Category: Stanford/Ministry News

A few weeks ago, Whit­ney showed up to Chi Alpha’s week­ly meet­ing with a large ban­dage wrapped around her hand. I asked her what had hap­pened, and she told me of a fero­cious rac­coon attack while walk­ing along Lake Lagu­ni­ta.

This was not sur­pris­ing to me. Rac­coons are evil. All right-think­ing peo­ple know this in their mar­row.

Sure, they look cute with their lit­tle paws and their masked face, but even Satan seems to be a beau­ti­ful angel

. No — rac­coons are as evil as a sub­hu­man mam­mal can be. And giv­en that rac­coons roam freely

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across cam­pus, some­thing like this was inevitable.

Real­iz­ing that I was sit­ting on enter­tain­ment gold, I asked Whit­ney to keep silent until the announce­ment time, when I would inter­view her and allow her to regale the entire group with her sto­ry.

After wor­ship, I called her to the front and asked her what had hap­pened. As she held her ban­daged hand high and said, “I was bit­ten by a rac­coon,” Desir­ae cried out, “I knew those things were dan­ger­ous!” A hush fell over the room as she began to tell her tale.

She and her room­mate had been walk­ing around Lake Lag when Whit­ney noticed a rac­coon mov­ing about in the bush­es. She turned to her room­mate to point it out and saw a flur­ry of motion out of the cor­ner of her eye. The next thing she knew, she was being lunged at by an appar­ent­ly car­niv­o­rous rac­coon. She fend­ed it off, suf­fer­ing a griev­ous hand wound in the process.

Her room­mate, a pre-med stu­dent, gave her some quick treat­ment and then she head­ed over to Vaden health cen­ter for fur­ther med­ica­tion.

At this point, you could have heard a pin drop in the Chi Alpha meet­ing. Every stu­dent there was think­ing of the many times they had seen rac­coons ram­bling across cam­pus, look­ing at Whit­ney’s ban­daged hand, and think­ing, “There but for the grace of God go I.”

At least until Whit­ney burst out laugh­ing and said, “And you believe me?”

I said, “Bwah?”

Whit­ney said, “I was mak­ing that up. I tripped and hurt my hand. My room­mate said that was too bor­ing and that I should make up a bet­ter sto­ry. So far every­one I’ve told has believed me.”

The room erupt­ed in laugh­ter.

For those keep­ing score:
Whit­ney: 1
Glen: 0
Rac­coons: neg­a­tive infin­i­ty

And that’s why peo­ple should always come to Chi Alpha in per­son rather than just watch­ing our meet­ings online — you nev­er know what’s going to hap­pen when the cam­er­a’s not run­ning.

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Some of the Chi Alpha fel­las made a Valen­tine’s Day video for our Chi Alpha gals. I thought it came out well: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bs34q2K91Po down­load lena bak­er sto­ry the online

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long week­end the movie

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I’m sit­ting in the green room (the room a speak­er uses to pre­pare for a speech or per­for­mance) just after Fran­cis Collins fin­ished a phe­nom­e­nal pre­sen­ta­tion on the com­pat­i­bil­i­ty of faith and sci­ence.

He was astound­ing. If you haven’t read his book The Lan­guage of God then I rec­om­mend you pick it up. We’ll be putting a video of his pre­sen­ta­tion up soon at http://franciscollinstalk.stanford.edu

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. If you’re impa­tient you can see one of a sim­i­lar pre­sen­ta­tion at MIT last year.

Our venue, Memo­r­i­al Audi­to­ri­um, seats 1,700. Our over­flow room, Bish­op Audi­to­ri­um, seats 324. We had to open five addi­tion­al class­rooms. I’m con­fi­dent we had at least 2,000 peo­ple turn out, but a police offi­cer pro­vid­ing secu­ri­ty was bold enough to sug­gest that the real total was 2,300.

My favorite part of the event? Look­ing at the pro­gram and see­ing six lines.

Wel­come: Lisa Ooi
PhD stu­dent, Chem­i­cal & Sys­tems Biol­o­gy

Intro­duc­tion: Pro­fes­sor William New­some
Chair, Stan­ford Depart­ment of Neu­ro­bi­ol­o­gy the last house on the left online

Lec­ture: Dr. Fran­cis Collins
Direc­tor, Nation­al Human Genome Research Insti­tute

Those six lines sum up the whole event bril­liant­ly — many very bright sci­en­tists see no nec­es­sary con­flict between sci­ence and Chris­tian­i­ty.

