George Wood — From Great To Awesome

I was very sur­prised to see this

in my news feed when I logged onto Face­book this morn­ing.

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Dr. Wood, you are offi­cial­ly awe­some. I pre­vi­ous­ly sus­pect­ed that you might be, but now I know with cer­tain­ty.

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Great Bumper Sticker

Liv­ing the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area, I’ve seen just about every anti-Bush bumper stick­er you can imag­ine. It’s rare that I see a fresh one.

Today while dri­ving around I saw one that actu­al­ly made me chuck­le.

I want a pres­i­dent who can talk good­er.

Regard­less of your polit­i­cal lean­ings, that’s fun­ny.free girl next door the

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Selecting Good Workers

I just watched an excel­lent lec­ture by Mal­colm Glad­well on the chal­lenges of hir­ing wise­ly

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.

Very stim­u­lat­ing.

The same thing hap­pens in min­istry at both the cler­gy and the lay lev­el. We over-val­ue artic­u­late extraverts and are dis­mis­sive of those who don’t fit the mold.

But I know sev­er­al out­stand­ing min­is­ters who break every mold you can imag­ine. Every­one who knows lots of min­is­ters does. And yet some­how we don’t inter­nal­ize this real-world feed­back. Like Samuel and David’s rel­a­tives, we mea­sure the wrong things.

Any­way, all that to say that Glad­well’s talk is help­ful at illus­trat­ing the extent to which we hire fool­ish­ly in our cul­ture.

P.S. Extro­vert vs Extravert. Either spelling is accept­able. I used “extravert” because I’ve noticed that’s the spelling most psy­chol­o­gists seem to use.

1,825 miles and 841 pages later…

Yes­ter­day I flew 1,825 miles and read 841 pages. Yikes.

The last few weeks have been a blur. On Father’s Day I watched an astound­ing group of grad­u­ates cel­e­brate as they received their degrees from Stan­ford. As I sat in the hot sum­mer sun lis­ten­ing to Oprah Win­frey pon­tif­i­cate at com­mence­ment

, I thought about their lives and what God might do through them. I also got sun­burn.

The day after grad­u­a­tion I hopped on a plane to Spring­field, MO to teach at Chi Alpha’s Reach The U insti­tute (that trip wound up being 2,278 miles due to weird rout­ing — I did­n’t think to keep track of the pages I read, but I will tell you that Augus­tine of Hip­po

is a dense read). Train­ing a new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers is fun, but exhaust­ing. On the two worst days I taught 6 hours! I’m amazed I did­n’t lose my voice.

One cool thing — I shared a bath­room with fel­low instruc­tor Pete Bul­lette, some­one I had trained at this same con­fer­ence years ago. He now leads a min­istry of 250 stu­dents at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia down­load the invin­ci­ble iron man dvd . While I don’t think I can take cred­it for what he’s done there, I was hap­py that he mocked me for some of my actions those many years ago — it means I made an impres­sion. 🙂 Who knows what the new min­is­ters I trained over the last few weeks will go on to accom­plish?

All that to say, I have one of the best jobs in the world. I get to help the amaz­ing stu­dents at Stan­ford come to and grow in faith, and I get to train min­is­ters who will mul­ti­ply this on cam­pus­es around the world.

By the way, you can read about one of the afore­men­tioned grads in “The Rhodes Schol­ar” down­load ocean s thir­teen online (the arti­cle was pub­lished on Father’s Day, in case you’re won­der­ing about the huge father­ly empha­sis).down­load lars and the real girl movie

Earth Day, Jesus, and Christian Environmentalism

I’m in Spring­field, MO at a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence where I’ve taught approx­i­mate­ly 12 hours in the last two days.

Yes, that’s as gru­el­ing as it sounds. It’s been fun, though.

Any­way, while here I got to hang with Dar­rin Rodgers

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, an old sem­i­nary bud­dy who is now a his­to­ri­an. He told me some­thing that blew my mind: the founder of Earth Day (the first Earth Day, I should say — there are two) is a Pen­te­costal Chris­t­ian. His name is John McConnell. If you are a paci­fist you will find his sto­ry espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing — read some reviews of his biog­ra­phy.

I’m encour­aged that a fol­low­er of Jesus was at the fore­front of the ear­ly envi­ron­men­tal move­ment. It is easy to grow dis­ap­point­ed in Chris­tian­i­ty if you focus on the inac­tiv­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion­al church and for­get that the faith, ulti­mate­ly, is expressed in indi­vid­ual lives. But when you remem­ber that the church’s busi­ness is to not to engage in activism itself but rather to release Chris­tians to serve God’s pur­pos­es in the world, you can actu­al­ly become quite gid­dy. We still have a long way to go, but we’re doing far bet­ter than the world or the church seems to think. When I peek deep into a pos­i­tive sit­u­a­tion I often dis­cov­er a Jesus-fol­low­er (or even a few) at the heart of it.

