Category: Assemblies of God

Just noticed that the Nation­al Coun­cil of Church’s 2009 Year­book was recent­ly pub­lished (found via MMI). Here are the stats on the 10 largest reli­gious groups in Amer­i­ca.

1. The Roman Catholic Church, 67,117,06 mem­bers, down 0.59 per­cent.
2. The South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, 16,266,920 mem­bers, down 0.24 per­cent.
3. The Unit­ed Methodist Church, 7,931,733 mem­bers, down 0.80 per­cent.
4. The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints, 5,873,408 mem­bers, up 1.63 per­cent.
5. The Church of God in Christ, 5,499,875 mem­bers, no change report­ed.
6. Nation­al Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, U.S.A., Inc., 5,000,000 mem­bers, no change report­ed.
7. Evan­gel­i­cal Luther­an Church in Amer­i­ca, 4,709,956 mem­bers, down 1.35 per­cent.
8. Nation­al Bap­tist Con­ven­tion of Amer­i­ca, Inc., 3,500,000 mem­bers, no change report­ed.
9. Pres­by­ter­ian Church (USA), 2,941,412 mem­bers, down 2.79 per­cent
10. Assem­blies of God, 2,863,265 mem­bers, up 0.96 per­cent. dan­ger­ous beau­ty divx online blue­toes the christ­mas elf movie down­load down­load home­ward bound ii lost in san fran­cis­co online

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So.… yeah. We’re num­ber 10, we’re num­ber 10, we’re num­ber 10! Maybe we can chant that at Gen­er­al Coun­cil.

Sad­ly, we’re the only Chris­t­ian group (in the top 10) that is grow­ing. And even sad­der, when you get into our inter­nal num­bers you real­ize that a few parts of our move­ment are grow­ing rapid­ly but that there are huge swaths under­go­ing slow decline. For now, the explo­sive growth is off­set­ting the decay.

I’m grate­ful that I’m on a win­ning team and that our move­ment is grow­ing when so many are stag­nat­ing, but I must con­fess that a 0.96% growth rate is not exact­ly the sort of thing that stirs the pulse.

We need divine­ly-sparked revival to which we must respond with orga­ni­za­tion­al renew­al, or else we’ll soon be cel­e­brat­ing the fact that we shrunk least.

But hey — for now I’ve got a handy fact I can share with peo­ple who say, “The Assem­blies of God? Nev­er heard of it.” I can now shoot back, “Hey — we’re almost as large as the Pres­by­te­ri­ans. Near­ly. We’re only off by like 80,000 peo­ple. That’s the size of a good South Amer­i­can church. We haven’t quite fig­ured out how to do that in North Amer­i­ca, but it can’t be that hard. So we’re basi­cal­ly one mis­si­o­log­i­cal insight and then one good church plant away from being num­ber 9. So there.”

I was very sur­prised to see this

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

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

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It’s tru­ly a new day in the Assem­blies of God. George Wood is on Face­book. For those of you from anoth­er world, he’s the Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent of the Assem­blies of God. So he’s kind of like our Pope. Just with a lot less author­i­ty. And with­out the cool wardrobe. Or a Pope­mo­bile. He’s basi­cal­ly in charge, though.

I noticed it by acci­dent ear­li­er today and I thought it had to be a mis­take. Once I real­ized it real­ly was him and not some Bible col­lege kid play­ing a joke, I emailed him to ask if it was okay to share this pub­licly — I thought per­haps he had acci­den­tal­ly left his pri­va­cy set­tings too open.

It turns out he’s avail­able on pur­pose. He accepts friend requests from peons like me (and pre­sum­ably you).

And on top of that, Dr. Wood has been pod­cast­ing like crazy with two sep­a­rate pod­casts: inter­views with lead­ers and stud­ies in the book of Mark

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.

And he’s not the only one savvy to the dig­i­tal age. The Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary, John Palmer, has a blog

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. Not only that, his blog is host­ed on an offi­cial Assem­blies of God instal­la­tion of Word­Press MU super­girl online down­load : who knew we had come so far?

