Glen and Paula Davis

Today is Thanksgiving, and once again I am reminded of all that I have to be grateful for.

God loves me. I have a wonderful family (both by birth and by marriage). I have a faithful team of supporters who partner with me in ministry. I have the coolest calling in the world. I have fabulous students in my ministry. I live in America in the 21st century - one of the greatest, freest, and most prosperous cultures of all time. I live in California, which is as awesome as the rest of you think it is. And, and, and, and…

Today is Thanksgiving, and so such a list springs easily to mind. It reminds me that I am to be thankful every day. Many passages command us to be grateful. Among them are Ephesians 5:19-20, Colossians 2:7, Colossians 3:15-16, and 1 Thessalonians 5:18. They’re wonderful passages and worth memorizing.

But my favorite passage on gratitude is from Deuteronomy 8:17-18:

You may say to yourself, “My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me.” But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you the ability to produce wealth…

It is God who gives us the ability. Not just the ability to produce wealth, but also the ability to make jokes, to find love, to enjoy a sunset, to get good grades, to run quickly, to leap in puddles, and to sleep soundly at night.

Every day is filled with occasions for gratitude, but we almost always let them pass unremarked.

This Thanksgiving, take to heart the ever-quotable G. K. Chesterton:

You say grace before meals. All right. But I say grace before the concert and the opera, and grace before the play and pantomime, and grace before I open a book, and grace before sketching, painting, swimming, fencing, boxing, walking, playing, dancing, and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

Amen.

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If you haven’t heard from me and you’ve been expecting to, I apologize. For some reason a lot of my very normal emails (particularly to students) have been labeled as spam. Here’s an example of an email that gets labeled as spam:

Student’s email to me: “Glen, can I get a ride to church on Sunday?”
My reply to the student: “Sure, I’ll pick you up at 10am. See you then!”

Result - automatically deleted as SPAM! The poor girl thought I was ignoring her and almost biked to church before we got it straightened out.

I had a student send me a copy of one of the unfortunate emails, and digging through the headers I found this entry from Stanford’s spam filter:

X-Spam: Probability=82%, Report='URI_CLASS_ABS_DOMAIN 8, BODY_SIZE_6000_6999 0, WEBMAIL_SOURCE 0, __BOUNCE_CHALLENGE_SUBJ 0, __CD 0, __CP_URI_IN_BODY 0, __CT 0, __CTE 0, __CT_TEXT_PLAIN 0, __FRAUD_419_BODY_WEBMAIL 0, __FRAUD_419_WEBMAIL 0, __FRAUD_419_WEBMAIL_FROM 0, __FROM_GMAIL 0, __HAS_MSGID 0, __HELO_GMAIL 0, __MIME_TEXT_ONLY 0, __MIME_VERSION 0, __PHISH_SPEAR_HTTP_RECEIVED 0, __PHISH_SPEAR_STRUCTURE_1 0, __RDNS_GMAIL 0, __SANE_MSGID 0, __URI_CLASS_ANY 0′

I’ve googled for URI_CLASS_ABS_DOMAIN, but I haven’t been able to figure out what it means. I’m sending my emails from gmail, so I don’t think there’s any weirdness there. Something about the content of my email seems fishy to the spam filter. My best guess is that it’s my footer (which I intend to disable as a test), but any insight is appreciated.

The footer, in case you’re curious, is an innocuous

Glen Davis: http://glenandpaula.com/
Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship @ Stanford University: http://xastanford.org/


Bottom line: if you expected an email from me and you haven’t seen it, check your spam folder. A happy surprise might be waiting for you.

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I was chatting with De Wen (a student in our ministry) yesterday and he made a comment that really resonated with me: “God wants friends, not fans.”

A lot of us settle for being fans. I often settle for being a fan. But there’s so much more available - like Abraham, we can be friends with God (Isaiah 41:8, James 2:23). As he did to the disciples, Jesus yearns to say to us, “I no longer call you servants but friends” (John 15:15).

But the temptation to be a mere fan is strong. In Jimmy Tate’s memorable phrase, we substitute praise for prayer. We allow the life of the church to displace our own spiritual journey and we live vicariously through the pastor’s insights or the worship leader’s zeal. Like a dutiful fan, we turn out for the game (Sunday morning) and cheer at all the appropriate places. But we don’t call the coach after the game to congratulate him or shoot the breeze. We don’t invite him over for a victory bbq. That’s the stuff a friend would do.

