Author: Glen

Reading List For New Students

note for every­one who’s not a new stu­dent: there’s a new stu­dent ori­en­ta­tion thingee hap­pen­ing today and on our pro­mo pieces I promised them that we’d have some read­ing rec­om­men­da­tions for them

So you’re com­ing to Stanford–that’s great! I know you’ve got a lot to read and do before you arrive, but I’d like to sug­gest some books you real­ly need to check out.

How To Stay Chris­t­ian In Col­lege by J. Budziszews­ki. If you only read one book from this list, make it this one! The author lost his faith while an under­grad and regained it after attain­ing his doc­tor­ate, and he’s packed this book full of extreme­ly prac­ti­cal advice!

The Diver­si­ty Myth by Peter Thiel and David Sacks. This book is all about Stan­ford and its agen­da when it comes to reed­u­cat­ing stu­dents (writ­ten by two Stan­ford grads). I need to pref­ace my rec­om­men­da­tion with sev­er­al dis­claimers: you should keep in mind that these guys have a huge ide­o­log­i­cal axe to grind and that there are always two sides to every sto­ry. In addi­tion, the book is about a decade old, and so some of the details are no longer accu­rate. Final­ly, they’re not writ­ing from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. Even after all those qual­i­fi­ca­tions, I rec­om­mend that you read this book before you show up for your first day at Stan­ford. In case you’re curi­ous, the title comes from the authors’ con­tention that there is no true diver­si­ty on cam­pus.

Final­ly, con­sid­er read­ing The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines by Dal­las Willard. This is one of the best books I’ve ever read. Some peo­ple find it dense, and if you fall into that cat­e­go­ry I rec­om­mend The Life You’ve Always Want­ed as an alter­nate. Either of these books will help you learn a life-chang­ing lesson–that there’s a dif­fer­ence between try­ing to be like Jesus and train­ing to be like Jesus. If all you do is try, you can kiss your faith good­bye once you go to col­lege. If what do now is begin to train, you can thrive spir­i­tu­al­ly at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty!

You might also want to check out pre­vi­ous posts we’ve made on Tips for New Stu­dents, Becom­ing Wise In Col­lege, and Books Every Edu­cat­ed Chris­t­ian Should Know.

At Least The Mudhouse Is Not The Doghouse

Once again, I find myself sit­ting in the Mud­house (Spring­field­’s coolest cof­fee shop) typ­ing away on a lap­top (bor­rowed, this time, from Ste­fanie Chappell–future Chi Alpha mis­sion­ary to the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area).

Once again, I find myself sit­ting in the Mud­house (Spring­field­’s coolest cof­fee shop) typ­ing away on a lap­top (bor­rowed, this time, from Ste­fanie Chappell–future Chi Alpha mis­sion­ary to the Wash­ing­ton, D.C. area).

I’m sit­ting here with Paula, Joe Zick­afoose, Sarah Her­man, Ste­fanie Chap­pell, and Noble Bow­man, and Ste­fanie is urg­ing me to blog some­thing per­son­al. To, in her words, “let out my deep feel­ings.”

Hmmm…

I am deeply hap­py to vis­it Spring­field, and I am deeply hap­py not to live here any­more. Sat­is­fied, Stef?

By the way, if you live in Spring­field and Paula and I haven’t got­ten togeth­er with you yet, call us soon–we’re leav­ing Fri­day morn­ing!

Back in the Mudhouse

meet­ing with yet more peo­ple

Wow–what a whirl­wind of activ­i­ty! We’re see­ing every­one we pos­si­bly can, and we’re hav­ing a great time doing it

I’m still not access­ing my email all that fre­quent­ly, but I’m check­ing as often as I can. If you don’t hear from me, don’t assume I’m brush­ing you off.

Dis­trict coun­cil starts tomor­row…

At the Mudhouse

Paula and I are sit­ting in the Mud­house in Spring­field, MO typ­ing away on our lap­tops. We flew in a lit­tle ear­ly for the South­ern Mis­souri Dis­trict Coun­cil and we’re con­nect­ing with old friends and col­leagues.

Paula and I are sit­ting in the Mud­house in Spring­field, MO typ­ing away on our lap­tops. We flew in a lit­tle ear­ly for the South­ern Mis­souri Dis­trict Coun­cil and we’re con­nect­ing with old friends and col­leagues.

