Author: Glen

I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas

in which I send a provoca­tive pic­ture to my friends in Mis­souri, and they respond with pho­tos of their own.

balcony_small.jpgPaula and I lived in Spring­field, MO for around five years, and so we were extreme­ly inter­est­ed to hear that they were hav­ing a snow­storm last week.

Paula got puck­ish and sug­gest­ed that I spread a lit­tle hol­i­day cheer, and so I sent my friends back in MO a pic­ture from our bal­cony along with this note:

I just saw a weath­er report for the Ozarks, and it filled me with such sor­row. How I miss the snow and ice!

small_bridge.jpgI took a pic­ture from my bal­cony a few min­utes ago with you in mind. Look at what Paula and I are forced to tol­er­ate day after day…

Mer­ry Christ­mas,

Glen

small_suv.jpgNat­u­ral­ly, this pro­voked a few spir­it­ed email respons­es.

What most sur­prised me was how many peo­ple respond­ed by send­ing back a dig­i­tal pho­to of their own. I’ve uploaded two of the best so you can con­trast them with my own provoca­tive shot.

I’d just like to wish all my friends in the state of Misery–I mean, Missouri–a very Mer­ry Christ­mas.

P.S. I’m wear­ing shorts and a trop­i­cal print shirt as I write this. I’d say I’m dream­ing of a white Christ­mas, but I don’t think a min­is­ter should tell white lies…

From Christmas Colors to Christmas Spirit

Stan­ford looks like Christ­mas, but what’s beneath the wrap­ping?

stanford_100.gif Christ­mas is upon us. This year, I’ve been struck by the Christ­mas col­ors that Stan­ford flaunts on its logos. I sup­pose that makes Stan­ford sort of Christ­massy.

But in a more impor­tant sense, Stanford’s not Christ­massy at all. Christ isn’t at the cen­ter, and cel­e­brat­ing Christ­mas with­out Christ is like being mar­ried with­out a spouse. Some­thing essen­tial is miss­ing.

God has called us here to help a school with Christ­mas col­ors devel­op true Christ­mas spir­it. Christ­mas is about Jesus being born—not just born in a manger 2,000 years ago, but being born in each of our hearts. Until every heart becomes a manger, we’ll be pro­claim­ing the Christ­mas sto­ry to the stu­dents at Stan­ford, whether it’s Decem­ber or July.

So if you’re ever on cam­pus and you hear some fool yelling “Mer­ry Christ­mas” at a wild­ly inap­pro­pri­ate time of year, be sure to tell me hi.

The Church Changes The World

The church too often gets a neg­a­tive rep on the col­lege cam­pus. Con­sid­er this: “Would any­one notice if our church closed down tomor­row?” a preach­er asked his con­gre­ga­tion. Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty researcher Robert D. Put­nam says yes, Chris­tian­i­ty and oth­er reli­gions do make a dif­fer­ence in Amer­i­can soci­ety. (source)

Some high­lights:
* half of all per­son­al phil­an­thropy is reli­gious in char­ac­ter, and half of all vol­un­teer­ing occurs in a reli­gious con­text.
* Church­go­ers are sub­stan­tial­ly more like­ly to be involved in sec­u­lar orga­ni­za­tions and to have deep­er infor­mal social con­nec­tions.
* In one sur­vey it was mem­ber­ship in reli­gious groups that was most close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with oth­er forms of civic involve­ment, like vot­ing, jury ser­vice, com­mu­ni­ty projects, talk­ing with neigh­bors, and giv­ing to char­i­ty.

Food for thought…

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!