Author: Glen

Why Reach Stanford?

Schools like Stan­ford are steer­ing wheels for our soci­ety: as goes the cam­pus, so goes the cul­ture. Our lead­ers are shaped in Stan­ford’s lec­ture halls–four of Amer­i­ca’s nine Supreme Court Jus­tices are Stan­ford grads!

And it’s not just Amer­i­ca that Stan­ford influences–the pres­i­dent of Peru is a Stan­ford grad­u­ate. In fact, 1/4 of the stu­dents are from anoth­er coun­try, and the two most rep­re­sent­ed nations are Chi­na and India.

Today they learn, but tomor­row they lead. These future world-chang­ers must be reached with the gospel while they are more open than they will ever be again!

If you want even more amaz­ing rea­sons, check out my list of famous Stan­ford alum­ni.

Extremely Productive Day

My friend Andrew Carea­ga (aka Cleopa­tra) cor­rect­ly point­ed out that being num­ber one isn’t always a desir­able thing, so I thought I’d give him some props. Check out his site.

Any­way, today was extreme­ly pro­duc­tive. Tim Smith (the Chi Alpha @ Sacra­men­to State guy who game­ly tried to recruit Glen Cole to our Chi Alpha fam­i­ly) and I met with John Har­ris and Doug Reid of Cap­i­tal Chris­t­ian Cen­ter in Sacra­men­to. Doug is the stu­dent min­istries pas­tor and John works on his staff to reach col­lege stu­dents.

Doug recent­ly came on staff and com­mis­sioned a demo­graph­ic study of all the stu­dents in Sacra­men­to. He was floored when he real­ized that there were more col­lege stu­dents than high school stu­dents (150,000 col­le­gians) and that he only had 1.5 staff peo­ple focus­ing on them (out of a stu­dent min­istries staff of 20).

Being a sharp guy, Doug real­ized that he needs to rad­i­cal­ly realign his min­istry to touch col­lege stu­dents.

We had a great meet­ing and I think that we’ve got some great ideas for syn­er­giz­ing their out­reach with what Chi Alpha is doing. Along­side Noble’s mod­el in Spring­field, MO (if you don’t know I don’t have time to explain it) this could real­ly be a huge stride for­ward for Assem­blies of God col­lege min­istry.

After­wards, Paula and I got to hang with Tim and Julie at Cal­i­for­nia Piz­za Kitchen after­wards. Good food and good friends.

If you’re a Chi Alpha per­son read­ing this blog, know that we always have extreme­ly pro­duc­tive days in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia / Neva­da that cul­mi­nate in high­ly fun and rela­tion­al meals.

Come west, young leader! There are over 80 size­able col­leges to choose from…

Harvard Porn?

I just learned that Har­vard is launch­ing a porn mag­a­zine fea­tur­ing stu­dents down­load boon­dock saints the .

Har­vard stu­dents. Nudi­ty. One shud­ders.

Actu­al­ly, they’re prob­a­bly shud­der­ing them­selves. It gets cold in Boston.

Seri­ous­ly, I can’t help but won­der how long it is until some­one at Stan­ford tries to copy­cat Har­vard (con­sid­er our copy­cat mas­cot as evi­dence).

Once again for the record, Chi Alpha thinks porn is bad. The fact that Har­vard is now com­plic­it only makes it worse!

We’re Number Two, We’re Number Two

Stan­ford has been dom­i­nat­ing the world of hoops late­ly, but for some strange rea­son Duke is still ranked num­ber one. Sports Illus­trat­ed has a real­ly good piece explain­ing why we ought to be ranked first.

Lies We Believe

John Stos­sel did a report on 20/20 that makes for fas­ci­nat­ing read­ing, Lies, Myths, and Down­right Stu­pid­i­ty, in which he explodes the most com­mon media-fed rumors that mess up our lives and our soci­ety.

Some of the myths he hits: that there’s a rela­tion­ship between being cold and catch­ing a cold, that we have less free time than we used to (we have a lot more free time than our par­ents did or than we did grow­ing up), and the idea that mon­ey can buy hap­pi­ness.

It’s good read and will give you fod­der for late-night dorm con­ver­sa­tions.

Some February Thoughts

Last night’s episode of the West Wing was the first one in a while that was­n’t com­plete­ly lame. The end­ing was a bit con­trived, but I liked the flow of the episode.

That, how­ev­er, is nei­ther here nor there.

Also, I noticed that a Stan­ford grad joined Cirque de Soleil while at the same time becom­ing Ms. Fit­ness USA. I swear, those stu­dents can be such over­achiev­ers… I bet her mom has some fun­ny con­ver­sa­tions, though. “So your daugh­ter has a grad degree from Stanford–what does she do?” “She’s per­forms in the cir­cus.”

That also is nei­ther here nor there (but I note that you’re still read­ing, and so it was at least inter­est­ing).

Paula is doing well–she’s got just under two months to go until she gives birth to our first child. The biggest item on our to-do list now is buy­ing dia­pers. Lots of dia­pers.

Things are going well with Chi Alpha, espe­cial­ly on a dis­trict (statewide) lev­el.

