Author: Glen

GQ Profiles The Jesus Freaks

I just read Upon This Rock, an absolute­ly phe­nom­e­nal arti­cle by an ex-Chris­t­ian who goes to a Chris­t­ian music fes­ti­val and writes about it for GQ.

If you are a col­lege or youth pas­tor you real­ly need to read the arti­cle in its entire­ty. I mean it–all the way to the end.

(thanks to GetRe­li­gion for draw­ing my atten­tion to this)

Those Wacky Bozemanites

I just got a phone call from Will Kli­er, Chi Alpha leader in Boze­man, MT. A phone call from Will, one of Chi Alpha’s most inven­tive lead­ers, is always a treat.

Any­way, he was telling me that they’ve been hav­ing unsea­son­ably warm weath­er in Mon­tana (in the 50s) and they’ve also been try­ing to drum up pub­lic­i­ty for Chi Alpha, so they decid­ed to stage a mock protest.

Actu­al slo­gans chant­ed:

What do we want? Win­ter! When do we want it? Now!

Heck no, we want snow, glob­al warm­ing’s got to go!

Pow­der to the peo­ple!

The protest wound up being cov­ered by the media and made it into the AP wire, so that the pic­ture you see above was copied from the San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle.

Now that’s a cre­ative (and suc­cess­ful) pub­lic­i­ty stunt.

Be sure to let me know if you ever have any ideas like that for our group.

musicplasma

this soft­ware helps you find musi­cians sim­i­lar to those you love (cour­tesy The Long Tail)–and they know all the cool Chris­t­ian artists, too.

Religion In The Academy

Earl Creps just sent me a link to the arti­cle Revi­tal­iz­ing Reli­gion In The Acad­e­my. Pret­ty bor­ing unless you’re think­ing about the role of reli­gion in uni­ver­si­ty set­tings (but inter­est­ing if you are).

Any­way, one stat leapt out at me: Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ report­ed a 73% increase in stu­dent atten­dance between the 95–96 school year and the 98–99 school year.

Perfectly Expressed

One of my favorite web­sites, Church Mar­ket­ing Sucks, has hit the nail on the head with the Dr. Dob­son vs Sponge­bob brouha­ha.

Most Random Question Today/This Year

My phone rang just after 10:00am. What fol­lows is a rough tran­script of the ensu­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

Her: Hi, is this the right num­ber to call if I have a ques­tion about Chi Alpha?
Me: Yes, I’m Glen Davis, the direc­tor of the min­istry.
Her: This is prob­a­bly going to be the most ran­dom ques­tion you get today, but did you guys have a meet­ing last night?
Me: Yes we did.
Her: And were you sell­ing tacos there?
Me: No. Why do you ask?
Her: My friends told me that you were and I said that was stu­pid. You were a Chris­t­ian group and why would you be sell­ing tacos?
Me: Pre­cise­ly. There were no tacos for sale at our meet­ing.
Her: That’s what I thought.
Me: May I ask you a ques­tion in return?
Her: Sure.
Me: Were we doing any­thing to lead your friends to believe that we had tacos for sale?
Her: Not that I could see.
Me: That’s rea­sur­ring.
Her: Yeah, two guys had just made some total­ly inap­pro­pri­ate com­ment to me and my friends explained it by say­ing that your group was sell­ing tacos.
Me: *pause* Did these two gen­tle­men seem to be con­nect­ed with our min­istry?
Her: Oh no, def­i­nite­ly not.
Me: Okay.
Her: Any­way, thanks for help­ing!
Me: Sure thing. Feel free to call me if you have any more ques­tions.

How ran­dom was that?

The American Religious Impulse

I just read the most amaz­ing arti­cle by a Yale prof explain­ing the reli­gious impulse in Amer­i­can his­to­ry.

If you have any inter­est at all in pol­i­tics, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions, anti-Amer­i­can­ism, or the role of reli­gion in pub­lic life you real­ly ought to give this arti­cle a read: Americanism–And Its Ene­mies by David Gel­ern­ter (that’s his fac­ul­ty bio page, there’s a much more inter­est­ing pro­file here). If you want to have your mind blown wide-open, read Ama­zon’s sum­ma­ry of his sur­vival of an attack from the Unabomber.

Also, we have new pho­tos in the gallery.

College Humor

There’s a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle on the run­away hit CollegeHumor.com at the New York­er: Fun­ny Boys.

Two pas­sages that struck me:

A key to col­lege humor, the four have real­ized, is that stu­dents like to think they belong to a small in-crowd that under­stands the joke, while the pub­lic at large remains clue­less. Take the phrase “More Cow­bell,” which is a slo­gan appear­ing on one of the most pop­u­lar of the company’s Bust­ed Tees; it comes from an instruc­tion giv­en in a skit on “Sat­ur­day Night Live.” “Not every­one saw that episode, so the peo­ple who did see it think it is that much cool­er because nobody else knows,” Josh said.

and

Josh, of CollegeHumor.com, is hap­py to point out that his site has sur­passed The Onion in traf­fic, “though I can’t say we are bet­ter.” There is a cru­cial dif­fer­ence in con­tent between The Onion and CollegeHumor.com: while the suc­cess of the for­mer depends on the wit of its writ­ers, the appeal of the lat­ter is clos­er to that of “America’s Fun­ni­est Home Videos.” CollegeHumor.com offers found humor of the sort pio­neered by, among oth­ers, Steve Allen and David Let­ter­man. Yet CollegeHumor.com isn’t the expres­sion of a gov­ern­ing com­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty deter­mined to enter­tain an audi­ence with, say, Stu­pid Pet Tricks; rather, the audi­ence decides what is fun­ny, and enter­tains itself. CollegeHumor.com doesn’t just cater to the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor; it’s cooked and served by the low­est com­mon denom­i­na­tor, too.

The Best Question Ever

I just fin­ished read­ing The Best Ques­tion Ever by Andy Stan­ley in prepa­ra­tion for a mes­sage tomor­row night. The book is quite good.

In case you’re curi­ous, the ques­tion in ques­tion is sim­ply this: What is the wise thing to do?