Author: Glen

Over 20 Students At Our House For Thanksgiving!

For­get stuff­ing the turkey–we stuffed our apart­ment this Thanks­giv­ing!

The nearly 30 people we had in our house for Thanksgiving!For­get stuff­ing the turkey–we stuffed our apart­ment this Thanks­giv­ing! Not only did Glen’s broth­er and Paula’s col­lege room­mate trav­el down from Wash­ing­ton state, but we were able to host over 20 Stan­ford stu­dents in our home for lunch on turkey day (near­ly 30 total peo­ple)!

Let me tell you–that’s an awful lot of peo­ple to cram into one apart­ment!

In case you’re won­der­ing why they did­n’t head home to vis­it their fam­i­lies, all the stu­dents were inter­na­tion­al stu­dents (most­ly from Sin­ga­pore). Trav­el­ing inter­na­tion­al­ly and get­ting jet lagged is a big has­sle (and pret­ty expen­sive) for such a short break from school.

For many of them, this was their first real cel­e­bra­tion of Thanks­giv­ing. Think about it–how many oth­er coun­tries cel­e­brate the pil­grims’ sur­vival? To my knowl­edge, only Cana­da…Students eating Thanksgiving meal

Sev­er­al of our guests were already fol­low­ing Christ, but many have yet to expe­ri­ence God’s trans­form­ing love. The King­dom of God flows through rela­tion­ships, and so please pray that God would use our hos­pi­tal­i­ty as a cat­a­lyst for spir­i­tu­al growth in these stu­dents’ lives.

Cook­ing for so many peo­ple was a huge task, as was seat­ing them. Thanks to Greg, Rachel, and Ailin for help­ing to pre­pare the food, and many thanks to South­bay Chris­t­ian Cen­ter and Three Cities Assem­bly for loan­ing us chairs and tables, and a heap of thanks to Pas­tor Mike Brown of Inter­na­tion­al Assem­bly of God (as well as his wor­ship leader Paul) and Josh Wong and Ming Fai Wong for help­ing to cart the chairs and tables to our place. We could­n’t have done it with­out you!

UPDATE: our Pho­to Gallery has been updat­ed with pic­tures from the Thanks­giv­ing feast!

Please Pray for Paula Marks

please pray for Paula Marks–she’s in a coma

I just received this email: “Last evening, Paula Marks, wife of Bob Marks [Bob is on the Chi Alpha nation­al lead­er­ship team], had a brain aneurysm burst. She is cur­rent­ly in a coma in neu­ro inten­sive care unit and is unre­spon­sive. Please keep Paula and the fam­i­ly in your prayers, they need a mir­a­cle.”

Please pray for Paula and Bob. They’re both won­der­ful peo­ple (although I’d ask you to pray for them even if they were scoundrels). FYI: Bob is on Chi Alpha’s nation­al lead­er­ship team and is a vet­er­an mis­sion­ary to France.

UPDATE: On 12/4 in the morn­ing I received this email:
“Many of you are email­ing me want­i­ng a lat­est update on my mom.

She is very ill and the doc­tor told us, that he is NOT see­ing sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments.

We are told that less than 1% sur­vive this kind of aneurysm.…

That does not mean that our faith is gone! Unless God inter­feres she will pass on so we con­tin­ue to pray for a divine mir­a­cle.

Please pray with us for this mir­a­cle because I do know that God does per­form mir­a­cles.

Sev­er­al of you want to know what to pray for specif­i­cal­ly so here it is:

The doc­tor wants to see if her lift 2 fin­gers on com­mand and then he will rec­og­nize that she is not neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly impaired.

That is what I am pray­ing for. I told her that last night and remind­ed her that her strength is in the LORD. PSALM 121 is what we have taped in her room…we are also remind­ing her that it is “Not by might, nor by pow­er but by His spir­it, says the Lord.” Thank you for pray­ing for her! ”

UPDATE: on 12/4 in the after­noon I received this mes­sage:
We just got a call from the hospital…when the doc­tor asked Paula to raise
her two fin­gers- she did.

Praise God for his answer to prayer! The fam­i­ly is very encour­aged, but
Paula still needs our prayers for con­tin­ued heal­ing.