Speak­ing of the dis­trict lev­el, my dis­trict super­in­ten­dent is retir­ing this April. This led Tim Smith, who leads Chi Alpha at Sacra­men­to State to have some fun:


From: Tim Smith
Sent: Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 04, 2004 1:24 PM
To: Glen Cole
Sub­ject: Chi Alpha

Dear Bro. Cole–

I don’t want you to leave your cur­rent office, but as talk­ing you out of it at this point seems unlike­ly, I am writ­ing today to offer you a new job as an Asso­ciate Cam­pus Pas­tor with me here in Chi Alpha-Sacra­men­to.

The perks of this job include:
–unlim­it­ed time off for “Plus One” con­certs and/or tours.
–a more relaxed dress code when on cam­pus.
–the oppor­tu­ni­ty to have direct involve­ment in shap­ing the imme­di­ate future of our world’s lead­er­ship, both domes­tic and for­eign, on a dai­ly basis.

I’m pret­ty sure I can get Chi Alpha and AGHM to waive the year-long Cam­pus Mis­sion­ary Intern­ship and Bere­an require­ments, so we could have you on cam­pus imme­di­ate­ly after rais­ing your bud­get. Also, if Mrs. Cole goes to work, they will count her income toward 20% of your bud­get, so that could help.

Any­way, you think about it, let me know if you’re inter­est­ed, and we’ll sched­ule an inter­view over piz­za and Coke.
Have a great day!
Tim Smith

To which the amused Glen Cole replied:


Dear Tim:

I knew God would speak to me about my future. Yours is the first offer, so we will be in prayer­ful con­sid­er­a­tion about this.

Bless­ings!

GDC

That’s a lot fun­nier if you know Glen Cole at all. Or if you know any­thing about how Chi Alpha ranks on the inter­nal AG peck­ing order.

And Now For Something Completely Different

From the realm of just plain gross: the BBC reports that sci­en­tists have found a way to make mice pro­duce mon­key sperm.

Yes, you read that cor­rect­ly.

*shud­der*

That’s just creepy on so many lev­els I don’t know where to begin.

Religion and Economic Growth Linked

Here’s an inter­est­ing sto­ry from the New York Times: Research Around the World Links Reli­gion to Eco­nom­ic Devel­op­ment.

Intrigu­ing excerpts:

Since the Ger­man soci­ol­o­gist Max Weber wrote about the Protes­tant work eth­ic and the spir­it of cap­i­tal­ism, social sci­en­tists have argued that cul­ture — includ­ing reli­gious habits — is part of the com­plex mix that deter­mines a coun­try’s eco­nom­ic health. What dis­tin­guish­es the work of Mr. Bar­ro and Ms. McCleary, some schol­ars said, is that it uses a sophis­ti­cat­ed analy­sis of a huge set of data to quan­ti­fy the argu­ments of anthro­pol­o­gists, soci­ol­o­gists and polit­i­cal sci­en­tists.

…

As the cou­ple began their study, Ms. McCleary said, it was clear that the wide­ly dis­cussed sec­u­lar­iza­tion the­sis — the idea that a coun­try becomes more sec­u­lar as it becomes rich­er and more indus­tri­al­ized — did not apply to the Unit­ed States, one of the most reli­gious nations in the world.

And over the last 30 years, many East Asian coun­tries, includ­ing Malaysia, Sin­ga­pore and South Korea, have expe­ri­enced both rapid eco­nom­ic growth and the spread of Chris­tian­i­ty, Mr. Bar­ro said.

“South Korea is a good exam­ple of that rapid growth and more reli­gion,” he said. There the num­ber of con­verts from Con­fu­cian­ism and oth­er East­ern reli­gions to Chris­tian­i­ty is grow­ing rapid­ly, he explained.

Some of the low­est lev­els of reli­gios­i­ty were found in Chi­na and North Korea. The low­est lev­els of eco­nom­ic growth were in sub-Saha­ran African coun­tries. The for­mer East Ger­many (which includes Weber’s birth­place) was one of the low­est in both reli­gios­i­ty and growth.

Booze, the Bible, and Bad Theology

As I promised in last night’s mes­sage Booze, The Bible, & Bad The­ol­o­gy, here are some resources out­lin­ing what the Bible says about fer­ment­ed bev­er­ages.

* First, a list of every pas­sage in the Bible that dis­cuss­es alco­hol.
* Daniel Whit­field has a good essay Alco­hol and the Bible–well worth read­ing.
* Daniel Wal­lace wrote The Bible and Alco­hol, an extreme­ly help­ful arti­cle from a very sol­id schol­ar.
* The Chris­t­ian Coun­ter­cul­ture project has an insight­ful col­lec­tion of arti­cles in their What Would Jesus Drink? col­lec­tion.

There is diver­si­ty with­in the Chris­t­ian camp on this issue, and a sim­ple google search will find argu­ments from all cor­ners. The ones I list­ed above are the ones I find most cred­i­ble.

UPDATE: I just ran across a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at Chris­tian­i­ty Today that gives a sol­id his­tor­i­cal overview — Amassed Media: The Drink Debate.

Retreat Messages Online

The mes­sages from Col­lege Win­ter Retreat are online now in Win­dows Media for­mat.

I would have put them in MP3 for­mat, but every time I tried to con­vert the file sizes swelled by an order of mag­ni­tude and I could­n’t fig­ure out how to change it.

If you want to give it a go, feel free.