So if you’re a fan of Earth Day (the orig­i­nal), then remem­ber to thank God for it. And keep your eyes open — God is at work in unex­pect­ed places.

Unexpected Perspective on Worship

I’ve been prepar­ing to teach some ses­sions at Reach The U (a con­fer­ence for new cam­pus min­is­ters) and I just read one of the most unex­pect­ed lit­tle para­graphs while dig­ging through some research:

Across the Unit­ed States, Asian Amer­i­can groups are pio­neer­ing a revival of a cap­pel­la singing. On West Coast col­lege cam­pus­es, Kore­an Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals are known for their cut­ting-edge praise music. Stu­dents of oth­er eth­nic­i­ties com­mon­ly note, “Oh, the Kore­ans have a great wor­ship team.” Indeed they do. Although Asian Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­s’ praise is large­ly sim­i­lar to oth­er evan­gel­i­cals, it is often more cut­ting edge. They use the lat­est praise music com­ing out of the Unit­ed King­dom as well as the Unit­ed States—before the oth­er cam­pus min­istries do the same. They tend to use more mod­ern musi­cal instru­ments like elec­tric pianos, bass, and gui­tar than some of the oth­er tra­di­tion­al­ly white-dom­i­nant cam­pus min­istries.

Source: Rebec­ca Kim, “Asian Amer­i­cans for Jesus: Chang­ing the Face of Cam­pus Evan­gel­i­cal­ism down­load drag­on­heart divx

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This isn’t a thought I’ve had before. Inter­est­ing.west side sto­ry online

Evil Raccoons and Mendacious Students

wounded-whitneyA few weeks ago, Whit­ney showed up to Chi Alpha’s week­ly meet­ing with a large ban­dage wrapped around her hand. I asked her what had hap­pened, and she told me of a fero­cious rac­coon attack while walk­ing along Lake Lagu­ni­ta.

This was not sur­pris­ing to me. Rac­coons are evil. All right-think­ing peo­ple know this in their mar­row.

Sure, they look cute with their lit­tle paws and their masked face, but even Satan seems to be a beau­ti­ful angel

. No — rac­coons are as evil as a sub­hu­man mam­mal can be. And giv­en that rac­coons roam freely

across cam­pus, some­thing like this was inevitable.

Real­iz­ing that I was sit­ting on enter­tain­ment gold, I asked Whit­ney to keep silent until the announce­ment time, when I would inter­view her and allow her to regale the entire group with her sto­ry.

After wor­ship, I called her to the front and asked her what had hap­pened. As she held her ban­daged hand high and said, “I was bit­ten by a rac­coon,” Desir­ae cried out, “I knew those things were dan­ger­ous!” A hush fell over the room as she began to tell her tale.

She and her room­mate had been walk­ing around Lake Lag when Whit­ney noticed a rac­coon mov­ing about in the bush­es. She turned to her room­mate to point it out and saw a flur­ry of motion out of the cor­ner of her eye. The next thing she knew, she was being lunged at by an appar­ent­ly car­niv­o­rous rac­coon. She fend­ed it off, suf­fer­ing a griev­ous hand wound in the process.

Her room­mate, a pre-med stu­dent, gave her some quick treat­ment and then she head­ed over to Vaden health cen­ter for fur­ther med­ica­tion.

At this point, you could have heard a pin drop in the Chi Alpha meet­ing. Every stu­dent there was think­ing of the many times they had seen rac­coons ram­bling across cam­pus, look­ing at Whit­ney’s ban­daged hand, and think­ing, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

At least until Whit­ney burst out laugh­ing and said, “And you believe me?”

I said, “Bwah?”

Whit­ney said, “I was mak­ing that up. I tripped and hurt my hand. My room­mate said that was too bor­ing and that I should make up a bet­ter sto­ry. So far every­one I’ve told has believed me.”

The room erupt­ed in laugh­ter.

For those keep­ing score:
Whit­ney: 1
Glen: 0
Rac­coons: neg­a­tive infin­i­ty

And that’s why peo­ple should always come to Chi Alpha in per­son rather than just watch­ing our meet­ings online — you nev­er know what’s going to hap­pen when the cam­er­a’s not run­ning.

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Feeling Tired

I’m quite tired.