Not to be out­done, the new (as in begin­ning his term of office today) Gen­er­al Trea­sur­er, Doug Clay, has been blog­ging on Blog­ger for quite a while.

My head is spin­ning. I don’t know if I can han­dle all this dig­i­ti­za­tion of our lead­er­ship at once.down­load legion­naire dvdrip it s pat dvd

It struck me the oth­er day that there are a lot of Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave lead­ers with degrees from sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ties instead of Bible colleges/Christian lib­er­al arts schools, so I start­ed putting a list togeth­er.

The list is heavy on the Assem­blies of God because those are the cir­cles I run in, and it’s also min­is­ter-heavy for the same rea­son. I’d love to add some busi­ness lead­ers. I’m leav­ing out Chi Alpha mis­sion­ar­ies because we’d swamp the list.

In alpha­bet­i­cal order:
For Their Under­grad

1. Bret Allen (pas­tor, Bethel Church of San Jose) – East­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty
2. John Ashcroft

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   (politi­cian and author) – Yale for under­grad, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go for law school

3. Rocky Bar­ra — (pas­tor of Con­nec­tion Church in Can­ton, MI) — East­ern Michi­gan Uni­ver­si­ty (for both under­grad and mas­ter’s)
4. Glen Berteau (pas­tor of Cal­vary Tem­ple in Modesto, CA) – Louisiana Tech
5. John Bevere (author and con­fer­ence speak­er) – Pur­due
6. Brady Boyd (pas­tor of New Life Church in Col­orado Springs) — Louisiana Tech
7. James Brad­ford (pas­tor of Cen­tral Assem­bly in Spring­field, MO) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta (all the way through Ph.D.)
8. Frank Cargill (dis­trict super­in­ten­dent of Okla­homa) — Okla­homa State Uni­ver­si­ty (under­grad), Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa (master’s),and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cen­tral Okla­homa (anoth­er mas­ter’s).
9. Den­nis Cheek (pastor/church planter & Vice Pres­i­dent for the Kauf­mann Foun­da­tion) — Tow­son Uni­ver­si­ty (under­grad), anoth­er under­grad from Excel­sior Col­lege, a mas­ter’s Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land Bal­ti­more Coun­ty, a Ph.D. in cur­ricu­lum and instruction/science edu­ca­tion from Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, and a Ph.D. in the­ol­o­gy from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Durham.
10. Ali­cia Chole (author and con­fer­ence speak­er) – UT Austin (through her mas­ter’s)
11. Earl Creps (church planter, author, edu­ca­tor) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Pitts­burg for under­grad, North­west­ern for Ph.D.
12. Mark Driscoll (pas­tor of Mars Hill in Seat­tle) — Wash­ing­ton State Uni­ver­si­ty
13. Den­ny Duron (pas­tor of Shreve­port Com­mu­ni­ty Church in LA) – Louisiana Tech
14. Jonathan Gains­brugh (evan­ge­list and author) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia
15. Randy Gar­cia (pas­tor of Fortress Church in San Anto­nio, TX) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas at San Anto­nio
16. Paul Goulet (pas­tor of Inter­na­tion­al Church of Las Vegas) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Ottowa
17. Wayne Gru­dem (the­olo­gian) — Har­vard
18. Stan­ley Hor­ton

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    (the­olo­gian and author) — B.S., Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, S.T.M. from Har­vard

