Category: Stanford/Ministry News

My phone rang just after 10:00am. What fol­lows is a rough tran­script of the ensu­ing con­ver­sa­tion.

Her: Hi, is this the right num­ber to call if I have a ques­tion about Chi Alpha?
Me: Yes, I’m Glen Davis, the direc­tor of the min­istry.
Her: This is prob­a­bly going to be the most ran­dom ques­tion you get today, but did you guys have a meet­ing last night?
Me: Yes we did.
Her: And were you sell­ing tacos there?
Me: No. Why do you ask?
Her: My friends told me that you were and I said that was stu­pid. You were a Chris­t­ian group and why would you be sell­ing tacos?
Me: Pre­cise­ly. There were no tacos for sale at our meet­ing.
Her: That’s what I thought.
Me: May I ask you a ques­tion in return?
Her: Sure.
Me: Were we doing any­thing to lead your friends to believe that we had tacos for sale?
Her: Not that I could see.
Me: That’s rea­sur­ring.
Her: Yeah, two guys had just made some total­ly inap­pro­pri­ate com­ment to me and my friends explained it by say­ing that your group was sell­ing tacos.
Me: *pause* Did these two gen­tle­men seem to be con­nect­ed with our min­istry?
Her: Oh no, def­i­nite­ly not.
Me: Okay.
Her: Any­way, thanks for help­ing!
Me: Sure thing. Feel free to call me if you have any more ques­tions.

How ran­dom was that?

As many of you are no doubt aware, I am coor­di­nat­ing Chi Alpha’s San Diego win­ter con­fer­ence.

Now it is vir­tu­al­ly axiomat­ic that every­thing goes crazy pri­or to a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence. For exam­ple, last year I got a tick­et for run­ning a stop sign as I was prepar­ing to head up to our Lake Tahoe win­ter con­fer­ence. For the record, I still dis­pute the legit­i­ma­cy of that tick­et. I think the cop was asleep and was star­tled into con­scious­ness by the vibrant hue of my car. But I digress…

This year things have been crazy as well. Let me high­light one thread of our con­fer­ence preparations–the wor­ship.

This year we part­ed with tra­di­tion and booked an out­side band instead of ask­ing one of our Chi Alpha groups to lead wor­ship. An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence was that unlike our Chi Alpha groups, the band does­n’t nor­mal­ly bring their own sound sys­tem with them.

Now as any­one who has min­is­tered to col­le­gians will attest, hav­ing a good sound sys­tem is fair­ly impor­tant. Most stu­dents are audio­philes or pre­tend to be, and so get­ting the right gear makes a dif­fer­ence.

It is also ridicu­lous­ly expen­sive. We found a com­pe­tent sound guy who also works with equip­ment rentals and he did some research and found us the low, low price of $4,500.

That’s more than our entire con­fer­ence bud­get (exclud­ing hous­ing).

So we went back to the draw­ing board.

I should men­tion that I was strand­ed in Louisiana with­out cell phone cov­er­age most of the time that we were try­ing to fix this. I seem to be aller­gic to the entire state of Lou­siana, because every time I go home I get major aller­gy attacks. So I’m grumpy from my aller­gies and unable to call any­one to make alter­nate plans for the sound equip­ment.

Even­tu­al­ly we got back home and I start­ed work­ing hard to find a back­up sound sys­tem. We accost­ed Chi Alpha min­istries, church­es, and ran­dom passer­by to no avail.

Final­ly my good friend Jeff Devoll came through for us. Jeff has got one of the nicest sound sys­tems I’ve ever seen and is also one of the nicest (and sharpest) guys I’ve ever met. So we were able to get an out­ra­geous­ly good sys­tem as a very rea­son­able price.

Now we had the prob­lem of trans­port­ing this sound sys­tem the 500 miles from Sacra­men­to down to San Diego.

Instant suc­cess–our min­istry in Sacra­men­to has a trail­er for trans­port­ing sound gear.

The heady swell of suc­cess was soon dashed on the hard rocks of real­i­ty. We had a trail­er but no means to haul it.

So we called every sin­gle Chi Alpha min­istry in north­ern Cal­i­for­nia to see who had a pick­up truck or an SUV or even a tow-capa­ble van.

No one. None of the staff and none of their stu­dents have any­thing suit­able.

This is in marked con­trast to my years of min­istry in Spring­field, MO. Find­ing tow vehi­cles was easy. Lim­it­ing myself to female acquain­tances alone I could have drummed up a truck in under five min­utes. But in this eco­topia no one seems to own any­thing sig­nif­i­cant­ly larg­er than a chip­munk.

At this point, I should men­tion that I’m still sick and unable to think as clear­ly as I would like. And the “this point” that I’m ref­er­enc­ing is Christ­mas day.

