Category: Personal News

The Gratitude of a Preacher

As a preach­er I have a lot to be thank­ful for. First, of course, I have the sorts of things every­one should be thank­ful for. I’m thank­ful for pup­pies and kit­tens and stars. I’m thank­ful for my health and for my fam­i­ly. I’m thank­ful that I live in a peace­ful place in this war-torn and vio­lent world.

But there are some addi­tion­al things that I as a min­is­ter ought to be grate­ful for, and three are on my mind today. I am grate­ful for those I min­is­ter to, I am grate­ful for those I used to min­is­ter to, and I am grate­ful for those who make it pos­si­ble.

First, I am grate­ful for those I min­is­ter to. So often in his let­ters Paul express­es thanks to God for the peo­ple he min­is­ters to:

1 Thess 3:9 may be the most pow­er­ful of these vers­es:

How can we thank God enough for you in return for all the joy we have in the pres­ence of our God because of you? (NIV)

I can relate to Paul — the stu­dents in Chi Alpha bring me joy. Actu­al delight. Words fail me at times. And this isn’t a one-off sen­ti­ment Paul express­es:

  • 1 Cor 1:4 – “I always thank my God for you”
  • Eph 1:16 – “I have not stopped giv­ing thanks for you”
  • Col 1:3 – “We always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, when we pray for you”
  • 1 Thess 1:2 – “We always thank God for all of you”
  • 2 Thess 1:3 – “We ought always to thank God for you” (all these are from the NIV)

Paul knew that when you’re a min­is­ter, you should real­ize that the peo­ple God has giv­en you are a gift. More ful­ly, you are a gift to them and they are a gift to you.

Some­one like me should be grate­ful that any­one shows up to hear me preach. I min­is­ter to busy Stan­ford stu­dents. These peo­ple have been work­ing all week. They’ve got home­work to get done. They have text­books to read. And they’ve got cute peo­ple to woo. And they’re gonna take time every Wednes­day night to walk across cam­pus and lis­ten to me talk about the Bible? And then they’re going to find me through­out the week to ask me ques­tions about God and how to fol­low Him more ful­ly and wise­ly? That’s wild!

I am grate­ful to them, and I am grate­ful to God for them. My stu­dents are amaz­ing and I love them so much.

Sec­ond, I am grate­ful for those I min­is­tered to years ago.

In 3 John 1:4 the apos­tle tells us

I have no greater joy than to hear that my chil­dren are walk­ing in the truth. (NIV)

Paula and I recent­ly took a trip to DC, New York, and Boston to vis­it some of our alum­ni. It was so excit­ing to catch up with every­one, but one of the things that made the biggest impres­sion on me was meet­ing chil­dren who only exist because God called Paula and me to min­is­ter at Stan­ford over two decades ago. Their par­ents met in Chi Alpha, and like­ly would not have begun to date had we not pro­vid­ed the envi­ron­ment in which their rela­tion­ship grew. And now there are kids. Actu­al adorable humans of infi­nite worth who exist as a direct result of our min­istry. It’s won­der­ful.

See­ing our alum­ni filled me with inex­press­ible joy, espe­cial­ly when I spoke to so many of them about the church­es they attend and how their faith has grown through the years.

Our alum­ni are extra­or­di­nary peo­ple and I am always touched when they have time to meet with their old col­lege pas­tor, and even more when they have kind words to share and fond mem­o­ries to rem­i­nisce over.

Third, I am grate­ful for those who make it pos­si­ble.

In Philip­pi­ans 1:3–5, Paul says

3 Every time I think of you, I give thanks to my God. 4 When­ev­er I pray, I make my requests for all of you with joy, 5 for you have been my part­ners in spread­ing the Good News about Christ from the time you first heard it until now. (NLT)

Paul is so thank­ful for the Philip­pi­ans that he thanks God for them every time he prays because they are his “part­ners in spread­ing the Good News about Christ.” What that means is unclear until you come to the end of the let­ter. In Philip­pi­ans 4:15–16 he explains

15 As you know, you Philip­pi­ans were the only ones who gave me finan­cial help when I first brought you the Good News and then trav­eled on from Mace­do­nia. No oth­er church did this. 16 Even when I was in Thes­sa­loni­ca you sent help more than once.(NLT)

The Philip­pi­ans part­nered with Paul by send­ing him mon­ey to help him do min­istry. And Paul was grate­ful.

