Author: Glen

World Leaders Trained on US Campuses

The world sends it’s lead­ers to Amer­i­ca for high­er education–here’s a list.

Here’s anoth­er rea­son the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty is such a strate­gic mis­sion field–there are about 14,000,000 uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents attend­ing col­lege in Amer­i­ca and almost 4% of them are from oth­er nations.

The most recent sta­tis­tics I could find show that over half of them are from Asia and 7% are from the Mid­dle East. Many of these nations for­bid any sort of mis­sion­ary work–but they send their future lead­ers here to be trained! In fact, the Nav­i­ga­tors claim that 7 of the top 10 coun­tries that send stu­dents to the U.S. are closed to typ­i­cal miss­sion­ary efforts.

That’s impres­sive enough, but I’ll up the ante even fur­ther. I’ve heard that every major world leader except Sad­dam Hus­sein has stud­ied in Amer­i­ca, but I was­n’t able to ver­i­fy that claim. What I can do is list of some of the world lead­ers trained on Unit­ed States cam­pus­es. Imag­ine the poten­tial world impact of reach­ing the future lead­ers of the world today (inci­den­tal­ly, I have a relat­ed essay focused on Amer­i­ca)! The polit­i­cal scene is so tumul­tuous that I won’t both­er pre­tend­ing this is cur­rent. Assume that they’re pos­si­bly out of pow­er unless you hear their names on the news.

Ehud Barak, For­mer Israeli Prime Min­is­ter, Stan­ford
Ale­jan­dro Tole­do, pres­i­dent of Peru, Stan­ford
Ben­jamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Min­is­ter, MIT
Benizar Bhut­to, first female Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan, Har­vard U
Car­los Sali­nas, pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co, Har­vard U
Lien Chan, Pre­mier of Tai­wan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go
Lee Teng Hui, Pres­i­dent of Tai­wan, Iowa State and Cor­nell
Saud Al-Fasial, For­eign Min­is­ter of Saudia Ara­bia, Prince­ton
Adul Al-Awa­di, Kuwaiti Min­is­ter of State, Har­vard
Kai-Wen Mao, Chi­nese Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion, UC Berke­ley and Carnegie-Mel­lon
Dhoukan Al-Hin­dawi, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter of Jor­dan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
Osama al-Baz, Chief Advi­sor to Pres­i­dent Mubarak in Egypt, Har­vard
Bir Birkram Sha Dev Biren­da, King of Nepal, Har­vard
Tahir al-Mas­ri, Prime Min­is­ter of Jor­dan, Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas
Yosuko Mat­suo­ka, For­eign Min­is­ter of Japan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon

You don’t have to imag­ine the poten­tial impact, min­istry to inter­na­tion­al stu­dents has already had world­wide ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Con­sid­er this telling exam­ple:

A num­ber of years ago, Hal Guf­fey (for­mer pres­i­dent of Inter­na­tion­al Stu­dents, Inc.) was speak­ing to a group of Chris­tians about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to befriend inter­na­tion­al stu­dents. At the end of his talk a young lady from anoth­er coun­try approached him. She told him that though her father had not become a Chris­t­ian as a result of his stu­dent days in the U.S., nonethe­less he had returned home with a favor­able impres­sion of Chris­tians. Many years lat­er he found him­self in a posi­tion to decide whether Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies should be allowed to remain in his coun­try. He decid­ed they should be allowed to stay. (source)

If you know of any oth­ers world lead­ers who should be on the list, let me know via the com­ment box!

Revisions To Core Areas

Some minor site updates: revi­sions for clar­i­ty and pre­ci­sion.

I’ve made some revi­sions to the core essays on this web­site: I think I’ve made them more read­able and more infor­ma­tive. The ones that have under­gone the most change are:

1) What Is Chi Alpha? (changed rad­i­cal­ly)
2) Com­mon Ques­tions About Sup­port­ing Mis­sion­ar­ies (added new ques­tions and intro)
3) Why Uni­ver­si­ties Need Mis­sion­ar­ies (added a clos­ing sec­tion)
4) How to Become a Part­ner In Min­istry (changed the word­ing for clar­i­ty)

Let me know if you find any­thing unclear or con­fus­ing!

