Author: Glen

Successful Seminarians

Some­where I heard that most of today’s best-known pas­tors did­n’t go to sem­i­nary. As I recall, this obser­va­tion was brought up in the con­text of crit­i­ciz­ing the very con­cept of grad­u­ate-lev­el min­is­te­r­i­al train­ing. The impli­ca­tion was that the time spent learn­ing about the Bible would have been bet­ter spent learn­ing about mar­ket­ing (or the inter­net or psy­chol­o­gy or some­thing prac­ti­cal).

This crit­i­cism did­n’t have a lot of weight for me — I just knew sem­i­nary had been good for me and I con­tin­ued to rec­om­mend it to any min­is­ter who loved learn­ing.

But I real­ized this morn­ing that the alle­ga­tion was untrue. Not only have lots of the big-name pas­tors gone to sem­i­nary, I would say that the major­i­ty of those that we first think of are sem­i­nar­i­ans.

  • Andy Stan­ley — Dal­las The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
  • Craig Groeschel — Phillips The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
  • Rob Bell — Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
  • John Ort­berg — Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
  • John Piper — Fuller and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Munich (Ph.D.)
  • Tim Keller — Gor­don Con­well and West­min­ster The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary (Ph.D.)
  • Rick War­ren — Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary

There are sev­er­al who haven’t. Bill Hybels has­n’t gone to sem­i­nary, for exam­ple. I don’t think Ed Young, Jr. has, either. Joel Osteen has­n’t. Mark Driscoll is, I believe, fin­ish­ing up a sem­i­nary degree right now.

But from what I can tell the major­i­ty of nation­al­ly-known Chris­t­ian pas­tors have gone to sem­i­nary.

I’m not say­ing that going to sem­i­nary will guar­an­tee you a numer­i­cal­ly fruit­ful min­istry — but I can guar­an­tee you that it won’t pre­vent you from build­ing a numer­i­cal­ly fruit­ful min­istry, either. And you’ll be a bet­ter per­son for hav­ing gone.

In an age when sem­i­nary gets a lot of knocks, I thought that was worth shar­ing.

Introducing Alexander Davis

Alexan­der Davis was born 11/17/2006 at 12:24pm after a very quick labor (from the time Paula began to push until the time he was com­plete­ly out­side was four min­utes). He weighed 6lbs and 7oz and was 19.75 inch­es long.

Our plan is to refer to him as Xan­der (instead of the full Alexan­der or the briefer Alex). We’ll see how it takes. Dana seems to like it, so that’s a plus.

We’re still decid­ing about the mid­dle name. We’ve got it nar­rowed down to three and we want to sleep on it before mak­ing our choice.

I’m too wiped to type much more now, check back lat­er for more details. Until then, enjoy the pho­to gallery.

Research On Glossolalia

I just read about some cut­ting-edge research about speak­ing in tongues (you may have also seen this referred to as “glos­so­lalia”).

Sum­ma­ry quote:

“We noticed a num­ber of changes that occurred func­tion­al­ly in the brain,” com­ments Prin­ci­pal Inves­ti­ga­tor Andrew New­berg, MD, Asso­ciate Pro­fes­sor of Radi­ol­o­gy, Psy­chi­a­try, and Reli­gious Stud­ies, and Direc­tor for the Cen­ter for Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and the Mind, at Penn. “Our find­ing of decreased activ­i­ty in the frontal lobes dur­ing the prac­tice of speak­ing in tongues is fas­ci­nat­ing because these sub­jects tru­ly believe that the spir­it of God is mov­ing through them and con­trol­ling them to speak. Our brain imag­ing research shows us that these sub­jects are not in con­trol of the usu­al lan­guage cen­ters dur­ing this activ­i­ty, which is con­sis­tent with their descrip­tion of a lack of inten­tion­al con­trol while speak­ing in tongues.”

I pass this along because we so often focus on research find­ings which seem to chal­lenge the faith (or more fre­quent­ly on research find­ings which chal­lenge our inter­pre­ta­tion of the faith), it’s always inter­est­ing to spot those that cor­re­spond to exact­ly what we would expect based upon a straight­for­ward read­ing of the Bible.

Thoughts on Worship

A few weeks ago I was dis­cussing wor­ship with David Jones, the leader of Reformed Uni­ver­si­ty Fel­low­ship at Stan­ford, and he put some­thing into words that I’ve been try­ing to artic­u­late for a while, “Wor­ship is both expres­sive and for­ma­tive.”

In oth­er words, wor­ship does­n’t only show what we feel and believe, it also shapes what we feel and believe.