So far it’s been great–we’ve got­ten togeth­er with Levi Augur (an alum­nus from our min­istry back at SMS), his par­ents (who gra­cious­ly allowed us to stay at their house), Joss Wal­ter (the first pas­tor to ever book us for a ser­vice), and Rich Avi­la (anoth­er pas­toral-type per­son we know). We’re stay­ing with Joe and Jayne Zick­afoose, who are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing to go estab­lish uni­ver­si­ty min­istry in Scot­land. It’s great!

While we were in the air our stu­dents back at Stan­ford orga­nized and led the week­ly wor­ship ser­vice by them­selves. I can’t wait to hear how it went–Paula and I are very excit­ed at the lev­el of pas­sion and own­er­ship they’re dis­play­ing!

My wife just informed me it’s time to go grab lunch, so I’m sign­ing off. I may edit this lat­er to add more details and cor­rect any spelling/grammatical errors.

Stanford Limits Freshman Access to Alcohol

Begin­ning next year, Stanford’s all-fresh­man dorms will no longer be allowed to serve alco­hol at events in their lounges, hall­ways or out­door areas.

I was both tick­led and sad­dened when I read the news in the Stan­ford Dai­ly today: Stan­ford To Ban Alco­hol At All-Fresh­man Dorm Events.

Begin­ning next year, Stanford’s all-fresh­man dorms will no longer be allowed to serve alco­hol at events in their lounges, hall­ways or out­door areas.

Seems rea­son­able to me, espe­cial­ly since almost all fresh­men are way under 21 and there­fore are not allowed to drink alco­hol. Nonethe­less, the move pro­duced con­tro­ver­sy: Junior Nic Kanaan, a res­i­dent assis­tant in Otero, said he believes the pol­i­cy will have unin­tend­ed neg­a­tive con­se­quences. “I think this new pol­i­cy will make a kind of intro­vert­ed drink­ing cul­ture that could poten­tial­ly be more dan­ger­ous, because it’s behind closed doors and you can’t see what’s going on…”

For­tu­nate­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty sim­ply reit­er­at­ed its log­i­cal­ly com­pelling posi­tion: Admin­is­tra­tors counter that allow­ing drink­ing in fresh­man dor­mi­to­ries is ille­gal, detracts from efforts to cre­ate a safe and com­fort­able atmos­phere and has failed to pre­vent seri­ous alco­hol-relat­ed inci­dents among fresh­men in recent years.

Per­son­al­ly, I can’t believe this is even an issue. It just seems clear to me that the uni­ver­si­ty is oblig­at­ed to pre­vent ille­gal behav­ior.…

Retreat Tomorrow

Tomor­row Paula and I will be head­ing to Jen­ness Park with a bunch of our students–it’s retreat time!

Tomor­row Paula and I will be head­ing to Jen­ness Park with a bunch of our students–it’s retreat time!

Out speak­er’s going to be Scott Mar­tin, and I ful­ly expect the retreat to rock!

John W Templeton Student Internship

Stu­dent Intern­ship
John Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion
Rad­nor, PA

The John Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion and its new Divi­sion, Tem­ple­ton Ven­ture Phil­an­thropy Asso­ciates, is seek­ing a stu­dent intern for the sum­mer of 2003.

The Foun­da­tion awards grants around the globe for projects that involve sci­ence and reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and well-being, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment in youth, and free enter­prise. A fla­vor of some of this work is on the Foundation’s web­site. Suit­ably qual­i­fied stu­dents might assist in a range of research-relat­ed tasks that might include search­es of the WWW, sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses, project design and day-to-day man­age­ment, sur­vey admin­is­tra­tion, and econo­met­ric mod­el­ing. Interns work a min­i­mum of 10 hours per week to a max­i­mum of 40 hours. Com­pen­sa­tion will be deter­mined based on back­ground and whether aca­d­e­m­ic cred­it is being sought.

Inter­est­ed stu­dents should send a brief resume high­light­ing skills and work expe­ri­ence and a short cov­er let­ter in Word for­mat to Mar­ta Oliv­er at moliver@templeton.org. Ques­tions may also be direct­ed to this e‑mail address. Please do not call the Foun­da­tion.

My Week At A Glance

Run­ning around with my head cut off.

Last week­end I promised my dad that I’d put some per­son­al news on the site, and I’ve been not doing that ever since. Sor­ry!

Last week­end was pret­ty neat: Paula and I got to share in two church­es: Cameron Park Chris­t­ian Cen­ter and Lake­view Assem­bly. They were both quite cool in dif­fer­ent ways. It was­n’t even that much driving–they’re with­in two hours or so of one anoth­er!

The work week was pret­ty busy: the stu­dents returned from spring break, and I real­ly felt that I need­ed to talk about the war head-on. What good is faith if it does­n’t inform your every­day view of the world?

At the same time, I don’t think it’s my job to tell peo­ple what to think; rather, I’m to help them learn to think in a Bib­li­cal way. So I opt­ed to talk about the sub­ject of war­fare in gen­er­al, what we should think about it, and what we should do in a time of war. All that to say, I had a lot of prep work to do!

I put my notes on the group web­site so they could fol­low up on some ref­er­ences I made.

As usu­al, we went to the Stan­ford Cof­fee­house after­ward and stayed up for far too long talk­ing.

Wednes­day I made a TON of phone calls. My ear still hurts (not real­ly).

Thurs­day Paula and I decid­ed to have some stu­dents over for a home-cooked meal and we stayed up entire­ly too late talk­ing (notice the pat­tern).

Fri­day I was sick (no doubt due to the afore­men­tioned pat­tern).

Which brings me to today. I got sun­burn on my ears. I hope they don’t peel too vis­i­bly while I’m preach­ing tomorrow–I bet that would be dis­tract­ing.

Genes and God: Contrasting Perspectives

Lon­don’s Tele­graph had an unusu­al­ly bal­anced arti­cle on how lead­ing sci­en­tists think about God.

The occa­sion? The 50th anniver­sary of the dis­cov­ery of DNA.
The play­ers? Wat­son & Crick (dis­cov­er­ers of DNA, both athe­ists) and Fran­cis Collins (head of the Human Genome Project, devout Chris­t­ian).

In Crick­’s mind, “The god hypoth­e­sis is rather dis­cred­it­ed.” Indeed, he says his dis­taste for reli­gion was one of his prime motives in the work that led to the sen­sa­tion­al 1953 dis­cov­ery.

“I went into sci­ence because of these reli­gious rea­sons, there’s no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inex­plic­a­ble and are used to sup­port reli­gious beliefs: the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing and non­liv­ing things, and the phe­nom­e­non of con­scious­ness.”

And accord­ing to Wat­son, “Every time you under­stand some­thing, reli­gion becomes less like­ly,” said Wat­son. “Only with the dis­cov­ery of the dou­ble helix and the ensu­ing genet­ic rev­o­lu­tion have we had grounds for think­ing that the pow­ers held tra­di­tion­al­ly to be the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of the gods might one day be ours.”

But Collins (who has suc­ceed­ed Wat­son as head of the Human Genome Project), believes that reli­gion and sci­ence “are nice­ly com­ple­men­tary and mutu­al­ly sup­port­ing”, he said. As one exam­ple, his research to find the faulty gene respon­si­ble for cys­tic fibro­sis pro­vid­ed sci­en­tif­ic exhil­a­ra­tion and “a sense of awe at uncov­er­ing some­thing that God knew before that we humans did­n’t”.

“The tragedy is that many peo­ple believe that, if evo­lu­tion is true, which it clear­ly is, then God can’t be true… God decid­ed to cre­ate a species with whom he could have fel­low­ship. Who are we to say that evo­lu­tion was a dumb way to do it? It was an incred­i­bly ele­gant way to do it.”

“Jim, who I know much bet­ter than Fran­cis, avoids bring­ing this top­ic up when we are hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion.”

The arti­cle con­cludes with what I found to be a sad­ly amus­ing sto­ry of Crick­’s antipa­thy to faith. You real­ly ought to read the whole thing.

Just a Little Botox For the Site Header

I just redesigned the site header–if I did it cor­rect­ly it should allow the page to load faster even though the head­er is larg­er and more com­plex.

I just redesigned the site header–if I did it cor­rect­ly it should allow the page to load faster even though the head­er is larg­er and more com­plex.

Please let me know if you have any prob­lems, because I’ve been doing some exper­i­men­ta­tion in Flash and I’m def­i­nite­ly at the begin­ning of the learn­ing curve.

UPDATE: I’m get­ting some weird results from the indi­vid­ual entries–I’m hop­ing it’s just a cache prob­lem. I’ll take a look at it again in the morn­ing. Even if it’s doing what it seems to be doing it does­n’t make the site unuse­able (just ugly).