Author: Glen

Google Earth

If you have broad­band and a fast enough com­put­er, you’ve got to vis­it http://earth.google.com/ and down­load their soft­ware.

Absolute­ly incred­i­ble.

On The Facebook

I don’t know if I’ve ever men­tioned this on my web­site, but I’m on the Face­book.

I bring this up for two rea­sons:

  1. If you’re a new stu­dent com­ing to Stan­ford feel free to scope us (Chi Alpha) out online. Also check xaStanford.org and Chi Alpha on the Face­book. Feel free to join our Face­book group with­out any sense of long-term oblig­a­tion.
  2. If I’ve met you at a con­fer­ence or some­thing you can feel free to add me as a Face­book friend. Just do a glob­al search for Glen Davis at Stan­ford (the glob­al search link is at the top of the page under the fa in face­book).

Superfluity of Naughtiness

I rarely look at the King James trans­la­tion, but today I hap­pened to glance at it while prepar­ing for a con­fer­ence:

Where­fore lay apart all filth­i­ness and super­fluity of naugh­ti­ness, and receive with meek­ness the engraft­ed word, which is able to save your souls. James 1:21, KJV

That’s right: we are to avoid a super­fluity of naugh­ti­ness.

What beau­ti­ful phras­ing.

Half Blind In Bangkok

I’ve been mean­ing to men­tion this for a while, but my broth­er is half-blind in Bangkok right now. He’s on a mis­sion trip and got some sort of infec­tion behind his eye­ball (yuck).

It sounds like he’s going to be A‑OK, but I’m sure it’s quite dis­turb­ing to fall ill in anoth­er coun­try. Espe­cial­ly a non-West­ern one.

On the plus side, he had trav­el insur­ance and so every­thing is paid for. It’s far bet­ter for him finan­cial­ly than it would have been in Amer­i­ca. And what­ev­er he has isn’t some­thing he got in Thailand–it was devel­op­ing before he left.

Any­way, he should be com­ing back this week­end. Until then, I’ll keep think­ing about Mur­ray Head­’s One Night In Bangkok.

Absolutely Amazing

I lis­ten to MP3s when I bike to cam­pus. Not music, as I real­ly don’t like music all that much; rather, I soak up lecture/seminar/sermonic stuff. I get a lot of them from Dis­ci­ple­ship Library and I’ve recent­ly start­ed down­load­ing some from IT Con­ver­sa­tions.

Any­way, I recent­ly lis­tened to Ben Saun­ders’ amaz­ing sto­ry. He made a solo expe­di­tion to the North Pole and real­ly knows how to spin the tale. I was agog. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.

Campus Ministry at the Ivies

One of our alum­ni, Eliz­a­beth, emailed me this fas­ci­nat­ing NYT arti­cle: On a Chris­t­ian Mis­sion to the Top. It’s an arti­cle about min­istry at the Ivy League schools focus­ing on a group called Chris­t­ian Union

. There’s a relat­ed NPR sto­ry.

I real­ly appre­ci­ate their vision. I’ve often thought that some­one ought to estab­lish evan­gel­i­cal min­istry cen­ters at the top tier uni­ver­si­ties, so I’m glad to see that they’re run­ning with it.

Any­way, this para­graph leapt out at me:

By the 1970’s, Assem­blies church­es were sprout­ing up in afflu­ent sub­urbs across the coun­try. Recent sur­veys by Mar­garet Polo­ma, a his­to­ri­an at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Akron in Ohio, found Assem­blies mem­bers more edu­cat­ed and bet­ter off than the gen­er­al pub­lic.

I’m speech­less.

The Assem­blies of God and edu­ca­tion are not two con­cepts that are often linked in the minds of the pop­u­lace at large (with rea­son, I might add: I’ve actu­al­ly heard these words uttered at a min­is­te­r­i­al gath­er­ing with absolute­ly no hint of humor, “The prob­lem with the Assem­blies is all this eddikashun.” More­over, I saw sev­er­al heads nod in agree­ment). Per­haps that instance has unfair­ly taint­ed my per­cep­tions of the move­ment as a whole, but I’ve nev­er been par­tic­u­lar­ly impressed with our intel­lec­tu­al prowess in the Assem­blies.

On the flip side, one of our AG min­is­ters in San Fran­cis­co is a Har­vard grad who lives in a bus and min­is­ters to the home­less. And of my three dis­trict offi­cials (bish­op-equiv­a­lents) one has his doc­tor­ate and anoth­er just needs to fin­ish his dis­ser­ta­tion. A pas­tor I know in the San Joaquin val­ley was once nom­i­nat­ed for a Pulitzer. Come to think of it, I know lots of sharp, well-edu­cat­ed min­is­ters and even more sharp, well-edu­cat­ed laypeo­ple.

