Author: Glen

A Georgetown Suggestion

I found this on GetRe­li­gion and was so tick­led I thought I’d pass it along here:

what would hap­pen if lead­ers of the kicked-off-cam­pus George­town Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of Inter­Var­si­ty Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship applied to the lead­er­ship of the Jesuit school for per­mis­sion to hold a pub­lic forum this week in which stu­dents and fac­ul­ty would be asked to read and then peace­ful­ly dis­cuss the text of Pope Bene­dict XVI’s actu­al speech text on faith, rea­son and jihad?

Per­haps the event could be held at the well-endowed Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Cen­ter for Mus­lim-Chris­t­ian Under­stand­ing on the cam­pus?

Just think­ing out loud, you know. I am sure the cam­pus admin­is­tra­tion would wel­come such a request by the oust­ed Protes­tant groups to orga­nize an ecu­meni­cal and even inter­faith event focus­ing on the intel­lec­tu­al thought of a man that George­town must real­ize is in the main­stream of Catholic intel­lec­tu­al life.

🙂

I don’t think it’s going to hap­pen, but it’s fun to fan­ta­size about.

Also see my pre­vi­ous thoughts on the evan­gel­i­cal evic­tion from George­town.

5 Rare Gems for Reaching High School and College Students

I just fin­ished Don­ny Rober­son­’s 5 Rare Gems for Reach­ing High School and Col­lege Stu­dents. It’s an excel­lent (and brief) guide to cam­pus min­istry.

You should espe­cial­ly read this if you are in col­lege min­istry and are a male over 30 — he makes some insight­ful obser­va­tions you won’t find any­where else.

His “5 Gems” are real­ly just mus­ings on five big top­ics: under­stand­ing your stu­dents’ fam­i­lies, being cre­ative, build­ing qual­i­ty rela­tion­ships, being per­sis­tent, and lis­ten­ing effec­tive­ly.

From every gem save one I learned some­thing that I’m look­ing for­ward to try­ing this year — and the book only cost me $3.

So go order it already.

Worst Places To Be When The Big One Strikes

Liv­ing in the Cal­i­for­nia Bay Area, my thoughts turn peri­od­i­cal­ly to the Big One.

Recent­ly I was won­der­ing where the worst places to be in an earth­quake would be (oth­er than in open-heart surgery or some­thing else that is already life-or-death).

Quick thoughts that I had:

  • Get­ting a hair­cut
  • Walk­ing among the stacks of a library
  • In a port-a-pot­ty

I’m sure there are lots of more hor­ri­ble places to be in an earth­quake, but these are the ones that strike par­tic­u­lar fear into my heart.

Who Will Let The Dog Out?

Duane Chap­man, aka Dog the Boun­ty Hunter, was arrest­ed ear­li­er today for vio­lat­ing Mex­i­can law while track­ing down a wealthy ser­i­al rapist.

I have to con­fess that I’m bummed. Boun­ty hunt­ing is a noble pro­fes­sion that helps our legal sys­tem func­tion more effec­tive­ly, and Dog was always enter­tain­ing. Plus I just learned that he’s the kid of an Assem­blies of God mis­sion­ary (Bar­bara Chap­man, whom I nev­er met and who is now deceased) which gives me a cer­tain kin­dred affec­tion for him.

I under­stand that he broke Mex­i­can law, but sure­ly there are high­er pri­or­i­ties for the Mex­i­can legal sys­tem than arrest­ing some­one who helps catch fugi­tives. Almost any­thing rather than devot­ing effort to extra­dit­ing an Amer­i­can boun­ty hunter for catch­ing a vile man who had done despi­ca­ble things.

The one thing about the reports so far that real­ly puz­zles me is that the Chap­mans evi­dent­ly broke bail them­selves. Maybe they know some­thing about the Mex­i­can legal sys­tem that I don’t, but giv­en their line of work that seems pret­ty stu­pid.

Life Church Down The Road

I’ve been think­ing about LifeChurch.tv late­ly (check the Wikipedia arti­cle on them).

In case you’re not famil­iar with the church, it’s one of the best-known exam­ples of the mul­ti-site church move­ment. At present, Life Church uses live video feeds to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly have the same ser­vice in Okla­homa, Ari­zona, Texas, and Ten­nessee. They also stream the ser­vice over the inter­net.

They both start new church­es and acquire exist­ing church­es (that’s their lan­guage, not mine. They are very clear that they are not propos­ing merg­ers — they are propos­ing acqui­si­tions — lis­ten to Kevin Pen­ry). If you’d like to be acquired you can sign up online ask the dust divx movie online .

