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Month: December 2014 (Page 1 of 2)

A Preacher’s Honor

December 31, 2014 / / 2 Comments

Preachers are a blessed bunch of people. We don’t deserve our blessings, we don’t earn them, we don’t seek them. But the blessings from our God and his people fall on us and overwhelm us quite regularly. We are honored above most other groups of people. And we would do well to be more aware of those blessings and honors, to recognize them and appreciate them when they arrive.

The people in our churches honor us by sharing their lives with us. They give us glimpses into their hearts that other people never see. They allow us to look into their very souls, they open up their emotions to us, they come clean with us about their struggles and doubts, and they share with us their greatest joys.

And, why?

God only knows.

I was so incredibly honored this past Sunday to perform the marriage ceremony for Landon Brightwell and Taylor Bates, two precious kids from the Legacy youth group. Honored. My first real exposure to Landon was the day his dad dragged him into my office and asked me to talk to him for an hour about some trouble he was getting in to. Landon and I were both very uncomfortable. He mainly listened and fidgeted in his chair while I tried to inspire him with stories from the gospels and hypothetical situations involving his uncertain future if he didn’t shape up. I was terribly ineffective that afternoon. But his dad trusted me with his son. His dad thought I could help and he trusted what I might say.


 

 

 

 

 

Over the next three years I watched as our Lord began to speak to Landon and his friends and to work in them and through them in astounding ways. These three guys began showing up to the Tuesday men’s Bible study, blessing the old men in the group, asking all the right questions, speaking deeply from their hearts. They began taking regular shifts during Legacy Morning Prayers, blessing our elders and ministers, being blessed by Quincy, growing in their faith in God and in their trust in his Church and in one another. They pranked my house, put live goldfish in the bed of my truck, planted apple trees on my front porch, and put living room furniture in my front yard. And they prayed with me before I left for Amarillo.

I’ve only seen Landon maybe once or twice since we left; I haven’t talked to Taylor at all. And when he called me over the summer to ask me if I’d marry them, it completely blew me away. Why? Why do want me to do your wedding?

“Because you’re our preacher.”

I’m not sure a preacher can hear any more encouraging and affirming and honoring words than those. It’s humbling and it’s flattering. But above all, I believe it’s an honor.

To be able to share this most important day with Landon and Taylor, to be right in the middle of this foundational day with them and their sweet families, was such a blessed honor for me. And I know it has very little, if anything, to do with my sermons or my teachings or the things I believe. It has nothing at all to do with any special talents or abilities. It’s only because I just happened to be their preacher when they were growing up. I was their preacher.

Carrie-Anne and I worshiped with the Legacy church family Sunday for the first time since we left a little over three years ago. And we were honored from the moment we walked in until the moment we drove off to lunch with the Byrnes and Cindy Pope. We were hugged and kissed, appreciated and encouraged. Lots of people expressed how much they miss us. A few pointed out some things we started at Legacy that are still continuing today and are very much a part of the church’s DNA. Several thanked me for something I had done or said in the past. Three people asked me to pray for someone in their family.

Whoa.

What an honor. Because I’m a preacher.

Preachers don’t deserve the trust people put in us. We’re not worthy of receiving the parts of their lives others choose to share with us. All of it is a gracious gift from our God.

Lord, please help us recognize and appreciate those honors as the gifts to us they are, to more fully understand the position you’ve placed us in and how you’re working through us for your purposes and glory.

Anticipation

December 23, 2014 / / 0 Comments

“My eyes have seen your salvation!” ~Luke 2:30

Simeon and Anna were both at the temple in Jerusalem that day Joseph and Mary brought their six-weeks-old baby boy to the priests for dedication. Scripture tells us that Simeon was “waiting for the consolation of Israel” and that Anna and others with her were “looking forward to the redemption of Jerusalem.” And when they gazed upon the infant Jesus, they saw the Lord’s salvation. They were looking at a baby, but they saw the glorious fulfillment of God’s promises. They saw it!

Israel was being brought back together as God’s united people because of Jesus. The powerful would be humbled and the lowly would be raised because of Jesus. Evil was being defeated and the captives were being set free because of Jesus. God had always promised to comfort and console his people; to protect and provide for his people; to rescue and restore his people. Simeon and Anna both saw how all those eternal pledges were finally coming true in Jesus. And not just for Israel, but for the whole world!

Simeon is looking at a baby; but he sees salvation from God.

Anna is gazing at an infant; but she sees deliverance from God.

