Author: Glen

A Living Legend Has Passed

I just learned that Bill Bright died yes­ter­day. Even though he and I would have prob­a­bly dif­fered quite strong­ly on some points had we talked in per­son (one of the rea­sons I min­is­ter with Chi Alpha instead of Cam­pus Cru­sade), I still held him in the high­est esteem pos­si­ble and would like to pub­licly hon­or him.

In case you aren’t famil­iar with him, Bill Bright found­ed Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ, wrote an extreme­ly influ­en­tial book­let called The Four Spir­i­tu­al Laws, and was respon­si­ble for the cre­ation of The Jesus Film–arguably the most effec­tive evan­ge­lis­tic tool in his­to­ry.

Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ is a tremen­dous min­istry, and the fact that it will con­tin­ue strong is a tes­ta­ment to Bill Bright and his lead­er­ship.

May the peace of God be with his fam­i­ly and friends…

Moral Confusion

I’ve had a nag­ging thought for a while now, some­thing about how our soci­ety is begin­ning to view risk (or lack there­of) to be a cen­tral part of moral­i­ty (and how this is not a good thing). I’ve nev­er been able to artic­u­late it as well as I would like, which is why I was so pleased to run across this essay by Den­nis Prager: Would You Rather Your Teenag­er Smoke Or Cheat?

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Here are his open­ing para­graphs, I encour­age you to read the whole thing: Decades of lec­tur­ing around Amer­i­ca and of speak­ing with par­ents on my radio show have led me to an incred­i­ble con­clu­sion: More Amer­i­can par­ents would be upset with their teenage chil­dren if they smoked a cig­a­rette than if they cheat­ed on a test.

How has this come about? This is, after all, an entire­ly new phe­nom­e­non. Almost no mem­ber of my gen­er­a­tion (those who became teenagers in the 1960s), let alone a mem­ber of any pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion, could ever have imag­ined that par­ents would be angri­er with their teenage child for smok­ing than for cheat­ing.

There has been a pro­found change in Amer­i­can val­ues. In a nut­shell, health has over­tak­en moral­i­ty. Or, if you pre­fer, health has become our moral­i­ty.

Read the whole essay.

College Matters

I just read this para­graph in the Ivy Jun­gle’s Cam­pus Min­istry Update and thought it worth post­ing here: In her recent book, Hillary Rod­ham-Clin­ton describes her­self as a Gold­wa­ter con­ser­v­a­tive pri­or to her col­lege years. The daugh­ter of a staunch Repub­li­can, it was in col­lege that she changed her polit­i­cal views. One cat­a­lyst for the change, she says, was the “MOTIVE” mag­a­zine pub­lished by the Methodist Church. The mag­a­zine, which ceased cir­cu­la­tion in 1968, was designed for col­lege stu­dents and helped her see the cause of social jus­tice. Regard­less of polit­i­cal your polit­i­cal views, this reminds us that col­lege min­istry mat­ters. Press on.

Talk About Your Good Days

Yes­ter­day was an astound­ing­ly good day: I got up at 5am to dri­ve to Sacra­men­to for a meet­ing to appoint a new col­lege min­istries direc­tor for our dis­trict. The meet­ing went well, I offered some opin­ions and strong­ly rec­om­mend­ed one of my peers for the posi­tion, and then I recused myself from the meet­ing (it just seemed prop­er since I was tech­ni­cal­ly a can­di­date).

I wait­ed out in the hall­way for what seemed like an hour, and when I was invit­ed back in I was asked to take the helm in an inter­im capac­i­ty while we seek some­one full-time for the posi­tion!

To clar­i­fy: this does­n’t involve Paula and I leav­ing the min­istry at Stan­ford. This is an added thing.

Although I did­n’t seek the posi­tion (and I actu­al­ly mean that–this was­n’t one of those I won’t seek it to make myself a more desir­able can­di­date sort of things), I was very excit­ed to be select­ed. There are more than 500,000 col­lege stu­dents in this zone spread across over 40 size­able cam­pus­es (and many, many small­er ones), and I’ve got some ideas I’m eager to try out.

After that I drove back and dis­cov­ered that our min­istry had received a pledge from a church. Woohoo!

Fol­low­ing that I did some pid­dling work until the work­day end­ed and played my cur­rent video game, Brute Force, and beat a lev­el that was vex­ing me great­ly. Also a cause for cel­e­bra­tion.

Fol­low­ing that I head­ed into down­town Palo Alto to the Stan­ford The­ater to watch The For­bid­den Plan­et and the orig­i­nal Time Machine (two fine movies) with some of our Chi Alpha stu­dents. I just loved watch­ing those won­der­ful films in that cool old the­ater, and I was pret­ty sur­prised to real­ize that Leslie Nielsen was the star of The For­bid­den Plan­et. The whole movie I kept telling myself I’ve seen this guy in some oth­er films but I could­n’t place him. I was shocked at the end cred­its! In fact, I did­n’t even ful­ly con­nect the dots until Lynette Gar­cia said some­thing about it.