One thing I want to praise them for: they make their resources avail­able online for free. They’re clear­ly very King­dom-mind­ed.

But some­thing about LifeChurch’s approach wor­ries me.

I’ll explain what it is after some nec­es­sary dis­claimers:

  1. I have no fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal prob­lem with mul­ti-site church­es. If you think it’s okay for a sin­gle-site church to have two ser­vices on a Sun­day morn­ing then you’re incon­sis­tent to oppose mul­ti­ple-site church­es. Once you cede the split­ting of the con­gre­ga­tion it’s all just a mat­ter of degree (if this is not clear to you then spend some time think­ing through your prob­lems with mul­ti-site church­es and how they are also applic­a­ble to a church that has an 8:00am ser­vice and an 11am ser­vice).
  2. There are a lot of ways to do mul­ti-site church and there is cer­tain­ly diver­si­ty with­in the move­ment. My con­cerns about LifeChurch’s approach don’t apply to all the ways mul­ti-site is done.

Here’s my con­cern: if LifeChurch’s phi­los­o­phy becomes the norm (an excel­lent test of the sound­ness of a phi­los­o­phy) then we lose some­thing vital to the health of the church.

Let’s say LifeChurch con­tin­ues to grow and spreads into 10 or 15 states. They reach 100,000 in aggre­gate atten­dance. 200,000. 500,000. 1,000,000. These num­bers are not unrea­son­able — mul­ti-site church­es seem to be scale-free net­works and thus will exhib­it the win­ner-take-all phe­nom­e­non. The largest mul­ti-site will be about twice as large as its next-great­est neigh­bor and so on down the line.

In effect, LifeChurch (or some­one like it) will become the Wal-Mart of church­es soon, and just like Wal-Mart the over­whelm­ing nature of their dom­i­nance will be sur­pris­ing and will take a while to sink in. And just like Wal-Mart, that will bring some good and some bad along with it.

What hap­pens when the pri­ma­ry leader of the Amer­i­can gigachurch laps­es into stu­pid­i­ty, heresy, or moral fail­ure? How does that affect Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca?

This isn’t an unre­al­is­tic con­cern — evan­gel­i­cal­ism has a his­to­ry of each of these blun­ders. And the high­er-pro­file a per­son is the more prone they seem to be to falling into one or more of these.

  • Stu­pid­i­ty: pub­lic dis­plays of igno­rance, par­tic­u­lar­ly on polit­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic issues
  • Heresy: say­ing things about Jesus or the Bible that just aren’t true
  • Moral Fail­ure: finan­cial impro­pri­ety or sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, for exam­ple

As things stand now, when Joe Preach­er on tele­vi­sion has a moral blowout that church is destroyed but the rest of us rock on, sad­dened but unaf­fect­ed.

Imag­ine a sin­gle church which con­tains 35% of all evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca (and a hand­ful in Eng­land and Aus­tralia) hav­ing the same blowout. It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

That’s bad enough, but what I real­ly wor­ry about is the lack of ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty such an arrange­ment would bring about. Evan­gel­i­cals are already prone to sheep-like behav­ior, but at least we cur­rent­ly hang out in dif­fer­ent flocks.

When we cre­ate an evan­gel­i­cal pope who has far more direct influ­ence over his orga­ni­za­tion than the Pope has over the Catholic church, we will lose some­thing vibrant and vital about evan­gel­i­cal­ism. If we’re not care­ful, we’ll lose a vital part of the gains of the Ref­or­ma­tion.

LifeChurch (and the entire mul­ti-site move­ment) have a lot to offer and are doing some won­der­ful things. On the whole, I have high praise for them.

But it is not unqual­i­fied praise.

Entertainment I Adore

Yes­ter­day I men­tioned some of my least-favorite enter­tain­ment, today is the oppo­site-enter­tain­ment I adore.

Radio: Den­nis Prager is the man. He’s smart, rea­son­able, and thinks out loud in an inter­est­ing way. If your local radio does­n’t car­ry him then it’s your loss. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ira Fla­tow and Hugh Hewitt.

Tele­vi­sion: Myth­busters is clear­ly the best show in the his­to­ry of some­thing. I just can’t decide whether it’s the best show in the his­to­ry of the uni­verse or the best show in the his­to­ry of tele­vi­sion. Hon­or­able men­tions: Dog the Boun­ty Hunter, 24.

