Author: Glen

Lay Leadership Summit

Every year our district sponsors an event called The Lay Leadership Summit. It’s a big conference designed to help church volunteers do their jobs better. There are about 50 learning tracks (each with four workshops) ranging from children’s ministry to using the internet effectively to using lighting and sound systems. We, of course, sponsor a college ministry track.

I mention all this by way of introduction to mention two people I interacted with this weekend: Dan Betzer and John Abela.

Dan Betzer is a legend in the Assemblies of God–he’s an incredible speaker, a missions fanatic, and an extremely successful pastor. He’s also a bit of a hero of mine (his wife, incidentally, blogs).

Anyway, I learned two things about him this weekend:
1) he once lost his ministerial credentials for seven years for flouting the hierarchy’s rules
2) he’s such an introvert that he keeps his office at 60 degrees so that people feel too chilly to hang around and chit-chat

For the record, he and I have never had a conversation. I gleaned one tidbit from his sermon and another from a friend of his.

The second person I met was John Abela. John is a former core member of the phpBB2 team and runs the most popular conglomeration of Assemblies of God websites in the world. I am told that his total bandwidth exceeds that of all the national Assembly of God websites in every nation combined.

That tickles me. Many of our leaders attempt to lead by limiting information and don’t seem to realize that’s no longer possible. John has effectively done an end run on a ton of stupid rules in the Assemblies of God and because he’s a layperson no one can stop him–he’s got no credentials for them to revoke. I love it.

He mentioned that he gets a phone call from some AG official or another about once a week asking him to stop doing what he’s doing. Even allowing for conversational hyperbole, that sounds about right. He’s making people nervous enough that we’ve even had resolutions at General Council prompted by one of his sites.

Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think John’s a cool guy and that he’s making our movement better by using the web to help people. Kudos to him.

Completely Random Dream

I never remember my dreams, and so I was very surprised this morning when I woke up and remembered an extremely bizarre dream sequence.

In my dream I was reading an op-ed piece by someone–I’m pretty sure it was Victor Davis Hanson. As I read a sentence stuck in my mind, “If you sneak around on private property long enough, you will convince yourself you have a right to be there.”

How bizarre.

Tonight I’ll probably have a dream about hearing Hugh Hewitt say something like, “If you trash-talk a nominee long enough, you will convince yourself she is unqualified to be a janitor.”

Induced Combustion

Lindsey Hawley (who will soon escape the frozen tundra of Alaksa and move in with Paula and I) burst into flame the other day, prompting reflection (and no small amount of laughter) on our part.

Our thoughts:

  • We’re fortunate not to have a gas stove.
  • We’re fortunate not to favor flammable sleepwear.
  • We’re fortunate not to have large windows in our kitchen.
  • We’re fortunate to have learned of Lindsey’s proclivities so early. New rule: Lindsey can’t cook coed. And we’ll start storing a spare robe next to the fire extinguisher.

What All Religions Have In Common

At a three-hour Stanford Associated Religions meeting last Friday I finally discovered what all religions have in common: an aversion to meetings, particulary the long and bureaucratic sort. Especially meetings in which the rules fall like manna from heaven. For instance, the Office For Religious Life (an office I generally and genuinely enjoy working with), decided that last year’s “Unified Christian Gathering” was deceptively titled because the Mormons (and a few other groups) were not invited to help plan the event and so now we have new rules governing event titles. And for a few minutes there I thought we were about to be required to clear all guest speakers with the student activitities staff. Yeesh!

Serenity

I went to go see Serenity with two students tonight.

It was really, really, really good. The audience burst into applause when it was over.

It was funny. The humor was MUCH more amusing than most comedies manage.

It was suspenseful. One girl in the audience screamed at one particular tense moment.

It was well-written. Very well-written. Every character was unique, made sense, and needed to be there.

I loved this movie.

A Dartmouth Double Standard?

Noah Riner, the student body president of Dartmouth, told incoming students that they should focus on developing morally as much as academically and that Jesus can bring moral transformation. A ruckus ensued, with the apparent justification being that student presidents shouldn’t use such occasions to promote their own idiosyncratic views of the world. 

Oddly enough, a similar ruckus does not seem to have followed the then student body president’s call for the legalization of pot two years earlier.

Perhaps the issue isn’t that Mr. Riner propagated his own views, but that the message of Jesus still makes people uncomfortable after two millenia.

Just a theory, mind you.

Sound the Kazoo–Salvation is Nigh!

Yesterday was our last day of tabling on campus for the fall kickoff, and it was worth every minute for one really unique experience: I actually saw a Jewish open-air preacher on White Plaza. Unexpected, given that Jewish adherents are rarely noted for their evangelistic fervor. He had a bullhorn and everything.

It was a bit hard to make out what he was saying, given that concurrently:

  • about 160 students and workers were holding a rather loud protest rally. “What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!”
  • a hip-hop group was blaring tunes from their turntable set up about 15 feet behind the aforementioned preacher.
  • two acapella groups were also projecting music (although less thumpily than the hip-hoppers).

Still, it was interesting to speculate about the content of his message. I do know that at one point a dozen Jewish students were blowing kazoos while Rabbi Mychal Copeland blew a full-on shofar. I also was able to hear the occassional Hebrew phrase and a few English words like “inner brokenness.”

All in all, a most surprising development. 

T‑Shirts On Campus Today

While tabling on campus today I saw two t‑shirts that tickled me. The first was a Che Reagan t‑shirt. The shirt is delightfully ambiguous. Side note: the Che Jesus t‑shirts just don’t have that same vibe–the beret is just too much. The other was a Kerry/Gore t‑shirt. Kerry/Gore? What? They were never even running mates. It was Gore/Lieberman in 2000 and then Kerry/Edwards in 2004. I’m sure the shirt was supposed to be some sort of statement, but I can’t for the life of me figure it out.