That’s right–I’m call­ing peo­ple on Christ­mas day to find a hauler. “Mer­ry Christ­mas! Do you have a truck I can bor­row?”

Alas, there were to be no tow-capa­ble Christ­mas gifts for me.

On the day after Christ­mas we decide we have no choice but to rent an exor­bi­tant­ly priced and uncom­fort­able mov­ing truck (we attempt­ed to rent a pick­up truck first, but no com­pa­ny was will­ing to rent us a pick­up to haul a trailer–I guess tow­ing is con­sid­ered a Bad Thing).

Now in order to rent a truck you need a dri­ver. I thought I had one lined up, but he did­n’t work out. I then thought I had a cou­ple lined up, but they did­n’t work out. I thought I had anoth­er guy lined up but he was head­ing to Tahoe to spend time with his fam­i­ly pri­or to con­fer­ence. I final­ly called my ace in the hole and he was dri­ving to Tahoe to spend time with his fiancee pri­ot to con­fer­ence.

What can I say? Tahoe is pop­u­lar.

To make things even more tumul­tuous, the kind­ly Mr. Devoll is in the midst of mov­ing and has left a cru­cial piece of sound equip­ment at his old place in Napa.

It is now Sun­day Decem­ber 26th and Paula and I are fly­ing out at 10:00am tomor­row. We need to get this tak­en care of pron­to.

To our hor­ror, we learn that all the rental places close at noon on Sun­day. Even if we find a dri­ver we’re hosed–we’ll be on a plane before we get a chance to rent a vehi­cle.

It’s around 1:00PM Sun­day after­noon, the equip­ment has to leave tomor­row, parts are still in Napa, we have no dri­ver, and we have no truck.

And then the mag­ic hap­pened.

Tahoe boy (with fiancee) is pass­ing right next to Napa on his way to Tahoe. So he and his fiancee dri­ve to Napa and rum­mage through Jef­f’s garage look­ing for a 24-chan­nel mix­er and a box of micro­phones and cables. I coach them through the process by look­ing at a Microsoft Word sketch of Jef­f’s house marked the like­ly loca­tion of the equip­ment which he sent me in the wee hours of the morn­ing. It takes a while but they final­ly find it.

And then we dis­cov­er that our sound guy (the $4,500 sound sys­tem guy) is going to be dri­ving a truck full of music instru­ments down to San Diego in a rental truck any­way and is hap­py to bring our sound sys­tem as well.

And then we dis­cov­er that the sound guy is going to be hang­ing out that night across the street from the Tahoe cou­ple who have the extra sound equip­ment, so the hand­off will be easy.

And that’s the way it always hap­pens. Every­thing goes nuts and then every­thing works out. To wrench 2 Corinthi­ans 4:8–9 from its con­text:

We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; per­plexed, but not in despair; per­se­cut­ed, but not aban­doned; struck down, but not destroyed.

Relieved, Paula and I turn to prepar­ing for our trip tomor­row morn­ing and dis­cov­er that we mis­booked our tick­ets and are leav­ing at 9pm instead of 9am, which mess­es up sev­er­al parts of our sched­ule down south.

Aargh!

To add insult to injury, I’m get­ting a promi­nent facial pim­ple in the first time in for­ev­er. That’s right–take anoth­er look at the pho­to on th e top right. See the blem­ish next to my nose?

Also, I’ve spent much time on my cell phone today that if cell phones real­ly do cause can­cer I’ll be grow­ing a blue rib­bon tumor out of my ear by tomor­row morn­ing.

At least I’m not sick any­more.

But things will work out–the mag­ic will hap­pen and the con­fer­ence will be a smash­ing suc­cess.

In fact, it’s a gen­er­al­ly accept­ed prin­ci­ple that the more hec­tic the pre-con­fer­ence brouha­ha is the bet­ter the con­fer­ence winds up being.

Based on our sound sys­tem prob­lems alone we’re expect­ing either glob­al revival to break out or the rap­ture to occur. We’re not sure which one, but be ready just in case either comes to pass next week.

I was out of town all day yes­ter­day and got back late enough that I did­n’t both­er to check any sports scores. I had had some inti­ma­tion of the rude infor­ma­tion that await­ed me in the San Jose Mer­cury News sports sec­tion (owing to an ill-timed con­so­la­tion call from the Chi Alpha leader at Berke­ley).

So we lost Big Game. Again. And we lost Big Game big. Almost as bad­ly as it has ever been lost (although out­ranked by our 1930 41–0 romp over Cal).

I think the prop­er atti­tude is con­veyed in Mark Pur­dy’s col­umn:

Oh, it could have gone worse for Stan­ford on a windy, blus­tery after­noon. But only if a tree had fall­en on The Tree.

