Category: Stanford/Ministry News

I’ve been get­ting the Stan­ford Chi Alpha web­site ready for launch, and now it’s ready! You can vis­it it at http://www.xastanford.org/.

Here’s what I’ve post­ed so far:
*What Is Chi Alpha?
*What’s Impor­tant To Chi Alpha?
*What Does Chi Alpha Believe?
*What Does The Name Chi Alpha Mean?

One thing I’m very excit­ed about is that the stu­dents will be able to make posts as well, so this will be a true rep­re­sen­ta­tion of our com­mu­ni­ty!

Don­ald Knuth, a retired com­put­er sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford, under­took a project many years ago to ana­lyze every chap­ter 3 verse 16 in the Bible. It’s sup­posed to be quite fas­ci­nat­ing, although I’ve not read it yet.

In any event, I just ran across the coolest thing on his web­site: John 3:16 in beau­ti­ful PDF cal­lig­ra­phy. The trans­la­tion is pret­ty neat as well.

On a tri­umphal­ist note, I should men­tion that Stan­ford has won the Sears cup AGAIN

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! That makes 8 in a row. And not only did we win–we won by a lot. Here are the point totals:

1. Stan­ford 1499.0
2. Texas 1110.5
3. Flori­da 1078.0
4. North Car­oli­na 1065.5
5. UCLA 1026.0

See how each indi­vid­ual sports teams did.

In case you’re won­der­ing, the Sears Cup is award­ed each year to the best over­all col­le­giate ath­let­ics progam in the nation. In oth­er words, we rock!

In case you did­n’t know, the Assem­blies of God is divid­ed into dis­tricts, and in mov­ing from Mis­souri to Cal­i­for­nia we changed dis­tricts. We’re now mem­bers of the North­ern California/Nevada Dis­trict.

Each dis­trict is pret­ty autonomous when it comes to inter­act­ing with mis­sion­ar­ies, and so we’ve been delight­ed at how warm our recep­tion has been here. Today we were able to vis­it the Dis­trict Mis­sions Bou­tique, which is a col­lec­tion of very cool stuff (tow­els, sheets, kitchen items, etc) that the wom­en’s min­istries of church­es through­out the dis­trict accu­mu­late to give to mis­sion­ar­ies. Wow! Thanks to all the women who par­tic­i­pat­ed in this program–you are such a bless­ing.

We’ve got our first Cal­i­for­nia church ser­vice this Sun­day! Paula and I are dri­ving up to Dob­bins, CA at Dob­bins Chris­t­ian Assem­bly, where Jack Over­bey is the pas­tor. We’re pret­ty excit­ed to begin shar­ing our vision with the church­es of the North­ern California/Nevada Dis­trict of the Assem­blies of God. Pray that God would grant us favor!

Today They Learn, Tomor­row They Lead

In a very real sense, schools like Stan­ford func­tion as a steer­ing wheel
for our soci­ety. Whichev­er way they turn now deter­mine how our soci­ety
will turn out a few decades down the road.

Alum­ni include

• Gov­ern­ment: 4 cur­rent Supreme
  Court Jus­tices (Chief Jus­tice William Rehn­quist and Asso­ciate Jus­tices San­dra Day O’Con­nor, Antho­ny Kennedy and Stephen Brey­er), Cal­i­for­nia gov­er­nor Gray Davis, 5 U.S. sen­a­tors, and Ehud
  Barak (for­mer Prime Min­is­ter of Israel)
• Busi­ness: the CEOs of 3Com, Hewlett-Packard,
  Nike, and Sun Microsys­tems
• 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 Stan­ford famous alum­ni list!

Paula and I work with Chi Alpha Cam­pus Min­istries at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty (check out our group web­site). Chi Alpha is a mis­sions pro­gram of the Assem­blies of God tar­get­ing col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties across Amer­i­ca.

You might be won­der­ing why the Assem­blies of God sends mis­sion­ar­ies to col­lege campuses–read our expla­na­tion of cam­pus­es as mis­sion fields.

So what do you do?
We strive to build an on-cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty of stu­dents who are earnest­ly fol­low­ing Jesus. We do that by lead­ing mid­week wor­ship ser­vices in the mid­dle of cam­pus, by spon­sor­ing Bible stud­ies in the dorms, and by con­duct­ing var­i­ous out­reach­es.

Col­lege can be a dan­ger­ous place for a Chris­tian’s faith!

To begin with, 2 out of every 3 teenagers involved with a youth group already plan to leave the church once they’re on their own (i.e., in col­lege). One out of every 8 bails on the church before they even set foot on the col­lege cam­pus (Leonard Sweet, SoulT­suna­mi page 47).

Even leav­ing that dis­turb­ing fact aside, col­lege isn’t too kind to the faith of stu­dents.

Quotes from Pas­carel­la and Teren­zi­ni: How Col­lege Affects
Stu­dents: Find­ings and Insights From Twen­ty Years of Research

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“the lit­er­a­ture pub­lished since 1967 fair­ly con­sis­tent­ly reports sig­nif­i­cant declines in reli­gious atti­tudes, val­ues, and behav­iors dur­ing the col­lege years.” p 280–281

“The like­li­hood of chang­ing to no reli­gious
pref­er­ence was also high­est at so-called elite insti­tu­tions.” p 303

“In prob­a­bly the strongest stud­ies on this point, Astin (1972b, 1977a) found (net of oth­er per­son­al and back­ground fac­tors) sig­nif­i­cant­ly greater than expect­ed decreas­es in con­ven­tion­al reli­gious affil­i­a­tion and in reli­gious­ness (that is, pray­ing and read­ing the Bible) among stu­dents attend­ing selec­tive or pres­ti­gious schools.”

But there is hope: in the same vol­ume, the authors state:
“Only a hand­ful of stud­ies exam­ine
the long-term effects of col­lege on reli­gious atti­tudes and val­ues,
but with one excep­tion, they indi­cate that changes in this area occur
dur­ing but appar­ent­ly not after the col­lege years.” p 323

In oth­er words, col­lege is our last chance to reach a gen­er­a­tion! That’s why there must be cam­pus min­istry at sec­u­lar col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties!