Author: Glen

I Never Saw It Coming When I Woke Up…

This was a pret­ty amaz­ing day–I bought a djem­be for our min­istry, I was for­mal­ly invit­ed to guest lec­ture in a grad class about “The Role of Reli­gion In the Ide­al Soci­ety”, I had a neat answer to prayer, and I met a remark­able per­son.

This was a pret­ty amaz­ing day–I bought a djem­be for our min­istry, I was for­mal­ly invit­ed to guest lec­ture in a grad class about “The Role of Reli­gion In the Ide­al Soci­ety”, I had a neat answer to prayer, and I met a remark­able per­son.

First, the neat answer to prayer: I’ve been vis­it­ing a guy named Tom at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Med­ical Cen­ter. He has a tra­chea tube which pre­vents him from speak­ing, and so I had to work out a chart that allowed him to spell out words to me using ges­tures. Today he asked me to pray that he would be able to speak soon–as we fin­ished pray­ing a doc­tor walked in a placed a spe­cial attach­ment on the end of his tra­chea tube that allowed him to do some vocal­iza­tion! He still can’t talk flu­ent­ly, but he’s on the recov­ery trail.

Sec­ond, today Paula and I went to pick up a stu­den­t’s father at San Jose Inter­na­tion­al Air­port. He’s going to be in town to see his daugh­ter and do some research. Any­way, I real­ized this morn­ing that I did­n’t real­ly know what Dr. Abegg looked like, so I googled for Mar­tin Abegg and short­ly real­ized that he’s the rea­son the Dead Sea Scrolls were pub­lished after decades of secre­cy! For more info, read the fas­ci­nat­ing com­men­tary by Penn Jil­lette (yes, the magi­cian of Penn & Teller fame) or the arti­cle The Dead Sea Scrolls: Mak­ing The Good Book Even Bet­ter?

Any­way, he’s a great guy and we had a won­der­ful time get­ting to know him bet­ter.

And I just thought this was going to be a day like any oth­er…

More on that guest lec­ture­ship in a grad class soon–The West Wing beck­ons…

Gas Prices State by State

I ran across this link today: Gas Prices State by State. Cal­i­for­nia, of course, tops the list for all the states–we even beat out Hawaii. I also learned recent­ly that real estate is cheap­er in Hawaii than here in the Bay Area. That just seems wrong on so many lev­els at once…

I ran across this link today: Gas Prices State by State. Cal­i­for­nia, of course, tops the list for all the states–we even beat out Hawaii. I also learned recent­ly that real estate is cheap­er in Hawaii than here in the Bay Area. That just seems wrong on so many lev­els at once…

For all our friends and fam­i­ly, this is the cur­rent break­down of Cali ver­sus the oth­er places we’ve lived.

Cal­i­for­nia $1.93
Louisiana $1.60
Mis­souri $1.58

Reno Is Beautiful!

This Wednes­day Paula and I drove up to Sparks, NV to preach at Cross­winds Assem­bly of God, which was a great expe­ri­ence.

nevada.jpgThis Wednes­day Paula and I drove up to Sparks, NV to preach at Cross­winds Assem­bly of God, which was a great expe­ri­ence.

First, Sparks is adja­cent to Reno–and that is an incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful area, sport­ing snow-capped moun­tains in vir­tu­al­ly every direc­tion.

Sec­ond, the church itself was very cool–the peo­ple were friend­ly, the wor­ship was great, and I got to use one of those cool lit­tle pro­fes­sion­al wire­less mikes that fits like a head­set (the kind Brit­ney and those boy bands use). I love gad­gets, and that was just plain neat.

Third, Paula and I were able to meet with five oth­er pas­tors for face-to-face pre­sen­ta­tions of our min­istry on Wednes­day and Thurs­day: Rod­ney Waters (Light­house of Natomas), David Hoskins (Val­ley View Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship), Brent John­son (Reno Assem­bly of God), Ter­ry and Rita Fred (Sier­ra Church), Stan Friend (Cap­i­tal Chris­t­ian Cen­ter in Car­son City), and John Peter­son (South Shore Chris­t­ian Assem­bly).

Fourth, Den­nis Gay­lor (the nation­al Chi Alpha direc­tor) hap­pened to be in Reno and we got to meet him for lunch along with Ter­ry and Rita Fred.

Fifth, the last pas­tor we met with (John Peter­son) used to pas­tor here in Palo Alto. He and his wife pio­neered a church here around 1989 and over a decade grew it to around 350 peo­ple, includ­ing sev­er­al Stan­ford stu­dents. He got involved with min­istry on cam­pus and things were going well, and then he went to join the dis­trict denom­i­na­tion­al lead­er­ship team. The church dwin­dled and does­n’t exist any­more. Still, it was great talk­ing to him!

