Author: Glen

Anybody have an extra fifteen million dollars lying around?

in which the Jew­ish cen­ter at Stan­ford lays down $15,000,000 smack­ers for a piece of prop­er­ty on cam­pus.

Today’s edi­tion of the Stan­ford Dai­ly had an inter­est­ing arti­cle about Hil­lel (the Jew­ish cam­pus min­istry at Stan­ford). [Hil­lel’s web­site]

They were able to lease some prop­er­ty on campus–for a whop­ping $15,000,000. Yes, that’s 15 times 10 to the 6th pow­er. Fif­teen mil­lion bucks. If I read the arti­cle cor­rect­ly, that was $5,000,000 for the lease and oth­er ini­tial costs, $5,000,000 for ren­o­va­tion, and $5,000,000 to cre­ate an endow­ment fund for the cen­ter. They’re still work­ing on the last $10,000,000.

Wow. I remem­ber when I was a stu­dent back in Louisiana, and we were able to pur­chase a house and a six unit apart­ment com­plex for less than 1% of that price (a rel­a­tive­ly pal­try $90,000).

Does­n’t look like we’ll be get­ting a Chi Alpha house at Stan­ford any­time in the near future–unless you’d like to charge $15,000,000 to your cred­it card!

Seven Things We’re Thankful For

Thanks­giv­ing is com­ing, and we’re get­ting thank­ful in advance.

This has been a great year for Paula and I–we’ve had a lot of fun changes to process! Think­ing back, here are sev­en things we’re thank­ful for:

1) We’re thank­ful for five won­der­ful years of min­istry to the stu­dents back in Spring­field, MO!

2) We’re thank­ful for a safe and fun move west (and espe­cial­ly for the friends we were able to vis­it with as we drove across Amer­i­ca).

3) We’re thank­ful that we now have the hon­or of rep­re­sent­ing Christ to the world’s future lead­ers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty!

4) We’re thank­ful for the many rela­tion­ships God has grant­ed us with Stan­ford stu­dents, both grad and under­grad (near­ly 25 so far). Pio­neer­ing is often much, much hard­er, and we’re grate­ful for how easy God has made it for us!

5) We’re thank­ful for liv­ing in such a won­der­ful apart­ment across the street from cam­pus. The best thing about it our prox­im­i­ty to stu­dents: Kevin, who is pur­su­ing his mas­ters in engi­neer­ing, can bike from his dorm to our apart­ment in about three min­utes!

6) We’re also thank­ful that God has pro­vid­ed us with what is quite pos­si­bly the most vibrant­ly yel­low car on the plan­et! We’ve got a few nick­names for this irre­press­ibly perky vehi­cle, includ­ing “The Curi­ous George Mobile” and “The Hap­py Car.”

7) And final­ly, we’re thank­ful for friends like you who sup­port us, pray for us, and show con­cern for us and for our min­istry. Thank you and thank God for you! We whole­heart­ed­ly echo the apos­tle Paul, “How can we pos­si­bly thank God enough for all the hap­pi­ness you have brought us?” (1st Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 3.9, CEV)

Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing!

Some things just don’t mix…

In a thor­ough­ly dis­gust­ing inci­dent, A cus­tomer in an inter­na­tion­al ham­burg­er chain out­let in west­ern Swe­den lost his appetite when he dis­cov­ered the restau­ran­t’s toi­let seats were being washed in its dish­wash­er along­side the kitchen uten­sils. (source)

Yuck. Some things just don’t mix.

Reminds me of James 3.10–12, And so bless­ing and curs­ing come pour­ing out of the same mouth. Sure­ly, my broth­ers and sis­ters, this is not right! Does a spring of water bub­ble out with both fresh water and bit­ter water? Can you pick olives from a fig tree or figs from a grapevine? No, and you can’t draw fresh water from a salty pool. (NLT)

Whew–What A Whirlwind

Just a quick update on our lives…

It’s been a while since I’ve post­ed any­thing on this site (although look over at the Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford site and you’ll real­ize that I’ve been quite active online).

Still, this is the site that bears my name and all…

Here are a few lit­tle tid­bits:

  • I vot­ed today. It was worth­while, but it real­ly wrecked my sched­ule.
  • I have a bone to pick with the Cal­i­for­nia polit­i­cal sys­tem: what’s up with statewide ref­er­en­dums? Don’t they defeat the pur­pose of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy?
  • And why do we use plu­ral­i­ty vot­ing to select pub­lic ser­vants? There are much bet­ter ways!
  • I broke the 10,000 mile mark­er on our car yes­ter­day. I’m get­ting quite famil­iar with Cal­i­for­ni­a’s inter­state sys­tem…
  • Also yes­ter­day I had a chance to meet with a real­ly neat pas­tor named Paul. He has eleven chil­dren. All by the same wife. Who still looks like a mod­el (his words). Wow.
  • While I was meet­ing with Paul, he gave me a free tick­et to a remark­able cave in Vol­cano, CA called Black Chasm. Creepy name, gor­geous cav­ern. I was the only per­son on the tour when I vis­it­ed the cave, so it was real­ly cool. If you’re ever near Vol­cano, you should real­ly try to vis­it the cave–it’s well worth the time and mon­ey.

Any­way, I’m still work­ing at rais­ing our full mis­sion­ary bud­get (hence all the miles on the car and the meet­ing with said pas­tor). Keep us in your prayers!

Inci­den­tal­ly, I am giv­ing about two hours a week of min­istry time on Stan­ford’s cam­pus. We’ll be hav­ing our sixth meet­ing of the year this Wednes­day (Paula will be speak­ing), and we’re expect­ing around 20 stu­dents to show up. Rough­ly 1/3 of them will be Sin­ga­pore­an grad­u­ate stu­dents.

