Category: Stanford/Ministry 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.

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.

Yikes — New Students Arrive Today!

In which I describe in great detail my pan­icked yet joy­ous feel­ings as the school year begins.

these are random freshmen from some other school... but you get the ideaNew stu­dents arrive on cam­pus today. Yikes!

To Do:

  • Brush my teeth real­ly well, includ­ing my tongue so my breath does­n’t stink.
  • Shave head. Care­ful­ly. We don’t want a repeat of that inci­dent when I missed a patch and looked like a Who from Whoville.
  • Trim edges of beard. The dif­fer­ence between an epic prophet beard and a crazy cult leader beard is sur­pris­ing­ly hard to define, but raggedy beard edges have some­thing to do with it. That, and neck hair. Say no to the throat beard.
  • Print lit­er­a­ture for tabling: new stu­dent devo­tion­al guide, Why Jesus? essay, The Jesus FAQ.
  • Prac­tice smil­ing in the mir­ror.
  • Dou­ble check on throat hair.

P.S. I don’t think I’ve pub­li­cized it here, but I put a new writ­ing online. I men­tion it above in the “print lit­er­a­ture” bul­let point — it’s a ten-day devo­tion­al guide for new stu­dents called Thrive. It, along with all my oth­er writ­ings, is indexed here.

Spring Break Infographic

Spring break is around the cor­ner for most col­leges. Here’s an infor­ma­tive graph­ic I found at http://www.onlineschools.org/blog/spring-break.

The Story Behind Spring Break

Change The University, Change The World

Aerial Shot of Stanford CampusI just added a new PDF to my grow­ing list of essays and Bible stud­ies: Change the Uni­ver­si­ty, Change the World. I wrote it for my sem­i­nary’s alum­ni mag­a­zine, Rap­port, in 2008.

It looks so much more pro­fes­sion­al than all my oth­er stuff — it’s amaz­ing what an edi­tor and some graph­ic design can do to make con­tent sparkle. 🙂

I’ll be putting some more essays up soon. Thanks to all who have tak­en the time to give me feed­back in the com­ments sec­tion of my blog, on Face­book notes, and on Google Buzz. I appre­ci­ate it very much.

An Unofficial Response to Westboro Baptist Church

The noto­ri­ous West­boro Bap­tist Church is hold­ing a protest at Stan­ford this Fri­day (see a good sum­ma­ry at Fiat Lux: why here, their iden­ti­ty, their beliefs, their legal his­to­ry). In response, the Stan­ford com­mu­ni­ty is plan­ning a counter-ral­ly at the same time and place as West­boro’s protest.

A group of Chris­t­ian min­istries signed a joint state­ment oppos­ing West­boro, but the Stan­ford Dai­ly has appar­ent­ly declined to pub­lish it (at least, I can’t find it in the online paper). Per­haps it will appear soon (UPDATE: it was pub­lished in the op-ed sec­tion the day after I put this post up). But in case it does not, I would like to give my own per­son­al response to them here. The offi­cial state­ment was designed to gar­ner sup­port from sev­er­al dif­fer­ent min­istries, but what fol­lows is lan­guage that no one else but me has signed off on. Con­se­quent­ly, it is con­sid­er­ably more direct.

I think West­boro Bap­tist Church is crazy. I also think it is unwise to hold a ral­ly oppos­ing a group which thrives on con­flict. Atten­tion is the drug they crave. They have become a recur­ring nation­al news sto­ry mere­ly because of their abil­i­ty to draw crowds and media.

I refuse to protest them, and I also refuse to ignore them. I am in no way ambiva­lent about their pres­ence on cam­pus: what they are doing is wrong. It heaps shame upon Christ and it caus­es peo­ple made in God’s image to expe­ri­ence an alien­at­ing anguish. I believe that prayer is the most effec­tive pos­si­ble response to this sit­u­a­tion. I, my min­istry, and sev­er­al oth­er Chris­t­ian groups at Stan­ford will hold a prayer meet­ing while the protest is going on at which we will ask God to con­vict West­boro mem­bers of their sin and lead them to repen­tance.

So yeah. That’s what one preach­er thinks about their pres­ence.

Chi Alpha Favorably Profiled In The Stanford Daily

Halls of Learning - Stanford QuadThe Stan­ford Dai­ly pub­lished an arti­cle titled Tes­ti­monies On Stan­ford Faith about peo­ple in our min­istry (Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship).

The web­site the arti­cle focus­es on is testimonies.stanford.edu.

Read­ing this arti­cle was very encour­ag­ing to me because I always fear that Chi Alpha will wind up in the Dai­ly because of some bone­head­ed thing I said in a ser­mon… this was a much bet­ter expe­ri­ence. 😉

Baptism on Campus

Jan­u­ary 29th I had a great priv­i­lege. I was able to bap­tize my friend Kel­ly in the Claw Foun­tain in between the Book­store and Old Union.

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The water was cold. In fact, I saw Kel­ly’s eyes shoot open when she went under the water and I could prac­ti­cal­ly read the thoughts run­ning through her brain, “I want to gasp. But if I gasp, I’ll drown. Drown­ing is bad at a bap­tism. But I want to gasp so bad­ly.”

For­tu­nate­ly, the warm Cal­i­for­nia sun brought her back from the brink of hypother­mia right after I pulled her up. I’m just glad I told her to bring a change of clothes and a tow­el!

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watch slaugh­ter online If hav­ing a bap­tism out in pub­lic strikes you as a lit­tle odd I’d like to point out that it has ample Bib­li­cal and his­tor­i­cal prece­dent. The most famous Bib­li­cal exam­ple is from Acts 8:36–38:

As they trav­eled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water. Why should­n’t I be bap­tized?” And he gave orders to stop the char­i­ot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip bap­tized him.

Yeah. So we did that.

And I hope we get to do it again soon. 🙂

Stanford at the Olympics

Stan­ford has 46 ath­letes com­pet­ing in the Olympics this year. Get a sum­ma­ry of the lat­est news or see sto­ries with pic­tures and more details down­load scenes of a sex­u­al nature online . to daylilies apply­ing colchicine down­load bratz genie mag­ic dvd

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Stanford Rocks It Again

The 2008 world rank­ing of uni­ver­si­ties has just been released, and yet again Stan­ford occu­pies the #2 spot in the whole world

uni­ver­sal sol­dier the return free

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It real­ly is an amaz­ing place to do min­istry. Big thanks to all of you who pray for and sup­port us. bergen coun­ty breast aug­men­ta­tion

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