We’re just fans, so we go home and talk about how great the game was.

And we miss out on something wonderful.

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One of the best books I’ve read in the last few years has been Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath. It’s chock-full of well-researched goodness. One of the most intriguing studies they cite is The Fundamental Templates of Quality Ads. If you read the article (or just the summary in Made to Stick), you learn that if you make an ad using one of a handful of templates, it will be much better (and perceived to be more creative) than if you put a group of people in a room and tell them to be as creative as they can.

Ever since I stumbled upon that study, I’ve been thinking about how it applies to sermons. There are lots of ways to structure sermons, but only a few seem to work really well.

As a result, I’ve compiled a list of sermon templates. When I’m preaching, I try to think through these templates to see if one naturally matches my subject, and I use as that the framework that I build the message around.

Template #1: Classic Expository Preaching
Simply use the outline/plot of the text as your preaching outline. This template is transcendent when done well, and painful when done poorly. It’s probably the most common template out there.

Template #2: Practical
In Acts 2 Peter structures his sermon around the answers to three questions.

1. What?
2. So what?
3. Now what?

Template #3: How To
One of the simplest ways to structure a message:

1. Tell them why.
2. Show them how.

Template #4: Solve The Problem (Andy Stanley)

1. Create Attention: “here’s a problem that needs to be resolved
2. Integrate Scripture: “fortunately, we’re not the first ones to wrestle with this”
3. Clarify The Significance: “here’s why this answer matters”
4. Apply The Concept: “and here’s how to make it work in real life”

Template #5: Pronouns (Andy Stanley)

1. Me (Orientation): Introduce yourself to the audience and to your personal experience of the problem you’re talking about.
2. We (Identification): Show how the audience has the same (or a sufficiently similar) problem.
3. God (Illumination): Tell them what the Bible says about how to respond to this problem.
4. You (Application): Call for a personal response
5. We (Inspiration): Explain how things would be change if we all responded in obedience.

Template #6: Life Change (Rick Warren)

1. Establish a need
2. Give personal examples
3. Present a plan
4. Offer hope
5. Call for commitment

Template #7: The Story With a Punch (Inductive)

1. Tell an engaging, carefully-chosen story (usually funny).
2. Bring the surprise punchline from the Bible.

Template #8: The Question & Answer Outline (Thomas Aquinas)

1. Make a bold claim (or ask a tough question and give an answer)
2. Anticipate the objections raised by your claim/answer
3. Answer the objections
4. Repeat steps 2 & 3 as long as necessary to establish your original claim.

I hope these serve you well. I should hasten to add that these aren’t based on research - they’re the byproduct of observation and of what I learned at a few conferences. In other words, you can take what the article said about advertisements to the bank. You should only take my advice to the lemonade stand.

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Chris Tilling helpfully points out that ellipses can mangle meaning. Consider:

“As for yourself, you shall … come back here … smoking … pot”
Genesis 15:15-17, NRSV.

Ellipses can clarify as well as mislead, of course. But an abundance of them makes me nervous. Always ask yourself, “What’s hiding behind those three little dots?”

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fall 2008 tabling

Freshmen have arrived on campus this week, and we’ve had a blast meeting them. Our strategy isn’t super-sophisticated - we just set up a table on White Plaza and beckon students over to chat with us. We also give them free stuff (like popcorn and these really cool eco-friendly shopping bags).

The photo on the right is me and a couple of our hardworking students.

But there’s been an unexpectedly cool development. The table next to us has been for the Stanford Educational Studies Program (they’re trying to recruit some freshmen to teach high school students stuff) and is manned by one of our students, Ben. Ben works with really cold stuff - about as close to absolute zero as humanity has been able to get (millikelvins, if you’re curious). So something like liquid nitrogen is like hot chocolate to him - it’s at a mere 320 Fahrenheit below zero. I know 320 below sounds cold, but most of the universe is much, much colder than that - just not the part that we inhabit.

ben and glen with liquid nitrogen

So Ben brings these containers (called dours) of liquid nitrogen out to White Plaza and makes ice cream with them in front of people. It’s very eye-catching. Massive amounts of fog are generated. And the resulting ice cream is yummy.

