The Kingdom, The Kids, & The Cowboys

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God Bless Legacy

August 11, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Carrie-Anne and I had dinner Saturday night with some of the very best people we know, some of our very best and closest friends from our time at Legacy, the first church we served in full-time congregational ministry. David and Shanna Byrnes hosted us for a massive fajita feast, and we talked and laughed together until we were too tired to keep going. We talked about kids and grandkids, weddings and jobs, and Kevin and Jill Welch’s connections to Hollywood and baseball royalty through their two daughters. We thanked God again for Shanna’s good health and cried together as we marveled over his divine goodness to us all. And then Kevin showed us how to precisely place one scoop of Blue Bell Homemade Vanilla between two of Delanie’s homemade chocolate chip cookies to form the perfect ice-cream sandwich, a delightful cap on a wonderful evening.

It was twenty years ago this summer I received that first phone call from Jerry Karels, the chairman of the preacher search committee at Legacy Church of Christ in North Richland Hills. I was standing in the driveway of Kyle and Marti Futrell’s rent house in Marble Falls, the place we were living while I completed my two-year seminary education in Austin. I was halfway through the program and, as a result of connections between Austin Grad President Stan Reid and a couple of Legacy elders, I was on Legacy’s list. Jerry and I talked about the preaching position for about 30-minutes and then he asked me to send him a resume and tapes of a couple of my sermons. I didn’t tell him at the time, but I had only preached a total of two sermons! So, I sent him the CDs and, by God’s grace, we wound up at Legacy.

Carrie-Anne and I were blessed by God and honored by Legacy to be invited back this past Sunday to help them kick off their new cycle of Small Groups. I preached to a packed house about our connections together in Christ. I joked that they should have a recall option in place in order to re-think their ordaining of Jerry Karels as an elder. And then I encouraged their small groups co-leaders at a lunch in the Legacy gym. I must admit, I experienced some PTSD as we entered the gym–I kept expecting to be smashed in the face by a Josh Dyniewski elbow.

The most important thing, though, is that I got to tell them how much they mean to us.

That Legacy church will always be special for Carrie-Anne and me. Those are the people who gave us our start in congregational ministry. They saw something in me, they believed in me, they gave me a chance at a time when I’m not sure anybody else would. Those poor people burned off years of purgatory listening to my earliest sermons! They encouraged me. They took care of my family and me. They gave me a place to learn how to be a preacher. And I’ll always love them for that.

I thank God that I got to hug Quincy DeQueemani’s neck Sunday and listen to him tell me one more time how our God is the one who killed the Amorites with hailstones. I thank God that I got to tell John Royse again how much he inspires me. I thank God that I can still see hear Paul Dennis’ booming bass voice coming from that fourth middle pew, even thought he and Jean have already fallen asleep in our Lord. I thank God that Keith Romero still laughs really loud, that Todd Robinson is still really bald, and that Polythene Pam is still doggedly pursuing our God. I thank our Lord I got to see Nancy Snelson on Sunday, the original inspiration behind Missions Month. I thank him for J Bailey, who always knows the exact right thing to say to encourage me in any given moment, and Russ Garrison, who must have said “Keep your chin up” to me about a million times back then.

I thank God that Carrie-Anne and I were able to worship Sunday next to Chris Drake, aka Rob’s Dad, aka #48. Chris told me on several occasions back then to just point out the people who were giving me trouble and he’d clear them out like Moose Johnston blocking for Emmitt Smith. As we shared the communion meal Sunday, I reminded Chris of the time he led our communion thoughts by comparing a perfect 6-4-3 double play to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. As he headed to the parking lot after church, The Drake told me again to “keep matriculating the ball down the field.”

I thank God for every person at Legacy Sunday who had so many nice things to say to us. Sunday was truly a wonderful day for us, and I pray it was a blessing to that good church.

And Saturday night. Saturday night was heaven. A foretaste of what’s in store for us on that coming day of glory.