You know why they saw it? You know why they recognized it? Because they were looking forward to it! They were waiting for it, watching for it, expecting it, anticipating it. They were laying awake every night like little kids on Christmas Eve: can’t sleep, can’t wait, all I think about, hurry up and get here!

What is it you’re waiting for like that because of Jesus? What are you looking for? What are you expecting because of Jesus? What do you see?

Fifty years ago everybody was looking at a couple of missionaries in Brazil. But a few of God’s saints saw Great Cities Missions and dozens and dozens of teams of gospel proclaimers preaching the Word and planting churches and baptizing and making disciples in the largest capitol cities all over the Latin world. Because of Jesus. They anticipated it because of Jesus. They expected it.

We gaze at Ellwood park across the street here at Central and we know it as a place for drug dealers and prostitutes and crime. Well, some of us are going to have to see a place where the hungry are fed, where the discouraged are lifted up, where bridges are built and community is forged and where God draws people to himself to the glory of his great name. Because of Jesus. We have to anticipate it. We have to look forward to it.

We look at the Madison Apartments and we know it as an eyesore, a slum, a dilapidated and dangerous cluster of buildings that represent the darkness and desperation of our church’s neighborhood. We know it as something that needs to be mowed down by a bulldozer and leveled. But we’ve bought those apartments. We own them. Because there’s a growing number of saints in our church who actually see the largest branch of this city’s first ever free medical clinic operating in those buildings. We anticipate doctors and nurses and dentists providing health care at no charge; we see God’s people singing and praying and celebrating with men and women and children who’ve never had any health care before; we expect folks in our neighborhood to experience the love and grace of our God maybe for the first time in their lives. Because of Jesus.

I look at the Central Church of Christ and I know us as a terrific group of warm and friendly God-fearing people with an excellent reputation in our community for wanting to help others. But I see something more. I see a group of 700 followers of Jesus; all of us committed to discipleship; dedicated to giving every part of our lives to God; focused on transformation and the hard changes it demands. I anticipate all of us to be totally sold out to God’s salvation mission so that we all have our own ministries, our own mission points, taking God’s gospel to the bankers and lawyers in the southwest part of town, proclaiming the good news at the parks and ball fields on the east side of town, spreading God’s mercy and grace in the medical district, sacrificing and serving in his name at the schools and shelters downtown, purposefully taking God’s love to the coffee shop in Pampa and the Supercuts in Canyon. I see it. I’m expecting it. All of us. Eventually turning our whole community upside down as salvation from God reaches every single corner of the panhandle. Because of Jesus.

What are you looking for? What are you anticipating because of Jesus?

Can you see the darkness in your circumstance eventually turned to light because of Jesus? Can you see the despair of your situation eventually turning to joy because of Jesus? Can you see the mundane aspects of your life eventually being filled with excitement and purpose for God and his salvation mission?

Simeon and Anna were looking at a baby. But they saw the promised salvation from God.

Yes, our God can sometimes seem slow. We might even say God is slow as Christmas. But he will fulfill all his promises to you and to his people and to the whole world. Our God is faithful and he will keep his Word. And he left his home in glory and came here to us one clear and starry night in a manger in Bethlehem, as a baby, as a human baby, so we could see.

Peace,

Allan

Seek Justice

December 22, 2014 / / 0 Comments

I know the Cowboys are really rolling right now. The offensive line is imposing its will and mowing people down, Murray and all the backs are running with authority, Romo is having the greatest year of his career, Dez looks unstoppable, and the defense is flying around the ball with abandon on every play. Today the Cowboys look really, really good. But I’m sticking with my preseason prediction of 6-10.

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“Stop doing wrong, learn to do right!
Seek justice, encourage the oppressed.
Defend the cause of the fatherless,
plead the case of the widow.”
~Isaiah 1:16-17

We understand the biblical concept of justice to be about reversing the curse. We see it as leaning into God’s promised future, a mostly “back to the future” promise that our Lord is redeeming and restoring all of creation to be like it was in the very beginning, and working to bring it about. So we feed the hungry because there is no hunger in heaven. We clothe the needy and house the homeless because there is no poverty in heaven. We live in peace with others because there is no violence in heaven. We love and sacrifice and serve to lift up the hopeless and protect the defenseless because that is the way of our Father.

