Seventeen Years of Ministering at Stanford

Sev­en­teen years ago today my wife and I drove into Palo Alto in a rent­ed yel­low Penske truck. God had called us to min­is­ter to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and we were report­ing for duty.

The years since then haven’t always been easy, but they have been extreme­ly reward­ing. Here are some thoughts run­ning through my mind on this anniver­sary:

1. God does the work. I remem­ber sit­ting down with a stu­dent a few months ago. She had sought me out after com­ing to faith through read­ing. She had nev­er been to a Chi Alpha wor­ship ser­vice. She had nev­er heard me preach. She had just spent time think­ing and read­ing. Even­tu­al­ly she was con­vinced and her life was changed. So many of the best things we’ve seen hap­pen in min­istry have hap­pened inde­pen­dent­ly of any plan or effort of ours. God does the work and gra­cious­ly invites us to tag along.
2. Uni­ver­si­ty min­istry real­ly does touch the world. Last year, Paula hung a map on our wall and we began putting a dot on the map when­ev­er an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent ate a meal in our home. In one year we had over 50 inter­na­tion­al stu­dents from over 25 nations sit down to eat with us. In Acts 19:9–10 we read that because Paul spent two years min­is­ter­ing dai­ly at an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion “all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.” That strat­e­gy still works today.
3. Uni­ver­si­ty min­istry real­ly does build god­ly lead­ers. By my count, we have alum­ni work­ing in the gov­ern­ments of three nations, we’ve got alum­ni serv­ing as pro­fes­sors at five uni­ver­si­ties (includ­ing three pro­fes­sors at Stan­ford), we’ve had two alum­ni make the Forbes “30 Under 30” list, one make the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review’s “35 Inno­va­tors Under 35” list, sev­er­al serv­ing as pas­tors and mis­sion­ar­ies, and many more doing amaz­ing things all over the world. Some of these alum­ni came to Christ through our min­istry while oth­ers were dis­ci­pled in their exist­ing faith. We are thrilled at all God has done in them and in awe of what He is doing through them.
4. We could­n’t have done it alone. I’ve got to extend a huge thank YOU to every­one who has sup­port­ed us in our min­istry. We are so grate­ful to every­one who has prayed for us, to all the staff who have worked along­side us, to the gen­er­ous peo­ple who have giv­en to help make this min­istry pos­si­ble, and to the stu­dents who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in our min­istry. None of this could have hap­pened with­out your part­ner­ship. We are grate­ful to you and also grate­ful to God for you.

So any­way, that’s what I’m think­ing about after sev­en­teen years of min­istry on the Farm. I’m excit­ed to see what God does over the next sev­en­teen!

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