah helps us understand how God thinks. It helps us see God’s great love for all of his creation and his will for all men and women of the world to be saved. The apostle Peter finally figured it out after a couple of rooftop visions in Joppa.

“Do not call anything impure that God has made clean.” ~Acts 10:15

“God has shown me that I should not call any man impure or unclean.” ~Acts 10:28

“I now realize how true it is that God does not show favoritism but accepts men from every nation who fear him and do what is right.” ~Acts 10:34-35

We have enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan. And our God loves them and he wants them to be saved. But sometimes our language and our prayers and our actions and our emails don’t reflect it. How quickly we forget that while we were God’s enemies, Christ died for us.

We have enemies right here in our own communities. Enemies of our property values, enemies of our employment figures and tax rates, enemies of our comfort zones and our decency and order. And our God’s unmistakable call is to take to them the good news of salvation.

See, the deal with Jonah is that he believes in the sovereignty of God in his clear call. Jonah understands it. He just doesn’t want to obey it.

We believe that Jesus meant it when he said love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. But we don’t always practice it.

God is still calling his people to preach, to witness, to testify, on his behalf to other people. We see it with Jonah. We really see it in Jesus. Our Savior crosses all the social and political and cultural and racial and economic boundaries to save violent outcasts, those possessed by demons, warring zealots, traitorous tax collectors, Roman centurions, and thieves on crosses. He broke through the barriers of time and space to save you. And me.

And our God unmistably calls us to reach out to others the same way.

Peace,

Allan

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God — this is your spiritual act of worship. Do not conform any longer to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is — his good, pleasing, and perfect will.” ~Romans 12:1-2

We want more than anything to be in God’s holy will. We want to be holy. We want to please our Father. We want to get everything right. We want so badly to be correct. And so when we discuss divorce and remarriage or worship practices or church structures or any of the other “hot button” issues or topics, a lot of us will say “better safe than sorry.” When making decisions about behavior or practice, we’ll oftentimes employ this “better safe than sorry” mantra to guide our interpretation of Scripture and our instruction to others.

And that’s OK, if we truly understand what it means to be “safe” when we’re talking about our God and his will for his people.

Usually, “better safe than sorry” means everybody freeze! Nobody do anything! Everybody step back! And then we draw lines and develop boundaries and devise rules and make judgments. This kind of thinking dictates that we be extra-triple-careful not to offend God’s holy will and risk being damned to hell. That kind of philosophy is probably good if you’re a sky-diver or you make your living dismantling bombs. When wiring a house or feeding a lion or crossing a busy street, “better safe than sorry” makes perfect sense.

But “better safe than sorry” is no way to live in relationship with God and God’s people. Unless we’re all very clear with what exactly it means to act “safely” according to God’s economy.

Acting “safely,” according to our heavenly Father, means giving more grace and mercy, not more rules and regulations. It means more acceptance and less judgment. It means forgiveness and compassion, not lines and boundaries. If you want to be “better safe than sorry” with God, you’ll exercise more patience and understanding with your Christian brothers and sisters and do away with all prejudice and pride. Being “safe” with God means showing more love to the people you meet in the world and less attitude.

It means being like Christ.

Making up more rules and holding others accountable to those rules is something else entirely.

Peace,

Allan

This is not a lock-jawed Pacman chasing a ghost without a face. And it’s not what happens when you open up your Big Mac container and the meat has slid clean off the bun. This is a symbol of the Resurrection. This is the empty tomb of Jesus. This represents the power of the Resurrection. This symbol stands for the hope we have in the Resurrection. And we’re going to use this image to bring people to our Christ.

Our hope is to outfit the entire Legacy congregation — one thousand men, women, and children — in empty tomb T-shirts. Yesterday we took orders for 659 shirts. In less than an hour. We also saw over two-thousand empty tomb decals fly out the doors. Most of them went on our cars and trucks and the backs of our cell phones.

The goal is to completely saturate our community with this symbol. We want people to see this Resurrection image everywhere. And then, after a few days, when people see the symbol on our shirts and our cars and our phones, they’ll initiate the conversation.

“Hey, what is that on your shirt? I’ve seen that around town.”

“I’ve seen that logo on a bunch of cars lately. And you’ve got it on your phone. What is that?”