Peace,
Allan

Trading Places

August 6, 2026 / / 0 Comments

The Gospel is all about trading places. It’s about substitution. Someone taking my place. Me filling in for someone else. Christ Jesus paying a debt he did not owe. Me bearing burdens that belong to my brother. An exchange. A switch-out.

The Gospel is this way because our God is this way.

God is love. And love–real love, intimate love, liberating love, Gospel love–is all about this exchange.

Think about your small group that meets most Sunday nights. Think of the emotionally wounded person in your group. There is no way to listen to and love that person and stay completely emotionally put-together yourself. As you listen to him and attend to him, he will probably begin to feel stronger and better. But that won’t happen without you being emotionally drained yourself. There’s an exchange. A trade. And it takes a toll.

Parenting is the same way. We sacrifice and give and serve in order that our children may live. We decrease so they will increase.

God’s salvation through Jesus works the same way. He submits to us. He leaves his heavenly home. He serves. He sacrifices and suffers. He takes on shame to give you glory. He dies so you can live.

John Stott wrote:

“The essence of sin is we human beings substituting ourselves for God, while the essence of salvation is God substituting himself for us. We put ourselves where only God deserves to be; God puts himself where we deserve to be.”

If we’ll open our eyes and look for it, we’ll see that the exchange is all around us. We live in the exchange. We are trading places all the time. This is our salvation and our holy call. Praise God for trading places!

Peace,
Allan

Working for Christ

August 5, 2026 / / 0 Comments

Once again, our GCR Church hosted all the new Midland School District employees this week for their two-day orientation. Almost 400 new teachers, bus drivers, counselors, coaches, nurses, and aides spent all day yesterday and today getting the lowdown on how to do their jobs the Midland ISD way. And it was a tremendous success. Again.

 

 

 

 

 

I am so thankful for the more than 30 GCR members who showed up both mornings to greet all the new school district employees, to serve coffee and tea, to point folks to the registration tables, to direct them to the restrooms, and to usher them to the Worship Center, the gym, and Room 301. It’s so much fun when our church recognizes that our building is a ministry hub seven days a week. I have to guess at least half of these 400 new teachers have just moved to Midland from out of town–they’re brand new here–and now they’ve all been inside our building and have had a good experience with some of our best and nicest people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don’t know what God will do with that. I remember Jimmy Morgette walking through our doors two years ago as the new choir director at Bowie, and now he and Logan have made GCR their home. And our whole church is better for it. God is at work both in us and through us when we host the MISD new employee orientation. May his name be praised.

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“Obey your earthly masters in everything and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for people, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” ~Colossians 3:22-24

Disclaimer: The relationships between employers and employees in our democratic society today is so different from what it was with masters and slaves during the first century when Paul penned his letter to the church in Colosse, it’s hard to make even one correlation. We certainly can’t do a one-to-one comparison in which slaves equal employees and masters equal employers. That is not the point of this post. The point is the mutual submission the Bible commands, which is definitely applicable in all our workplaces. 

When you’re at work, someone is either over you or you are over somebody else. Most of the time, it’s both. There’s a leadership structure, a chain of command. There are power and control dynamics in every workplace. So, the biblical principles apply: Don’t just work hard when they’re looking, but work hard to honor the Lord. Whatever you do, do it as working for the Lord.

I love how the cosmic realities of a new life in Christ, being raised with Christ and being a new person, all under the Lordship of Jesus totally transforms the workplace. No matter what your job is–“whatever you do”–you are working for the Lord. No matter what you do for a living, submitting to Christ as Lord of your life turns your job into his holy calling.

Your job is not just a necessary evil to make money. It’s not like you just work to pay the bills and your service to Christ is somewhere else, like what you do through the church. You were created to do everyday work for the Lord. When God created Adam and Eve, he put them in the garden to work it. When you are raised with Christ, you are living a new life in his glory, and you work your job in that same glory. God uses what you do, whatever you do, to benefit others. The Bible wants you to see your work this way and to view everybody’s jobs this way–as work that is commissioned by the Lord and used by him to bring glory to God.