 

 

 

 

At Central, this seeking justice takes many forms. Among them, the community Christmas lunch we hosted here on Saturday for all the men, women, and children who live in our downtrodden downtown neighborhoods. Around 70 volunteers served a hot Christmas lunch to more than 400 members of our community.  Four worship leaders from four different churches — with our own Kevin Schaffer out front — provided the Christmas/worship music. We shared Christmas stories and traditions, we told Santa Claus what we wanted, we passed out hand-sewn emergency kits and blankets, we called upon God in prayer, and we ate a lot of pie.

 

 

 

 

Most importantly, we made connections. We tried with everything we’ve got to make sure there was somebody from Central at every table. Not serving food, not gathering information, but lovingly sharing our lives with those around us. Learning names, looking at pictures of children and grandchildren, making fun of each other’s teams, noticing rings and bracelets, laughing together at some of our silly assumptions.

I don’t know when or even if Saturday’s lunch will translate into baptisms and new members classes and a swell in the church rolls. It doesn’t matter; it’s not the point. The point is that for two hours on Saturday, four hundred of our neighbors experienced God. They got a glimpse, a tiny little sneak preview of heaven. They were made, I hope, to feel important, to feel loved, to feel significant, to know they matter.

I think that’s seeking justice: understanding what our God is doing in the world, what his ultimate goals are, what the eternal outcome of what he’s doing is going to be, and then working like crazy to make it happen in our contexts right here, right now.

We don’t have it all figured out here at Central. We still mess a lot of things up and we still allow many things to slip through the cracks. But we’re trying to do good works that imitate our Lord. We’re trying to view our efforts and evaluate our programs with better questions. It’s not just “What would Jesus do?” It’s also, “What did God do for me?” and “What is God doing right now?”

Peace,

Allan

The Corporate Life

December 17, 2014 / / 5 Comments

Regular readers here are aware of my deep conviction that salvation is a corporate event. No one is saved alone, no one is a Christian by herself, no one worships or serves in isolation. God draws us to him in community, we are baptized into a community, we are transformed by the Spirit in the context of community. But in an increasingly individualistic society such as ours in the U. S., those ideas are more and more marginalized and rendered almost antiquated. In our culture, an individual’s rights and freedoms now trump those of the community. Almost any community.

Nobody watches broadcast TV anymore; we watch Netflix and DVDs and DVR’ed programs by ourselves where and when we please. Nobody listens to the radio anymore; we program our own playlists and listen with our own ear buds any where and any time we like. And if the civic club or the social group I belong to acts in any way that infringes on my own personal choices, I leave and join a new club. Or I start my own club, even if that club is just a chat-site or a Facebook group. And if any organization is seen by the society as encroaching on anyone’s individual desires, that group faces pressure from the society to relax its standards. Community must bow to the individual.

That means the members of our churches today are more prone to bristle when congregational leadership wants to hold them to high standards of discipleship. They are more likely to take offense and leave when they’re expected to behave in certain orthodox ways. At the very least, they’re bent towards ignoring it when the church calls for disciplined living in a particular community of faith.

That’s not the only reason that church numbers are going down across this country. But it’s a factor.

In an essay for Christianity Today, Andy Crouch calls this the “erosion of corporate identity.” He observes that Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, in her dissent in the recent Hobby Lobby case, wrote that “religious organizations exist to foster the interests of persons subscribing to the same religious faith.” Now, you and I both know that’s wrong. We know that Israel was saved and called by God to exist for the sake of the nations. We know that the Church is saved and called to sacrifice and live for the sake of others. But our culture doesn’t behave this way. So communities that try to behave this way are attacked or, at the very least undermined and marginalized by society:

“An individualistic world is scandalized by any community whose boundaries threaten the freedom of the individuals within it. Such a world promotes transactional relationships, overseen by the only form of community that remains: a centralized and powerful nation-state. Rather than existing to protect small- and medium-sized communities, the state views them with suspicion. Or that state redefines them, as did Justice Ginsburg, by reducing them to the most venal of motives.”

Corporate life in the U. S. is withering. Corporate life is what gave our forefathers their sense of belonging and identity and their platform through which to work for the greater good. But it’s fading fast. Small- and medium-sized businesses, civic organizations, and churches are on a rapid decline. Fewer and fewer of us have deep connections to the small communities that used to mediate life. Forty-one percent of children in the United States are born out of wedlock, so even the most fundamental and committed of  communities — the family — is  in trouble.

So, how are we to respond?

