Category: Personal News

On a per­son­al note, the last few weeks have been a great expo­sure to the diver­si­ty of the Assem­blies of God here in Nor Cal.

Two Sun­days ago I had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to talk to peo­ple about our min­istry at Fam­i­ly Com­mu­ni­ty Church in San Jose. FCC is a very con­tem­po­rary church reach­ing young adults and pro­fes­sion­als by the droves. They’ve added over 700 in week­ly atten­dance over the last two months.

That after­noon, I was invit­ed to preach in a Fijian church (First Fijian Assem­bly of God) that meets here in Palo Alto. It was great–they’re a won­der­ful church! We were espe­cial­ly hon­ored by their gifts of Fijian leis to us. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, they make leis out of dyed tree bark in Fiji. Very nice.

Last Sun­day I was able to share at Ori­en­tial Chris­t­ian Cen­ter (a Chi­nese church) that meets down in San Jose. It was the first time I’ve ever preached with an inter­preter. I kind of like it!

And to show you how con­nect­ed the Body of Christ is, one of the peo­ple I talked to at FCC gave my web­site to a friend of his who works at Stan­ford. He con­tact­ed me and we had lunch yes­ter­day. While talk­ing, he men­tioned that he had a Fijian friend he was try­ing to min­is­ter to, and I was able to con­nect him with the Fijian church I preached at!

How wild… God has got a way of hook­ing things up. He’s def­i­nite­ly got a sys­tems per­spec­tive!

By the way, we’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing great favor in our attempts to sched­ule ser­vices and con­nect with pas­tors. Right now we’re preach­ing in a dif­fer­ent church every week through March, and we’ve got tons of 1–1 meet­ings planned.

As a result, we’re already at the 70% mark of our man­dat­ed month­ly sup­port! It looks like we’ll be able to go full-time on cam­pus some­time this aca­d­e­m­ic year. Yippee!

Also, it looks like we’re going to have around 30 peo­ple crammed into our apart­ment for a Thanks­giv­ing lunch tomorrow–almost all of them Stan­ford stu­dents!

This has been a great year for Paula and I–we’ve had a lot of fun changes to process! Think­ing back, here are sev­en things we’re thank­ful for:

1) We’re thank­ful for five won­der­ful years of min­istry to the stu­dents back in Spring­field, MO!

2) We’re thank­ful for a safe and fun move west (and espe­cial­ly for the friends we were able to vis­it with as we drove across Amer­i­ca).

3) We’re thank­ful that we now have the hon­or of rep­re­sent­ing Christ to the world’s future lead­ers at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty!

4) We’re thank­ful for the many rela­tion­ships God has grant­ed us with Stan­ford stu­dents, both grad and under­grad (near­ly 25 so far). Pio­neer­ing is often much, much hard­er, and we’re grate­ful for how easy God has made it for us!

5) We’re thank­ful for liv­ing in such a won­der­ful apart­ment across the street from cam­pus. The best thing about it our prox­im­i­ty to stu­dents: Kevin, who is pur­su­ing his mas­ters in engi­neer­ing, can bike from his dorm to our apart­ment in about three min­utes!

6) We’re also thank­ful that God has pro­vid­ed us with what is quite pos­si­bly the most vibrant­ly yel­low car on the plan­et! We’ve got a few nick­names for this irre­press­ibly perky vehi­cle, includ­ing “The Curi­ous George Mobile” and “The Hap­py Car.”

7) And final­ly, we’re thank­ful for friends like you who sup­port us, pray for us, and show con­cern for us and for our min­istry. Thank you and thank God for you! We whole­heart­ed­ly echo the apos­tle Paul, “How can we pos­si­bly thank God enough for all the hap­pi­ness you have brought us?” (1st Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 3.9, CEV)

Hap­py Thanks­giv­ing!

It’s been a while since I’ve post­ed any­thing on this site (although look over at the Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford site and you’ll real­ize that I’ve been quite active online).