And then we begin our Resurrection Conversations. We tell them that the tomb is empty. We tell them that our King is alive today and reigning at the right hand of our Father in heaven. And we tell them that because Jesus lives, death has nothing on us. And neither does sin. And then we invite them to Legacy on Easter Sunday for the start of our four-day Resurrection Renewal. Five sessions of Resurrection singing and reading and praying and preaching. Resurrection Power. Resurrection Hope. Resurrection Proof. Resurrection Mystery. Resurrection Community. Very evangelistic. Very visitor-friendly. And if we do it right, if every one of us gets involved in getting this symbol out there in our town, the people will start the discussions for us.

That’s the plan we unvieled yesterday. And I completely underestimated the response.

It was chaotic. It was crazy. It was hectic. It was loud. And it was wonderful and inspiring. Everyone bought in. All three exits out of our parking lots were staffed with teens putting empty tomb stickers on the backs of cars as they were leaving. Two dozen volunteers took T-shirt orders and applied decals to the phones. Before I even made it to lunch yesterday I had two text messages from two different people telling me about Resurrection Conversations they’d already had at restaurants. All day today I’ve been receiving similar messages. Chandler and Philip and Conner. All three of my own daughters. The phones have been ringing at the church offices all day today with people wanting more shirts and more stickers. The symbol is showing up on our members’ Facebook pages. Our people are tagging their email signature lines with the image. Resurrection Conversations are happening all over NorthEast Tarrant County.

And our God gets all the glory.

The Resurrection of our Savior is a big deal. And we’re giving it big deal treatment this Spring at Legacy. Like the very first believers two-thousand years ago, we’re using it to convince our community that Christ is Lord. This thing has the potential to change the mindset of our congregation. I pray we’re going to start focusing much more now on what’s happening outside our walls then on the inside. And, by God’s grace and the power of his Spirit, this thing could quite possibly turn our town upside down for the Kingdom.

I’ll keep posting pictures here as more of these things roll in.

Peace,

Allan

“In a good friendship each member often feels humility towards the rest. He sees that they are splendid and counts himself lucky to be among them.” ~C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves

(Regular readers of this blog know about the Four Horsemen. If you’re brand new, if you need a refresher, or if you just want to read something really cool about how God has used and is using four men with one another and for the Kingdom click here.)

My three greatest friends and I go camping together every year on the last weekend in February. It seems to be the one weekend that all four of us can consistently get away. Late February is far enough after the holidays and the start of the year and far enough before the madness of the spring to be just perfect. The odd date is also good for guaranteeing that we’re going to be the only ones at the campgrounds. Some years it’s sunny and in the 60s. Some years we nearly freeze to death. Yesterday Dan sent us all a picture of the National Weather Center’s weekend forecast for East Texas. Looks like it’s going to be perfect!

This weekend we will pray together. And laugh. And argue. And eat. Somebody will almost get hurt really badly. We’ll talk about our families, our churches, our struggles, our triumphs. At some point the raccoons will get brave enough to go for an open bag of chips on the table. We’ll ask for advice and listen patiently to advice that’s unsolicited. Dan will encourage. Kevin will challenge. Jason will connect it all back to our God. And I’ll be thinking to myself the entire time, “Why can’t I be more like these guys?”

Our annual Four Horsemen Advance is regularly one of the best weekends of my life. We are all four so different. And I think we each genuinely appreciate the uniqueness in one another. We see very clearly the goodness in each other. And we recognize easily that it comes from beyond us. I have no doubt that our God brought us together for his divine purposes. And I thank him for that.

Jason and Dan and Kevin are splendid, indeed. And I am lucky to be among them.

Have a great weekend,

Allan

I realize every time I get up in the pulpit on Sunday mornings I’m preaching between 900-1,000 different sermons. Everybody within earshot hears something a little differently. The people in our churches arrive in the assembly and bring to our sermon different experiences, different worldviews, different backgrounds. They come from different family dynamics, different geographical locations, and different economic circumstances. These different contexts shape the sermon; what they hear; how they respond.

