Author: Glen

Spiritual Help When Studying Abroad

Going to study abroad? God Abroad is a great resource–it will help you find a Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty over­seas!
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Spir­i­tu­al Help When Study­ing Abroad”

Dick Staub Interviews Mary Poplin

I just ran across a tran­script of an inter­view with Mary Poplin.

Dr. Poplin is the Dean of the School of Edu­ca­tion­al Stud­ies at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty and she’s cur­rent­ly writ­ing a book (title unknown) about inte­grat­ing faith and acad­e­mia. (see her fac­ul­ty bio page)

You should real­ly read the inter­view on Dick Staub’s web­site, but I’ve excerpt­ed the most fas­ci­nat­ing bits…
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Dick Staub Inter­views Mary Poplin”

More Photos Added To Gallery

There are some new pho­tos in the Chi Alpha pho­to gallery.

Also, the soft­ware has been recent­ly updat­ed so there are a few new fea­tures in the gallery.

Feel free to play around!

The Importance of College Students

I just ran across an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the LA Times that I deemed wor­thy of com­ment: The nation’s lead­ing lawyer [Jay Seku­low] for evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians was born and raised a Jew in Brook­lyn, but decid­ed in col­lege that Christ was the Mes­si­ah. (read the whole arti­cle: Evan­gel­i­cals’ Cham­pi­on to Argue Case at High Court)

Seku­low has argued 11 cas­es before the Supreme Court and is the chief coun­sel for the Amer­i­can Cen­ter for Law and Jus­tice.

Jay Seku­low is an excel­lent exam­ple of what I keep telling people–college stu­dents are the lead­ers of tomor­row and they are unique­ly open to rethink­ing their belief sys­tems. Reach­ing stu­dents today changes the world of tomor­row.

Chi Alpha in Boston

The Boston Globe has a neat arti­cle that ref­er­ences the Boston area Chi Alphas:

“When I came to MIT, I was expect­ing it to be full of nerds — peo­ple who don’t real­ly put togeth­er sci­ence and reli­gion,” says Ben­jamin Brooks, a senior from Pater­son, New Jer­sey, who belongs to the MIT chap­ter of the evan­gel­i­cal group Chi Alpha. “I was real­ly sur­prised — and still am — by the vol­ume of Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship here.”

and lat­er The Boston Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of Chi Alpha holds reg­u­lar “The Gospel Accord­ing to The Simp­sons” gath­er­ings.

The arti­cle is called God on the Quad and talks about the evan­gel­i­cal pres­ence on the Boston cam­pus­es.

Hugh Hefner Deconstructed

I just ran across an inter­est­ing arti­cle I thought most col­lege stu­dents would find inter­est­ing: Hugh Hefn­er’s Hol­low Vic­to­ry (orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the defunct re:generation quar­ter­ly, now host­ed on ChristianityToday.com).

It’s a very insight­ful cri­tique of the main­stream porn indus­try in Amer­i­ca. Well worth read­ing.

Updates

Sor­ry it’s been so long since I’ve post­ed any­thing to the site–I feel as though I’ve bare­ly had time to check my email late­ly, much less update the site.

In any event, Paula and I are set­tling in to our new place. Stuff is actu­al­ly get­ting hung on the walls and the few box­es that remain dwin­dle dai­ly.

Things have Stan­ford have been pret­ty good–as always some bits are encour­ag­ing and some bits are dis­cour­ag­ing. Our small groups are the real high­light for me this quar­ter.

On anoth­er encour­ag­ing note, I just got an email from Josh Wong (one of our alum­ni from last year) and it con­tained this excit­ing lit­tle snip­pet: Ming Fai has also gone to Myan­mar! He said that I encour­aged him to go there, so I am glad to hear that. He is now dri­ving the pro­duc­tion of a movie-CD about Myan­mar to pro­mote aware­ness and to raise funds for the orphans and mis­sion­ar­ies there. I am help­ing him on that.

That was very neat to hear!

What Does It Mean To Be A Christian?

A fel­low Chi Alphan (Lynette, if you must know) asked me to rec­om­mend some online expla­na­tions of Chris­tian­i­ty that she could for­ward to a friend who is inter­est­ed.

There are a ton out there, but here are some that I real­ly like:

Pow­er to Change is prob­a­bly my favorite. It eschews over-the-top flash ani­ma­tion and focus­es on the sto­ries of changed lives.

The next three are all vari­ants on a theme–make the gospel look cool through use of snazzy flash and sound­track. They are actu­al­ly quite cool. To each their own:
1) Got Life?: a play on the “Got Milk?” cam­paign.
2) Wuzup God?: a youthy vari­ant of the bill­boards ask­ing ques­tions. It’s not quite as clear as I would like it to be, but it’s still nice.
3) The Kris­to: very cool, but it annoys me that I can’t skip the intro to get to the inter­ac­tive part nor can I pause it (if some­thing cool comes on tv or I get a phone call then the inabil­i­ty to pause becomes a real drag).

Faith Cards: this is an e‑vangelistic twist on the wide­spread elec­tron­ic birth­day and hol­i­day cards out there. I almost nev­er open them myself, but some peo­ple love them. If that describes your friend (which it almost cer­tain­ly does if this is a friend who for­wards you cute sto­ries), they might appre­ci­ate get­ting one of these.

If you have one that you real­ly like, post it in a com­ment. If I like it too, I’ll update the post and include it in the main text!

Bayesian Analysis of God’s Existence

This caught me off-guard (kudos to Chris­tian­i­ty Today Blog for find­ing it): a sci­en­tist has done a Bayesian cal­cu­la­tion to deter­mine the prob­a­bil­i­ty of God’s exis­tence (which he pegs at 67%).

The sci­en­tist’s name is Stephen Unwin (read an inter­view), and the book detail­ing his thoughts is The Prob­a­bil­i­ty of God: A Sim­ple Cal­cu­la­tion That Proves the Ulti­mate Truth

The open­ing line of his book is “Do you real­ize that there is some prob­a­bil­i­ty that before you com­plete this sen­tence, you will be hoofed insen­si­ble by a way­ward, minia­ture Mediter­ranean ass?”

How cool is that?

I’ve not read it yet–so I have no fur­ther com­ments except to say that it looks extreme­ly inter­est­ing.

Top 10 College Temptations

I just ran across a handy arti­cle called The Top Ten Col­lege Temp­ta­tions. It’s not stuff you’ve nev­er heard before, but it’s a good sum­ma­ry of sim­ple truth.