Author: Glen

You Know You’re From Louisiana

I got one of those for­wards from a friend (Brandt Noel) this morn­ing. He nev­er for­wards me stuff, so I decid­ed to take a look at it. I liked it!

In abridged ver­sion, here’s a Louisiana primer:

  1. There are 5,000 types of snakes, and 4,998 live in Louisiana.
  2. Squir­rels will eat any­thing. And folks in Louisiana will eat squir­rel.
  3. If it grows, it sticks; if it crawls, it bites.
  4. It is not a shop­ping cart, it is a bug­gy.
  5. “Fix­in­to” is one word.
  6. There ain’t no such thing as “lunch.” There’s “din­ner” and then
    there’s “sup­per.”!
  7. Sweet tea is appro­pri­ate for all meals, and you start drink­ing it when you’re two.
  8. “Jeet?” is actu­al­ly a phrase mean­ing “Did you eat?”

And you know you’re from LA (Louisiana, that is) if:

  1. You mea­sure dis­tance in min­utes.
  2. You use “fix” as a verb. Exam­ple: I am fix­ing to go to the store.
  3. You “axe” peo­ple ques­tions. Exam­ple: I got some­thin’ to axe you ’bout.
  4. You only own four spices: salt, Tony’s, Tabas­co and ketchup.
  5. The local papers cov­er nation­al and inter­na­tion­al news on one page
    and six pages for local gos­sip and sports.
  6. You think that the first day deer sea­son is a nation­al hol­i­day.
  7. You find 100 degrees Fahren­heit “a lit­tle warm.”
  8. You know all four sea­sons: almost sum­mer, sum­mer, still sum­mer,
    and Christ­mas.
  9. You describe the first cool snap (below 70 degrees) as good gum­bo weath­er.
  10. A car­bon­at­ed soft drink isn’t a soda, cola, or pop…it’s a Coke, regard­less of brand or fla­vor. Exam­ple: “What kin­na coke you want?”
  11. Fried Cat­fish is the oth­er white meat.
  12. You laugh out loud when you vis­it friends from oth­er states and they com­plain about the humid­i­ty.

Great Biblical Charts

Check out the great bib­li­cal charts at threetwoone.org (scroll down a bit until you see the “reli­gious” sec­tion).

Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the Old Tes­ta­ment overview.

One dis­claimer: the author seems to come from a mod­er­ate (rather than con­ser­v­a­tive or lib­er­al) per­spec­tive on Bib­li­cal schol­ar­ship. Adjust the charts accord­ing­ly based on your con­vic­tions.

Stanford Rocks At Sports (Again)

Scan­ning the news that backed up for me while I was away, I notice that Stan­ford was the best sports pro­gram in Amer­i­ca for the 10th year in a row.

Woohoo!

I hon­est­ly did­n’t think we’d get it this year. Shows what I know.

Along ath­let­ic lines, I found Supreme Court Jus­tic San­dra Day O’Con­nor’s com­ment at grad­u­a­tion pret­ty fun­ny:

“I am expect­ing to see any day at the Court a ne exeat peti­tion from Stan­ford for an order to pre­vent these depar­tures. As I count it, we have at least four Stan­ford votes on the Supreme Court at present.” (refer­ring to coach­ing changes–basketball coach Mike Mont­gomery and ten­nis coach Dick Gould are leav­ing)

I’m Back

I got back from Washington/Baltimore yes­ter­day, and Paula gets back in from Louisiana today. I’ll have to post an account of my trav­els later–they were fun!

Sor­ry about the bounc­ing emails–that should all be straight­ened out now.

Nothing Sketchy About That At All…

Aargh! In just a few hours I’m fly­ing out to Bal­ti­more for a week (I’ll be serv­ing in a friend’s wed­ding, con­nect­ing with some min­istry peers, and sight­see­ing).

Just one lit­tle prob­lem… I lost my wed­ding ring. I sat down to check my email this morn­ing and noticed that my hand felt odd. I glanced down and saw a ring of tan­less flesh where the glint of gold ought to be.

All I can imag­ine is that it came off in the show­er or some­thing.

What a time to mis­place my wed­ding ring. The phrase that keeps run­ning through my head is min­is­ter trav­els with­out wed­ding ring. Noth­ing sketchy about that at all…

Rest assured that a fran­tic search is about to ensue!

Update: found. I was in my bed–I must have been play­ing with it right before I fell asleep or some­thing. Whew!

Nate, Julia, and passages

One of the bit­ter­sweet things about col­lege min­istry is watch­ing the peo­ple in your min­istry grad­u­ate and move on.

That’s fresh on my mind because I bumped into two stu­dents who recent­ly walked the line.

This week­end Julia Heng (who just got her mas­ter’s degree in Man­age­ment, Sci­ence, and Engi­neer­ing) dropped by for a few min­utes to return some stuff she had bor­rowed from us. I had­n’t seen her since our grad­u­at­ing stu­dents celebration–she’d been galla­vant­i­ng around the coun­try with her par­ents (it was her mom’s first time in Amer­i­ca). Then she head­ed back to Sin­ga­pore.

And then this morn­ing I had break­fast with Nate Flake. Nate just grad­u­at­ed from Stan­ford with a degree in lin­guis­tics. He speaks more lan­guages than any­one else I know.

