Author: Glen

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!

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.