Author: Glen

Chi Alpha Got the Giddy

First, no baby yet. You’ll know when baby Davis arrives. Relax.

Sec­ond, I was talk­ing with a church staffer yes­ter­day and he said, “One of the things that drew me to Chi Alpha was that you guys got the gid­dy.”

That’s a cool phrase–we got the gid­dy.

The Wounds of a Friend

What hap­pens when a friend puts your nose out of joint? Find out in the lat­est Chi Alpha video blog — Devi­at­ed Sep­tum (opens Quick­Time movie).

As always, if you like this remem­ber to check the video blog archives for more.

Inci­den­tal­ly, the guy who’s doing this blog was my spir­i­tu­al men­tor when I was a stu­dent. How cool!

Relevant Network

I final­ly received the first install­ment of my sub­scrip­tion to Rel­e­vant Net­work this morn­ing (I say final­ly because I expect­ed it last week).

Any­way, I had won­dered what I would get with my sub­scrip­tion, and now I know. I thought I’d pass it on in case your min­istry is con­sid­er­ing join­ing the net­work.

I got a mag­a­zine called Rel­e­vant Leader. It looks okay–it’s a guide to the resources in the kit (reviews, inter­views with artists, etc) along with a hand­ful of extra arti­cles thrown in.

I got 5 copies of the most recent issue of Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine. That was nice, but for some rea­son the mag­a­zine has always under­whelmed me. I’ve always felt that they try too hard. But then again, I tend to get annoyed at most things I’m sup­posed to find cool (like pop­u­lar music and tele­vi­sion pro­grams), so that’s a clue that Rel­e­vant is hit­ting its demo­graph­ic (for the record, I’m a NPR junkie. If there’s ever any­thing else on in the car it’s prob­a­bly because Paula is dri­ving).

I got 7 books (Red Moon Ris­ing, The 250: Evan­ge­lism Ideas for Your Cam­pus, Enjoy­ing God, Enter the Wor­ship Cir­cle, Soul Sur­vivor, What’s So Amaz­ing About Grace — Visu­al Edi­tion, and The Air I Breathe).

I got 2 study guides (one for Red Moon Ris­ing and the oth­er for Soul Sur­vivor).

And I got 5 CDs (Anony­mous: Accel­er­ate in Slow Motion, Enter The Wor­ship Cir­cle: The Third Cir­cle, Des­per­a­tion, Antho­ny Skin­ner: For­ev­er and a Day, and Tele­cast: The Beau­ty of Sim­plic­i­ty).

Not a bad deal. Not bad at all. I was wor­ried I would be dis­mayed with my pur­chase, but I was actu­al­ly quite sat­is­fied.

I had hoped for some video clips (like the kind of stuff High­way Video puts out), but that was­n’t to be. Per­haps in future install­ments.

UPDATE: After a lit­tle more reflec­tion, I real­ized that I was sur­prised at how few of the resources were actu­al­ly min­istry resources. Most were per­son­al growth resources.

As I men­tioned before, I was most anx­ious to receive tools (such as video clips) that would be use­ful in con­duct­ing wor­ship ser­vices or plan­ning out­reach­es or craft­ing ser­mons. Videos from Nooma, for exam­ple, would be real­ly help­ful. Two or three ser­mons on CD would be extreme­ly use­ful. A bible study or two would be well-received.

I guess I’d pre­fer to see 50%+ of the resources be min­istry tools and the minor­i­ty be per­son­al growth mate­ri­als.

Just some thoughts.

Over­all, it’s a great invest­ment. The books and CDs I received were worth far more than I’m pay­ing for the sub­scrip­tion.

Basketball, Baby!

I was on cam­pus today and noticed a huge crowd in the Stu­dent Union–turns out that some­one had set up a screen and a sound sys­tem and was show­ing the PAC 10 tour­na­ment.

We won our first game, by the way.

Any­way, it was inter­est­ing to watch how many stu­dents were engrossed in the game. It’s the week before finals here, and usu­al­ly that means stu­dents are cram­ming like crazy.

I guess they just love dom­i­nat­ing at a major sport.

Technical Glitch

For some strange rea­son, the MP3 encod­ing of last night’s mes­sage was com­plete­ly blank. Not a sin­gle sound was cap­tured.

Oh well, it was­n’t the best mes­sage I’ve ever preached any­way. It’s still frus­trat­ing.

We do have oth­er mes­sages for down­load, how­ev­er.

On an unre­lat­ed note, is it just me or did every­one start wear­ing a lot less all of a sud­den? I swear that some of the peo­ple on the Farm paint­ed their out­fits on, and did­n’t use much paint in the process…

Great Week

Just a quick update. The won­der­ful folks at Inter­na­tion­al Assem­bly of God up in Burlingame threw a baby show­er for us Sat­ur­day evening. We got some amaz­ing gifts and were tru­ly blessed by their gen­eros­i­ty. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I had to attend with­out Paula, as she was still on bed rest.

I did my best. I got real­ly excit­ed about the col­or pink and I did­n’t throw away any bows. I think that’s what you’re sup­posed to do at a show­er…

And my in-laws arrived for a month-long vis­it yes­ter­day. They’ve already begun pam­per­ing Paula to death, but I think she likes it.

One more comment–I just learned that Supreme Court Jus­tice San­dra Day O’Con­nor is going to be this year’s com­mence­ment speak­er. Wow.

Side note–I just learned that she was in the same class as Chief Jus­tice William Rhen­quist. I bet the profs who taught that year are feel­ing pret­ty good about them­selves.

Building On Negatives

In Food Porn, Susan Wise Bauer writes about the ten­den­cy of mod­ern authors to cri­tique cul­ture with­out offer­ing a viable alter­na­tive: The cov­er-mod­el ide­al is warped and twist­ed, but they can’t man­age to unwarp it. I’m remind­ed of J. R. R. Tolkien’s orcs, who (accord­ing to the Sil­mar­il­lion) were mod­eled on elves by the dark pow­ers; they were fash­ioned “by slow arts of cru­el­ty … in envy and mock­ery,” because dark pow­ers can only warp and twist, not cre­ate afresh. If you’ve nev­er seen an elf, and you try to work back­wards from an orc to its mod­el, you’re darn well not going to end up with Orlan­do Bloom.

You can’t build on nega­tion alone.

How often is our plan for being good to stop being bad? In the Bib­li­cal per­spec­tive, holi­ness is an addi­tion equa­tion, not a sub­trac­tion equa­tion. We don’t mere­ly seek to erad­i­cate vices such as gos­sip and lying; on the con­trary, we active­ly cul­ti­vate virtues such as love, joy, patience, and self-con­trol.

Just some quick thoughts inspired by an absolute­ly bril­liant Tolkien ref­er­ence in an oth­er­wise unre­lat­ed arti­cle.

Another Tolkien Perspective

I just ran across a great arti­cle that unpacks some of the dif­fer­ences between the movies and the books, and how it affects Tolkien’s mes­sage: The Return of the King: Best Pic­ture, Per­haps, But Not Best Ver­sion.

In case you’re curi­ous, we’ve got two oth­er sig­nif­i­cant entries on Tolkien:
* Splin­tered Light (from Tolkien’s eleven­ty-first birth­day)
* Saint J. R. R. The Evan­ge­list