Category: Stanford/Ministry News

On a total­ly ran­dom note, I hap­pened to stop in at the Stan­ford Book­store and I saw an ad for birds.stanford.edu.

Yup. Birds.

The site actu­al­ly redi­rects to a sub­di­rec­to­ry on the stanfordalumni.org domain, so I guess the ol’ alum­ni asso­ca­tion has some pret­ty seri­ous ornithol­o­gists…

Andrew Wright, the Stan­ford stu­dent who was liv­ing with us over the sum­mer just moved out. He’s gone to stay at home the rest of the sum­mer so he can spend some time with his fam­i­ly before school starts.

*sniff*

It was great get­ting to know him bet­ter! We had some won­der­ful talks about God and the Chris­t­ian life, and our rela­tion­ship with him has real­ly con­firmed our call to Stan­ford.

Just last night we had a great time talk­ing about a Chris­tian’s prop­er rela­tion­ship to cul­ture, and what it means to be in the world but not of it…

On anoth­er note: I’ve been sick all day. I’m feel­ing bet­ter now, but I sure was a whipped pup­py ear­li­er.

Last night I was priv­i­leged to preach at Glad Tid­ings Assem­bly of God in San Fran­cis­co. It was a lot of fun!

Pas­tor Beis­er had asked me to come and encour­age the peo­ple to invite their friends to hear Bub­ba Paris (of the San Fran­cis­co 49ers) come and preach this week­end at their spe­cial meet­ings, and to specif­i­cal­ly “speak on the lost­ness of man.”

I decid­ed to speak from Luke 15, the chap­ter in which Jesus talks about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son (prodi­gal son).

Since Paula’s col­lege room­mate, Rachel Spradley, is vis­it­ing with us right now I decid­ed to use her in my ser­mon. I told the con­gre­ga­tion that Rachel had just become engaged to be mar­ried, and I asked her to stand up and show every­one her ring. Rachel then stood up and flashed her fin­ger sans ring, and con­vinc­ing­ly shrieked: “I’ve lost my ring!”

Every­one freaked out and began to scan the floor for her ring. I then read from Luke 15:8: “sup­pose a woman has ten sil­ver coins and los­es one. Does she not light a lamp, sweep the house and search care­ful­ly until she finds it?”

It was fun. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, two peo­ple bolt­ed right away to search the lob­by and the restroom (they even put on rub­ber gloves and dug through the trash). As a result, they missed most of my mes­sage. Still, they beau­ti­ful­ly illus­trat­ed how we respond when we think some­thing valu­able is lost!

My points, inci­den­tal­ly, were as fol­lows:

1) Real­ize peo­ple are lost
2) Val­ue lost peo­ple
3) Take risks to reach the lost
4) Use every resource at our dis­pos­al to reach the lost
5) Cel­e­brate suc­cess

A friend just informed me that Stan­ford stu­dent Vini­ta Kailasanath won the 2001 Jeop­ardy Col­le­giate Cham­pi­onship.

I searched long and hard online for infor­ma­tion about the 2002 win­ner, but I could­n’t find any info. I can only sur­mise they’ve not con­duct­ed the 2002 con­test yet. I’m sure the Car­di­nal will emerge vic­to­ri­ous again!

One of the weird­er (but prob­a­bly more strate­gic) min­istry tasks that I’ve had for the last few years is main­tain­ing the Chi Alpha nation­al web­site and the Reach The U web­site (the lat­ter being the more sig­nif­i­cant).

Today I had some time to tack­le a fea­ture I’d real­ly been want­i­ng to revise: the chap­ter direc­to­ry.

I think it’s a lot slick­er now, and the clean code­base means that I can add new func­tions with­out a lot of has­sle. Huz­zah!

Ulti­mate goal: to cre­ate a user login sys­tem so that each local cam­pus min­istry can own it’s data and update it when­ev­er some­thing changes.

Speak­ing of site upgrades: I final­ly man­aged to quash a very annoy­ing bug on my blog. The page kept get­ting cut off! If you’re hav­ing sim­i­lar trou­ble, read this help­ful thread.

Today I received from the Stan­ford Office for Reli­gious Life the names of all three of the Assem­blies of God stu­dents plan­ning to attend Stan­ford next year. That’s right–three. Out of around 1,400. There was also a Foursquare stu­dent and a few from inde­pen­dent charis­mat­ic church­es. Let’s say there are about 10–15 Pentecostal/charismatic stu­dents in total.

Even giv­en that only 4% of teens attend a Pen­te­costal or Charis­mat­ic church, that’s pret­ty sad. If even 4% com­ing to Stan­ford were Pentecostal/charismatic that would be over 50 incom­ing fresh­men. That’s a dis­crep­an­cy of 70% (in oth­er words, 70% few­er stu­dents are Pen­te­costal or Charis­mat­ic than you would expect)!

