faithrunner

Last Sunday, Legacy Church , hosted our third annual Cultural Fair that celebrates the world in our backyard . Plano has become a multi-cultural community; especially in our neighborhood (75024). We have committed to embrace this change rather than relocate or huddle together in our own ethnic conclave. We can't call ourselves technically a multi-ethnic congregation a la' Mark Deymaz and others, but if you join us on Sunday, you will see that we are not a "homogeneous unit" gathered to escape our changing world . We look something like the mission field in which we find ourselves. During our worship Sunday morning of the Cultural Fair, we observed Communion. We celebrate it differently at times, and this week we chose to have people come and receive the elements at five different stations. We took the bread, and the server said, " The Body of Christ broken for you ." We dipped the bread in the cup, and the server said, " The Blood of Christ shed for ...

On our trip to Laos to see and work on the coffee farm, Bolaven Farms , I was struck with the daily life of the people. Culture is played out more in daily habits than in artifacts, art, and buildings . Laotian families do what all families do, but their conditions are different than ours. I love how children find fun and laugh no matter the condition of their home . (The boy giving the thumbs up and the child in the walker were at a cafe by a tourist attraction. They clearly lived where the family worked.) Schools varied in size but most were surrounded by dirt fields where the students played and did what students do universally. (This is a typical school house we saw.) But it is the children that capture your heart. Those that live on the farm will most likely work on a coffee farm much like their parents but their conditions can be much better with the help of Bolaven Farms and those who buy their coffee. I've included a couple of pictures of the kitchen and food preparatio...

Legacy Cyclists , Amy Nash, Nicole Henson, and Gene Wilkes, recently took a trip to Laos to work on a coffee farm Legacy Church supports. On their first morning in country, they met a group of cyclists riding across Vietnam, Lao, and Thailand as a gesture of unity . With the help of a translator, they greeted one another. Gene exchanged his LiveStrong wrist band with a Thai rider’s “Long Live the King” band. (Thailand is a kingdom with a real king, thus the message that is also in Thai on the band.) Yes, it was Boston Marathon Monday in the USA, and I wore my 2004 participants shirt that morning. The group presented Nicole with one of their jerseys, which you will see worn among the Legacy Cyclists from time to time. (34 Legacy Cyclists ride in the Frisco to Forth Worth MS150 ride, Saturday, May 1, with Team Bike Mart .) One of the riders, who we were told was a national cycling champion in his country (actually, we were told one of the riders was a champion, but this one look...

This morning, as on most mornings, I brewed a 4-cup pot of coffee to begin my day. I never knew what it took to produce something that I have taken for granted most of my life . Last week, five of us from Legacy Church , traveled to the Bolaven Farms in Laos. There we saw the work we have supported for over a year to bring sustainable living to the farmers who worked the coffee fields. I have more appreciation than ever for what Sam Say and his team are accomplishing for those who work on the farm. Their motto is "beyond fair trade and organic." I learned that you can be labeled a " fair trade " company with only a percentage of your product designated that way. Sam wants to move beyond getting the sticker on the coffee bags for fair wages to providing a life of hope in which one day each family trained on the farm will have their own farm . And, you can be labeled organic and still use certain pesticides. Not on the land we saw. The farmers use everything fro...

This Saturday, April 17, Legacy Church is cooperating with three other churches in the community to sponsor an event to help alleviate the pain of poverty . That's right. Four churches --one with a Baptist tradition, one community church, one Wesleyan , and one Roman Catholic -- are working together to put on a 5K, fun run, and "family palooza" to raise money to help those in need in our county . The idea resulted from some of our staff who were cooperating with other ministries, and when they turned their attention from attracting people to our churches to serving them, they discovered Seton Soles and its mission. This is the run's third year, and we hope to blow the doors out with participants and the amount of funds raised. I am honored to be on the team with Pastors George Feiser of Grace Community Church , Blair Richie of Collin Creek Community Church , and Fr. Henry Petter of St. Elizabeth Ann Seton Catholic Community . Thanks to Markus Lloyd , Legacy...

Legacy celebrated the resurrection of Jesus with Christ-followers around the world on Sunday. Our focus for the day was that Jesus' answer to the problem of evil and suffering offers us hope: trusting God that something good can come out of something bad . (If you would like to hear my message, you can hear it here .) I concluded that Jesus' death gives us hope that God is with us in the middle of our suffering and trials. (See Hebrews 4:14-16 . I encouraged us not to moralize that passage, but to let it speak of Jesus' presence with us in our suffering.) I then reminded the listeners that Jesus' resurrection gives us the hope of heaven, which we can taste now . (See Romans 8:18-25 . For you theology buffs, this is the "already-not yet" perspective of N T Wright and others.) My final conclusion was that we who trust Jesus to be God's ultimate answer to our problem of evil and suffering are to live as if we are God's present answer to the problem of ...

Guest blogger: Patsy Weinberg (All quotations are from Max Lucado's book, He Chose the Nails , pgs. 72-75) Evening Scripture says little about the clothes Jesus wore . We know what his cousin John the Baptist wore. We know what the religious leaders wore. But the clothing of Christ is nondescript: neither so humble as to touch hearts nor so glamorous as to turn head. With one exception. Read John 19: 23-25 . Scripture often describes our behavior as the clothes we wear. Peter urges us to be “clothed with humility” ( 1 Pet. 5:5 nkjv ). David speaks of evil people who clothe themselves “with cursing” ( Ps. 109: 18 nkjv ). Garments can symbolize character, and like his garment, Jesus’ character was seamless. Coordinated. Unified. He was like his robe: uninterrupted perfection. The character of Jesus was a seamless fabric woven from heaven to earth…from God’s thoughts to Jesus’ actions. From God’s tears to Jesus’ compass...