I’m also aware that what’s happening in the room also impacts the way I preach. I feel that I’m much more bold when I’m preaching in Arkansas or California to people I’ve never met. It’s not that I don’t want to be bold at Legacy. It’s just that it’s much more difficult to say hard things to people I’ve grown to love. I love these people and I think I speak differently to them. Obviously, it’s much, much easier to preach following an uplifting service of praise in which the entire assembly has together raised the roof in joyful song than following a half-hearted robotic effort to trudge through songs nobody likes or nobody knows. The songs are intended to edify the congregation, to uplift the people of God. And they do. They uplift the preacher, too.

The great theologian Reinhold Niebuhr knew that his Sunday morning sermons were better than his Sunday evening sermons. He realized that cicumstances do affect the quality of the message. And a lot of that, according to Niebuhr in Leaves from the Notebook of a Tamed Cynic, has to do with how many people are in the room.

“A full church gives me a sense of fighting with a victorious host in the battles of the Lord. A half empty church immediately symbolizes the fact that Christianity is very much a minority movement in a pagan world and that it can be victorious only by snatching victory out of defeat.”

Yes, the preacher is impacted by the mood of the crowd, the lighting in the room, the events of the past week, and by the anticipated, yet strangely unexpected, moving of the Spirit. All those things, and many more, affect the sermon.

My faith is in the divine promise that God’s Word never returns to him empty. He puts his truth directly into the hearts of our hearers. Despite our shortcomings and inadequacies, despite our human tendencies to be swayed by temporal distractions, our Father uses preaching to reveal himself to the world.

That’s still pretty cool.

Peace,

Allan

Jesus says the Golden Rule — Do unto others as you would have them do unto you — actually sums up the Law and the Prophets. But I think there’s a much bigger idea at work throughout all of Scripture. Our foundational motivation, our guiding principle as God’s holy people is “Do unto others as God has done unto you.”

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.” ~ Colossians 3:13

“Accept one another as Christ accepted you.” ~Romans 15:7

“Love one another as I have loved you.” ~John 15:12

The key is in my understanding that God has treated me in ways I absolutely do not deserve. That’s the most basic part of this. It all falls apart without that genuine realization. It doesn’t work.

How much has God forgiven you? Everything. Everything? Yeah, everything. Is there anything he hasn’t forgiven you of? No. Nothing? Nothing. He’s really forgiven you of everything? Yes, everything. You deserve it? No.

“Forgive as the Lord forgave you.”

Has Christ accepted you? Oh, yeah. Without a doubt, I belong to him. Really? You belong to Jesus? Yes, sir, he’s accepted me. And you were perfect when he accepted you? Um, no. You weren’t perfect? No. Not even close. But he still accepted you? Yeah. Well, how bad were you? Pretty bad. But you never intentionally sinned, right? Oh, no, there were plenty of intentional sins. You had hurt Jesus with your words? Oh, yeah, plenty of times. You had disappointed him with your actions? All the time. Lousy attitude? Selfish pride? Stubbornness? Yes, all those things. Sin? Yes, I’m a sinner. I was a sinner when I met Jesus. I hadn’t been following him or listening to him or obeying him. I was a sinner. But he still accepted you? Yes. Did you deserve it? No.

“Accept one another as Christ accepted you.”

Does Jesus love you? Yes. How much? A bunch. A ton. How do you know? How do you know he loves you so much? He died for me. What’s that? He died for me. He died for you? Yeah, he died for me. How did he die? Look, he left everything he had in heaven by the Father’s side; he left his glory and his power and his authority; he left his prestige and position and status; he left his home; he gave up everything to come to earth and suffer horribly and die in agony and pain like a criminal on a cross! He did that for you? Yeah. He must love you a lot. Yes, he does. You deserve that kind of love? No. Not even close.

“Love one another as I have loved you.”

See, if we think we deserve God’s forgiveness, if we believe that we have lived in such a way or have worked in such a way as to actually merit Christ’s acceptance, if we suppose we’ve earned the right to God’s love, we’ll only show that same kind of love and acceptance and forgiveness to people we think deserve it. I’ll judge people as worthy or not of my acceptance. I’ll forgive people only as I deem them forgiveable. I’ll love only those I want to love.

Do unto others as God has done unto you. It’s basic.

Why do we miss it?

Peace,

Allan

“Where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?
Thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ!”

These are the words that popped up on my screen at just after 4:00 this afternoon. These were the triumphal words chosen by the family and friends of Jenny Bizaillion to communicate to their thousands of brothers and sisters in Christ who have been as united by her illness and struggle for life as they are by the blood of the Lamb that Jenny died today at 3:38pm.

