Author: Glen

Chi Alpha Favorably Profiled In The Stanford Daily

Halls of Learning - Stanford QuadThe Stan­ford Dai­ly pub­lished an arti­cle titled Tes­ti­monies On Stan­ford Faith about peo­ple in our min­istry (Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship).

The web­site the arti­cle focus­es on is testimonies.stanford.edu.

Read­ing this arti­cle was very encour­ag­ing to me because I always fear that Chi Alpha will wind up in the Dai­ly because of some bone­head­ed thing I said in a ser­mon… this was a much bet­ter expe­ri­ence. 😉

Group Text Messaging

7001 New Messages?
For a few years, Face­book was one of the best ways to con­nect with col­lege stu­dents. Not any more. It’s still use­ful, but not near­ly as use­ful as it used to be. The nov­el­ty has worn off and so stu­dents aren’t as respon­sive on it.

So like Steve Lutz I’ve been think­ing about text mes­sag­ing late­ly. My younger stu­dents (frosh and sopho­mores) seem to be much more like­ly to have unlim­it­ed tex­ting plans than my upper­class­men and grad stu­dents.

In the past I’ve just texted peo­ple indi­vid­u­al­ly, but now I’m exper­i­ment­ing with group text mes­sag­ing ser­vices.

I con­sid­ered using Twit­ter and telling peo­ple to sub­scribe via text. A few prob­lems:
a) Col­lege stu­dents don’t use twit­ter.
b) It cen­tral­izes the com­mu­ni­ca­tion too much.
c) I don’t feel con­fi­dent in twit­ter’s reli­a­bil­i­ty.
d) The verb “tweet”.

So I’ve been look­ing into oth­er ser­vices. So far I’m drawn to txtBlaster. The thing I like best is that I can dep­u­tize as many of the sub­scribers as I want and allow them to text the entire group, so I can make this a stu­dent-dri­ven thing. It’s a free (ad-sup­port­ed) ser­vice. They claim to screen their ads care­ful­ly and to tar­get them based on the type of group you set up. So far so good on that front.

Do you have
a) any thoughts on using text mes­sag­ing effec­tive­ly as a min­istry tool?
b) anoth­er ser­vice to rec­om­mend (such as TextMarks or txtSig­nal or even the maligned Twit­ter)?

P.S. If you want to see txtBlaster in action, feel free to text xas­tan­ford to 25278. I’ll be play­ing around with it for the next few days.

Every Ph.D. Has A Little Crazy Inside

Straight Jacket GuyPh.D. stands for doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy. Doc­tor is from the Latin doc­tor which means ‘teacher’. Phi­los­o­phy is from the Greek (the verb phileo ‘I love’ plus the noun sophia ‘wis­dom’). From an ety­mo­log­i­cal stand­point, a doc­tor of phi­los­o­phy is one who teach­es oth­ers to love wis­dom.

But ety­mol­o­gy is often a mis­lead­ing guide to real­i­ty. Just ask a but­ter­fly or a pineap­ple.

There’s an old joke that Ph.D. stands for per­ma­nent head dam­age. Humor usu­al­ly has more truth buried inside it than ety­mol­o­gy. I am con­vinced that most Ph.D.s have a lit­tle crazy in them.

You see, to earn a Ph.D. one must con­vince not only one­self but also a com­mit­tee that you are one of the world’s lead­ing experts about one nar­row slice of real­i­ty. Ide­al­ly, you con­vince the com­mit­tee that you know more about this very nar­row prob­lem than any­one else who has ever lived.

And here’s where the crazy comes in: this idea that you are unique­ly qual­i­fied to hold a cer­tain opin­ion in a very eso­teric area becomes a habit which creeps into oth­er areas of your life. You con­vince your­self that you are right and the world is wrong about some­thing quite triv­ial. Every­one does this to a degree, but there is one impor­tant dif­fer­ence: the Ph.D. believes some­thing absolute­ly crazy.

At this point you are think­ing to your­self, “Glen, I know sev­er­al Ph.D. hold­ers. They’re nice, nor­mal peo­ple.”

Yes. They are. They are also insane about some­thing unex­pect­ed. They have learned through expe­ri­ence to keep their crazi­ness well-masked. You have to dig down deep.

Talk with your friend long enough and you will like­ly dis­cov­er that they raise ham­sters for food. Or that they have a plan for which stores to loot in which order after the next major nat­ur­al dis­as­ter, and actu­al­ly have a shop­ping list secret­ed about their per­son at all times for just such an even­tu­al­i­ty. Or that they believe in flood­ing preschools with mar­i­jua­na smoke to keep the kids calm. Or that they keep a bazooka in the trunk of their car.