So am I. Our min­istry is only pos­si­ble because of a whole lot of peo­ple like the Philip­pi­ans. They give us finan­cial help and Paula and I are so very thank­ful.

So I’m grate­ful. And if you’re a stu­dent in Chi Alpha now, or if you were a stu­dent in Chi Alpha years ago, or if you are one of our finan­cial part­ners, know this: I am espe­cial­ly grate­ful for you this Thanks­giv­ing. May you be blessed.

What I’m Thankful For In 2020

I had some of my stu­dents sub­mit video self­ies of grat­i­tude. I hope these three min­utes put a smile on your face and stoke your hol­i­day spir­it.

Stan­ford stu­dents express thanks

Every Thanks­giv­ing I think about this poem from the ever-quotable Chester­ton:

You say grace before meals.
All right.
But I say grace before the con­cert and the opera,
and grace before the play and pan­tomime,
and grace before I open a book,
and grace before sketch­ing, paint­ing,
swim­ming, fenc­ing, box­ing, walk­ing, play­ing, danc­ing,
and grace before I dip the pen in the ink.

G.K. Chester­ton, “A Grace”, Col­lect­ed Poet­ry

Even in 2020 there is so much to be thank­ful for. I am grate­ful that my fam­i­ly has stayed healthy. I am grate­ful that we live in an age when sci­en­tists can pro­duce three vac­cines for a new pan­dem­ic in less than a year. I am grate­ful that even in the midst of a pan­dem­ic I have a place to live and food to eat.

I am grate­ful that I love my job — I get to min­is­ter at one of the most amaz­ing places on earth. I am grate­ful for the team of peo­ple pray­ing for and pro­vid­ing for this min­istry. I am grate­ful that even in the midst of a pan­dem­ic we were able to meet and min­is­ter to new peo­ple — I had­n’t met six out of the twen­ty stu­dents in the above video before fall quar­ter began. How won­der­ful!

I am grate­ful that God loves, that God for­gives, and that God will bring jus­tice. I am grate­ful that He cre­at­ed a won­der­ful world and filled it with good things. I am grate­ful for the cross and for the emp­ty tomb, and I am grate­ful that in just two days my fam­i­ly will begin dec­o­rat­ing for Christ­mas to cel­e­brate the gift of Jesus — God with us.

May the rest of your 2020 be filled with occa­sions for grat­i­tude, and may your 2021 be out­stand­ing!

Seventeen Years of Ministering at Stanford

Some thoughts from sev­en­teen years of min­istry at Stan­ford. HUGE THANKS to every­one who has been part of this won­der­ful jour­ney. Let’s see where the next sev­en­teen take us!

Sev­en­teen years ago today my wife and I drove into Palo Alto in a rent­ed yel­low Penske truck. God had called us to min­is­ter to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty and we were report­ing for duty.

The years since then haven’t always been easy, but they have been extreme­ly reward­ing. Here are some thoughts run­ning through my mind on this anniver­sary:

  1. God does the work. I remem­ber sit­ting down with a stu­dent a few months ago. She had sought me out after com­ing to faith through read­ing. She had nev­er been to a Chi Alpha wor­ship ser­vice. She had nev­er heard me preach. She had just spent time think­ing and read­ing. Even­tu­al­ly she was con­vinced and her life was changed. So many of the best things we’ve seen hap­pen in min­istry have hap­pened inde­pen­dent­ly of any plan or effort of ours. God does the work and gra­cious­ly invites us to tag along.
  2. Uni­ver­si­ty min­istry real­ly does touch the world. Last year, Paula hung a map on our wall and we began putting a dot on the map when­ev­er an inter­na­tion­al stu­dent ate a meal in our home. In one year we had over 50 inter­na­tion­al stu­dents from over 25 nations sit down to eat with us. In Acts 19:9–10 we read that because Paul spent two years min­is­ter­ing dai­ly at an edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tion “all the Jews and Greeks who lived in the province of Asia heard the word of the Lord.” That strat­e­gy still works today.
  3. Uni­ver­si­ty min­istry real­ly does build god­ly lead­ers. By my count, we have alum­ni work­ing in the gov­ern­ments of three nations, we’ve got alum­ni serv­ing as pro­fes­sors at five uni­ver­si­ties (includ­ing three pro­fes­sors at Stan­ford), we’ve had two alum­ni make the Forbes “30 Under 30” list, one make the MIT Tech­nol­o­gy Review’s “35 Inno­va­tors Under 35” list, sev­er­al serv­ing as pas­tors and mis­sion­ar­ies, and many more doing amaz­ing things all over the world. Some of these alum­ni came to Christ through our min­istry while oth­ers were dis­ci­pled in their exist­ing faith. We are thrilled at all God has done in them and in awe of what He is doing through them.
  4. We could­n’t have done it alone. I’ve got to extend a huge thank YOU to every­one who has sup­port­ed us in our min­istry. We are so grate­ful to every­one who has prayed for us, to all the staff who have worked along­side us, to the gen­er­ous peo­ple who have giv­en to help make this min­istry pos­si­ble, and to the stu­dents who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in our min­istry. None of this could have hap­pened with­out your part­ner­ship. We are grate­ful to you and also grate­ful to God for you.

So any­way, that’s what I’m think­ing about after sev­en­teen years of min­istry on the Farm. I’m excit­ed to see what God does over the next sev­en­teen!

P.S. If you just stum­bled upon this blog post while brows­ing the site and would like to begin receiv­ing our prayer emails, you can sign up here.

Merry Christmas!

May you forge warm mem­o­ries, enjoy deli­cious food, and expe­ri­ence the joy and peace that came into this world two thou­sand years ago this Christ­mas.

Thanksgiving

Every year we host stu­dents in our home for Thanks­giv­ing. Today we will have just shy of three dozen. They come from around the world and find it dif­fi­cult to make it home for such a short break.

Since Thanks­giv­ing in a nov­el cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence for many of them, I always give a quick expla­na­tion before the meal. For the curi­ous, here’s what I’m plan­ning to say today:

Amer­i­can Thanks­giv­ing traces its roots back to 1621 when the Euro­pean colonists of Ply­mouth Plan­ta­tion cel­e­brat­ed their first har­vest on the new con­ti­nent. 45 colonists and 90 native Amer­i­cans cel­e­brat­ed togeth­er for a three-day feast.

This became a cus­tom in many colonies, but the sched­ule and the details of the cel­e­bra­tion would vary from place to place. On Octo­ber 3, 1789 George Wash­ing­ton called for the first Fed­er­al Thanks­giv­ing with this procla­ma­tion. It’s a bit long so I’m going to read the high­lights:

By the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, a Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as it is the duty of all Nations to acknowl­edge the prov­i­dence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grate­ful for his ben­e­fits, and humbly to implore his pro­tec­tion and favor– and where­as both Hous­es of Con­gress have by their joint Com­mit­tee request­ed me to rec­om­mend to the Peo­ple of the Unit­ed States a day of pub­lic thanks­giv­ing and prayer to be observed by acknowl­edg­ing with grate­ful hearts the many sig­nal favors of Almighty God espe­cial­ly by afford­ing them an oppor­tu­ni­ty peace­ably to estab­lish a form of gov­ern­ment for their safe­ty and hap­pi­ness.

Now there­fore I do rec­om­mend and assign Thurs­day the 26th day of Novem­ber next to be devot­ed by the Peo­ple of these States to the ser­vice of that great and glo­ri­ous Being, who is the benef­i­cent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offer­ing our prayers and sup­pli­ca­tions to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to par­don our nation­al and oth­er trans­gres­sions– to enable us all, whether in pub­lic or pri­vate sta­tions, to per­form our sev­er­al and rel­a­tive duties prop­er­ly and punc­tu­al­ly….