19. Roger Houtsma (founder of World Out­reach Min­istries) — UC Berke­ley
20. Tim John­son (Con­gress­man) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois – Champaign/Urbana
21. Steve Lim tam­ing of the shrew the down­load (Aca­d­e­m­ic Dean at AGTS), UC Berke­ley
22. Mike McClaflin (Africa Region­al Direc­tor for Assem­blies of God World Mis­sions) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Wyoming
23. Lee McFar­land (pas­tor of Radi­ant Church in Sur­prise, AZ) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Col­orado
24. Mar­vin Miller (direc­tor of Rayne Project Min­istries) — Whit­ter Col­lege
25. Don­nie Moore (evan­ge­list) – Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pacif­ic
26. J. P. More­land (apol­o­gist and schol­ar) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­souri
27. Mar­i­lyn Mus­grave (Con­gress­woman) — Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty
28. Rich Nathan – (pas­tor of Vine­yard Com­mu­ni­ty Church of Colom­bus, OH) – Case West­ern Reserve Uni­ver­si­ty
29. Sarah Palin — (politi­cian) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Ida­ho
30. Ray Rachels – (South­ern Cal­i­for­nia Dis­trict Super­in­ten­dent) – Troy State Uni­ver­si­ty
31. Cecil Robeck (schol­ar) — San Jose City Col­lege (for his AA)
32. Mark Rut­land – (pres­i­dent of South­east­ern Col­lege) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
33. Antho­ny Sco­ma (pas­tor of South­west Fam­i­ly Fel­low­ship) — Uni­ver­si­ty of Texas (Austin)
34. Char­lie Self — under­grad and Ph.D. from UC San­ta Cruz (break for Grad­u­ate The­o­log­i­cal Union in the mid­dle)
35. Sean Smith (evan­ge­list) – Uni­ver­si­ty of the Pacif­ic
36. Zol­lie Smith
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    (Exec­u­tive Direc­tor AG US Mis­sions) – Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty

37. Sam Storms — Uni­ver­si­ty of Okla­homa
38. James Watt (politi­cian) – Uni­ver­si­ty of Wyoming

For Grad Work Only

1. Chris Carter (schol­ar — APTS) — PhD from Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty
2. John Carter (schol­ar — APTS) — PhD from Uni­ver­si­ty of Illi­nois in edu­ca­tion­al psy­chol­o­gy
3. Roli dela Cruz (schol­ar, APTS) — PhD in tex­tu­al crit­i­cism from Birm­ing­ham Uni­ver­si­ty
4. Gor­don Fee (schol­ar and author) — Ph.D. from USC
5. Richard Ham­mar (AG legal coun­sel) – Har­vard Law
6. Rich Israel (schol­ar) — Ph.D. from Clare­mont
7. Todd Labute (schol­ar — APTS) — PhD from Mar­quette Uni­ver­si­ty
8. Everett Wil­son (schol­ar) — Ph.D. from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty
9. George O. Wood (Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent of the Assem­blies of God) — Law degree from West­ern State Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege of Law in Fuller­ton, Cal­i­for­nia
10. Amos Yong (the­olo­gian) — M.A. from Port­land State and Ph.D. from Boston Uni­ver­si­ty

Why com­pile a list like this?

First, if you’re a stu­dent at a sec­u­lar school don’t assume that you can’t go into voca­tion­al min­istry. As this list shows, some of the most well-known min­is­ters in the Pen­te­costal world come from the same place you do. And the trend isn’t abat­ing — when I was in sem­i­nary I learned that half of my class­mates at AGTS had gone to non-Chris­t­ian schools for their under­grad just as I had.

Sec­ond, if you’re a youth pas­tor (or a par­ent) don’t be scared to send your kids with a min­istry call­ing off to sec­u­lar schools to major in busi­ness or physics some­thing. Bible col­leges aren’t the only route to min­is­te­r­i­al prepa­ra­tion — and for many peo­ple they’re not the best route.

Third, don’t feel alone if you’re in min­istry and grad­u­at­ed from a sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty. At least in the Assem­blies of God it’s pret­ty easy to feel iso­lat­ed, because they have all these Bible col­lege alum­ni reunions at every big min­is­ter’s gath­er­ing and there’s nev­er a gath­er­ing for “went to a pagan school.” You may feel alone, but you’re not even close to alone.