And that’s just the way it is. Some things come with acces­sories — Bar­bie dolls are one and Ph.D.s are anoth­er. You just have to learn to live with it. This is why I have a much high­er tol­er­ance for eccen­tric beliefs in out­side speak­ers for my min­istry if they have a doc­tor­ate. I expect the crazy. I actu­al­ly wel­come the crazy — it keeps things inter­est­ing.

So if you are my friend and are in pur­suit of a Ph.D., know that I love you and that I won’t be dis­tressed when you turn crazy in a few years.

And if you already have your Ph.D., just remem­ber that I know. Some­where deep in the recess­es of your brain is an idea. I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what it’s about. But I know it is so insane that your fam­i­ly has tried to slip phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals into your meals on more than one occa­sion, which is why you only eat foods that are translu­cent. Which is crazy.

The Deceptiveness of Sin — Deeper Than You Thought

Justice Preveils?Simon M. Lahama, Adam L. Alterb, and Geof­frey P. Good­winc report a sur­pris­ing result in “Easy on the mind, easy on the wrong­do­er: Dis­crepant­ly flu­ent vio­la­tions are deemed less moral­ly wrong” Cog­ni­tion, Vol­ume 112, Issue 3, Sep­tem­ber 2009, pages 462–466.

From the paper:

Par­tic­i­pants com­plet­ed a ques­tion­naire in which they read six vignettes describ­ing var­i­ous moral vio­la­tions: ‘Punch’ (one man punch­es anoth­er in a bar), ‘Flag’ (teacher burns Aus­tralian flag in class), ‘Dog’ (fam­i­ly eats its dead dog), ‘Deface’ (man defaces a memo­r­i­al), ‘Hitler’ (man taunts Jew­ish sports fans with Hitler imi­ta­tion), ‘Kiss’ (broth­er and sis­ter kiss pas­sion­ate­ly).

Each of the par­tic­i­pants read three of the sto­ries in an easy-to-read for­mat and the oth­er three in a hard­er-to-read for­mat.

In the words of the authors:

…dis­crepant per­cep­tu­al flu­en­cy decreased per­cep­tions of wrong­ness com­pared to dis­crepant dis­flu­en­cy. Fur­ther, and con­sis­tent with effects of dis­crepant flu­en­cy on truth judg­ments (Hansen et al., 2008), it seems that this dif­fer­ence is account­ed for by flu­ent pro­cess­ing decreas­ing, rather than dis­flu­ent pro­cess­ing increas­ing, per­cep­tions of wrong­ness.

In nor­mal Eng­lish: peo­ple thought that immoral choic­es were less seri­ous when they were easy to read about. In the­o­log­i­cal terms, they excused sin because of how good it looked (or more pre­cise­ly based upon how easy it was to under­stand). Appar­ent­ly clean­li­ness is next to god­li­ness (or at least leg­i­bil­i­ty is next to liv­ing right).

So the next time you have some­thing to con­fess, be sure to print it on nice paper and use a laser print­er. It just might give you the edge you need.

The heart is deceit­ful above all things and beyond cure. Who can under­stand it? (Jer 17:9)

Where Should Prospective Ministers Go To College?

question markC. Michael Pat­ton over at Parch­ment and Pen (one of my favorite blogs), recent­ly offered some thoughts on enter­ing min­istry. He made a state­ment that has always seemed like com­mon sense to me, but that I know many peo­ple find objec­tion­able:

If pos­si­ble, go to a sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty for under­grad and an Evan­gel­i­cal sem­i­nary for your mas­ters. You need expo­sure to both.

I’ve long been mys­ti­fied that as a mat­ter of course we iso­late prospec­tive min­is­ters from their cul­ture for 4 years (more if they go to sem­i­nary after­wards). Sure­ly there’s a case to be made for tak­ing our prospec­tive young min­is­ters and forc­ing them to solid­i­fy their own faith and also min­is­ter to their peers in a sec­u­lar set­ting. Let them prove that they can be both faith­ful and fruit­ful before they invest time and mon­ey in edu­ca­tion that is use­less out­side of min­istry.

I’m sure a Bible col­lege is the ide­al route for some peo­ple, but it seems to me that we should high­light sec­u­lar schools as a viable option. It’s cer­tain­ly borne good fruit for the Pen­te­costal move­ment and the impact in the larg­er evan­gel­i­cal world is even more impres­sive (Tim Keller, any­one?).

I sup­pose the most com­mon objec­tion is that sec­u­lar col­leges are harm­ful to faith, but that’s just not true. And even if it was, I don’t think it would mat­ter that much. If some­one who is plan­ning to enter min­istry can’t han­dle Intro to Soci­ol­o­gy or the cam­pus beer­fest, then I real­ly don’t want them preach­ing the gospel. They’re a time bomb wait­ing to explode and take oth­ers with them.