Giv­en under my hand at the City of New York the third day of Octo­ber in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Wash­ing­ton

That procla­ma­tion regard­ed a sin­gle occur­rence, not a year­ly event. A few gen­er­a­tions lat­er on Octo­ber 3, 1863 Abra­ham Lin­coln estab­lished Thanks­giv­ing as an annu­al nation­al hol­i­day which we still cel­e­brate to this day.

I am a Chris­t­ian, and so this day is very spe­cial to me because grat­i­tude is at the heart of Chris­tian­i­ty.

As the apos­tle tells us in 1 Thess 5:18

Give thanks in all cir­cum­stances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (ESV)

And we do this because even when cir­cum­stances are bad, God is good. As we read in Psalm 107:1

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his stead­fast love endures for­ev­er! (ESV)

And so this Thanks­giv­ing, join me as we offer thanks for the food.

Cre­ator God, we are grate­ful for your pro­vi­sion of a uni­verse for us to inhab­it filled with won­der­ful things, includ­ing deli­cious food. Help us to enjoy it and the con­ver­sa­tions that fill this room. Most of all, thank you for giv­ing us Jesus as a sav­ior and a Lord.  Today we declare with the Psalmist: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24, ESV)

Now let us eat with grate­ful hearts!

Conversations

Three recent con­ver­sa­tions, pre­sent­ed ver­ba­tim:

Domino

A Con­ver­sa­tion With My Daugh­ter
I set up a line of domi­noes run­ning around a cor­ner and had my sev­en-year-old daugh­ter sit where she could only see the end. I tipped the first domi­no over and we watched the entire chain fall.

Then I asked her, “How do you know there was a first domi­no? You did­n’t see it.”

She stared at the fall­en domi­noes with a fur­rowed brow for a few sec­onds, then said, “If there was no first domi­no there would be no world. Noth­ing could exist.”

Look out, Aris­to­tle. My daugh­ter is gun­ning for you.

new face
A Con­ver­sa­tion With My Son
Yes­ter­day I took my chil­dren to Hap­py Hol­low. As we were enter­ing the park we passed by an Asian gal dressed up as an ani­me char­ac­ter. I’m not sure which one, but she had on some sort of bulky white body armor. More to the point, she had also dyed her hair pur­ple.

So I said to my wife, “If I was Asian I would total­ly have pur­ple hair.”

My four-year-old son over­heard and said with a dis­mis­sive tone, “If I was Asian I’d have black hair.”

kiwanja_palo_alto_texting_3
A Con­ver­sa­tion With A Stu­dent
A text mes­sage con­ver­sa­tion with one of my stu­dents (ver­ba­tim with a few words removed to pre­serve anonymi­ty):

Stu­dent: “Is pub­lic nudi­ty a sin?”
Me: “What?”
Stu­dent: “Is it just kind of weird or is it some­thing to avoid alto­geth­er?”
Me: “Search biblegateway.com for the term ‘mod­est’.”

And Then What Happened?

Warriors ...I got back from a trip yes­ter­day and was greet­ed by my three-year old son. He had some­thing to tell me about preschool:

He said, “Matthew hit me today.”

So I said, “Real­ly? And then what hap­pened?”

He said, “I hit him.”

Rea­son­able enough for a three-year old. And around this time the teacher is prob­a­bly about to get involved, and I’m pret­ty curi­ous about what she did. “What hap­pened after that?”

He said, “He hit me again.”

Uh-oh. This might not be a very good sto­ry. “And then what hap­pened?”

He got a big grin on his face. “I tum­bled him.”

I start­ed to grin back. It was part­ly a response to his grin, part­ly amuse­ment at his inven­tive use of the word “tum­ble”, and part­ly pride in my war­rior son.

“I see. And then what hap­pened?”

“Noth­ing.”

I burst into laugh­ter. So did Paula. What would you have done?

Is Jesus On Fire?

Fire man!Every morn­ing before my daugh­ter heads to kinder­garten I read her a Bible sto­ry. This morn­ing I read some­thing Jesus said and asked her if there was any­thing she did­n’t under­stand.