Any­way, there are no doubt dozens more who aren’t com­ing to mind right now. I wel­come con­tri­bu­tions to the list — leave any updates in the com­ment sec­tion or email/facebook me. (If you’re read­ing this on Face­book, by the way, you’re only read­ing a copy. Click on the link at the top to go to the orig­i­nal where you can leave a com­ment). When you make a sug­ges­tion, please indi­cate your source (per­son­al con­ver­sa­tion, pub­lished bio, heard them men­tion it in a ser­mon, friend of a friend, etc).

edit 3/20/2008: first update is Mike McClaflin — thanks to Den­nis and Jen for this!
edit 3/21/2008: Rich sug­gest­ed Roger Houtsma along with Gor­don Fee and George O Wood (I’m leav­ing those two off for now because only their doc­tor­ates that came from a sec­u­lar school — try­ing to decide what to do with that). I’m also leav­ing off Mark Bat­ter­son for now because he start­ed his under­grad at Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go but fin­ished at a Bible col­lege. I also added a third rea­son for the list.
edit 3/21/2008: Char­lie also sug­gest­ed sev­er­al Ph.Ds, so I’ve start­ed a sec­ond list of those who did grad work at non-Chris­t­ian schools.
edit 3/28/2008: Brady Boyd, Mar­vin Miller, JP More­land, Mark Driscoll, Sam Storms, and Wayne Gru­dem added
edit 6/18/2008: Frank Cargill, Den­nis Cheek, Randy Gar­cia, Jonathan Gains­brugh added
edit 7/1/2008: added Antho­ny Sco­ma — doh! How did I over­look my bud?
edit 7/9/2008: added Rocky Bar­ra — thanks to David Moore for the point­er
edit 7/24/2008: removed Doug Peter­son and added Roli dela Cruz, Chris Carter, Todd Labute, and John Carter per Eka­pu­tra Tupamahu’s sug­ges­tions in the com­ments below. I haven’t tracked down a bio on each per­son, so their under­grad degrees might also be from sec­u­lar schools.
edit 8/29/2008: added Sarah Palin, gov­er­nor of Alas­ka and VP nom­i­nee.

I just read a great arti­cle about Chi Alpha nation­wide

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. It’s full of encour­ag­ing tes­ti­monies — includ­ing sto­ries from sev­er­al of my friends.

There’s one sto­ry I remem­ber from my under­grad days:

Min­istry real estate can be scarce on a sec­u­lar cam­pus. When Treuil came to Lafayette, Chi Alpha had no facil­i­ties.

“I inher­it­ed a two-draw­er file cab­i­net,” he says.

Today, the Lafayette chap­ter owns prop­er­ty esti­mat­ed at $1 mil­lion and com­plete­ly paid for.

A local busi­ness­man paid the rent on a house for about 5 years. A non-Chris­t­ian group was poised to buy the house in 1993 when the land­lord offered to sell the prop­er­ty to Chi Alpha. The catch — Treuil had to raise $90,000 in 90 days.

“We didn’t have the mon­ey, but we took a step of faith,” he says.

In 90 days God pro­vid­ed more than $90,000 in cash from indi­vid­ual offer­ings. Pas­tors opened their pul­pits to Treuil. One man donat­ed a Rolex watch. A woman gave Treuil eel-skin purs­es to sell. About 600 peo­ple con­tributed.

It was pret­ty amaz­ing to watch God pro­vide like that — and now the min­istry there owns not only the orig­i­nal prop­er­ty, but almost an entire block across the street from cam­pus that they use for min­istry. God is doing stuff like that through Chi Alpha min­istries on 250 cam­pus­es! Read the full arti­cle.born divx

While I was busy tour­ing Mon­terey Bay Aquar­i­um with my fam­i­ly and eat­ing duri­an, most of the rest of the Assem­blies of God was in Indi­anapo­lis for our bien­ni­al min­is­te­r­i­al gath­er­ing.

