Category: Spiritual Growth

Check it out–I’m the guest video blog­ger on ChiAlpha.com in a clip enti­tled “I Doubt It”! We filmed this while I was in Atlanta for the cam­pus min­is­ters’ con­fer­ence this week­end.

Curt (the video blog king) did some major edit­ing to make me sound more intel­li­gent than I was in that section–I was bab­bling like a fool but through the mir­a­cle of iMovie I came out look­ing not total­ly stu­pid.

Also, they have added a video archive so that you can check out all the past video blogs.

In case you haven’t been check­ing it out, the nation­al Chi Alpha web­site has been rockin’ late­ly. If you want to get a feel­ing for what they’re doing, check out their video blogs (the most recent one is a video blog of love, but I think the one on post­mod­ern cook­ie evan­ge­lism is a bet­ter intro).

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, there’s no index to them all. You can sort of see one at http://chialpha.com/video_blogs, but it’s real­ly just a direc­to­ry list­ing. *sigh*

Update: there is an index to the Chi Alpha video blogs!

As I promised in last night’s mes­sage Booze, The Bible, & Bad The­ol­o­gy, here are some resources out­lin­ing what the Bible says about fer­ment­ed bev­er­ages.

* First, a list of every pas­sage in the Bible that dis­cuss­es alco­hol.
* Daniel Whit­field has a good essay Alco­hol and the Bible–well worth read­ing.
* Daniel Wal­lace wrote The Bible and Alco­hol, an extreme­ly help­ful arti­cle from a very sol­id schol­ar.
* The Chris­t­ian Coun­ter­cul­ture project has an insight­ful col­lec­tion of arti­cles in their What Would Jesus Drink? col­lec­tion.

There is diver­si­ty with­in the Chris­t­ian camp on this issue, and a sim­ple google search will find argu­ments from all cor­ners. The ones I list­ed above are the ones I find most cred­i­ble.

UPDATE: I just ran across a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at Chris­tian­i­ty Today that gives a sol­id his­tor­i­cal overview — Amassed Media: The Drink Debate.

The mes­sages from Col­lege Win­ter Retreat are online now in Win­dows Media for­mat.

I would have put them in MP3 for­mat, but every time I tried to con­vert the file sizes swelled by an order of mag­ni­tude and I could­n’t fig­ure out how to change it.

If you want to give it a go, feel free.

The Nation­al Chi Alpha office has just released anoth­er video blog.

Check it out!

Going to study abroad? God Abroad is a great resource–it will help you find a Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty over­seas!
Con­tin­ue read­ing “Spir­i­tu­al Help When Study­ing Abroad”

I just ran across an inter­est­ing arti­cle I thought most col­lege stu­dents would find inter­est­ing: Hugh Hefn­er’s Hol­low Vic­to­ry (orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the defunct re:generation quar­ter­ly, now host­ed on ChristianityToday.com).

It’s a very insight­ful cri­tique of the main­stream porn indus­try in Amer­i­ca. Well worth read­ing.

A fel­low Chi Alphan (Lynette, if you must know) asked me to rec­om­mend some online expla­na­tions of Chris­tian­i­ty that she could for­ward to a friend who is inter­est­ed.

There are a ton out there, but here are some that I real­ly like:

Pow­er to Change is prob­a­bly my favorite. It eschews over-the-top flash ani­ma­tion and focus­es on the sto­ries of changed lives.

The next three are all vari­ants on a theme–make the gospel look cool through use of snazzy flash and sound­track. They are actu­al­ly quite cool. To each their own:
1) Got Life?: a play on the “Got Milk?” cam­paign.
2) Wuzup God?: a youthy vari­ant of the bill­boards ask­ing ques­tions. It’s not quite as clear as I would like it to be, but it’s still nice.
3) The Kris­to: very cool, but it annoys me that I can’t skip the intro to get to the inter­ac­tive part nor can I pause it (if some­thing cool comes on tv or I get a phone call then the inabil­i­ty to pause becomes a real drag).

Faith Cards: this is an e‑vangelistic twist on the wide­spread elec­tron­ic birth­day and hol­i­day cards out there. I almost nev­er open them myself, but some peo­ple love them. If that describes your friend (which it almost cer­tain­ly does if this is a friend who for­wards you cute sto­ries), they might appre­ci­ate get­ting one of these.

If you have one that you real­ly like, post it in a com­ment. If I like it too, I’ll update the post and include it in the main text!

I just ran across a handy arti­cle called The Top Ten Col­lege Temp­ta­tions. It’s not stuff you’ve nev­er heard before, but it’s a good sum­ma­ry of sim­ple truth.

I just ran across a state­ment of faith writ­ten by Mike Yaconel­li (who recent­ly died) for his com­pa­ny, Youth Spe­cial­ties.

I high­ly rec­om­mend What Do You Real­ly Believe?