My stu­dents will only hear me preach a giv­en ser­mon once — but they may sing a wor­ship song dozens of times. And if we’ve cho­sen catchy yet super­fi­cial junk for them to sing we’ve done them a real dis­ser­vice.

And that’s why we don’t just sing any old song in our Chi Alpha meet­ings. They have to be catchy while also being pro­found and ennobling. In oth­er words, they have to both sound good and be good.

For what it’s worth, I think that Chris Tom­lin and Ben Pasley (of Enter the Wor­ship Cir­cle) stand out for real­ly hit­ting the mark con­sis­tent­ly. Of the old hymn writ­ers, Isaac Watts real­ly had it going on.

As The World’s Number One Speaker On The Subject of Humility…

Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders (J-B Leadership Network Series)As the world’s num­ber one speak­er on the sub­ject of humil­i­ty, I’d like to draw your atten­tion to a book in which I am a recur­ring char­ac­ter.

Earl Creps has just writ­ten Off-Road Dis­ci­plines, a book for church lead­ers try­ing to nav­i­gate all the change our cul­ture keeps throw­ing at us.

I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that I am quot­ed many times through­out the book. If you have nev­er read your­self quot­ed in a book before, let me assure that it can be dis­con­cert­ing.

There’s no way I can be objec­tive about this book. It’s writ­ten by a friend and almost all the recur­ring char­ac­ters are friends.

So I will sim­ply say that I enjoyed it and I think I would have enjoyed it whether or not it was by a friend. It’s just filled with fas­ci­nat­ing lit­tle snip­pets.

The His­to­ry Chan­nel recent­ly offered me part of the answer in a doc­u­men­tary about the researchers who devote their lives to dis­cov­er­ing Atlantis. These pas­sion­ate and sin­cere peo­ple con­sid­er them­selves con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­als in their field. They employ expen­sive, high-tech equip­ment and sac­ri­fice the respect of main­stream sci­ence to live on the per­pet­u­al verge of one of the great­est dis­cov­er­ies of all time. Spurred on by an ancient text (Pla­to, in this case), they spend years sur­vey­ing vast stretch­es of ocean in a quest to assem­ble clues to cat­a­clysmic events in the dis­tant past. The dis­dain of their sci­en­tif­ic peers only increas­es their fer­vor by mak­ing these faith­ful into pro­fes­sion­al mar­tyrs. Some­time before the last com­mer­cial on the TV pro­gram, I grasped the par­al­lel to the post-Chris­t­ian expe­ri­ence of the Church: ancient texts, out­ra­geous the­o­ries, huge expense, per­se­cu­tion com­plex, and a pas­sion­ate devo­tion to things that mat­ter only to insid­ers. (page 21)

I have to believe I would find that grip­ping no mat­ter who wrote it. Or con­sid­er this sim­ple evi­dence that demon­strates a truth I have long believed but been unable to show data for:

…in a sur­vey of mag­a­zine indices I found that the first ref­er­ences to post­mod­ernism in Chris­t­ian peri­od­i­cals did not appear until four to thir­teen years after the first ref­er­ences are indexed in sec­u­lar jour­nals.

That’s the most con­crete, data-based illus­tra­tion I’ve ever seen of the cul­ture lag in which the church is trapped.

Plus he coins two phras­es that I love: “over­churched under­achiev­er” (so busy with church stuff they have no time for real stuff) and “ortho­doxy creep” (a ten­den­cy to doc­tri­nal­ize every opin­ion).

Any­way, on to the impor­tant stuff: me.

My first appear­ance in the book is on page 45:

After hear­ing a talk sup­port­ed by Pow­er­Point, Glen (half my age) said polite­ly, “I thought you had a degree in com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Ouch. The words hurt Earl the first time and me the sec­ond.

I am fea­tured again five pages lat­er: “Glen helps me with tech­nol­o­gy and the Inter­net.”

My best role, how­ev­er, comes in the chap­ter on humil­i­ty.

No, real­ly.

A [min­is­te­r­i­al] life rep­re­sent­ing an atti­tude of “I know!” “You’re wrong!” and “You need me!” serves as what my friend Glen calls a “block­er,” stand­ing in the way of the spir­i­tu­al­ly hun­gry rather than moti­vat­ing them to inves­ti­gate Jesus fur­ther. (page 83)

At last, I am por­trayed as the hum­ble sage I know and love.

So I’ll stop quot­ing from the book before I paint myself in an unflat­ter­ing light again. 😉

Oh, You Have One Of Those…

Dana has been pot­ty train­ing late­ly and she’s get­ting quite good at it. She’ll be play­ing with her toys, mind­ing her own busi­ness, when all of a sud­den she will leap to her feet and sneak/bolt towards the bath­room. After suc­cess­ful­ly deposit­ing sol­id mat­ter she will emit a tri­umphant cry: “I went poop!”