George Wood has been elect­ed Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent of the Assem­blies of God. I hon­est­ly did­n’t think he had a chance — our move­ment is still pret­ty anti-intel­lec­tu­al and he has two earned doc­tor­ates. In addi­tion, I thought he might be per­ceived as part of the “old guard” in a time of great change. I’m delight­ed that I was wrong — he’ll be a great leader. He’s a very flex­i­ble thinker and sees both the strengths and weak­ness­es of our move­ment pret­ty clear­ly.

Alton Gar­ri­son was elect­ed the new Assis­tant Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent (I expect­ed he would take one of the two top spots) — and he’s a very savvy leader. He’s much more well-read and inno­v­a­tive than most peo­ple expect an evan­ge­list from Arkansas to be. He’ll be a great voice to have at the table.

John Palmer is the new Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary — I had expect­ed him to become the exec­u­tive direc­tor of AG US Mis­sions instead. I’ve nev­er met him, but I’ve heard noth­ing but good things. Tim and Julie Smith in par­tic­u­lar have giv­en me very encour­ag­ing reports about him. He seems like a great addi­tion to the team.

Zol­lie Smith was the most sur­pris­ing elec­tion. He’s my new boss’s boss (direc­tor of US Mis­sions, tak­ing the posi­tion I expect­ed John Palmer to land), and I’ve been hear­ing good things about him for years. His elec­tion was a mile­stone for the Assem­blies of God — he’s our first non-Cau­casian exec­u­tive offi­cer.

I’m very excit­ed about the lead­er­ship team that came out of this Gen­er­al Coun­cil. It bodes well for our future as a move­ment. We picked some extreme­ly com­pe­tent peo­ple.

Oh — and the busi­ness ses­sions were feisty this year. If you’re into that sort of thing, you might want to check them out

.

The way the Assem­blies of God works, our next Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent will almost cer­tain­ly be or have been the pas­tor of a megachurch (I add “have been” because dis­trict offi­cials come pri­mar­i­ly from these ranks).

In fact, some are clam­or­ing for chang­ing our lead­er­ship mod­el to require that our Gen­er­al Superinden­dent be required to serve as pas­tor while serv­ing as our nation­al leader. There’s mer­it to the idea, but I’ve always had a notion in the back of my head that I’ve want­ed to see tried instead: elect a mis­sion­ary as Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent.

The Assem­blies of God is explod­ing world­wide, part­ly due to the lead­er­ship of our mis­sion­ar­ies. Turn­ing to these proven and capa­ble lead­ers seems like com­mon sense to me, espe­cial­ly since we are increas­ing­ly real­iz­ing that Amer­i­ca is a mis­sion field just like any oth­er. We need some­one who is able to sep­a­rate the way they want to do things from the way things need to be done — the very essence of an effec­tive mis­sion­ary.

Why not some­one who has led a nation to revival? None of our state­side lead­ers has that kind of resume, but sev­er­al of our mis­sion­ar­ies have rel­e­vant expe­ri­ence.

Why not some­one who has proven that they can func­tion with lead­ers they did not select them­selves? This, after all, is a key aspect of the Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent posi­tion to which megachurch pas­tors are unac­cus­tomed.

Why not some­one who is accus­tomed to train­ing and coach­ing lead­ers on the ground instead of try­ing to run the whole show them­selves?

The only oth­er can­di­date I think is as well-suit­ed for the job is a dis­trict super­in­ten­dent who has led his dis­trict to health and growth. I expect that Leslie Welk (North­west) and Don Gif­ford (Indi­ana) will both receive nom­i­na­tions on this basis. Jim Brad­dy (Nor Cal / Nev) might also — but I’m a mem­ber of his dis­trict and so I don’t have a good sense of how he’s per­ceived out­side our nar­row lit­tle world.

How­ev­er, I’m bet­ting that Alton Gar­ri­son (for­mer Sup of Arkansas) is ulti­mate­ly going to get the nod. He’s led a megachurch, led a dis­trict, and is pro­vid­ing lead­er­ship on the nation­al lev­el as the direc­tor of AG US Mis­sions.