Using Your Doubts To Stimulate Your Faith

Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine has a great essay on how your doubts can build your faith. Here’s an excerpt:

Doubt in our faith can lead to the gate­way of spir­i­tu­al growth. Doubt calls us into deep­er exam­i­na­tion. It draws us onto the path of undy­ing curios­i­ty for real Truth. As Fred­erich Buech­n­er said, “my doubts keep me mov­ing.”

…

Bri­an McLaren, in his soon-to-be-released book Adven­tures in Miss­ing the Point, writ­ten with Tony Cam­po­lo, address­es the ques­tion of allow­ing doubt to take hold. Some­one asked Bri­an, “Well, won’t an open­ness to doubt lead to spir­i­tu­al insta­bil­i­ty and inse­cu­ri­ty?” “Yes,” he respond­ed, “but couldn’t an unwill­ing­ness to ques­tion lead to false secu­ri­ty that could be even more dan­ger­ous?” Being coura­geous enough to ask “why” (or even “why not”) can lead to a deep­en­ing of faith. Jesus nev­er said to us, “I will nev­er leave you or for­sake you … well, I take that back: I’ll only leave you when you start to doubt and ques­tion. And when you doubt, I’m out­ta here.” I believe Jesus, when He said He would nev­er leave us or for­sake us, He meant He would stick by us at all times, even in the tough times, the times when we won­der if he is even lis­ten­ing at all. Doubt can be painful, but it has the poten­tial for an incred­i­ble spir­i­tu­al break­through.

How To Link To The NET Bible

Finally–how to link to a verse in the NET Bible using their perl script!

As I men­tioned ear­li­er, I’ve been going crazy try­ing to fig­ure out how to link direct­ly to a verse in the NET Bible.

Their web­mas­ter final­ly sent me an email explain­ing how to do it!

Here’s what you want­ed:
The link goes to John 3:16

http://www.bible.org/cgi-bin/netbible.pl?book=joh&chapter=3&verse=16

You’ll note that the way our perl script is for­mat­ted, no one can take a verse out of con­text. That is, when you want a spe­cif­ic verse from the NET Bible, you’ll get the para­graph in which that verse occurs. (Para­graph breaks are sort of arbi­trary, but at least it’s a help to the con­text.) The only oth­er thing you need is a list of our abbre­vi­a­tions. For­mat: they are all first three let­ters (gen, deu, 1ch, 2sa, mat)

With fol­low­ing excep­tions:
  Judges: jdg
  Phile­mon: phm
  Philip­pi­ans: phi.

Cool! This will be use­ful when­ev­er I have a lit­tle time to reply to some of Nota Bene and Integri­ty Blog’s thoughts.

I Knew The Air Was Bad, But…

In the Bay Area a 2.5 week old baby has inhaled more pol­lu­tants than the gov­ern­men­tal stan­dard for a life­time.

OK, I knew that the air in Cal­i­for­nia was sup­posed to be bad, but this is ridicu­lous! By the time a Bay Area babies are two and a half weeks old, they have inhaled more pol­lu­tion than the gov­ern­ment rec­om­mends over a life­time!

At least now I have some­thing to tell peo­ple who imply that I moved to Cal­i­for­nia just because of the mag­nif­i­cence of the scenerey and not due to the call of God… I’ll try to explain it between hack­ing coughs evi­denc­ing the onset of emphy­se­ma.

This Reminds Me of A Proverb…

On the ain’t it pathet­ic front: A Yemeni man divorced his first wife because she was loud and argu­men­ta­tive and picked a deaf and mute woman as his new bride, a local news­pa­per said on Mon­day. Read the whole sad sto­ry.

Read­ing that trig­gered thoughts of Proverbs 27.15–16: A nag­ging wife is as annoy­ing as the con­stant drip­ping on a rainy day. Try­ing to stop her com­plaints is like try­ing to stop the wind or hold some­thing with greased hands. (New Liv­ing Trans­la­tion, link)

For the inter­pre­ta­tion­al­ly chal­lenged, let me make it clear the the Bible is in no way endors­ing the man’s actions. This is a descrip­tive pas­sage of Scrip­ture (mak­ing an obser­va­tion about life as it is) and not a pre­scrip­tive pas­sage (giv­ing advice and com­mands to cre­ate life as it should be).

Pray for the new students!

Some spe­cif­ic prayers you can offer on behalf of stu­dents.

This Thurs­day the new stu­dents will begin arriv­ing at Stan­ford for ori­en­ta­tion week.