Oh — if you’ve been fol­low­ing my blog for a long time, you might remem­ber Lisa Ooi’s name. She’s a long­time Chi Alphan who actu­al­ly lived with Paula and I for a brief sea­son. She did a great job and we’re very proud of her.

My sec­ond-favorite part of the event? Him show­ing the clip of him­self being grilled by Stephen Col­bert. Fun­ny stuff.

Big thanks to Chi Alpha’s co-spon­sors Inter­Var­si­ty Grad­u­ate Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship blues broth­ers 2000 divx online (the real dri­ving force for this event), the Catholic Com­mu­ni­ty at Stan­ford, and the Ver­i­tas Forum divx push

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. We could nev­er have pulled off an event of this scale alone. A big spe­cial thanks to Amy Cham­bers and Kyle Heath who shoul­dered a ridicu­lous amount of the admin­is­tra­tive details, to Pete Som­mer for rais­ing a lot of mon­ey to make this hap­pen, to Kyle Pub­ols and Andrea Romero for run­ning micro­phones dur­ing the q & a so very well, to the many stu­dents who helped route peo­ple to over­flow rooms on an instan­t’s notice, and to Lena Ho, Xianne Leiong, Hilary Dyer, Isaac Pen­ny, and all those who sat through lengthy meet­ings to plan this whole thing. Oh, and Dr. Bill New­some did a tremen­dous job. And thanks to the Office for Reli­gious Life and Dean Scot­ty McLen­nan for giv­ing us per­mis­sion to go for it.

Final­ly, a spe­cial thanks to Clare Kasem­set who did a great job on the plan­ning side but fell ill at the last minute and was unable to make it to the event. Hope you enjoy the video, Clare. Get well soon.

I’ll try to get some pho­tos and more thoughts online lat­er. Right now I need to focus on get­ting ready to preach a ser­mon­ic per­spec­tive on the same themes tomor­row night. I’ve got some big shoes to fill.

Our Col­lege Win­ter Con­fer­ence

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is this week­end, and I’m in charge. So for the last few days I’ve been bom­bard­ed with phone calls or urgent emails relat­ing to some minor cri­sis about the event. It reached a fever pitch yes­ter­day when I received a mes­sage about every ten min­utes (or so it seemed).

That’s not a big deal — it’s what you sign on for when you agree to direct a retreat or con­fer­ence.

How­ev­er, I also had to preach last night.

Being inter­rupt­ed every ten min­utes does not lend itself to robust ser­mon prepa­ra­tion. I’m very par­tic­u­lar about my ser­mon prepa­ra­tion rou­tine. I like to research my top­ic thor­ough­ly, write out what I intend to say word for word, and then rehearse it (at least once, prefer­ably twice). When speak­ing in the evening, I usu­al­ly man­u­script in the morn­ing and rehearse in the after­noon. That did­n’t hap­pen yes­ter­day.

The bot­tom line is that I walked into last night’s meet­ing less pre­pared for a ser­mon than I have been in years. I felt cer­tain that the mes­sage was going to be a flop.

While deliv­er­ing it, I felt as though I was fum­bling for words and ram­bling inco­her­ent­ly.

But at the end of the evening, one stu­dent prayed to receive Christ and anoth­er prayed to reded­i­cate her­self to Christ.

It was a hum­bling reminder that it’s not about me and my prepa­ra­tion; it’s about God using bro­ken ves­sels to achieve His will.

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Yes­ter­day we were giv­ing away free home­made choco­late-chip cook­ies on White Plaza, and we got all sorts of won­der­ful reac­tions. My favorite was from a mas­ter’s stu­dent in engi­neer­ing who grabbed a cook­ie and then looked at the poster next to the cook­ie pile.

It was an adver­tise­ment for the upcom­ing Fran­cis Collins talk watch corvette sum­mer online the man who would be king online down­load

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down­load bar­bie of swan lake movie . If the name does­n’t ring a bell, Collins coor­di­nat­ed the Human Genome Project that decod­ed human DNA. He’s also a fol­low­er of Christ.