Anyway, the drink for my lunch had gotten warm, so I asked Ben if we could use some liquid nitrogen to cool it off. It worked like a charm. Plus it was fun to do. Extremely fun.

That morning I had already been thinking that I had one of the best jobs in the world. And then I get to play with liquid nitrogen. While doing my job. Campus ministry rocks.

if you’re reading this on Facebook click through to the original to see the pictures

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We just moved from our old apartment to a house elsewhere in Menlo Park. So far we love it! The kids are especially jazzed about the yard and the ensuing prospects for outdoor play.

A big thank you to those who helped us move! Props to Ben, Katie, Alan, John, Desirae, Irene, Chris, Femi, Ethan, Lindsey, Scott (way to serve with your postoperative self), Jen and Aaron. Lindsey and Sue deserve special mention because they each watched our kids part of the day, which meant Paula and I could both get stuff done. And a special shout-out to Emily who was planning to help but had to bail due to a last-minute medical emergency (get well soon).

Highlights from the move:

• Noticing that a disproportionate number of students decided to wear their Chi Alpha shirts for the move. My heuristic was to wear a shirt I didn’t care about… which makes me wonder how our students really feel about our shirts.
• Happy Donuts for breakfast. Yum. Bonus: watching Ben get a sugar rush.
• Hearing my name used as a virtual curse word when people realized how many boxes of books they would have to carry. They love the erudite sermons, they just hate the way I prepare for them.
• Backing a U-Haul into my narrow driveway. Yikes!
• Chris getting scratched by a rose bush and me (for once) having the right line at the right time, “He doesn’t need a band-aid - he needs a Y chromosome.”
• New York Pizza for lunch. Two King Kongs and a Large. Excellent.
• Having our internet activated on the day we moved in. Sweet!
• Our new neighbor dropping off brownies. How very kind.
• Having our super-studly moving crew stay to help us assemble and lay out furniture. Way above and beyond the call of duty. THANK YOU!
• Costco Hot Dogs for supper. Those dogs are delicious. And huge.
• Double bonus: watching Ben cuddle up after a hard day’s work and drift into la-la land.

For those to whom it matters, our new address is 1032 Ringwood Ave, Menlo Park, CA 94025.

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My seminary’s alumni magazine, Rapport, just published an article I wrote, Change The University, Change The World.

It came out pretty well - although I did notice one mistake (which is probably my fault, not theirs). One sentence reads, “But for each nation that missionaries go to, there are hundreds of thousands of students from that nation currently studying in America.” Clearly that should be written more along the lines of, “But for each nation that missionaries go to, there are usually hundreds OR thousands of students from that nation studying in America.”

The other articles in that issue are also about college ministry, including three by former students of mine:

• Kristina Lwali wrote Reaching International Students
• Matt Herman wrote It’s All About Relationships
• Sarah Malcolm wrote Campus Ministry in Post-Christian Europe

I’m proud of them - they’re doing great things in God’s service. It was a privilege to play a small role in preparing them for ministry.

Joe, of course, played an even larger role in their lives than I did. One more testimony of his impact.

Joe - we miss you.

And to everyone who’s wondering if I’ll be at the funeral tomorrow, I’m sad to report that I won’t be. Just wasn’t able to work it out. I’ll be there in spirit.

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Joe Zickafoose died last night. He had cancer, and in the process of treatment his immune system became so weak that he was very vulnerable to infection, got pneumonia, and died.

Maybe this is normal, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by emotion until I try to talk to someone about it. It’s kind of weird. When I’m on the phone with a mutual friend of Joe’s, I start to choke up. And I usually weep for a few moments after I hang up. After that, I’m fine (albeit sad) until the next conversation.

It would be hard to overstate Joe’s influence in my life. When I moved from Louisiana to Missouri to go to seminary, I began volunteering at the Chi Alpha ministry he led at Missouri State University. He soon asked me to join him on staff, and I seized the opportunity to work with this amazing man.

I got to know Joe very well over the next few years. He was a real mentor. He told amazingly funny stories. He was kind and caring. And wicked smart. Joe really knew his stuff. He helped me understand how theology related to practical ministry in a way that is still stunning to me.

I have so many vivid memories of Joe that it’s hard to believe he’s really dead.