It’s quite charm­ing, real­ly.

Yes­ter­day one of our friends, Jen, vol­un­teered to take Dana in for the day while Paula was on bedrest. Things were going just fine until Dana pooped in her pants with­out show­ing the slight­est inter­est in Jen’s bath­room.

Dana need­ed some clean­ing to pre­vent a rash, and when Jen brought Dana to the bath­room Dana stared at the toi­let and then said slow­ly to Jen, “Oh, you have one of those.” 🙂

Assump­tions. As my friend Fras­er used to tell me in high school, the word assume makes an ass out of you and me.

For the record, I am assum­ing the ety­mol­o­gy of that com­ment traces back to don­keys and not to sphinc­ters, oth­er­wise it might be con­strued as a vul­gar­i­ty. My thoughts on curs­ing, vul­gar­i­ties, and exple­tives are a lit­tle com­pli­cat­ed, but the bot­tom line is that I try to avoid offend­ing peo­ple with the words I choose with­out becom­ing bound up in sil­ly rules (such as eras­ing the word ass from the dic­tio­nary because one of its uses is a syn­onym for pos­te­ri­or). Plus the ensu­ing pun (result­ing from the jux­ta­po­si­tion of poop and hiney) would be too awful even for me.

Back to assump­tions: Dana assumes Jen has no pot­ty and so she excretes wher­ev­er she hap­pens to be. I assume God has no opin­ion about my deci­sions and so I don’t pray to receive guid­ance.

Bad assump­tions lead to stinky sit­u­a­tions.

Paula in Hospital, Everything OK

Yes­ter­day Paula began to feel con­trac­tions, and her doc­tor decid­ed to put under obser­va­tion in the hos­pi­tal.

She gave Paula some med­i­cine to stop her con­trac­tions, and so far it seems to be work­ing. She esti­mates there’s still a 60% chance that our baby will go full term.

In any event, it looks as though Paula will be on bed rest right up until Baby Davis appears some­time in the next few weeks. Or days. 😉

We’re already at the point where Paula can deliv­er with very lit­tle dan­ger to the baby, so this is more about opti­miz­ing con­di­tions rather than try­ing to pre­serve the life of our child.

Bot­tom line: Paula is fine, baby is fine, Dana is con­fused, Dad­dy is fraz­zled.

Helping Teens Transition To College

I stum­bled upon this quote today:

Every autumn I have a spate of let­ters from fond par­ents, teach­ers, guardians, and mon­i­tors, appeal­ing to me to fol­low up on such and such a young­ster who is away from home at col­lege for the first time, and who has to be hunt­ed, fol­lowed, shad­owed, inter­cept­ed and dri­ven to Chris­t­ian meet­ings. I have scarce­ly ever known this des­per­ate tech­nique to work. I under­stand the pan­ic of par­ents and guardians, but it is too late then to try high pres­sure tac­tics. Prayer, exam­ple and pre­cept, in that order, are the means of bring­ing up chil­dren and young folk in the faith. Nor will high pres­sure tac­tics and brain­wash­ing tech­niques avail when young folk have gone off on their own. Some young folk, alas, will have their fling and sow their wild oats, and come at last to heel, sad­ly, like the prodi­gal son. It is where Chris­tians pathet­i­cal­ly put their trust in exter­nal tech­niques and arti­fi­cial strat­a­gems that young folk go astray. Noth­ing takes the place of the real­ism of holy liv­ing and secret wrestling before God in prayer for our young­sters. We must com­mit them to God so utter­ly that we dare not inter­fere or tam­per with their pre­cious souls.

(William Still, late Pas­tor of Gilcom­ston South Church, Aberdeen, Scot­land)

Well said.

Daddy Can’t Handle The Truth

While eat­ing break­fast this morn­ing, Dana said, “Your bot­tom is sag­gy, Dad­dy.”

Bewil­dered, I think I said some­thing on the order of, “Huh?”

At which point Dana began chant­i­ng, “You can’t han­dle the truth!”

Over and over.

I did­n’t think I’d have to put up with this sort of mock­ery until her ado­les­cence. I cer­tain­ly did­n’t expect it from a two year old.

I need to tell my ego to buck­le its seat­belt — it’s going to be a rocky ride from here on out.

New NET Bible website is awesome

The NET Bible web­site just got an over­haul and it is awe­some. Check it out (be sure to mouse over the foot­notes). And they seem to have renamed the web por­tion of their project NEXT Bible: http://nextbible.org