Books: Steven Brust is one of the great­est authors of our gen­er­a­tion. If you like nov­els about assas­sins with sar­cas­tic lizards, that is. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ter­ry Pratch­ett, C. S. Fried­man

Music: Rich Mullins rocks the free world. Or rocked the free world. Or what­ev­er. He’s dead but his music con­tin­ues to inspire me. Hon­or­able men­tions: U2, Men With­out Hats

Entertainment I Could Do Without

Social net­work­ing sites like the Face­book often ask you to list your favorite books, movies, and music. I under­stand the rea­son­ing they’re using, but some­times I won­der about what peo­ple real­ly dis­like.

Lest ye won­der the same about me, here’s my list of enter­tain­ment I could do with­out:

  • In radio, I could do with­out Fresh Air with Ter­ry Gross. I just don’t like her inter­views. She’s got a won­der­ful rep­u­ta­tion and so I’m sure she’s great at what she does, but I just don’t con­nect with her. And I LOVE talk radio.
  • On tele­vi­sion, I could do with­out Project Run­way. Paula loves this real­i­ty show, but I just don’t get it. Most fash­ion is ugly any­way — nobody real­ly likes it except for those in the fash­ion indus­try. Even the super­mod­els who demo the out­fits don’t wear that stuff when they don’t have to.
  • In the world of let­ters, I could do with­out the books by Bri­an Her­bert. Frank Her­bert’s son has been writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion nov­els just like his dad did. One prob­lem: he’s not his dad.
  • And in the world of music, I could do with­out hip hop. I know it’s hip (by def­i­n­i­tion — see name) and all the kids are dig­gin’ it, but it just does­n’t do it for me. I can appre­ci­ate the bizarre genius that goes into craft­ing the rhymes and that are rockin’ our times, but Dr. Seuss retired that genre years ago. Every­thing else is pure­ly deriv­a­tive.

So that’s my anti-pro­file. You may now judge me by the things I don’t like.

I’d Like To Thank The Academy…

I was in the Stan­ford Book­store today when I hap­pened to see a book called Stan­ford Spir­it. I noticed it was a com­pi­la­tion of essays by cur­rent Stan­ford stu­dents, so I picked it up to see if any were by peo­ple I knew — and one of our Chi Alphans has a con­tri­bu­tion!

You can down­load a dig­i­tal copy for free at
http://www.lulu.com/content/382219 — look for the chap­ter by Mari­bel Diaz.

In addi­tion, Lisa Ooi just had her debut pub­li­ca­tion in Cell (yes, THAT Cell) with the stir­ring “A Rapid, Reversible, and Tun­able Method to Reg­u­late Pro­tein Func­tion in Liv­ing Cells Using Syn­thet­ic Small Mol­e­cules”

Con­grat­u­la­tions to them both.

Facebook Friend?

I just learned that one of my friends is being recruit­ed by the Face­book.

I real­ly hope this works out, because then I’d be the coolest per­son in cam­pus min­istry by dint of that asso­ci­a­tion.

Pic­ture me at the next Chi Alpha con­fer­ence: “Par­don me, I need to take this call — my caller ID says it’s from Facebook.com Head­quar­ters. I’ve been urg­ing them to rethink the way they han­dle groups and I think the con­ver­sa­tion we had at a BBQ last week is final­ly bear­ing fruit.”

Now all I need to do is get an alum­nus into Google…

Georgetown Evicts Evangelical Groups

George­town Uni­ver­si­ty just kicked six cam­pus min­istries off cam­pus.

Cam­pus Min­istry Removes Affil­i­ates — The Hoya (cam­pus paper)
George­town Rejects Evan­gel­i­cal Groups — Inside High­er Ed (col­lege news blog)

Chi Alpha was among the groups banned. Pray for God’s peace and wis­dom to attend the lead­ers of the group as they decide what to do next.

At Stan­ford we are for­tu­nate to have a very strong rela­tion­ship with the Deans for Reli­gious Life. How­ev­er, the news from George­town is a reminder that this isn’t the only pos­si­ble state of affairs.

Paul was very wise when he remind­ed Tim­o­thy to pray for his impe­r­i­al over­lords.

“I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, inter­ces­sion and thanks­giv­ing be made for everyone—for kings and all those in author­i­ty, that we may live peace­ful and qui­et lives in all god­li­ness and holi­ness.”
1 Tim 2:1–2, NIV

I often tell stu­dents that this is the foun­da­tion of a sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. We want the gov­ern­ment (and any oth­er bureau­crat­ic bod­ies) to leave us free to wor­ship with­out oner­ous over­sight or reg­u­la­tion — because exter­nal involve­ment nev­er works out to our advan­tage in the long run.

In any event, my prayers are with those just boot­ed from George­town (and with the Chi Alpha folks in par­tic­u­lar as sev­er­al of them are close friends).