I’ll never forget his booming laugh echoing through the office. I remember once I was giving a student an explanation about eschatology (the end of the world), and after the student left Joe just started laughing uncontrollably. “Glen, do you realize how many times I’ve heard you give that exact same explanation using the exact same words to students?” Maybe it would be funnier if you heard my explanation and knew a little more about my denomination, but this isn’t really the place for a theological treatise on the return of Christ.

Another story that springs to mind is the time Joe decided to buy a motorcycle. He used to ride them as a kid, and he wanted to return to the halcyon days of his youth. So he did his research, bought the bike and all the accessories. It was a months-long process, filled with days of Joe waxing eloquent about the joys of motorcycle riding. Joe could get pretty obsessive about his hobbies, and this was close to displacing music in his level of passion. He set out to ride and my phone rang about an hour later. It was Joe. “Glen, I crashed my bike. Can you come pick me up?” So I set out in my trust Isuzu pickup to retrieve the noble fallen Zickafoose. He sold the bike shortly afterward. It was one of the most heartbreaking and yet funny events I can remember.

But my favorite story of Joe has to be his salvation story. I might have it a little jumbled, but this is the essence of it. He spent his teenage years working hard and saving for college. However, when he arrived at Kent State he blew all the money he had spent years saving in one term on a crazy drug binge. He had to drop out because he had depleted all his funds. But before he did, he met Jesus. Here’s how it happened.

Joe and his drug buddies used to stay up late at night talking about crazy stuff they had seen. Joe Zickafoose’s roommate, Joe Daltorio (hereafter referred to as Big Joe), had some of the best stories about people he had seen healed at the Pentecostal church he grew up in. Joe was skeptical, but Big Joe swore up and down he had seen it with his own eyes.

One night Joe was visiting his supplier down the hall, and they made some sort of joke about Satan. As Joe tells it, at that moment they felt the temperature drop and an ominous presence filled the room. Joe fled back to his room where Big Joe happened to be. As Joe entered the room, he felt the exact opposite presence. A sense of overwhelming peace filled his dorm room.

“I don’t know what’s happening in here, but I want it.”

Big Joe looked at him and said, “Joe, I’m what you call a backslider. I was turning my back on what I knew to be true. I told you all those stories about my church, but I never told you the most important story of all. Jesus is God and he died for your sins. You can be forgiven and have peace with God. I just finished repenting and I’m not going to be part of the drug scene anymore. Do you want in?”

Joe said sure, and so Big Joe explained, “This is the way they do it at church. Would you please bow your head? Without looking around, if you want to receive Jesus Christ as your personal lord and savior, would you please raise your hand? Great. Please kneel and repeat after me. Dear Jesus, I know I’m a sinner and I need your grace. I humbly repent and please forgive me of my sins and help me not to do them anymore. With your help, I’ll serve you.”

And that’s how Joe became a Christian. His drug friends came over to his room and Joe decided to put some music on to celebrate. He began digging through his collection until he found something that looked religious and put it on the record player. He told his friends, “See, there’s a quote by George Bernard Shaw about God on the cover. It’s spiritual music.”

His drug dealer friend started laughing. “What does George Bernard Shaw know about God? He was an atheist!”

Joe’s countenance changed; he stared at his record collection. “I’ve been deceived,” he said slowly. He took the record off the player and threw it out his window like a frisbee. It smashed into the next building. His friends sat stunned. One by one he took all the records in his collection and hurled them into oblivion, his friends screaming at him to stop and begging him to give them the records instead. He bellowed, “None shall have them!”

I always used to crack up at that line. “None shall have them!”

There are so many stories about Joe. He was truly an amazing individual. I’ll miss him deeply. We hadn’t talked too much in the last few years because he was serving overseas as a missionary to university students in Scotland, but I thought of him often.

I can barely imagine what his wife and teenage sons must be going through. I rejoice that Joe is in heaven experiencing his reward, but I weep for his family who now must soldier on without him. If you remember, be sure to pray for them.

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Stanford has 46 athletes competing in the Olympics this year. Get a summary of the latest news or see stories with pictures and more details.

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The 2008 world ranking of universities has just been released, and yet again Stanford occupies the #2 spot in the whole world.

It really is an amazing place to do ministry. Big thanks to all of you who pray for and support us.

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