Just a Quick Update

Just an update on what’s been going on in our week­end min­istry…

On a per­son­al note, the last few weeks have been a great expo­sure to the diver­si­ty of the Assem­blies of God here in Nor Cal.

Two Sun­days ago I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk to peo­ple about our min­istry at Fam­i­ly Com­mu­ni­ty Church in San Jose. FCC is a very con­tem­po­rary church reach­ing young adults and pro­fes­sion­als by the droves. They’ve added over 700 in week­ly atten­dance over the last two months.

That after­noon, I was invit­ed to preach in a Fijian church (First Fijian Assem­bly of God) that meets here in Palo Alto. It was great–they’re a won­der­ful church! We were espe­cial­ly hon­ored by their gifts of Fijian leis to us. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, they make leis out of dyed tree bark in Fiji. Very nice.

Last Sun­day I was able to share at Ori­en­tial Chris­t­ian Cen­ter (a Chi­nese church) that meets down in San Jose. It was the first time I’ve ever preached with an inter­preter. I kind of like it!

And to show you how con­nect­ed the Body of Christ is, one of the peo­ple I talked to at FCC gave my web­site to a friend of his who works at Stan­ford. He con­tact­ed me and we had lunch yes­ter­day. While talk­ing, he men­tioned that he had a Fijian friend he was try­ing to min­is­ter to, and I was able to con­nect him with the Fijian church I preached at!

How wild… God has got a way of hook­ing things up. He’s def­i­nite­ly got a sys­tems per­spec­tive!

By the way, we’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing great favor in our attempts to sched­ule ser­vices and con­nect with pas­tors. Right now we’re preach­ing in a dif­fer­ent church every week through March, and we’ve got tons of 1–1 meet­ings planned.

As a result, we’re already at the 70% mark of our man­dat­ed month­ly sup­port! It looks like we’ll be able to go full-time on cam­pus some­time this aca­d­e­m­ic year. Yippee!

Also, it looks like we’re going to have around 30 peo­ple crammed into our apart­ment for a Thanks­giv­ing lunch tomorrow–almost all of them Stan­ford stu­dents!

The Faith of a Scientist

From an inter­view at Chris­tian­i­ty Today: John Polk­ing­horne worked for years as a the­o­ret­i­cal ele­men­tary par­ti­cle physi­cist and then a math­e­mat­i­cal physics pro­fes­sor at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty before resign­ing to train for min­istry in the Church of Eng­land. Ear­li­er this year, he was award­ed the 2002 Tem­ple­ton Prize for progress in reli­gion…

Polk­ing­horne on whether sci­ence and faith are com­pat­i­ble: “I’ve nev­er felt an either/or sit­u­a­tion that I had to choose either my sci­ence or my reli­gious belief. Of course, there are puz­zles about how the two relate to each oth­er, and I tried to think about those dur­ing my sci­ence days. And, of course, I’ve thought a great deal more about them since then.

“I try to hold the two togeth­er as far as I can myself. I want to be, so to speak two-eyed: look­ing through my sci­ence eye and my reli­gious eye at the same time. I’m glad that I’m both a physi­cist and a priest and, though I’m puz­zled by how those aspects of me fit togeth­er, I want to hold them in dia­logue with each oth­er.” (read the whole thing)

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery…

It’s fun to have an influ­ence!

This is so cool! I waxed nos­talig­ic last week, and so I vis­it­ed my old church’s web­site to see how things were going. While there I hap­pened to glance at their ‘What We Believe’ page, and I noticed that it looked very famil­iar.

You see, when I began talk­ing to Stan­ford stu­dents about Chi Alpha many were curi­ous about our beliefs. I quick­ly real­ized that I need­ed a more stu­dent-friend­ly way of explain­ing our beliefs than the for­mal Assem­blies of God state­ment of faith. So I thought about it and decid­ed to revise and expand the one that we used to use back at SMS Chi Alpha.

In any event, I wound up writ­ing a con­cise state­ment of faith for Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford. Lo and behold, it’s iden­ti­cal to the one on my old church’s web­site! I emailed Cal (my old pas­tor), and he said that he saw it and liked it so much that he decid­ed to adopt it. Fur­ther­more, he’s shared it with two oth­er church­es (Tim­ber­creek and Tim­ber­line) that are con­sid­er­ing adopt­ing (or adapt­ing it).