Sixth, we drove back through Lake Tahoe–simply stun­ning!

In oth­er words, this trip was fab­u­lous any way you count it. Sor­ry if you’ve sent me an email I haven’t respond­ed to yet, we just put over 600 miles on our car in two days and haven’t been near a com­put­er for that whole time. I’ll begin pro­cess­ing the back­log today and get it cleared out by tomor­row.

Our Speaking & Travel Schedule

If you’re a pas­tor, you might be curi­ous to know when we’re avail­able to do a mis­sions win­dow or a ser­vice at your church.

If you’re a pas­tor, you might be curi­ous to know when we’re avail­able to do a mis­sions win­dow or a ser­vice at your church.

Our cur­rent cal­en­dar:

Sep­tem­ber 2003
Trav­el­ing first week in Sep­tem­ber
Wed 9/3 PM: Cal­vary Tem­ple Youth Group (Yuba City, CA)
Sun 9/14 AM: Mount Pleas­ant Chris­t­ian Cen­ter (San Jose, CA)
Sun 9/21 AM: Stan­ford Mul­ti-Faith Wel­come
Sun 9/28 PM: Red­wood Val­ley Mis­sions Con­ven­tion (ten­ta­tive)

Octo­ber 2003 down­load bone col­lec­tor the movie
Sun 10/5 AM: Chris­t­ian Cen­ter of San Jose
Wed 10/15 PM: Assem­bly of God Taber­na­cle (Keyes, CA)

Novem­ber 2003
Sat 11/1 PM: The Car­pen­ter’s House (Modesto, CA)
Sun 11/2 AM: The Car­pen­ter’s House (Modesto, CA)
Wed 11/5 PM: Oak Park Chris­t­ian Cen­ter (Pleas­ant Hill, CA)
Sun 11/9 AM: South­bay Chris­t­ian Cen­ter (Moun­tain View, CA)
Sun 11/16 AM: First Assem­bly (San Diego, CA)

Feb­ru­ary 2004
2/1–2/6: Spir­i­tu­al Empha­sis Week at Cross­roads Chris­t­ian School (Mor­gan Hill, CA)

May 2004
Sun 5/23 AM: Trin­i­ty Life (Las Vegas, NV)

I Have The Best Wife Ever

For the record, I have the best wife ever. Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day, Paula!

For the record, I have the best wife ever. Hap­py Valen­tine’s Day, Paula!

Sample Missions Window

For pas­tors: if you’re con­sid­er­ing hav­ing us in to do a mis­sions win­dow at your church, I encour­age you to check out the brief video wel­come we have on our web­site.

For pas­tors: if you’re con­sid­er­ing hav­ing us in to do a mis­sions win­dow at your church, I encour­age you to check out this brief (under two min­utes) video:

If you see this text, you need to download the latest Flash plugin for your browser. attic the online

The con­trols work just like a VCR–hit the play but­ton (>) to begin the video.

If you can’t get it to work (or can’t even see the arrow), down­load the lat­est Flash plu­g­in for your brows­er.

That’s basi­cal­ly what we do for a mis­sions win­dow (with­out the sound­track and the cool graph­ics effects).

If you have us in to do the whole ser­vice, I gen­er­al­ly do the mis­sions win­dow and then preach a prac­ti­cal mes­sage for your peo­ple unless you ask me to do oth­er­wise (some pas­tors pre­fer that I share about mis­sions or about Chi Alpha the entire time).

The Kingdom of Heaven

Here’s that lengthy quote I read last night:

“The King­dom of Heav­en,” said the Lord Christ, “is among you.” But what, pre­cise­ly, is the King­dom of Heav­en? You can­not point to exist­ing spec­i­mens, say­ing, “Lo, here!” or “Lo, there!” You can only expe­ri­ence it. But what is it like, so that when we expe­ri­ence it we may rec­og­nize it? Well, it is a change, like being born again and relearn­ing every­thing from the start. It is secret, liv­ing power—like yeast. It is some­thing that grows, like seed. It is pre­cious like buried trea­sure, like a rich pearl, and you have to pay for it. It is a sharp cleav­age through the rich jum­ble of things which life presents: like fish and rub­bish in a draw-net, like wheat and tares; like wis­dom and fol­ly; and it car­ries with it a kind of men­ac­ing final­i­ty; it is new, yet in a sense it was always there—like turn­ing out a cup­board and find­ing there your own child­hood as well as your present self; it makes demands, it is like an invi­ta­tion to a roy­al banquet—gratifying, but not to be dis­re­gard­ed, and you have to live up to it; where it is equal, it seems unjust; where it is just it is clear­ly not equal—as with the sin­gle pound, the diverse tal­ents, the labor­ers in the vine­yard, you have what you bar­gained for; it no knows com­pro­mise between an uncal­cu­lat­ing mer­cy and a ter­ri­ble justice—like the unmer­ci­ful ser­vant, you get what you give; it is help­less in your hands like the King’s Son, but if you slay it, it will judge you; it was from the foun­da­tions of the world; it is to come; it is here and now; it is with­in you. It is record­ed that the mul­ti­tudes some­times failed to under­stand.