Any­way, this guy just stared at the poster for about a minute, befud­dle­ment sprawled across his face. He looked at the pic­ture of Collins on the cov­er of Nature mag­a­zine. He read his sci­en­tif­ic cre­den­tials. And then he read the top­ic of the lec­ture again. Then he sort of mur­mured, “Wait. This can’t be right. This does­n’t make any sense.”

So we explained that yes, Fran­cis Collins real­ly is one of the world’s lead­ing geneti­cists. And yes, he real­ly does believe in Jesus. And he’s going to be talk­ing about it Stan­ford.

The stu­dent said he’d be there, and I hope he does show up. He seemed quite earnest. There are a lot of stu­dents on cam­pus who don’t allow them­selves to con­sid­er God seri­ous­ly because they assume that sci­ence and faith are by def­i­n­i­tion opposed to one anoth­er. We hope that by show­ing them a world-class sci­en­tist who loves God we can dis­pel some of that prej­u­dice.

I love this job.

Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford offi­cer Aaron Pol­hamus was just award­ed a Rhodes Schol­ar­ship

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(see page 10 of the doc­u­ment). That means he gets 2 or 3 years to study at Oxford — ful­ly sub­si­dized. The Stan­ford Dai­ly has a brief write-up

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on it which quotes Aaron at some length.

Being a Rhodes Schol­ar is a big deal — some notable recip­i­ents of the award include Bill Clin­ton, Wes­ley Clark (the gen­er­al turned politi­cian), Robert Reich, Daniel Boorstin (the his­to­ri­an), physi­cist Bri­an Greene (yeah, the one who writes the cool books about sci­ence), George Stephanopou­los, cur­rent Louisiana gov­er­nor Bob­by Jin­dal, and scads of con­gress­man and sen­a­tors. Oh, plus Kris Kristof­fer­son (real­ly).

So con­grats, Aaron!

As a Chris­t­ian min­is­ter, I apol­o­gize to the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty for for my well-mean­ing but mis­guid­ed broth­ers who bore the signs on White Plaza yes­ter­day.

You recall them, no doubt. They bore such charm­ing slo­gans as “The sin and the sin­ner go straight to hell togeth­er,” and “Warn­ing: For­ni­ca­tors, Drunk­ards, Thieves, Adul­ter­ers, God Haters, Liars, HOMOSEXUALS — JUDGMENT.”

I know you find it hard to believe, but they were under the impres­sion that they were act­ing with kind­ness and even love. They were try­ing to tell you some­thing impor­tant in the best way they could think of.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, their method under­mined their mes­sage.

To them, and to all the sign-bear­ers scat­tered across the cam­pus­es of Amer­i­ca, I direct the next few remarks.

I know you are doing your best to hon­or God, but when you bring such signs onto cam­pus and pro­voke stu­dents you are not accom­plish­ing your goal.

In fact, I sus­pect that a care­ful con­sid­er­a­tion of the Bible will lead you to rethink your actions.

Observe:

Always be pre­pared to give an answer to every­one who asks you to give the rea­son for the hope that you have. But do this with gen­tle­ness and respect, keep­ing a clear con­science, so that those who speak mali­cious­ly against your good behav­ior in Christ may be ashamed of their slan­der. 1 Peter 3:15–16, NIV

Gen­tle­ness and respect may have been your aspi­ra­tion, but the mes­sages on the signs belied your intent. You may not under­stand why, but peo­ple found your mes­sages extreme­ly dis­repect­ful. Respect is mea­sured by the recip­i­ent, so if an entire com­mu­ni­ty tells you that you are act­ing in a way that they find offen­sive and insult­ing then you must take them at their word and rethink the way that you com­mu­ni­cate your mes­sage.

Con­duct your­selves wise­ly toward out­siders, mak­ing the most of the time. Let your speech always be gra­cious, sea­soned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer every­one. Colos­sians 4:5–6, NRSV

My broth­ers, I humbly sug­gest that you act­ed with a great lack of wis­dom, as any­one who has spent time min­is­ter­ing on the col­lege cam­pus could have told you. Indeed, we would have made the point with great fer­vor. Some­thing like this hap­pens once or twice every year and it always detracts from the work of God on cam­pus — I have nev­er once seen it help.

If you doubt the effects of your vis­it, I direct you to the unof­fi­cial Stan­ford blog’s per­spec­tive on your actions.