Martin Luther wrote:

“When we pray the Lord’s Prayer, we ask God to give us this day our daily bread. And he does give us our daily bread. He does it by means of the farmer who planted and harvested the grain, the baker who made the flour into bread, the person who prepared our meal.”

Today, we could say the truck driver who hauled the produce, the factory workers in the food processing plants, the warehouse workers, the wholesale distributors, the stock boys in the grocery store, and the teenager at the checkout counter. You’ve also got bankers and investors and advertisers and agricultural scientists and mechanical engineers, and they’re all playing important roles in your getting your morning bagel. Or the bag of donut holes. It depends on if we’re talking about you or me.

God could give us what we need every day by his own direct provision. He’s done it before. Several times. It would be cool for pot roast and green beans to just fall from the sky, or for ravens to show up on my front porch with cheeseburgers and fries and spicy ketchup. But the Lord has chosen to work through human beings. And we’ve all got different capacities and different talents and different jobs, but we’re serving each other. And our Lord.

Scripture is calling you to re-think your job. “It is the Lord Christ you are serving.” What you do every day, and the way you choose to do it, blesses people and glorifies God. It’s much bigger and much more important than just the task in front of you. Or whether or not your boss is watching.

Peace,
Allan

Clothes Make the Christian

July 31, 2026 / / 1 Comment

Our youngest daughter Carley and her husband Collin just left our house for their new digs in Phoenix.

Arizona.

That’s a long, long way from Midland.

The move is the headline in Collin’s recent promotion with CBS Sports and their 24/7 streaming service. Instead of being headquartered in Dallas and covering college sports and recruiting from Norman to Austin up and down I-35, he’s now part of a team covering almost a third of the country from Arizona and Utah west to Southern California to Washington State. It’s a tremendous opportunity for Collin in a brutally competitive industry–I completely understand–and we’re absolutely thrilled for them both.

Still, obviously, there’s some sadness mixed in. We’re going to see these two much less often now. How do we get one of those credit cards that gives us Southwest Airlines miles?

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In other Stanglin family news, Elliott took his first steps at 6:45 Tuesday evening. At 55 weeks old, our first-born grandson (by 45 seconds) has flipped the switch and doesn’t crawl anymore! If history is an indicator, I’m betting that Sammy watches Elliott bust it for about two weeks, analyzes everything he sees, and then starts walking perfectly, immediately, and never falls. Here’s a video of those first steps:

ElliottFirstSteps

I know! I know! You want to watch it like ten times!

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“As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience… And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” ~Colossians 3:12-14

You can tell who people are by the clothes they wear. You see a police officer, you know he’s a police officer by the uniform, the badge, and the handcuffs on his belt. You know a nurse by the scrubs she’s wearing, the stethoscope around her neck, and the bags under her eyes. A referee wears a striped shirt, a cowboy wears pointed boots, a chef wears a funny hat, a dad wears cargo shorts and two-toned Asics.

A Christian is recognized by the fashion statements we make, too. When you’re raised with Christ, you wear compassion, kindness, gentleness, patience, and love And people can see it a mile away.

The old clothes, the clothes you wore in the life you once lived, those are inappropriate for the new realities we enjoy in Christ. The new clothes, the new way to behave–that’s what we wear now. And these new clothes signal to people who we are. They identify us as disciples of our Lord Jesus.

Now, some people will criticize these clothes Christians wear as kind of wimpy. Christians are weak-willed pansies who talk about love and peace and let others just walk all over them.

Wait. That’s not true. Christian behavior is decidedly different from worldly behavior, but it’s not for wusses. People who say that don’t know what they’re talking about.

Have you ever seriously tried to forgive someone who did you wrong? That is a very difficult thing to do. It takes determination and commitment and follow-through. It takes a devotion to another person and a loyalty to higher ideals. It takes great courage to forgive. The wimpy thing, the easy thing to do is NOT forgive.