Since one of the things I get most excit­ed about is shar­ing resources that help oth­er peo­ple be more effec­tive, I’m pret­ty hap­py about it! I’ve want­ed to be a mean meme machine for the King­dom…

Minor Site Redesign

a quick update on the site’s orga­ni­za­tion­al scheme

I’ve done some tweak­ing of the site. Basi­cal­ly, I’ve changed the lay­out of the front page slight­ly, and I’ve updat­ed the way I cat­e­go­rize infor­ma­tion on the site to reflect a refine­ment in my think­ing.

For sev­er­al months now I’ve been explain­ing to peo­ple that there are three key ways they can be a part of mis­sions (aside from becom­ing a voca­tion­al mis­sion­ary), and I’m redesign­ing the site so that infor­ma­tion is cat­e­go­rized accord­ing­ly. Most of my entries fall into one of four cat­e­gories:

1. Inter­ces­sion: Pray­ing for Mis­sions
My basic thrust in this sec­tion of the site is to encour­age peo­ple to pray for us, and espe­cial­ly to pray what I con­sid­er to be the core bib­li­cal prayer for mis­sion­ar­ies.

2. Invest­ment: Giv­ing to Mis­sions
This sec­tion of the site invites peo­ple to part­ner with us finan­cial­ly, which is actu­al­ly giv­en more promi­nence in the Bible than is pray­ing for mis­sion­ar­ies. Many of the entries revolve around anwer­ing peo­ple’s ques­tions about giv­ing to mis­sions.

3. Involve­ment: Work­ing for Mis­sions
In addi­tion to pray­ing and giv­ing, peo­ple with­out a call to full-time mis­sion­ary work can fre­quent­ly do things to help out. With­in the Assem­blies of God, this includes work­ing with such mis­sion­ary aux­il­liary min­istries as Light for the Lost, Speed the Light, Boys and Girls Mis­sion­ary Cru­sade, and the Wom­en’s Min­istries Mis­sion­ary Bou­tique. This is a new sec­tion of the site, as I real­ly did­n’t have any­thing up about this pri­or to yes­ter­day when I post­ed prac­ti­cal ways peo­ple can help.

4. Infor­ma­tion: Learn­ing about Mis­sions
Final­ly, I added one cat­e­go­ry for entries that were rel­e­vant, but just did­n’t seem to fit the above clas­si­fi­ca­tion.

I haven’t com­plete­ly fin­ished revamp­ing things yet, as I’m still think­ing about how to han­dle the remain­ing cat­e­gories and whether or not I should launch a per­son­al blog (where­in I actu­al­ly express opin­ions) in a sub­di­rec­to­ry of this site. I express more of my per­son­al inter­ests and obser­va­tions over at http://www.xastanford.org/, but there’s a lot of stuff I haven’t put there because that blog, like this one, is a blog with a pur­pose.

To give cred­it where cred­it is due, I got the cat­e­gories from First Assem­bly of God in Des Moines, Iowa. I don’t know if it’s orig­i­nal to them or not.

The 1982 Big Game Fiasco

Tomor­row’s Big Game will mark the 20th anniver­sary of The Play.

What is The Play? A moment of total humi­la­tion for Stan­ford at the hands of Cal. It’s pret­ty fun­ny, too.

Cal’s The Play memo­r­i­al page con­tains video clips of the horror–you should real­ly check it out!

How To Volunteer

prac­ti­cal things you can do to help us in our min­istry

Paula and I have been think­ing late­ly about how peo­ple can become involved with our min­istry at Stan­ford beyond pray­ing

and giv­ing. Here’s an ever-evolv­ing list of things you can do to help out:

  • Come and prayer­walk the cam­pus. Not famil­iar with prayer­walk­ing? Learn more about it!
  • Serve as a men­tor for a Stan­ford stu­dent. We’re espe­cial­ly eager to find Stan­ford alum­ni will­ing to devel­op a pur­pose­ful rela­tion­ship with a stu­dent.
  • Act as a host fam­i­ly for a stu­dent. Let them come do laun­dry at your house, feed them home cooked meals every once in a while, and take them shop­ping once a month or so.
  • Do their home­work for them (just kid­ding).
  • Pro­vide rides to church.
  • Come uti­lize a min­istry gift at our week­ly wor­ship ser­vice (Wednes­day nights at 8pm). We’ve already got a wor­ship leader and a speak­er, but tell us what you’re inter­est­ed in and we’ll see.
  • Vol­un­teer your exper­tise with cre­at­ing com­pelling dual-encod­ed HTML/AOL/text emails.
  • Vol­un­teer your web exper­tise and help us make our sites (xastanford.org and glenandpaula.com) bet­ter.
  • Help us fold and stamp our print newslet­ters once a month. We send out about 500, and our fin­gers sure get sore!
  • Send Glen use­ful links, arti­cles, and book rec­om­men­da­tions to assist in his ser­mon prepa­ra­tion.
  • Intro­duce us to Stan­ford alum­ni that you know (espe­cial­ly Chris­t­ian ones).
  • If you feel called, pur­sue appoint­ment as a Cam­pus Mis­sion­ary Aide through Chi Alpha Cam­pus Min­istries and work with us part-time on cam­pus.

If you’re inter­est­ed in any of these oppor­tu­ni­ties, let us know. We’ll inter­view you and talk to you about expec­ta­tions (both our expec­ta­tions of you and your expec­ta­tions of us).

How To Pray For Us

Pray that God would give us oppor­tu­ni­ties and the abil­i­ty to take advan­tage of them.

If you ever don’t know what to pray for us, pray for us like the ear­ly church prayed for the apos­tle Paul:

“Be sure to pray that God will make a way for us to spread his mes­sage and explain the mys­tery about Christ… Please pray that I will make the mes­sage as clear as pos­si­ble.” Colos­sians 4.3–4, CEV

In oth­er words, pray these two things:
1) That God will cre­ate oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to tell Stan­ford stu­dents about God’s love for them.
2) That God will enable us to take advan­tage of those oppor­tu­ni­ties to com­mu­ni­cate the gospel clear­ly and cred­i­bly.

And as always, you can look at our list of prayer requests.

Appreciating God’s Gift of Sex

Last night we talked about Appre­ci­at­ing God’s Gift of Sex, and I ref­er­enced a few dif­fer­ent resources and sta­tis­tics. Since this is a top­ic of such inter­est, I thought I should post some relat­ed resources in case you want to do some fur­ther reflec­tion.

Here’s the sound-byte ver­sion of my mes­sage:

Sex was God’s idea, and He’s giv­en it to us as gift. We need to under­stand how to receive His gift with respect and grat­i­tude. The first thing we need to know is that sex is fun­da­men­tal­ly rela­tion­al and not mere­ly recre­ation­al. The goal is inti­ma­cy in rela­tion­ship, and puri­ty paves the way to inti­ma­cy. Research shows that the best sex is monog­a­mous sex, and that if you’re promis­cu­ous, you’re actu­al­ly sac­ri­fic­ing qual­i­ty for quan­ti­ty. Main­tain­ing puri­ty in a pol­lut­ed world requires wis­dom and self-hon­esty, and God can restore our puri­ty when we have lost it.

Some of the pas­sages of scrip­ture that I ref­er­enced: 1st Corinthi­ans 6.12–20, Colos­sians 3.5, 1st Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 4.3–8, Matthew 5.27–30

, and Hebrews 13.4.

Here are some online resources you might want to check out:

First, some data:
* Cohab­i­tat­ing Does­n’t Lead to More Com­mit­ted Mar­riages, Study Finds
* Mis­sion­ary Cohab­i­ta­tion, Mis­sion­ary Cohab­i­ta­tion Part 2
* The Best Sex
* Lead­er­ship U Spe­cial Focus: Amer­i­ca’s Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion

Sec­ond, some com­mon-sense via arti­cles by J. Budziszews­ki:
* Going All The Way (this is the con­ver­sa­tion I quot­ed from last night)
* Sex At The Edge of Night (why sex out­side of mar­riage is not a good thing)
* What If We Love Each Oth­er? (why “being in love” isn’t suf­fi­cient jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for extra­mar­i­tal sex)
* Ordi­nary Lust (prac­ti­cal tips for win­ning the war with­in)
* Who’s On First? and The Moves (arti­cles about dat­ing)

I hope these resources help you as you reflect on sex and devel­op­ing a Chrisian per­spec­tive on it!