Category: Stanford/Ministry News

At our last Chi Alpha meeting, we had a guest named Darin, who is a physics major visiting from Princeton University. He came with one of our students, Shaowei, with whom he went to high school.

To make a long story short, after the meeting I learned that Darin isn’t a Christian but he did want some counsel from a minister. We talked for a long time, and he invited me to pray that God would reveal Himself to him in a way that is convincing to Darin.

Please pray for Darin! I think he’s on the verge of following Christ: he just needs some time to process everything and to experience God’s presence in his life.

Side note: one of the unexpected aspects of ministry at one elite school is that you get to minister to students from other elite schools as well. The weekend before meeting Darin I met a Harvard student named Steve who was visiting a student from a group that he went to high school with. Prior to that I met a Cornell student. Just thought you might find that interesting.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I preached at an inner-city youth group Friday night. I got back around midnight, went to bed, and woke up to drive to Yuba City.

We spent the night at Jeff and Lori Wright’s place (their son Andrew is involved in Chi Alpha @ Stanford), and then we shared at Sutter Community Church in the morning.

Side note: when I preach I generally put my cell phone on silent mode and set it on the pulpit as a way of keeping time. Unfortunately, when I receive a call the phone displays a new mail notification instead of the usual clock. That’s relevant only because Alicia Chole called me in-between points 2 and 3. I say this not to chastise Alicia, but merely because I found it funny. For the record, I did not answer the phone.

Anyway, we went out for lunch after and had a great time with the pastor and his family and the worship leader and his wife.

Then we headed to the Wright’s house to watch the first half of the Superbowl.

Then it was off to preach at Calvary Temple in Yuba City. There were a TON of people there, which surprised me given that the Superbowl was going on and that a California team was playing. Anyway, we had a great time sharing with the people. I even got to tell a pretty funny Raiders joke and not get lynched.

Paula and I would like to publicly commend Calvary Temple and Pastor Ciociola: they gave us the largest offering to aid our work that we’ve ever received, and they did it while the Superbowl was being played with a team from their state contending for the championship! May God richly bless them with every blessing at His disposal.

And then we left and we returned home around 11pm and crashed.

I got to share with the youth group at the San Francisco Worship Center tonight.

That was my first time preaching in an inner-city environment: it was fun! The youth seemed to be with me throughout my message (and I didn’t even have to bust into rap to keep their attention, although if I had I suppose I would have generated a certain amount of morbid fascination).

It was pretty cool, and we had some great Thai food afterwards.download skinwalkers divx

God is sneaky. I’m pretty sure that’s not in the Bible (unless you read a very loose translation), but I’m convinced of the fact. He tells us to be wise as serpents, and He models that for us.

For example, today Paula and I shared at a church in Burlingame, CA called Three Cities Assembly. The San Francisco Forty-Niners had a playoff game today, so I was expecting the attendance to be a little bit down. Other than that, I wasn’t expecting anything unusual.

God had other plans, though.

After the service, it’s customary for a missionary guest speaker to be available to shake hands and chat with people. I met the head of anthropology for Wycliffe Bible Translators after the service today–that was pretty cool. I also met a guy who used to be in a Chi Alpha group led by some friends of mine in Stockton, CA. That was also pretty cool. It’s not unusual to meet very cool people after the service.

I also met one of my upstairs neighbors, which was pretty surprising (and cool).

The best was yet to come, however.

Towards the end of the goodbyes, I met a young man named Charles who was visiting the church for the first time. Charles is a first-year Stanford grad student, and even though Burlingame is a good 25 miles away from Stanford he decided to visit the church today because he used to know Pastor Herndon back when they both lived in Las Vegas (Charles was actually in Jay’s youth group).

Charles has been trying to find a church that can accomodate his crazy student schedule: every third or fourth Sunday he won’t be able to go to church. Today he learned about Chi Alpha @ Stanford and he was able to hear me preach.

I guess he liked what he heard, because he’s planning to join us for worship on campus this Tuesday!

How providential of God–to bring us to the same church at the same time and arrange a connection. He’s sneaky I tell you…

I came across this information regarding international student enrollment at Stanford. Some of the information is a year or two out-of-date (which surprised me–it seems like this could be dynamically generated from a database and be 100% accurate at all times).

1/3 of all grad students are international, as are 1/20 of all undergrads. That works out to something like 20–25% of all Stanford students hail from another country.

The Top Ten Foreign Nations (among graduate students)

• China
• Korea
• India
• Canada
• Taiwan
• France
• Japan
• Singapore
• Turkey
• Mexico

Talk about potential for global impact!

We just got back from Chi Alpha’s Winter Conference yesterday. Wow!

It’s hard to summarize a multi-day conference in a such a brief posting, so I’ll content myself with observing that the worship and the teaching were both top-notch, and the campground itself was stunningly beautiful. The overwhelming majority of students that we talked with were having significant spiritual experiences. It was very cool.