But some­one who can thrive spir­i­tu­al­ly at a sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty and make a dif­fer­ence for Christ on cam­pus… give that per­son a robust the­o­log­i­cal edu­ca­tion and then turn them loose in the pul­pit!

Evaluating Sermons

I eval­u­ate a lot of ser­mons. I don’t just mean that I lis­ten to ser­mons and decide whether I like them or not — every­one who goes to church does that. I mean that I pro­fes­sion­al­ly eval­u­ate ser­mons and give for­mal feed­back to the preach­er. Some I eval­u­ate in my role as a min­istry train­er and oth­ers I eval­u­ate in my role on a preach­ing team (before one of us preach­es we preach the ser­mon to each oth­er and get feed­back on how to strength­en it).

So I’ve thought about this a lot. Most ser­mon eval­u­a­tion forms you find on the inter­net and at sem­i­nar­ies are not very help­ful because they mea­sure too many things.

These were the top hits when I googled for “ser­mon eval­u­a­tion forms”
Calvin Sem­i­nary’s (30 ques­tions)
The Ortho­dox Pres­by­ter­ian Church’s Form for Min­istry Interns (41 ques­tions)
Reformed Bap­tist Sem­i­nary’s (35 ques­tions).

Do all the things these long forms ask about mat­ter? A lit­tle. But using that to eval­u­ate a ser­mon is like eval­u­at­ing your church’s state­ment of faith based on its gram­mar. It sort of miss­es the point. Of course you want a state­ment of faith that is gram­mat­i­cal, but if its con­tent is sketchy then every moment spent improv­ing its gram­mar is wast­ed time. Sin­ful­ly wast­ed time.

In the same way, focus­ing on the super­fi­cials of a ser­mon when the under­ly­ing con­tent is bogus is ridicu­lous. I real­ize that’s not the intent of these forms, but that is what they encour­age.

So this is the form I use:

Point­ers (what should I change?)

Keep­ers (what was so good I should be sure not to take it out)?

That’s it — two ques­tions. I some­times do it on a 3x5 index card. Keep­ers on the front, point­ers on the back (a tip I got from Earl Creps).

And this is the grid I’m putting it through:
1) Was Christ pro­claimed clear­ly?
2) Was the ser­mon Bib­li­cal­ly sound?
3) Was it inter­est­ing?
4) Did it ask me to do some­thing appro­pri­ate in response?

I try to nev­er give them more than three point­ers and three keep­ers, and I try to be as spe­cif­ic as pos­si­ble.

There are lots of oth­er aspects of a ser­mon I could nit­pick, but if the per­son is preach­ing an inter­est­ing, Bib­li­cal­ly sound ser­mon that exalts Christ and chal­lenges me to obey Him then they’re doing fab­u­lous. Why would I nit­pick them at that point? To demor­al­ize them? To clone my habits (“at this point I would have told a joke — you should tell a joke”)?

Any­way, this post prob­a­bly was­n’t rel­e­vant to most of you. But for those of you who have to eval­u­ate preach­ing on a reg­u­lar basis, I hope I’ve giv­en you some food for thought.

And to those in my min­istry, now you know what I’m try­ing to do when I pre­pare a ser­mon: pro­claim the good news of Jesus in a way that is faith­ful to the Bib­li­cal text I’m work­ing with in an inter­est­ing way that chal­lenges you to whole­heart­ed­ly respond. From time to time, be sure to let me know how I’m doing. 🙂

Jacob Goldman rocks

I recent­ly updat­ed the Rec­om­mend­ed Read­ing Google Shared Items plu­g­in for Word­Press to the lat­est ver­sion and it stopped work­ing.

I con­tact­ed Jacob Gold­man, the plu­g­in devel­op­er, who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me fix the prob­lem. The issue was all on my end, and he helped me straight­en it out quick­ly.

The man deserves a shout-out.

To Jacob: con­sid­er your­self shout­ed out. Or shout out­ed. Or some­thing.

To the rest of the world: if you need a web devel­op­er check out the com­pa­ny he works for C. Mur­ray Con­sult­ing. I can attest that they’ve got excel­lent cus­tomer-ser­vice skills and know what they’re doing.

Roku Rocks

Roku Box BackendFor Paula’s birth­day I bought her a lit­tle device called the Roku Dig­i­tal Video Play­er. Basi­cal­ly, it takes Net­flix stream­ing videos and dis­plays them on your tele­vi­sion.

This is very good for us since we don’t have any tele­vi­sion ser­vice. When we moved into our new place a year ago we decid­ed that our cable bill was 90% waste, so we can­celled it and we watch tele­vi­sion series on DVD through Net­flix or on the com­put­er now.

So I bought this Roku device which takes the 12,000 or so stream­ing videos avail­able on Net­flix (and the 40,000 or so avail­able on Ama­zon as pay-per-view) and lets you watch them on your nor­mal tele­vi­sion.