He was­n’t able to join us for the cel­e­bra­tion that we hold right before grad­u­a­tion, and he’s been on the road since receiv­ing his diplo­ma. This was the first time since then that we’ve been able to con­nect.

And tomor­row he flies to Chi­na for a year. He’s not sure what he’ll do there, he just knows that he does­n’t want to teach Eng­lish. He’s angling for a job as a trans­la­tor or some­thing.

Good luck and God­speed, Julia & Nate! We’ll miss you.

Groovin’

I down­loaded Groove Work­space today to see if it would be use­ful in our minstry train­ing pro­gram.

Will it ever!

I per­suad­ed Antho­ny to down­load it and give it a whirl. This soft­ware is absolute­ly amaz­ing. We were able to talk over the net quite effec­tive­ly and could col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly edit doc­u­ments and do all sorts of oth­er cool stuff. We could eas­i­ly work as a team on ser­mon prepa­ra­tion or con­duct web sem­i­nars or do just about any­thing involv­ing ideas.

Free for per­son­al use (with restric­tions) and afford­able for pro­fes­sion­al use. What a com­bo!

Now I just can’t wait until Groove 3.0 comes out…

Building a Professional Ministry Library On The Cheap

Yes­ter­day I spent 10 hours in a meet­ing dis­cussing train­ing strate­gies for col­lege min­is­ters (most of whom come from sec­u­lar col­leges). While dri­ving back I began think­ing about the chal­lenge a new min­is­ter with­out for­mal train­ing faces in build­ing a pro­fes­sion­al library. Books are expensive–the New Inter­na­tion­al Com­men­tary series on the Old and New Tes­ta­ments retails for near­ly $1,500 (OT, NT)! For some new min­is­ters, build­ing a qual­i­ty library can seem so over­whelm­ing that it’s hard to know where to start.

Inspired by a sim­i­lar exam­ple, I decid­ed to com­pile a sol­id (although basic) min­istry library for under $200 (I failed by eleven cents). I priced the books (used) on Amazon.com on 6/18/2004. Books are list­ed in rough order of impor­tance with­in each cat­e­go­ry.

The Ref­er­ence Col­lec­tion — $102.85

  • NIV Exhaus­tive Con­cor­dance $19.35
  • Sys­tem­at­ic The­ol­o­gy, Mil­lard Erick­son $29.99
  • The IVP Bible Back­ground Com­men­tary — New Tes­ta­ment, Craig Keen­er $13.95
  • Hand­book of Chris­t­ian Apolo­get­ics, Peter Kreeft & Ronald Tacel­li $5.99
  • Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the New Tes­ta­ment, H. Wayne House $10.15
  • Chrono­log­i­cal and Back­ground Charts of the Old Tes­ta­ment, John Wal­ton $9.99
  • Mul­ti­pur­pose Tools for Bible Study, Fred Danker $13.43

The Per­son­al & Pro­fes­sion­al Growth Col­lec­tion — $97.26

  • Devo­tion­al Clas­sics, Fos­ter & Smith $6.65
  • How to Read The Bible For All Its Worth, Fee & Stu­art $1.99
  • Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, C. S. Lewis $4.95
  • The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines, Dal­las Willard $9.60
  • The Chal­lenge of Jesus, N. T. Wright $10.97
  • Prayer, Richard Fos­ter $5.00
  • A Tale of Three Kings, Gene Edwards $3.85
  • The Pur­suit of Holi­ness, Jer­ry Bridges $2.49
  • Exeget­i­cal Fal­lac­i­es – D. A. Car­son $8.99
  • Between Two Worlds, John Stott $9.00
  • The Mas­ter Plan of Evan­ge­lism, Robert Cole­man $0.97
  • The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Church, Rick War­ren $8.00
  • Chris­t­ian Coun­sel­ing, Gary Collins $10.50
  • Solu­tion-Focused Pas­toral Coun­sel­ing, Charles Kol­lar $12.71
  • Take and Read, Eugene Peter­son $1.59

Total Cost: $200.11 (exclud­ing ship­ping & han­dling)

I tried to end each list with a book that would lead to more books, so that this would only be the gen­e­sis of a pro­fes­sion­al library…

I wel­come sug­ges­tions for replace­ment vol­umes. What do you think impor­tant for a novice min­is­ter with lit­tle the­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion to read?

He Wrote What?

Antho­ny Sco­ma just told me about a book/author col­li­sion so improb­a­ble that I had to check it out for myself: Pen­te­costal Gifts and Min­istries in a Post­mod­ern Era by James K. Bridges.

Antho­ny assures me that con­trib­u­tors include Mau­rice Led­nicky and Opal Red­din.
Con­tin­ue read­ing “He Wrote What?”

Stanford Rakes It In

I get blown away some­times when I think about how inno­v­a­tive Stan­ford is. I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out which dorm room Google was found­ed in (I bet it’s in Escon­di­do Vil­lage).

Any­way, I start­ed think­ing again about the incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs at Stan­ford when I read that the Farm raked in $45.4 mil­lion last year from roy­al­ties.

That’s a lot of mon­ey.

Wow. Wow back­wards.