I just always assumed they were a minor­i­ty. I should real­ly rethink that.

Trailer for The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe

Shaowei just emailed me the link for the Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe trail­er

pathol­o­gy divx movie online

.

It was stun­ning. I can’t believe how good it was from a pure­ly cin­e­mat­ic per­spec­tive.

And from a the­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tive it looks as though they’re keep­ing way more of Lewis’ sym­bol­ism than I thought pos­si­ble. “In this house there are many rooms” “only one door leads to anoth­er world”… those are explic­it­ly Bib­li­cal allu­sions.

The Apex of Geek Humor?

Sean Wat has emailed me what may well be the apex of geek humor: the Klein Four Group per­form­ing “Finite Sim­ple Group (of Order Two)” (Win­dows media file)

I’m not sure whether it’s cool­er in my con­text to pre­tend that I get the parts that I don’t or that I don’t get the parts that I do…

I think that says a lot about me, my con­text, and soci­ety at large.

Worship In The Emerging Church

Peri­od­i­cal­ly I get a chance to sit in a live stu­dio audi­ence for a CCN broad­cast. I’ve seen Doug Fields, George Bar­na, Lar­ry Osborne, Hen­ry Cloud, etc. The best part is I can bring stu­dents and expose them to some of these lead­ers.

Any­way, I was par­tic­u­lar­ly excit­ed about the recent Wor­ship In The Emerg­ing Church sem­i­nar with Dan Kim­ball (he blogs!) and Sal­ly Mor­gen­thaler. If you’re going to hear two folks talk about this sub­ject it’s hard to pick a bet­ter team. You can get the notes in PDF (although there are blanks).

Some thoughts I had:

  • As I sus­pect­ed, col­lege min­istry real­ly is a behind-the-scenes dri­ver for a lot of the “emerg­ing church” “post­mod­ern church” stuff. Dan launched the pre­cur­sor to his cur­rent church as a col­lege min­istry. All the staff at Cur­tis’ church (includ­ing Cur­tis) are for­mer col­lege min­is­ters.
  • Dan men­tioned that he had done a sur­vey and 98% of UC San­ta Cruz stu­dents were not part of either a church or a cam­pus min­istry. Hur­ry up, Bri­an & Cecilee!
  • Cur­tis Chang was also there as an audi­ence mem­ber. He wrote a book on method­ol­o­gy in apolo­get­ics (Engag­ing Unbe­lief) which I real­ly like. He also pas­tors an uber-cool church in near­by San Jose. I asked what he’s been read­ing late­ly and he said Moun­tains Beyond Moun­tains and that it had real­ly stretched his vision. I’d nev­er heard of the book, which just shows I real­ly do know less than oth­er peo­ple think I do.
  • The weak­est point in the sem­i­nar was a for­ay into the realms of mul­ti­ple learn­ing styles. I find the con­cept as it is usu­al­ly expressed pret­ty bogus. I’m not sure the church should be tak­ing its lead from Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem and the the­o­ries that under­lie it. Let me rephrase that. I’m sure the church should not be tak­ing its lead from Amer­i­ca’s edu­ca­tion sys­tem. My apolo­gies to all the edu­ca­tion­al the­o­rists in Chi Alpha who will now regard me as an ene­my.
  • Resources that were rec­om­mend­ed:
  • In clos­ing, I’d nev­er seen Dan before this but I’d heard peo­ple rip on his hair. I like his hair. It suits his nose. He also plays with his wed­ding ring a lot, which I do myself.

The Next Great Awakening Will Be…

David Gellert­ner has a great arti­cle in the Week­ly Stan­dard called Bib­li­cal Illit­er­a­cy in Amer­i­ca. I liked the arti­cle well enough, but the last few para­graphs swept me off my feet:

My guess is that our next Great Awak­en­ing will begin among col­lege stu­dents. Col­lege stu­dents today are (spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing) the dri­est tim­ber I have ever come across. Most­ly they know lit­tle or noth­ing about reli­gion; lit­tle or noth­ing about Amer­i­can­ism. Most­ly no one ever speaks to them about truth and beau­ty, or nobil­i­ty or hon­or or great­ness. They are empty–spiritually bone dry–because no one has ever both­ered to give them any­thing spir­i­tu­al that is worth hav­ing. Plat­i­tudes about diver­si­ty and tol­er­ance and mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism are thin gru­el for intel­lec­tu­al­ly grow­ing young peo­ple.

Let the right per­son speak to them, and they will turn back to the Bible with an excite­ment and exhil­a­ra­tion that will shake the coun­try. In read­ing the Bible they will feel as if they are going home–which is just what they will be doing.

via GetRe­li­gion