“Well.… where was Jesus when he said this?”

“In Israel. Why?”

“I was won­der­ing if he was on earth or in heav­en when he said it.”

“He was on earth, hon­ey.”

And then my three-year old son said, “Or on fire.”

That’s almost cer­tain­ly not as fun­ny to you as it was to me, but I present it here for your con­sid­er­a­tion. When­ev­er Jesus said some­thing, he was either in heav­en, on earth, or on fire.

Settling In To Our New Digs

Boxes, boxes, and more boxes. Oh, and a U-Haul truck with yet more boxes.Some of our faithful movers take a well-deserved break.We just moved from our old apart­ment to a house else­where in Men­lo Park. So far we love it! The kids are espe­cial­ly jazzed about the yard and the ensu­ing prospects for out­door play.

A big thank you to those who helped us move!

aug­men­ta­tion breast mis­sis­sauga Props to Ben, Katie, Alan, John, Desir­ae, Irene, Chris, Femi, Ethan, Lind­sey, Scott (way to serve with your post­op­er­a­tive self), Jen and Aaron. Lind­sey and Sue deserve spe­cial men­tion because they each watched our kids part of the day, which meant Paula and I could both get stuff done. And a spe­cial shout-out to Emi­ly who was plan­ning to help but had to bail due to a last-minute med­ical emer­gency (get well soon).

High­lights from the move:

    down­load exit wounds dvd
  • Notic­ing that a dis­pro­por­tion­ate num­ber of stu­dents decid­ed to wear their Chi Alpha shirts for the move. My heuris­tic was to wear a shirt I did­n’t care about… which makes me won­der how our stu­dents real­ly feel about our shirts. 😉
  • Hap­py Donuts for break­fast. Yum. Bonus: watch­ing Ben get a sug­ar rush.
  • Hear­ing my name used as a vir­tu­al curse word when peo­ple real­ized how many box­es of books they would have to car­ry. They love the eru­dite ser­mons, they just hate the way I pre­pare for them. 🙂
  • Back­ing a U‑Haul into my nar­row dri­ve­way. Yikes!
  • Chris get­ting scratched by a rose bush and me (for once) hav­ing the right line at the right time, “He does­n’t need a band-aid — he needs a Y chro­mo­some.”
  • New York Piz­za for lunch. Two King Kongs and a Large. Excel­lent.
  • Hav­ing our inter­net acti­vat­ed on the day we moved in. Sweet!
  • Our new neigh­bor drop­ping off brown­ies. How very kind.
  • Hav­ing our super-studly mov­ing crew stay to help us assem­ble and lay out fur­ni­ture. Way above and beyond the call of duty. THANK YOU!
  • Cost­co Hot Dogs for sup­per. Those dogs are deli­cious. And huge.
  • Dou­ble bonus: watch­ing Ben cud­dle up after a hard day’s work and drift into la-la land.

For those to whom it mat­ters, our new address is 1032 Ring­wood Ave, Men­lo Park, CA 94025.down periscope free

the lit­tle kid­nap­pers movie down­load

California Is Amazing

In the last few days, my work has tak­en me to preach in Sono­ra, CA (where I was able to take an excur­sion to Yosemite Val­ley and also stand upon Glac­i­er Point divx machine girl the

tril­o­quist online down­load

they wait movie ), it has caused me to spend a day at Sea­cliff Beach

(near San­ta Cruz) help­ing with a youth camp, and it’s allowed me to have lunch with a wor­ship pas­tor in San Fran­cis­co. And in the mid­dle I got to hang out with some of the most amaz­ing peo­ple in the world at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.

If you’re keep­ing score, that’s two instances of moun­tain­ous beau­ty, one day of beachy fun, one inci­dent of cos­mopoli­tan ele­gance, and sev­er­al heap­ing sides of aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly elite intel­lec­tu­al stim­u­la­tion. All in under a week.

I’m blown away at (a) how cool my state is and (b) how delight­ful my job is.

If your life is insuf­fi­cient­ly fab­u­lous, con­sid­er com­ing to Cal­i­for­nia to do col­lege min­istry. It rocks.