We had our final Chi Alpha wor­ship meet­ing of the quar­ter last night. It went awe­some. Wor­ship was phe­nom­e­nal, I think the mes­sage was well-received, and we got to hang out and talk for a while after­wards. Plus we actu­al­ly end­ed the year with more num­bers than we began the year with. That’s rare in cam­pus min­istry. If you aver­age the first three weeks of the year and mul­ti­ply by about 80%, that’s a more typ­i­cal num­ber to end with. The growth has been great — but a larg­er min­istry means more peo­ple to meet with, which means less flex­i­bil­i­ty in my sched­ule.

So I’m tired from the aca­d­e­m­ic year.

I’ve also been teach­ing an exten­sion class for AGTS in Sacra­men­to every Thurs­day this month. Tonight is the final course. It’s a 2 hour dri­ve there, a four hour class, and then a two hour dri­ve back. It’s been very fun and I’ve learned a lot through teach­ing the course (which I’ve heard is the expe­ri­ence of most teach­ers).

But it’s pret­ty drain­ing. That’s an extra 8 hour day every week. And that’s if traf­fic behaves.

And I’m serv­ing on a task force for the Assem­blies. We had a video chat this morn­ing which last­ed about 2.5 hours. It was reward­ing, but also drain­ing.

Final­ly, I’m sup­posed to be doing a lot of web stuff for Chi Alpha. I just haven’t been able to pri­or­i­tize it late­ly. Yeek. Lots of low-hang­ing fruit, but no time to reach out and pluck it.

All in all, I’m very much look­ing for­ward to the change of sched­ule that comes with the sum­mer. I’ll still be busy, but at least I’ll be busy doing dif­fer­ent things. 🙂down­load shut­tle ter­ror by night down­load

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Fifteen Minutes and Counting

One of our wor­ship lead­ers, Awa, has some of the most quotable lines of any­one I know.

As exhib­it A, I sub­mit the fol­low­ing excerpt from an email to our group last week:

It’s spring quar­ter peo­ple, time to pro­cras­ti­nate so you can enjoy the beau­ti­ful warm weath­er and the beau­ti­ful peeps of Chi Alpha. I mean, we are a good look­ing bunch…I say that in truth and with humil­i­ty…

How mag­nif­i­cent is that lan­guage?

Any­way, at least one reporter at the Stan­ford Dai­ly agrees with me: Awa was quot­ed not once but twice in a recent arti­cle as was Chris, anoth­er of our stu­dents.

For con­text, the arti­cle is about a Hawai­ian Lu’au on cam­pus.

…kahlua pig … is tra­di­tion­al­ly pre­pared by fill­ing the pig’s abdom­i­nal cav­i­ty with hot stones, then plac­ing the pig in a pit con­tain­ing hot stones.

“But I’m sure San­ta Clara Coun­ty wouldn’t have been too open to that idea, so we hand-shred­ded the 40 lbs. of pork our­selves using forks,” said Lu’au Co-Chair Awa­puhi Dan­cil ‘10. “The hard­est part was fig­ur­ing out how much of each item to buy. Peo­ple at Cost­co kept star­ing at us since we had 40 toma­toes, pineap­ples and pounds of salmon.”

And then lat­er on,

“The mem­bers of the Hawai’i Club poured our heart and soul into this event, work­ing at 100 mph,” Dan­cil said.

And the con­tri­bu­tion from Chris:

Per­haps the most inter­est­ing side dish was the poi, pound­ed taro root that is knead­ed into a smooth paste, tra­di­tion­al­ly meant to be eat­en by scoop­ing it out of a bowl with one’s fin­gers.

“I still haven’t made up my mind about the poi,” said Chris Oli­vares ‘10. “But every­thing else is absolute­ly deli­cious. I came last year and had to come again to sup­port friends and watch the great dances. And how often do you get to have authen­tic Hawai­ian food that’s real­ly good?”

So a big shout out to you both for your 15 min­utes of fame.

Although next time you’re talk­ing about slaugh­tered pigs and root paste try to fig­ure out a sub­tle way to work in “Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship meets at 7:30pm every Wednes­day school is in ses­sion in build­ing 300–300.” I’m not quite sure how to do that ele­gant­ly, but there must be some way. Maybe some­thing like “Of course, slaugh­tered pigs can­not atone for our sins. They are mere­ly tasty. How­ev­er, there is one sac­ri­fice

that has already been giv­en on our behalf, and we’ll be talk­ing about it this Wednes­day… etc, etc”. 🙂trad­ing places movie down­load

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I Love The World

Look­ing for some inspi­ra­tion in an unex­pect­ed place? Check out this Dis­cov­ery Chan­nel com­mer­cial.

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