So there’s a good chance that we’ll get some­one from AGUSM into the top spot — but not because of his con­nec­tion with mis­sions.

As to the oth­er spots I have no idea. In addi­tion to the nom­i­nees I men­tioned above, I’m pret­ty sure John Lin­dell will get nom­i­nat­ed. He may even let his name stand (although I sus­pect this depends on whether or not he can con­tin­ue to pas­tor at James Riv­er). Dary Northrop will prob­a­bly be nom­i­nat­ed. Dan Bet­zer will be nom­i­nat­ed. Bret Allen might get nom­i­nat­ed but he will decline. I would not be sur­prised at all if John Palmer gets nom­i­nat­ed (espe­cial­ly for the AGUSM lead­er­ship role if Alton is elect­ed Gen Sup), but I have no idea if he will accept.

Beyond that, I real­ly don’t know. There are a lot of poten­tial can­di­dates out there, and our desire to avoid the appear­ance of pol­i­tics means that we nev­er know for sure who will be nom­i­nat­ed and who will allow their names to stand.

Speak­ing of avoid­ing the appear­ance of pol­i­tics — the only way to real­ly avoid pol­i­tics is to select our lead­ers ran­dom­ly. Any solu­tion involv­ing vot­ing is extreme­ly polit­i­cal and the only ques­tion is whether or not those pol­i­tics will be pub­lic. In our move­ment we’ve decid­ed that hid­den pol­i­tics are prefer­able to trans­par­ent ones, and more and more of us are unhap­py with the result.

How­ev­er it shakes out, the Assem­blies is in for a wild ride at Gen­er­al Coun­cil this year. Too bad I’m going to miss it…

A friend of mine (Jay New­land) just sent me a fas­ci­nat­ing site talk­ing about the future of the Assem­blies of God: Future AG.

Sites like these are con­tro­ver­sial in our move­ment because we wish to avoid the appear­ance of pol­i­tics — it seems too tawdry for us. But our goal is not to be non-polit­i­cal (as though that were pos­si­ble), but to be wise in our selec­tion process. Con­ver­sa­tions such as those at Future AG can help us make wis­er choic­es, and are there­fore a good thing.

One post was extreme­ly help­ful to me, and so I share it in the hope it will be help­ful to oth­ers as well.

Here is how it will work. When we arrive we will be asked to nom­i­nate some­one for the posi­tion of gen­er­al super­in­ten­dent fol­lowed by the assis­tant gen­er­al super­in­ten­dent, gen­er­al sec­re­tary, AG World Mis­sions exec­u­tive direc­tor and mem­bers of the Exec­u­tive Pres­bytery. Any ordained min­is­ter can be nom­i­nat­ed.

In the past this has been done by writ­ing someone’s name down on a piece of paper, how­ev­er, vot­ing this year will be con­duct­ed elec­tron­i­cal­ly. This should speed up busi­ness con­sid­er­ably. For exam­ple, fol­low­ing an elec­tion results should be avail­able in 10 min­utes rather than the hour or more it has tak­en in the past.

With these changes, it is impor­tant that you reg­is­ter ear­ly. Go to www.ag.org and you can reg­is­ter online before August 3rd. If you miss that date make sure to reg­is­ter imme­di­ate­ly upon arrival.

Vot­ing will require: Reg­is­tra­tion, Vot­er ID Badge, Vot­er Guide­book

Vot­ing del­e­gates will receive a vot­ing num­ber on the back of their reg­is­tra­tion cards, which will give them access to the vot­ing machine.

If one nom­i­nee receives two-thirds of the bal­lots cast by the del­e­gates at the gen­er­al coun­cil, a win­ner will be declared. That is what hap­pened in 2001 and 2005 when Trask was re-elect­ed.

If no one receives the two-thirds major­i­ty, the vot­ing is lim­it­ed to the top 15 vote-get­ters.

If that does­n’t pro­duce a win­ner, the field is cut to the top three.

You might also wish to check out http://www.agleadershipchange.blogspot.com/

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).