Still, this is the site that bears my name and all…

Here are a few lit­tle tid­bits:

• I vot­ed today. It was worth­while, but it real­ly wrecked my sched­ule.
• I have a bone to pick with the Cal­i­for­nia polit­i­cal sys­tem: what’s up with statewide ref­er­en­dums? Don’t they defeat the pur­pose of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy?
• And why do we use plu­ral­i­ty vot­ing to select pub­lic ser­vants? There are much bet­ter ways!
• I broke the 10,000 mile mark­er on our car yes­ter­day. I’m get­ting quite famil­iar with Cal­i­for­ni­a’s inter­state sys­tem…
• Also yes­ter­day I had a chance to meet with a real­ly neat pas­tor named Paul. He has eleven chil­dren. All by the same wife. Who still looks like a mod­el (his words). Wow.
• While I was meet­ing with Paul, he gave me a free tick­et to a remark­able cave in Vol­cano, CA called Black Chasm. Creepy name, gor­geous cav­ern. I was the only per­son on the tour when I vis­it­ed the cave, so it was real­ly cool. If you’re ever near Vol­cano, you should real­ly try to vis­it the cave–it’s well worth the time and mon­ey.

Any­way, I’m still work­ing at rais­ing our full mis­sion­ary bud­get (hence all the miles on the car and the meet­ing with said pas­tor). Keep us in your prayers!

Inci­den­tal­ly, I am giv­ing about two hours a week of min­istry time on Stan­ford’s cam­pus. We’ll be hav­ing our sixth meet­ing of the year this Wednes­day (Paula will be speak­ing), and we’re expect­ing around 20 stu­dents to show up. Rough­ly 1/3 of them will be Sin­ga­pore­an grad­u­ate stu­dents.

On a per­son­al note, last week was one of the most hec­tic I’ve had in a while. In the last sev­en days I’ve put 1700 miles on my car!

It start­ed off with a trip up to Dun­smuir, CA to meet with a pas­tors’ gath­er­ing, and it was con­stant motion from then on.

The week­end did­n’t pro­vide a sin­gle bit of respite–if any­thing, the pace picked up! Sat­ur­day morn­ing I taught a work­shop in Davis, and then I preached in Burlingame Sat­ur­day night, in San Bruno Sun­day morn­ing, and attend­ed a mis­sions ban­quet in San Jose Sun­day evening.

Yikes!

By the way, the top pic­ture is of me con­duct­ing the work­shop at Rock Your Cam­pus which I titled “Rea­son­able Answers to Hon­est Ques­tions” and I helped stu­dents process top­ics rang­ing from cap­i­tal pun­ish­ment and just-war the­o­ry to the levit­i­cal code and the exis­tence of suf­fer­ing. It was fun!

The bot­tom pic­ture is Paula and I with some of the Stan­ford stu­dents we brought to this min­istry train­ing event.

Here’s some­thing inter­est­ing (to me, at least). I’m on the cov­er of Chi Alpha’s mag­a­zine for cam­pus min­istry: Cam­pus Upgrade.

I’ll post a link to the arti­cle as soon as it’s online.

I found this link inter­est­ing: you are where you live.

Basi­cal­ly, you give it your zip­code, and it describes the peo­ple who live your area. For exam­ple, using my zip­code I get these results from the PRIZM sys­tem:
   Win­ner’s Cir­cle
   Exec­u­tive Suites
   Young Influ­en­tials
   Sub­ur­ban Sprawl
   Towns & Gowns

And I get these results from the Micro­vi­sion 450 data set:
   A Good Step For­ward
   Uni­ver­si­ty USA
   Mid­dle Years
   Upper Crust
   Urban Up And Com­ers

Pret­ty inter­est­ing stuff (and pret­ty accu­rate based on my impres­sions of the com­mu­ni­ty).

I first put this page online because a pas­tor asked me if there was some infor­ma­tion about us online, because he want­ed to copy our bio for the church bul­letin.

I thought about it, and real­ized that all the infor­ma­tion was scat­tered about and not in one place. It also occurs to me that vis­i­tors to the site might want to know a lit­tle bit more about me them­selves.