That does­n’t both­er me for the rea­son you might think. Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is pri­mar­i­ly an evan­ge­lis­tic orga­ni­za­tion. While we do want to take care of incom­ing Chris­t­ian stu­dents and help them mature in their faith, we’re pri­mar­i­ly con­cerned with reach­ing the major­i­ty who have no reli­gious back­ground at all (much less a Chris­t­ian one).

It’s not so much that I wish there were more stu­dents to plug into our group as I won­der why more com­ing in aren’t believ­ers. These num­bers, while only direct­ly reflect­ing on Pen­te­costals are rep­re­sen­ta­tive of what the oth­er min­istries are receiv­ing.

There’s been a mas­sive renais­sance in youth min­istry over the last decade, and there’s tons of arti­cles on the bur­geon­ing evan­gel­i­cal intel­lec­tu­als: so why aren’t there more arriv­ing at Stan­ford? Is it that we strong­ly dis­cour­age our gift­ed youth from attend­ing sec­u­lar schools or is mere­ly the sad fact that most “Chris­t­ian” stu­dents can’t wait to escape from their youth group?

In any event, if the oth­er elite schools are see­ing sim­i­lar trends the intel­lec­tu­al future of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty isn’t look­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly robust…

Here are some Assem­blies of God lead­ers who believe in us
and in our min­istry: I would like to par­tic­u­lar­ly direct your atten­tion to the
fact that both our cur­rent and our for­mer pas­tor are on this list. We believe
in the Assem­blies of God, we’re com­mit­ted to the pri­ma­cy of the local church,
and we’re team play­ers!

“I had Glen & Paula do a mis­sions win­dow in my church and they did a fab­u­lous job! God has called them to a tru­ly strate­gic mis­sion field, and James Riv­er is proud to be invest­ing in it. I encour­age you to book them for a ser­vice or a mis­sions window—you won’t be dis­ap­point­ed.” John Lin­dell Senior Pas­tor James Riv­er Assem­bly of God (Spring­field, MO)
“Penin­su­la Chris­t­ian Cen­ter is hon­ored to serve as a cov­er­ing for Stan­ford Chi Alpha, and I’m delight­ed to serve on the advi­so­ry board for this min­istry. I believe God has raised up Glen and Paula Davis to reach Stan­ford for Christ, and I encour­age your church to sup­port them in this strate­gic min­istry.” Jeff Langskov Senior Pas­tor (and Glen and Paula’s pas­tor) Penin­su­la Chris­t­ian Cen­ter (Red­wood City, CA)
“Being a grad­u­ate of the Uni­ver­si­ty of Calif. in Berke­ley, I appre­ci­ate what it takes to reach sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents in the Bay Area. Glen and Paula Davis have the spir­i­tu­al pas­sion, min­istry and peo­ple skills, intel­lec­tu­al integri­ty, and proven expe­ri­ence to devel­op a viable Chi Alpha min­istry at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. They mer­it your prayer and sup­port!” Dr. Steve Lim For­mer Bay Area Pas­tor & Sec­tion­al Pres­byter Chair­per­son of the Prac­ti­cal The­ol­o­gy fac­ul­ty at AGTS
“As a 10 year vet­er­an of the cam­pus­es in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia and a stu­dent of effec­tive cam­pus min­istry nation­wide I endorse Glen and Paula Davis enthu­si­as­ti­cal­ly to serve as mis­sion­ar­ies to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. They poss­es the tools, both intel­lec­tu­al­ly and spir­i­tu­al­ly, to lead a tru­ly fruit­ful min­istry on this most strate­gic cam­pus.” Curt Har­low Vet­er­an North­ern Cal­i­for­nia Cam­pus Min­istry Pio­neer Chi Alpha Nation­al Lead­er­ship Team
“Glen Davis is one of the new gen­er­a­tion of lead­ers God is rais­ing up in the church. He blends a won­der­ful com­bi­na­tion of qual­i­ties in that he is both spir­i­tu­al and strate­gic, both hum­ble and vision­ary, a both a team play­er and a true leader. He is one of the peo­ple I con­sid­er a true friend and I look to him for cut­ting edge insights into this gen­er­a­tion, con­tem­po­rary soci­ety and tech­nol­o­gy. He is a great com­mu­ni­ca­tor, first class leader and true min­is­ter of the Good News.” Dr. J. Melvyn Ming Lead­er­ship Coach, Divi­sion of Pas­toral Care and Devel­op­ment North­west Dis­trict Coun­cil of the Assem­blies of God
“Glen and Paula Davis will make a dif­fer­ence. As a for­mer pas­tor, these are the kind of peo­ple I would want my church to sup­port. They are mis­sion­ar­ies in the truest sense, liv­ing with­in an almost com­plete­ly unreached cul­ture to bring the mes­sage of God’s love in Christ. I have known Glen and Paula, and their min­istry, for years and find it a joy to rec­om­mend them to you.” Dr. Earl Creps Direc­tor of the Doc­tor of Min­istry Pro­gram, Assem­blies of God The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary
“Glen is one of my favorite com­mu­ni­ca­tors. His teach­ings are thought-pro­vok­ing because he is a thinker; they are bril­liant­ly illus­trat­ed because Glen is both rel­e­vant and schol­ar­ly. I believe that God will awak­en a new gen­er­a­tion through ser­vants like Glen and Paula Davis.” Ali­cia Chole Speak­er, Author (shared at 2001 Gen­er­al Coun­cil and Cel­e­bra­tion 2000)
“I have known Glen and Paula for many years and am pleased to call them friends as well as co-min­is­ters. There is no doubt in my mind that they are going to be might­i­ly used of God on the Stan­ford cam­pus. Whether in the area of evan­ge­lism, teach­ing, lead­er­ship or hos­pi­tal­i­ty, Glen and Paula are equipped to car­ry the gospel to the stu­dents of Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.” Antho­ny Sco­ma Dis­ci­ple­ship Pas­tor James Riv­er Assem­bly of God (Spring­field, MO)
“As Glen and Paula’s for­mer pas­tor, I whole­heart­ed­ly endorse their min­istry. Glen is an great preach­er and has filled our pul­pit on a num­ber of occa­sions, Paula has been an out­stand­ing board mem­ber, and they are both excel­lent lead­ers. Please book them for ser­vices and pick them up for month­ly sup­port!” Cal Swen­son Senior Pas­tor (and Glen & Paula’s for­mer pas­tor) New Life Church (Spring­field, MO)
“For five years I was blessed to have Glen and Paula on my staff at Chi Alpha — South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty. Their vision and cre­ativ­i­ty has played a vital role in mak­ing our pro­gram cut­ting edge and effec­tive in gen­uine­ly reach­ing into the nonChris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty of SMS. I can think of no oth­er cou­ple that is more capa­ble to pio­neer Chi Alpha at Stan­ford.” Joe Zick­afoose Vet­er­an Cam­pus Pio­neer Chi Alpha Direc­tor at South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty

I’ve talked about the incred­i­ble Stan­ford alum­ni ros­ter before, but I had occa­sion recent­ly to make a post­card fea­tur­ing them. I thought upload­ing the pho­to mon­tage I cre­at­ed might help you get a han­dle on exact­ly who I’m talk­ing about (not all are pic­tured):

• Gov­ern­ment: 3 cur­rent Supreme Court Jus­tices (Chief Jus­tice William Rehn­quist along with Asso­ciate Jus­tices Antho­ny Kennedy and Stephen Brey­er), for­mer U.S. Sec­re­tary of State War­ren Christo­pher, 5 U.S. sen­a­tors, and Ehud Barak (for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Israel)
• Busi­ness: the CEOs of 3Com, Hewlett-Packard,
  Nike, and Sun Microsys­tems (see a list of com­pa­nies found­ed by mem­bers of the Stan­ford com­mu­ni­ty)
• Celebri­ties: Reese With­er­spoon, Chelsea Clin­ton, Ted Kop­pel, Sigour­ney Weaver, Ted Dan­son, Jack Palance, Jen­nifer Con­nel­ly, and Fred Sav­age
• Sports: Tiger Woods, John Elway,
  and John McEn­roe
• Edu­ca­tion: the pres­i­dents of Yale,
  the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ari­zona, and Johns Hop­kins.
• Sci­ence: Vin­ton Cerf “the Father
  of the Inter­net”, and 17 astro­nauts (includ­ing Sal­ly Ride), and the founders of Yahoo! (most
  pop­u­lar site on the Inter­net) and the founders of Google.

In oth­er words, Stan­ford is one of the most strate­gic mis­sion fields in the world! For an even fuller list of alum­ni, check out the famous alum­ni list main­tained by Stan­ford itself!

Check this out: look at the bot­tom right of this screen. Notice any­thing dif­fer­ent?

Of course you do–all the post­ings from Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford are now list­ed in an RSS feed! (Thanks to Scrip­ty­God­dess for mak­ing me aware of this great code snip­pet avail­able at the Trom­me­ter Times).

Woohoo!