Final­ly, I came home and read very briefly from Daniel Boorstin’s engag­ing book The Dis­cov­er­ers. The only com­plaint I have about his book is the giant chip he seems to have on his shoul­der when he talks about reli­gion (any reli­gion). I’m very curi­ous to see if that theme con­tin­ues through the end of the book. Oth­er than that it’s excel­lent (and his com­ments about reli­gions and reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties are insight­ful).

Then I fell asleep–it was 11:00pm!

All in all an excel­lent day.

The Worst Haircut Experience Of My Life

If I may be per­mit­ted to vent for a moment, I just received the worst treat­ment I’ve ever received from a barbershop–namely the The Hair­cut in the Stan­ford Shop­ping Cen­ter.

Once I sat in the bar­ber’s chair every­thing was out of my control–my hair was not cut as I asked, my head was man­han­dled as though I were a fid­gety three-year-old child, and at the end the pro­tec­tive drape was ripped off my body and an indus­tri­al-strength blow­dri­er was run over me to remove any loose hair.

They nev­er even asked me if I was hap­py with my hair­cut. I had to remain seat­ed and ask if I could look in a mir­ror to see the results!

I still have stray hairs prick­ling my skin as I type this.

Most dis­ap­point­ing…

Sayings That Tickle Me

I’m real­ly get­ting into off-the-wall proverbs.

Two of my favorites:

1) Buf­fa­lo can’t see its own butt. (I’m told it’s from Kenya)
2) Dogs bark at what they can’t under­stand. (Her­a­cli­tus)

One Year Anniversary

July 1st was our one-year anniver­sary here in the Bay Area… a year ago our life was full of card­board box­es and lots of oth­er fun stuff.

Wow–a lot has hap­pened this year.

Preaching in Lodi

Last night we had a great ser­vice with Chan Kei­th in Lodi, CA. A col­lege-aged lady who was vis­it­ing the church that night chose to fol­low Christ!

I love my job…

Also, Nic­ho­lette Lock­wood, a stu­dent from our for­mer min­istry in Spring­field, MO moved in last night. She’ll be stay­ing with us for a month this sum­mer.

Right now I’m focused on two tasks:
1) Help­ing to select the Chi Alpha leader for North­ern Cal/Nevada.
2) Help­ing to plan Chi Alpha’s Win­ter Con­fer­ence in 2004.

Does The Bible Teach That Jesus Is God?

It is some­times alleged that the Bible does­n’t real­ly claim that Jesus is God. This is a list of pas­sages that estab­lish the doc­trine. This list isn’t writ­ten to per­suade non­be­liev­ers that Jesus is in fact God, but to per­suade every­one that the Bible indeed claims that He is.

Pas­sages That Explic­it­ly Assert Jesus’ Divin­i­ty

  • In the begin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
    Word was God    . (John 1:1, NIV)
  • No one has ever seen God. But his only Son, who is him­self God,
    is near to the Father’s heart; he has told us about him. (John 1:18, NLT)
  • Then he said to Thomas, “Put your fin­ger here; see my hands. Reach out your
    hand and put it into my side. Stop doubt­ing and believe.” Thomas said
    to him, “My Lord and my God!”     Then Jesus told him, “Because you have
    seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have
    believed.” (John 20:27–29, NIV)
  • Keep watch over your­selves and all the flock of which the Holy Spir­it has
    made you over­seers. Be shep­herds of the church of God, which he bought
    with his own blood    . (Acts 20:28, NIV)
  • Theirs are the patri­archs, and from them is traced the human ances­try of
    Christ, who is God over all, for­ev­er praised! Amen. (Romans
    9:5, NIV)
  • …we wait for the blessed hope—the glo­ri­ous appear­ing of our great
    God and Sav­ior, Jesus Christ,     who gave him­self for us to redeem us
    from all wicked­ness and to puri­fy for him­self a peo­ple that are his very own,
    eager to do what is good. (Titus 2:13–14, NIV)
  • …to those who through the right­eous­ness of our God and Sav­ior Jesus
    Christ     have received a faith as pre­cious as ours… (2 Peter 1:1, NIV)

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Does The Bible Teach That Jesus Is God?”

Reno Rocks!

We got back from Reno yes­ter­day. It was a great trip!

If you ever need to trav­el to Reno, you real­ly ought to look into stay­ing at the Pep­per­mill, a hotel/casino. Their rates are great and the rooms are won­der­ful!

We stayed in three dif­fer­ent hotels this week­end (for per­fect­ly good rea­sons which I won’t go into here), and the Pep­per­mill blew the oth­er two away.