So here goes:

First, I should men­tion that we’re the Assem­blies of God mis­sion­ar­ies to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Now here’s some per­son­al stuff:

Full Name: Glen Tal­bot Davis
Born: May 3, 1974
Real­ly Began to Fol­low Jesus: at a sev­enth-grade chapel ser­vice
Bap­tized in the Holy Spir­it: as a col­lege sopho­more in UL Chi Alpha
Called to Min­istry: as a col­lege junior at a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence
Pre­vi­ous Min­istry Expe­ri­ence: five years on staff with Chi Alpha at South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty
Edu­ca­tion: Mas­ter of Divin­i­ty (AGTS, 1999)
Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana, 1996)
Strengths: preach­ing sim­ply about com­plex sub­jects, orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship, refut­ing false beliefs, using tech­nol­o­gy effec­tive­ly
Often Heard Say­ing: “Con­trast breeds clar­i­ty”
Deeply Influ­enced By: The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Church, The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines, Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, The Mas­ter Plan of Evan­ge­lism
Favorite Comics: The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, Dil­bert
Vision for Stan­ford: Estab­lish a cred­i­ble, con­sis­tent and per­va­sive Spir­it-filled gospel wit­ness on cam­pus.
Core Com­mit­ments (Val­ues):
     I must nur­ture inti­ma­cy with God.
     I must cul­ti­vate my char­ac­ter.
     I must build my mar­riage.
     I must hone my skills.
     I must main­tain healthy rela­tion­ships.
     I must rig­or­ous­ly ana­lyze my beliefs.

Full Name: Paula Kay Davis
Born: August 4, 1974
Real­ly Began to Fol­low Jesus: July 23, 1990 at a Bible Study
Bap­tized in the Holy Spir­it: August 1990 at a Bible Study
Called to Min­istry: Sum­mer 1992 at a youth con­fer­ence
Pre­vi­ous Min­istry Expe­ri­ence: five years with Chi Alpha at South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty, two years as board mem­ber of New Life Church (Spring­field, MO)
Edu­ca­tion: Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana, 1996)
Strengths: Orga­nized, hard­work­ing, good lis­ten­er, sen­si­tive to oth­ers, teach­able
Pas­sions: To see myself and oth­ers shaped more into the image of the Mas­ter; to help hurt­ing peo­ple expe­ri­ence the love of the Father.
Hob­bies: Enjoy sewing, cook­ing and spend­ing time with friends

And a recent addi­tion:
Full Name: Dana Marie Davis
Born: March 25, 2004
Often Heard: scream­ing incon­solably
Hob­bies: poop­ing, spit­ting up, and cry­ing

UPDATE: our anniver­sary is 12/21/1996.

Some­one just told me that they emailed me four times with­out ever hear­ing a response from me. I nev­er received any of the mes­sages.

I men­tion this in case you’ve sent me a mes­sage to which I’ve not replied. It’s pos­si­ble there’s a glitch with my email serv­er, although it’s equal­ly pos­si­ble that the per­son sim­ply made some mis­take on their end.

If I haven’t replied to a mesage, I apol­o­gize. Please resend it and I’ll get right back to you!

OK, I knew that the air in Cal­i­for­nia was sup­posed to be bad, but this is ridicu­lous! By the time a Bay Area babies are two and a half weeks old, they have inhaled more pol­lu­tion than the gov­ern­ment rec­om­mends over a life­time!

At least now I have some­thing to tell peo­ple who imply that I moved to Cal­i­for­nia just because of the mag­nif­i­cence of the scenerey and not due to the call of God… I’ll try to explain it between hack­ing coughs evi­denc­ing the onset of emphy­se­ma.

We just had a great vis­it from Bri­an and Court­ney Jacob­son, alum­ni from our last min­istry.

It’s inter­est­ing: we’ve lit­er­al­ly had guests in our house every oth­er week since we’ve arrived. Our rate of vis­i­ta­tion was much low­er in Spring­field, MO. Hmm­mm.…

Also, one of the high­lights of their vis­it was the Stan­ford-San Jose State foot­ball game. We won 63–26! Woohoo!

I enjoyed the game (espe­cial­ly since we stomped the oth­er team), but I was pret­ty dis­ap­point­ed about two things:

1) There were no stu­dents there. Class does­n’t start until Sep­tem­ber 23rd. It just seems lame that at quar­ter sys­tem schools the team has to play their first home game with­out stu­dent sup­port.

2) The sta­di­um was pret­ty rat­ty. I was shocked. I was expect­ing sharp, clean mark­ings on the field. I thought the screen would be high-tech and sharp. Wrong on both counts. It’s not like Stan­ford’s hurt­ing for money–so why the under­im­pres­sive sta­di­um?down­load few good men a dvd