I don’t understand it. I don’t get it at all. I don’t pretend to know why our God allows such a thing as this to happen. Why do horrible things happen to wonderful people? I don’t know. Why do great things happen to lousy people? I don’t know that either. Neither did Habakkuk.

“Yet I will rejoice in the Lord,

I will be joyful in God my Savior.”

As long as I live, I’ll never ever forget the faith and the strength shown by Rick and Beverly and Josh and Jonathan and their families during this very difficult ordeal. I pray that I would show half the faith in a similar circumstance. I also pray that nobody ever has to endure a circumstance like this. I’ll always remember David’s courage and endurance and steadfastness in caring for his sweet wife and their precious daughter. Tirelessly. Loyally. Faithfully. I was sitting quietly with Rick and Beverly Saturday afternoon when David emerged from Jenny’s room to go watch Malaya play in a church league ball game. He had been working with Jenny’s legs and knees, doing everything the doctors and therapists said needed to be done following the Wednesday amputations.

Hug your kids today. Kiss your spouse tonight. Call your parents. Express your love. Show your appreciation. And then get down on your knees and face and thank God for the wonderful people he’s put in your life.

Like the Rosses. And David. And Jenny Biz.

While you’re down there, pray for these families. Pray for our merciful Father to bless them each with his grace and comfort and peace.

“On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine — the best of meats and the finest of wines.
On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations;
he will swallow up death forever.
The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces;
he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth.
The Lord has spoken.
In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him and he saved us.
This is the Lord, we trusted in him;
let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.’”

Peace,

Allan

“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: Love your neighbor as yourself. All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.” ~Matthew 22:37-40

Love is the beginning and the end of our righteous relationship with God — and everything in the middle. Love pushes us. It motivates us. It defines us. Love is what Scripture says binds everything we do together in perfect unity. We must place unconditional, God-ordained love in the supreme position of our hearts and minds and in God’s Church.

God’s love for us depends completely upon his character, not ours. Everyone stands before our God equally. No human being can ever do anything to earn God’s love. That fact that we are sinners is woefully inescapable. The fact that God still loves us anyway is amazingly wonderful. And we respond to that matchless grace and undeniable love by loving him back and by loving all people the way he does.

And that doesn’t mean surface relationships. It doesn’t mean love at arm’s length. It doesn’t mean love all people, but don’t get involved in their lives. It means imitating God’s gutsy love, his all-in love, a love so full and so complete that it compelled Christ to suffer and die to show us.

May we be a people who receive one another as Christ receives us, who forgive others as we’ve been forgiven by God, and who love God and others as fearlessly and unconditionally as he loves us.

Peace,

Allan

I was flipping through the TV channels a couple of weeks ago and accidentally landed on a news station. I stayed. Shame on me. This particular network was airing a 30-minute program about one U.S. political party that was claiming the other political party’s ideas and agendas were like Hitler’s. The anchors and reporters were refuting those claims by attempting to prove how, in fact, the first party’s thoughts and plans were actually more like those of Hitler.

The “demonization” of the other side is a disease that’s taking over the entire world.

And it’s killing us.

It happens in this country’s politics. It happens in our social settings. And it happens in our religious life. If we don’t see exactly eye-to-eye with somebody on something — anything — we have a real tendency to vilify that person from head to toe. That person is evil. That person is bad. That group is wrong. Through and through. There’s nothing good or redeemable about that person or that group of people because we have these one or two disagreements.

All conversation stops. All outreach stops. Love stops.

And it’s killing us.

I don’t have to actually talk to you because I know we disagree about this one thing. I’ve already labeled you as bad. You have this one certain viewpoint so I already know exactly where you and exactly where you’re going. Why would I spend any time or effort to get to know you?

Talk radio and talk TV are increasingly about this attitude now. Every other channel or station, every other show host and program, yelling and arguing, demonizing and vilifying the other side. It’s not just accepted as standard behavior or the expected response, it’s being promoted as virtuous!

You’re not involved in any of that, are you?

May we be a people who receive one another as Christ receives us, who forgive others as we’ve been forgiven by God, and who love God and others as fearlessly and unconditionally as he loves us.

Peace,

Allan