If any place will not wel­come you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a tes­ti­mo­ny against them. Mark 6:11, NRSV

And this, to me, is the clinch­er. Jesus told his dis­ci­ples to move on when peo­ple did­n’t want to lis­ten. And that’s the mod­el we see through­out the New Tes­ta­ment, par­tic­u­lar­ly in Paul. Paul, con­trary to his rep­u­ta­tion, was very can­ny and was a mas­ter at non-intru­sive evan­ge­lism. He sought to preach in places where peo­ple expect­ed to hear preach­ing. He went to syn­a­gogues, philo­soph­i­cal venues, and lec­ture halls and talked to peo­ple who were ready to lis­ten.

And so while I applaud your inten­tions, I beg you to rethink your evan­ge­lis­tic strat­e­gy and see if there is not a wis­er way to engage stu­dents with the claims of Christ.

And to the cam­pus com­mu­ni­ty I reit­er­ate my apol­o­gy. They meant well, but they act­ed in a way that caused many of you to have a low­er opin­ion of Christ and His fol­low­ers than you did before.

Ear­li­er today I was read­ing an arti­cle about Ein­stein’s reli­gious views and I was struck by the fol­low­ing com­ment: “I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the lumi­nous fig­ure of the Nazarene.”

If your per­cep­tion of Christ is shaped large­ly by the sign-bear­ers and oth­ers like them, then I urge you to look at Jesus your­self. Read the gospels and ask around in your dorm. I promise that you will find some Christ-fol­low­ers who would love noth­ing more than to have a respect­ful con­ver­sa­tion with you and help you to see why Jesus is still wor­shiped after these many years and across these many miles.

As most of you were com­plete­ly unaware, yes­ter­day was Pi Day.

If the ref­er­ence is con­fus­ing to you, yes­ter­day was March 14. This date can be writ­ten 3/14, and 314 are the first three dig­its of the infi­nite­ly-long num­ber pi.

Any­way, I made a ref­er­ence to Pi Day at the begin­ning of my mes­sage last night and I asked offhand­ed­ly if any­one in the audi­ence had pi mem­o­rized out to any sig­nif­i­cant length — more than 10 dig­its.

At first I did­n’t see any hands, but then I noticed that every­one was point­ing at some­one just out of my field of vision. I turned and John Sill­cox (pic­tured here) had his hand raised.

“John, how many dig­its do you have pi mem­o­rized out to?”

“100.”

“For real? You know the first 100 dig­its of pi?”

“Yeah.”

I was pret­ty floored. I had thought MAYBE some­one would know the first 10 or 25 dig­its.

“You know that I have no choice but to call you up here and have you recite them.”

After some cajol­ing he agreed and began recit­ing the num­bers. One of the graph­ics I had for pi day hap­pened to dis­play the first sev­er­al hun­dred num­bers and so we pro­ject­ed the graph­ic behind him while he rat­tled them off. His recall was per­fect.

Here’s the bit that I found most inter­est­ing about the entire expe­ri­ence: the response of the audi­ence. This is the sort of geeky thing that nor­mal­ly only I would find cool. But at Stan­ford, such dis­plays get a dif­fer­ent response. Our Chi Alpha group went wild. One of our rug­by play­ers got up and began bow­ing to John, cry­ing “We’re not wor­thy!”

So yeah. That’s what Pi Day at Chi Alpha is like. At least at Stan­ford.

For the record, my texts were Exo­dus 3:14 and Philip­pi­ans 3:14. 🙂

I was in the Stan­ford Book­store today when I hap­pened to see a book called Stan­ford Spir­it. I noticed it was a com­pi­la­tion of essays by cur­rent Stan­ford stu­dents, so I picked it up to see if any were by peo­ple I knew — and one of our Chi Alphans has a con­tri­bu­tion!

You can down­load a dig­i­tal copy for free at
http://www.lulu.com/content/382219 — look for the chap­ter by Mari­bel Diaz.

In addi­tion, Lisa Ooi just had her debut pub­li­ca­tion in Cell (yes, THAT Cell) with the stir­ring “A Rapid, Reversible, and Tun­able Method to Reg­u­late Pro­tein Func­tion in Liv­ing Cells Using Syn­thet­ic Small Mol­e­cules”

Con­grat­u­la­tions to them both.