As the web­site says, 1,752 fresh­men and trans­fer stu­dents will take part in NSO 2002 from Thurs­day, Sept. 19 to Tues­day, Sept. 24.

Wow.

These stu­dents needs prayer, and lots of it.

1) That those far from Christ would encounter Him.
2) That those who serve Him would remain pure in the midst of temp­ta­tion.
3) That those who serve Him would be bold in their wit­ness to God’s over­whelm­ing grace.
4) That all stu­dents would select their friends wise­ly.

Great Weekend With Brian and Courtney Jacobson

Some old friends vis­it, and we get to vis­it a Stan­ford foot­ball game.

bj_courtney.jpg We just had a great vis­it from Bri­an and Court­ney Jacob­son, alum­ni from our last min­istry.

It’s inter­est­ing: we’ve lit­er­al­ly had guests in our house every oth­er week since we’ve arrived. Our rate of vis­i­ta­tion was much low­er in Spring­field, MO. Hmm­mm.…

Also, one of the high­lights of their vis­it was the Stan­ford-San Jose State foot­ball game. We won 63–26! Woohoo!

I enjoyed the game (espe­cial­ly since we stomped the oth­er team), but I was pret­ty dis­ap­point­ed about two things:

1) There were no stu­dents there. Class does­n’t start until Sep­tem­ber 23rd. It just seems lame that at quar­ter sys­tem schools the team has to play their first home game with­out stu­dent sup­port.

2) The sta­di­um was pret­ty rat­ty. I was shocked. I was expect­ing sharp, clean mark­ings on the field. I thought the screen would be high-tech and sharp. Wrong on both counts. It’s not like Stan­ford’s hurt­ing for money–so why the under­im­pres­sive sta­di­um?down­load few good men a dvd

Mormons Have Their Own Bikes?

In which I announce my dis­cov­ery that there are spe­cial Mor­mon-only bicy­cles!

A church recent­ly vol­un­teered to pur­chase bicy­cles for Paula and I. That’s a super-prac­ti­cal way to sup­port our min­istry since the cam­pus is so vast!

Any­way, the pas­tor asked me to research bicy­cles and let him know what we need­ed.

All the bicy­cle sites online seemed to be focus­ing on upper-end triathalon-type bikes, which just aren’t what we need. So I start­ed think­ing about it, and I real­ized that Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies prob­a­bly know more about the type of bicy­cles we’re look­ing at than any­one else.

So I decid­ed to do some research, and I was amused to find that there is a com­pa­ny that makes spe­cial­ty Mor­mon mis­sion­ary bicy­cles. In fact, that’s all that they sell–and no one except Mor­mon mis­sion­ar­ies can pur­chase them.

I love this quote: As for theft, long a prob­lem for mis­sion­ar­ies, Spence notes: “If you see a hip­pie guy with long hair rid­ing a Lia­hona down the street, and he does­n’t have a shirt and tie on, you know the bike’s not his.”

I knew that the Mor­mons have spe­cial Mor­mon under­gar­ments (which I under­stand Sen­a­tor Orrin Hatch wears), but I had no idea they had spe­cial bikes as well!

Another Example of America’s Universities Gone Insane

Schools go nuts try­ing to con­vince fresh­men that their morals are stu­pid.

In BMOC: Big Man­date On Cam­pus, World Mag­a­zine cov­ers the amaz­ing indoc­tri­na­tion that some schools put incom­ing fresh­men through. I would have writ­ten the arti­cle dif­fer­ent­ly, but it’s got a lot of good data.

They don’t men­tion Stan­ford, but I’m curi­ous to see what sort of expe­ri­ence the incom­ing fresh­men have in the next few weeks.

Here’s an excerpt: Oth­ers say out­right that such pre­sen­ta­tions are designed to shake the soil from new stu­dents’ small-town roots, dis­man­tle tra­di­tion­al val­ues they might have brought from home… “I real­ly want [fresh­men] to under­stand that they are no longer at home, they’re not in high school any­more, and a lot of the val­ues and morals they may have had from those expe­ri­ences may change here over the next four years,” said diver­si­ty issues coor­di­na­tor Mar­cus New­som of Wart­burg Col­lege in Waver­ly, Iowa.

Thanks to blogs4God for bring­ing this link to my atten­tion.