The Roku box is amaz­ing. It only does one thing and it does it well. The images are crisp, the audio is clear, and the inter­face is very easy to use. In my opin­ion, the videos dis­play much bet­ter than they ever did on my lap­top or our desk­top com­put­er.

If you use Net­flix and ever watch stream­ing videos, you should seri­ous­ly con­sid­er the Roku. It rocks.

And it costs less than a few months of cable — even when you com­bine it with your month­ly Net­flix bill.

Tell Us How You Really Feel, Don…

I was just read­ing an essay by D. A. Car­son, “Wor­ship Under The Word”.

Car­son is, in my esti­ma­tion, one of the great­est bib­li­cal schol­ars in the world today. And I don’t just say that because he loves uni­ver­si­ty min­istry. 🙂 Approx­i­mate­ly one gazil­lion (round­ing up from three hun­dred and forty-four) of his writ­ings are avail­able for free online. They’re worth read­ing. Or at least sav­ing to your hard dri­ve so you can find them when you search your com­put­er using Google Desk­top…

Any­way, in foot­note 39 on page 47 of this essay, he makes a rather point­ed obser­va­tion. I have bold­ed my favorite line.

Per­haps this is the place to reflect on the fact that many con­tem­po­rary “worship lead­er­s” have train­ing in music but none in Bible, the­ol­o­gy, his­to­ry, or the like. When pressed as to the cri­te­ria by which they choose their music, many of these lead­ers final­ly admit that their cri­te­ria oscil­late between per­son­al pref­er­ence and keep­ing the con­gre­ga­tion rea­son­ably happy—scarcely the most pro­found cri­te­ria in the world. They give lit­tle or no thought to cov­er­ing the great themes of Scrip­ture, or the great events of Scrip­ture, or the range of per­son­al response to God found in the Psalms (as opposed to cov­er­ing the nar­row themes of being upbeat and in the midst of “worship”), or the nature of bib­li­cal locu­tions (in one cho­rus the con­gre­ga­tion man­ages to sing “holy” thir­ty-six times, while three are enough for Isa­iah and John of the Apoc­a­lypse), or the cen­tral his­tor­i­cal tra­di­tions of the church, or any­thing else of weight. If such lead­ers oper­ate on their own with lit­tle guid­ance or train­ing or input from senior pas­tors, the sit­u­a­tion com­mon­ly degen­er­ates from the painful to the piti­ful.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

I would “heh” more, but appar­ent­ly three times is enough. 🙂

Christianity, China, and College Students

I just read an inter­est­ing arti­cle

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about Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na. The empha­sis of the piece is on the dom­i­nance of Reformed the­ol­o­gy in Chi­nese Chris­tian­i­ty, but I was struck by the com­ments on the role of uni­ver­si­ties in the revival.

And in Chi­na, the place where Calvin­ism is spread­ing fastest is the elite uni­ver­si­ties, fuelled by prodi­gies of learn­ing and trans­la­tion. Wang Xiaochao, a philoso­pher at one of the Bei­jing uni­ver­si­ties, has trans­lat­ed the two major works of St Augus­tine, the Con­fes­sions and the City of God, into Chi­nese direct­ly from Latin. Grad­u­al­ly all the major works of the first cen­turies of the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion are being trans­lat­ed direct­ly from the orig­i­nal lan­guages into Chi­nese.

All of this is hap­pen­ing out­side the con­trol of the offi­cial body which is sup­posed to mon­i­tor and super­vise the church­es in Chi­na. Instead, it is the phi­los­o­phy depart­ments at the uni­ver­si­ties, or the lan­guage depart­ments and the depart­ments of lit­er­a­ture and west­ern civil­i­sa­tion that are the chan­nel.

“The [offi­cial­ly recog­nised] church­es are not hap­py with uni­ver­si­ties, because it is not with­in their con­trol. And their sem­i­nar­ies are not at the intel­lec­tu­al lev­el of the uni­ver­si­ties,” says Dr Tan. “Chi­nese Chris­tian­i­ty using Chi­nese to do Chris­t­ian think­ing has become a very inter­est­ing move­ment.”

And

If [May Tan] goes to preach at an offi­cial church, she says, “There will be per­haps 1000 peo­ple and 95% of them are over 65. So it’s a sun­set church. But if I went to house church – there would be 1000 peo­ple; per­haps 20 of them in their 50s, and all the rest are young­sters. The old­er ones will all be pro­fes­sors at the uni­ver­si­ties. So these are the future of the church­es. They have reg­is­tered pas­tors, and no access to sem­i­nar­ies: But they have youth, and future, and mon­ey.”

And lat­er on

“Very soon”, said Dr Tan, “Chris­tians will become the major­i­ty of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents… that could hap­pen.”

May it come to pass.matrix the divx down­load