Have you ever tried to be compassionate and patient? It’s not natural. It’s not easy. It takes tremendous discipline. Being a person of peace in the world we’re in takes a massive amount of courage and boldness. And it’s risky. It’s much safer to join in on all the slander and lies and expressions of outrage.

But those are the old clothes. That’s the old wardrobe, before you were raised with Christ. You wear different clothes now. People know by your kindness, gentleness, patience, and love that you live in a different reality and you serve a different King.

Peace,
Allan

A Social Event

July 28, 2026 / / 0 Comments

I had a fabulous lunch at Mulberry Cafe today with our two amazing GCR youth interns, Matthew and Olivia, two almost-seniors at Lubbock Christian University and two incredibly on-fire servants of our Lord. We talked about their whirlwind summer with our teenagers, horror movies, preaching, weddings, restaurants, the differences between Lubbock and Midland and Amarillo, and Van Halen and Rush and someone named Olivia Dean. I am envious of Matthew’s deep, resonant, bass voice and impressed with Olivia’s ability to just not care about something I’m screaming about. These are two rock-star interns and I hate to see them go back to school next week.

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While preparing for this Sunday’s sermon from Colossians 3, I came across these words from David Garland in the NIV Application Commentary about the social aspect of our salvation from God in Christ. Belonging to Christ means belonging to all those who are also in Christ. Nobody is saved alone.

“Paul gave his life to proclaiming a Gospel that broke down the walls of ancient prejudices. We should not fool ourselves into thinking that we are better than others or more favored by God than others, or that God will skip over us in the judgment because we belong to a chosen people. Our birth, race, gender, language, and social class are not barriers to God’s love, and they should not be allowed to become barriers in the loving fellowship of God’s people. The happenstance of our being born into this world does not cease to exist, but those circumstances should not define what it ultimately means to be human or put any limits on God’s love.”

And this quote from Markus Barth, from a book he wrote in 1968 called “Jews and Gentiles: The Social Character of Justification in Paul.”

“Justification in Christ is not an individual miracle happening to this person or that person, which each person may seek or possess for himself. Rather, justification by grace is a joining together of this and that person, of the near and the far, of the good and the bad, of the high and the low, liberal and fundamentalist. It is a social event. No one is joined to Christ except together with a neighbor.”

I’m reminded again of one of my favorite sentences in the Scriptures, Romans 12:5.

“In Christ, we, who are many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

Peace,
Allan

Fullness in Christ

July 27, 2026 / / 0 Comments

“You have been given fullness in Christ.” ~Colossians 2:10

The inspired apostle Paul reminds us in the middle of Colossians 2 that God has so fully identified you with Christ Jesus that whatever happens with Jesus also happens with you. By virtue of your baptism and your “faith in the power of God,” when Jesus died, you died with him. When Jesus was raised from the grave, you were raised with him to walk in newness of a brand new and eternal life.

When you are identified so completely with Christ, you cast aside your whole way of life. Your entire sphere of existence changes. In baptism, you have died to the old way of living, the old alliances, the old allegiances, the old powers that used to control you. You died to all that. And you are alive now to God’s new world of complete and total salvation in Jesus.

“Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules?” ~Colossians 2:20

Why are you still living by the world’s rules? Why do you still submit to the world’s principles? Love those who love you. Assert your rights. Get a high-paying job. Vote for this candidate. Drive this kind of car. Live in that zip code. Argue about your opinions. Insist on your way. Buy a bigger TV for your second house. What is that? What are you chasing? What are you looking for? All those things are destined to die. It may appear to be wisdom, it may sound smart, it may feel right–but it’s based on human thinking and worldly principles.

What do you need that you haven’t already been given abundantly in Jesus? You have HIM. You are in HIM. He has already given you everything he will ever demand and everything he could ever give. Why would you look to anyone else? Or anything else?

God made you alive with Christ, Colossians says. You have been given fullness in Christ.

Peace,
Allan

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