I believe we commit ourselves even more to the countercultural, subversive, corporate reality known as the local church. In all of its imperfections and sins, its many problems and issues — we throw ourselves into it with everything we’ve got. God’s Church should make a stronger claim on us than the state. According to our Lord, it makes a deeper claim on us even than our families. And by being stronger and deeper than the family and the state, your church provides a loving and loyal family for those who don’t have one and an eternal identity and community for us all. Yes, the church is going to demand a great deal from you. The church will ask that you humbly sacrifice and serve, that you eagerly give and work, that you commit and defer for the sake of others. But it also gives us the corporate life that we were created to enjoy, the only life that resembles the mutual love and relationship the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit have enjoyed forever and brought us into existence to share.

Peace,

Allan

Sermons on Suffering

December 10, 2014 / / 0 Comments

Whew! I’m at the tail end now of a five week sermon series at Central exploring the ways our faithful God sustains us during times of suffering. And I’m drained. Exhausted. Sweat-soaked and burned-out. Whoa. I’m looking forward to preaching something a little easier now like the mystery of the Incarnation.

I’ve been preaching here that the eternal nature of our God — the way he thinks, the way he acts, what drives him, his essence — is what we hold on to during the storms of life. We know that God loves us eternally; that everything he causes to happen and everything he allows to happen is motivated by his great love for us and his desire to live in holy relationship with him forever. We know God listens to us tenderly; that he wants us to lay our burdens at his feet and cry out to him in open and honest lament. We know that God understands totally what we’re going through; that through Christ Jesus our God experiences all of our pains and hurts; there’s nothing we go through that our Father hasn’t already gone through himself. And we know that God is sovereign over our sufferings; that he is completely in control of what’s happening to us and that he uses the really awful things in our lives to shape us into better reflections of his glory. Yeah, we know all that. And, yeah, those things are helpful to recall during terrible times.

But do they really fix anything?

See, that’s what’s been so tough during this series.

The last thing I ever want to do is to give the impression that I believe we should all just adopt the biblical perspective and then everything’s going to be fine. Because it’s not. Everything’s not fine. I want to honor both the pain of the sufferer and the words of our God that are intended to strengthen and sustain. I want to do both. I want to acknowledge the reality of the pain of living in this broken world and encourage our people by reminding them of the eternal realities of our God and his Kingdom. I want to do both.

This week a friend of mine forwarded a helpful passage from Francis Spufford’s Unapologetic:

“If your child is dying, there is no reason that can ease your sorrow. Even if, impossibly, some true and sufficient explanation could be given you, it wouldn’t help you, whether they are picture-book simple or inscrutably contorted. The only comfort that can do anything — and probably the most it can do is help you to endure, or, if you cannot endure, to fail and fold without wholly hating yourself — is the comfort of feeling yourself loved. Given the cruel world, it’s the love song we need, to help us bear what we must; and, if we can, to go on loving. We don’t say that God’s in his heaven and all’s well with the world; not deep down. We say: all is not well with the world, but at least God is here in it, with us.”

Yeah. That’s what I’ve been trying to say for four weeks.

I think the sermons have resonated with our church. Mainly, I believe that there is pain in every pew; every Sunday we worship our God together in a room full of hurting people. So I feel like we’re all listening, we’re all paying attention. My prayer has been that our God is putting his word into every heart in exactly the way it’s needed to strengthen and encourage. And I do think it’s happening. I think the Spirit is compelling us to apply these truths about God into our own situations. And, while the pain doesn’t go away, we endure it together as a loving community of faith.

Peace,

Allan

All In

December 8, 2014 / / 0 Comments

What does it mean to be “all in” for Jesus? What does it look like to be totally “sold out” for our Lord? He calls us to surrender all. We sing that we surrender all. So what does that look like?

People declare their desires to follow Jesus all the time. During his earthly ministry, people were always coming up to Jesus, asking to be his disciple. And he continually rejected the ones who were not willing to give up everything for him and his cause.

The rich young ruler who couldn’t let go of his money. The would be disciples in Luke 9 and Luke 14 who wanted to put comfort and family and business before their walks with the Lord. The clear message in the Gospels is that we follow Jesus on his terms, not ours.

“Any of you who does not give up everything he has cannot be my disciple.” ~Luke 14:33

Frederic Huntington says:

It is not scientific doubt, not atheism, not pantheism, not agnosticism, that in our day and in this land is likely to quench the light of the gospel. It is a proud, sensuous, selfish, luxurious, church-going, hollow-hearted prosperity.”

Ouch.

So what does “all in” for Jesus look like for you? What does it mean for you to be “sold out” for our Lord?

Peace,

Allan

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