Home, home on the web, where the bytes and the binaries play…

You might find this inter­est­ing: some of our very own have web­sites!

Jim­my Lim’s web­site is You ALWAYS Sing the First Line of a Blues Song Twice

Shaowei Lin’s web­site is Banana­World

Paula and I share a site: Glen & Paula Davis (although it’s more of a pro­fes­sion­al than a per­son­al site)

Any­one else out there with a home on the web?

Legal Rights Are Rooted In Divine Laws

Michael Novak has an inter­est­ing col­umn argu­ing that it’s in our nation­al self-inter­est to real­ize that there is an intrin­sic con­nec­tion between the wide­spread sense of reli­gious con­vic­tion in Amer­i­ca and the free­doms we enjoy.

Specif­i­cal­ly, Novak argues that Chris­tian­i­ty pro­vides a unique foun­da­tion for the con­cept of indi­vid­ual rights. Read all about it

(I should men­tion that it’s in the con­text of an anti-ACLU polemic).

Becoming Wise In College

I just ran across a very inter­est­ing arti­cle, How To Become Edu­cat­ed Despite Going to Col­lege (yet anoth­er entry from the engag­ing J. Budziszews­ki

soul assas­sin free down­load

).

In this dia­log, the fic­tion­al Pro­fes­sor Theophilus rec­om­mends the very real Stu­dent Self-Reliance Project from the Inter­col­le­giate Stud­ies Insti­tute (read a some­what hos­tile eval­u­a­tion of ISI’s aims).

They have some absolute­ly extra­or­di­nary guides to books and schol­ars that you should acquaint your­self with–and these are books and schol­ars who don’t often make it onto your class­room read­ing lists.

Judge With Right Judgment

J. Budziszews­ki has a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle over at Bound­less about what it means to “not judge.”

“Zack, where Jesus instructs his dis­ci­ples ‘Judge not,’ what do you think He means?”

“What is there not to get?”

“You did­n’t answer my ques­tion.”

“It means don’t — judge. Don’t make judg­ments. Don’t sit in judg­ment. Stop judg­ing peo­ple.”

I laughed. “It’s a good thing you don’t write dic­tio­nar­ies. ‘Judg­ing’ means sev­er­al dif­fer­ent things. Would­n’t it be good to know which one Jesus was talk­ing about?”

“He did­n’t say, so He must have meant all of them.”

“In that case, you’re guilty.”

“But I told my friends not to judge. I con­demned their judg­men­tal­ism.”

“Did­n’t you judge that Anton did­n’t mean what he adver­tised? Did­n’t you judge that Cleo was­n’t try­ing to be sleazy?”

“But I was­n’t, like, sit­ting in judg­ment.”

“Sure you were. You judged them ‘inno­cent.’ ”

does­n’t that just make you want to read it all?

Stanford Is The Fourth-Coolest University In America

Hey–how come we’re only fourth?

Accord­ing to Sev­en­teen mag­a­zine, Stan­ford is the fourth-coolest cam­pus in Amer­i­ca. What I want to know is–how in the world did we fail to attain the num­ber one spot?

In any event, the Stan­ford Dai­ly has a some­what tounge-in-cheek (yet appre­cia­tive) response.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, I was unable to find the orig­i­nal arti­cle online. Here’s the Stan­ford Dai­ly’s sum­ma­ry:

“Stan­ford rev­els in its rep as the best of the West, and even more impor­tant — what oth­er school can boast its own cam­pus mall!” the arti­cle said. “Stress relief is big on this cam­pus of noto­ri­ous over­achiev­ers: Stu­dents are aggres­sive­ly casu­al, the most pop­u­lar for-cred­it sport is wind­surf­ing, and almost 20 per­cent of those who go on to grad­u­ate drop out for a semes­ter or two along the way (part of a for­mal pol­i­cy called ‘stop-out’).”

The mag­a­zine described the cam­pus as look­ing like an upscale taque­ría, and praised the warm weath­er, the sub­ur­ban set­ting that “feels secure” and the prox­im­i­ty to San Fran­cis­co.

The mag­a­zine also includ­ed a pic­ture of biki­ni-clad bik­ers, not­ing “own­ing a bike is prac­ti­cal­ly required.”

The Uni­ver­si­ty was even not­ed for the qual­i­ty of boys on cam­pus. “As for boys — ever see the hunks snapped in the tabloids with Chelsea Clin­ton before she grad­u­at­ed from here? Hope she left some for the rest of us. Boy-girl ratio: 48:52.”

One Hectic Week: 1700 Miles in 7 Days

Glen runs all over cre­ation!

Glen answering students' questions at Rock Your Campus

On a per­son­al note, last week was one of the most hec­tic I’ve had in a while. In the last sev­en days I’ve put 1700 miles on my car!

It start­ed off with a trip up to Dun­smuir, CA to meet with a pas­tors’ gath­er­ing, and it was con­stant motion from then on.

The week­end did­n’t pro­vide a sin­gle bit of respite–if any­thing, the pace picked up! Sat­ur­day morn­ing I taught a work­shop in Davis, and then I preached in Burlingame Sat­ur­day night, in San Bruno Sun­day morn­ing, and attend­ed a mis­sions ban­quet in San Jose Sun­day evening.

Glen and Paula with some Stanford students at Rock Your Campus

Yikes!

By the way, the top pic­ture is of me con­duct­ing the work­shop at Rock Your Cam­pus which I titled “Rea­son­able Answers to Hon­est Ques­tions” and I helped stu­dents process top­ics rang­ing from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and just-war the­o­ry to the levit­i­cal code and the exis­tence of suf­fer­ing. It was fun!

The bot­tom pic­ture is Paula and I with some of the Stan­ford stu­dents we brought to this min­istry train­ing event.