faithrunner

This past Saturday members from Legacy Church joined members from St. Elizabeth Seton Catholic Community , Collin Creek Community Church , West Plano Presbyterian Church , and over 900 others for the Seton Soles 5K run/walk. 250 volunteers provided support and encouragement to all who participated. The purpose of the run/walk was to raise funds for the Monsignor Henry V. Petter Endowment Fund , which exists to support "work in outreach and justice" in Plano and Collin County. Henry Petter has served as a priest at St. Elizabeth Seton for almost twenty years, and he is a runner. He will retire in the near future, and he wanted his legacy to be something that dealt with the systemic issues that oppress and exclude people from the necessities of life . The church knew this and created the endowment in his name and the run to raise the funds. Two things about the event please and challenge me . The first was, as Blair Richie of CCCC said Saturday morning, getting Catholi...

My mother's birthday was Saturday, April 2. On that day she turned 80. Yes, count 'em, you Pine Covers, 80; and, to celebrate this milestone of maturity she decided to skydive! When asked, "Why would you do such a thing?" she said, "I always wanted to do it." However, when she announced she planned to jump out of a plane on her birthday this past Christmas, that was the first I had heard about it. Her daredevil desire to plunge to the earth at 120 miles-per-hour from 2.5 miles in the air for a minute and then hang from a nylon parachute harnessed to a man half her age had somehow come alive late in life. My mother is not a risk taker. She's a great-grandmother who teaches Sunday School each week and hosts a book club once a month. Her big adventure each week is driving to Palestine from her farm in Grapeland for groceries. She helped my Dad with the cows and projects on the farm up until about two years ago and they traveled in an RV around the ...

I knew the conference would be different. When we drove into the parking lot of the " For the City Center ," hand written signs on paper sheets guided us to the entrance. No buses or vans emptied their cargo into the parking lot; normal people carpooling like Austin residents would want us to, climbed out of their cars and made their way to the building. Inside, Austin Stone Community Church has done an awesome job to provide a contemporary and durable space for their intentions there. We registered and made our way into a gym-like room and sat around round tables--about 20 of them. M&M's and peanuts in plastic plates were our center piece and bowls turned over with a hand written number on it told us we were at table 6. When we started Hugh Halter stood on our level between two white boards and before a screen with one-color, PowerPoint slides projected on it. Senior member Bob L sat on a stool to the side like a father watching his son bat at a Little League g...

As we continue to read through the Old Testament as part of our year-long reading of The Story , the blood, gore, and annihilation we read about disturbs many of us . Isn't this sort of thing the very reason we are bombing Libya as I type and why we invaded Iraq and why troops remain in Afghanistan? The killing of innocent people cannot be tolerated in a civilized, free society.   If this is so, then, how do we resolve God's actions under the old covenant with the God we know through Jesus in the new covenant? Let me refer you back to an earlier post where I tried to explain "the anger of God" in the OT . I equated God's anger toward Israel to a parent's loving anger as he or she parented a rebellious teenager. We can get that. But what about the slaughter of indigenous people under Joshua and the Judges' leadership, for example? That's a bit harder to get your head and heart around than a frustrated God with his defiant people. Here's a...

The three worst letters in the alphabet for a runner are: DNF , which mean, "did not finish." There are a variety of reasons why runners don't finish races but, if you train to finish and enter to finish, DNF is not what you want to read on the final result list. You also don't want these three letters on your spiritual epitaph, but I'll get to that in a moment. This past Saturday, I entered the 20-mile length of what Tim Neckar calls, The Toughest n' Texas trail run . I completed the first two 50K runs Tim hosted on this course, and I thought I'd take on a shorter distance in the sixth running of the event. I love the run because it winds through Cameron Park in Waco . I believe these trails are the best kept secret in Texas . Multiple elevations, terrain, and different stands of trees (and bamboo) make it a trail runners delight. It is, however, a butt-kicking combination of rocks, roots, climbs, and washes. The course begins at Redwood Pavilion ,...

While some are mourning the demise of denominations , I continue to be excited about the possibilities of no longer needing to keep our sheep within strict doctrinal and liturgical fences. Finally, being the big "C" church is about the sheep and not about the shepherds. Another aspect of the crumbling walls of sectarianism and the reviving and re-forming of the church in America is a renewed focus on serving the communities in which we live and work . Being the church is no longer about gathering members but about empowering missionaries to serve where they live and work and go to school. Cooperation in the larger Body of Christ and attention to the needs of people in our mission field have combined to bring new life to dying fellowships and stagnate churches. Last year, Markus Lloyd, Children's Pastor and Creative Architect at Legacy Church , led us to partner with three other churches in our community to raise money for an endowment to address the needs in our ci...

We are reading through The Story at Legacy , and we are well into Exodus . By this time in His-story God has shown his anger several times, and these tantrums by God have begged the question from some of our readers, "Why is God so mean?" Others have commented, "I'm not so sure I like that God," or, "I'm glad Jesus came along and calmed his Father down!" Anyone who is a serious follower of Jesus and who stakes his or her life on the God revealed in Scripture has wondered, " What's up with all the 'anger of God' stuff in the Old Testament? " Here's my finite, fallible take on the topic : When Holy God reveals himself to a fallen people in a fallen creation in order to establish his presence among them for all to see and know, the clash of God's holiness with the fallen will cause conflict and anger on both sides of the relationship. The world was and is a fallen mess. Insert Holy God who wants to love and guide a ...