Dorothy Say­ers, The Poet­ry of Search

OK–That’s Fast!

The team trans­ferred uncom­pressed data at 923 megabytes per sec­ond for 58 sec­onds from Sun­ny­vale, Calif., to Ams­ter­dam — a dis­tance of almost 6,800 miles, or about one-quar­ter of the way around the world. This trans­fer speed is more than 3,500 times faster than a typ­i­cal home Inter­net broad­band con­nec­tion.

Sci­en­tists at the Stan­ford Lin­ear Accel­er­a­tor recent­ly trans­mit­ted the equiv­a­lent of a 4 hour movie to Ams­ter­dam in less than one minute.

Now THAT’S what I call band­width!

The team trans­ferred uncom­pressed data at 923 megabytes per sec­ond for 58 sec­onds from Sun­ny­vale, Calif., to Ams­ter­dam — a dis­tance of almost 6,800 miles, or about one-quar­ter of the way around the world. This trans­fer speed is more than 3,500 times faster than a typ­i­cal home Inter­net broad­band con­nec­tion.

Read all about it.

It’s fun to hang around a place where records are being set and the world is being changed…

Galileo And The Pope: Perspectives

Check out this brief inter­view with Pro­fes­sor Lind­berg (his­to­ry of sci­ence prof at Wis­con­sin-Madi­son) Did Mar­tin Luther Get Galileo in Trou­ble?

How did the church respond to Galileo’s the­o­ry?
There was a com­mit­tee estab­lished called the Holy Office, which had the respon­si­bil­i­ty to deter­mine the truth in mat­ters of faith. Charges were lev­eled against Galileo, and so the helio­cen­tric ques­tion came before them.

We don’t know much about what went on in their con­sid­er­a­tions. But it’s impor­tant to look at the whole pic­ture. And one part of that pic­ture is that the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty is over­whelm­ing­ly opposed to Galileo. That is, the evi­dence that Galileo has is not par­tic­u­lar­ly pow­er­ful. It’s not over­pow­er­ing. He was looked on as a crack­pot by lots of sci­en­tists.

If we com­bine this pic­ture with the author­i­ty of the Catholic Church to inter­pret the Bible—and their new atten­tion to lit­er­al interpretation—it’s just clear what the answer is going to be. They’re not going to vio­late their own hermeneu­tic exeget­i­cal stan­dards in order to adopt this crack­pot minor­i­ty opin­ion of the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty.

So then he goes before a papal court. It was­n’t his sci­ence that was on tri­al, though. What was he tried for?
Obe­di­ence was the only issue in the tri­al. And he was guilty. Every­body could tell he was guilty because Galileo does­n’t just dis­cuss the pros and cons of the the­o­ry, he just advo­cates all the way. It was a blun­der on Galileo’s part.

Galileo then recants. Why?
He had two choic­es. There was the threat of impris­on­ment or he could recant. Every­body knew it was a for­mal­i­ty, so he did­n’t cost his cause any­thing to recant.

How did the the­o­ry of the sun as the cen­ter of the uni­verse final­ly get accept­ed by the church?
Once New­ton’s the­o­ry of grav­i­ta­tion came along, you had over­whelm­ing argu­ments in favor of helio­cen­trism. The church says, “Okay, now we’ve got proof, so now we will rein­ter­pret the Bible.”

By the end of the 17th cen­tu­ry, the church was on board, though Coper­ni­cus’s book stayed on the index of pro­hib­it­ed books until 1835. This geo­cen­tric mod­el remained an alba­tross around the Catholic Church’s neck.

Inter­est­ing stuff.

More Scientists Who Believe

I just ran across a link for the Amer­i­can Sci­en­tif­ic Affil­i­a­tion: a fel­low­ship of men and women in sci­ence and dis­ci­plines that relate to sci­ence who share a com­mon fideli­ty to the Word of God and a com­mit­ment to integri­ty in the prac­tice of sci­ence.

They have an absolute­ly incred­i­ble respos­i­to­ry of arti­cles and links to resources. If you’re in the sci­ences, you need to check this out!