Also, I had the opportunity to teach a workshop called “Reasonable Answers to Honest Questions” (in which we talked very frankly about handling doubts and intellectual challenges to the faith) and I was also able to facilitate a seminar called “the Idea Exchange” (in which we just shared neat ideas from one campus to another).

Although the drive back was nearly eight hours and we were quite tired, we decided to have a joint New Year’s celebration. We met in one of the student’s apartments and had a jolly old time!

P.S. Expect website updates to return to their usual frequency (once or twice a week).

Bill Frist, who looks certain to replace Trent Lott as Senate Majority Leader, studied at medicine Stanford.

At least, if I read his Senate bio correctly he did:

In 1978, he graduated with honors from Harvard Medical School and spent the next several years in surgical training at Massachusetts General Hospital; Southampton General Hospital, Southampton, England; and Stanford University Medical Center. (source)

I’ve just discovered the wonders of Flash animation–pretty cool stuff!

As a result, the picture of Paula and I on the top right of the page now contains a playable video. Just click on the green arrow in the picture so I can greet you and explain our vision for ministry!

I’m still trying to get this Flash thing figured out. In particular, I’d like to have a message pop up when your mouse moves across the photo, so if anyone out there is a Flash guru, I’d love to learn from your wisdom!

In case you’re curious about Flash yourself, the three most helpful sites I’ve found are the official Macromedia Flash site, Flash Kit, and Flash Components.

For the record, I was shocked at how simple it was to do.

1) I set up my handy Logitech Webcam.
2) I downloaded the free beta copy of Windows Movie Maker 2 (which really rocks, it’s a legitimate competitor with iMovie).
3) I winged it and then edited it.
4) I imported it into Macromedia Flash MX.
5) I used the Satay Method to embed it in my page.

I was done! Now I just need to learn a little bit more about Flash (like how to animate text) and reshoot my video to make it a little tighter (like I said, I winged the script–and I think it shows in one or two spots).

Overall, though, I’m pretty happy.

UPDATE: I tweaked the video (and was able to trim its size by 33%), so now I just need to decide how much more I want to do before I leave well enough alone…

Wow. I woke up this morning and saw all sorts of news articles that suggest Stanford is about to engage in human cloning.

For example, there’s this story from the San Francisco Chronicle: Stanford University announced plans Tuesday to create a $120 million institute to study the overlapping biology of cancer and stem cells, including a plan to start cloning new stem cells from human embryos. (source)

Here’s what Stanford has to say: Stanford University Medical Center is not engaged in human reproductive cloning. A story published Dec. 10 by the Associated Press incorrectly characterized the nature of research that would take place at the newly announced Institute for Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

Creating human stem cell lines is not equivalent to reproductive cloning. The first step in the process of creating a stem cell line involves transferring the nucleus from a cell to an egg and allowing the egg to divide. This is the same first step as in reproductive cloning. However in creating a stem cell line, cells are removed from the developing cluster. These cells can go on to form many types of tissues, but cannot on their own develop into a human. Future research in this field, which will also be pursued at Stanford, will attempt to produce stem cell lines by transferring the nucleus into other embryonic stem cells rather than into eggs. (source)

It looks like the human cloning angle of the story was a little over-hyped in the news, and as far as I can tell, they’re going to be working exclusively with non-fertilized eggs (although I guess in one sense they’ll be creating their own).

I found this quote particularly interesting: “Our avowed goal is to advance science,” said Stanford medical professor Dr. Irving Weissman, who will direct the school’s stem cell effort. “For any group to stay out of the action and wait for someone else to do it because of political reasons is wrong.” (news source, emphasis added). 

I don’t pretend to really understand all the science, and so I don’t know how to evaluate what they’re planning to do from a moral standpoint. I do know that political reasons and moral reasons aren’t the same thing at all, although the two categories frequently overlap. 

In fact, Weissman intermingles politics and morality in his own comment: the reasons for staying out of the research would be political, but the reasons for engaging in it are moral. That seems a little convenient–almost by definition if doing one thing is political then doing the opposite is political as well. By and large the same observation holds true with respect to morality.

I know that it’s difficult to choose the right words when you’re being interviewed and don’t have time to craft the perfect response, but I found his wording revealing. It doesn’t reassure me that people are thinking through the ethical issues as rigorously as they are the scientific angles.

The news articles I read were pretty superficial, and so I hope I’m wrong.

Christmas is upon us. This year, I’ve been struck by the Christmas colors that Stanford flaunts on its logos. I suppose that makes Stanford sort of Christmassy.

But in a more important sense, Stanfords not Christmassy at all. Christ isnt at the center, and celebrating Christmas without Christ is like being married without a spouse. Something essential is missing.

God has called us here to help a school with Christmas colors develop true Christmas spirit. Christmas is about Jesus being bornnot just born in a manger 2,000 years ago, but being born in each of our hearts. Until every heart becomes a manger, well be proclaiming the Christmas story to the students at Stanford, whether its December or July.

So if you’re ever on campus and you hear some fool yelling “Merry Christmas” at a wildly inappropriate time of year, be sure to tell me hi.