Cal’s 41–6 vic­to­ry Sat­ur­day was so awful, Stan­ford fans spent the sec­ond half leav­ing in droves — in lux­u­ry cars, actu­al­ly, but in drove-like for­ma­tion.

Heh. It’s a game we lost, but it’s only a game.

Of course, had we won I’d be singing an alto­geth­er dif­fer­ent tune about the rel­a­tive impor­tance of squash­ing one’s rivals like bugs. But we did­n’t win, and so I adopt the more ratio­nal atti­tude. 🙂

Stan­ford is the sec­ond best uni­ver­si­ty in the world, accord­ing to The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rank­ing of World Uni­ver­si­ties.

Wow. It’s a priv­i­lege to min­is­ter here.

I can’t help point­ing out that Berke­ley is num­ber 4.

Bill Sny­der from the Chi Alpha nation­al lead­er­ship team is stay­ing with Paula and I right now. On the way back from pick­ing him up we stopped at the local super­mar­ket so that he could buy some snacks.

He bought one two-liter bot­tle of Diet Coke and a bag of grapes.

$10.02

I looked over and Bill was lit­er­al­ly frozen in shock, hand halfway towards his wal­let, as the price reg­is­tered in his brain.

Prices in the Bay Area real­ly are out of con­trol, but I found that hilar­i­ous. I’m still laugh­ing out loud even as I type this.

Stan­ford racked up 17 medals at the Athens Olympics.

Not too shab­by.

The noto­ri­ous Leland Stan­ford Junior Uni­ver­si­ty March­ing Band has struck again. Per­haps their most famous pre­vi­ous per­for­mance was a rou­tine fea­tur­ing a pre­gant nun while Stan­ford played Notre Dame.

Actu­al­ly, their most famous stunt was prob­a­bly The Play.

Any­way, they’re at it again:

Stan­ford ath­let­ic direc­tor Ted Leland apol­o­gized Mon­day to Brigham Young Uni­ver­si­ty and its fans for a half­time show by the Car­di­nal band that poked fun at polygamy with five dancers wear­ing wed­ding veils.

(source)

Research­ing the band, I noticed that their web­site is cat­e­go­rized accord­ing the sev­en dead­ly sins. Charm­ing.

At least we won the game.

42 cur­rent or for­mer Car­di­nals are com­pet­ing in this year’s Olympics.

True sto­ry: last night Andrew was over at our house and men­tioned that one of his advisees (Dana Kirk) is com­pet­ing in the 200m wom­en’s but­ter­fly tomor­row. “I tell her what class­es to take.”

That’s kind of wild.

It reminds me of one of my all-time favorite Stan­ford sto­ries.

Some ath­letes are in a study group dis­cussing their plans over break. One says he’s head­ing to Can­cun. Anoth­er men­tions that he’s going hik­ing in the moun­tains. The last guy says he’s going to the Mas­ters.

One of the oth­er atheletes knows how hard it is to get tick­ets, so he asks, “Man, how did you score tick­ets to the Mas­ters? That’s hard to do.”

The last guy: “Dude, I’m play­ing.”

“Oh. I knew you were good, Tiger. I did­n’t know you were that good.”

note: that’s a true sto­ry, but I can’t find the exact ref­er­ence and so I made up some details.

Yes­ter­day was cool. We had our on-cam­pus sum­mer Bible study and then we decid­ed to have a par­ty to wel­come Andrew back to Amer­i­ca after his jour­ney abroad.

We fig­ured few things are more Amer­i­can than BBQ, so we had a BBQ par­ty (after which most folk left) and then the guys who remained played XBox with me until mid­night.

I love my job.

Inci­den­tal­ly, one of the XBox games that we played is called Blood Wake, a birth­day gift from my younger broth­er.

I men­tion that because the plot of the game is a younger broth­er try­ing to slay his evil old­er broth­er.

Thanks, Greg. 🙂

I was blown away by this arti­cle from The Ori­gins Project newslet­ter (Emerg­ing Lead­ers part 1). I believe it was writ­ten by Alex McManus, but I’m not alto­geth­er cer­tain of that.

Alexan­der Hamil­ton was 19 years old when George Wash­ing­ton appoint­ed him as an aid. Impres­sive enough, except when com­pared to the fact that at 14, Hamil­ton set the rules for the sea-far­ing cap­tains who trad­ed with his employ­ers on St. Croix Island.

In 1381, Richard II walked onto a field and faced off against Wat Tyler and his mob. Lat­er that same day, after four­teen year old Richard 11 had Wat Tyler behead­ed, the young king addressed the mob of peas­ants with enough sen­si­bil­i­ty to calm and end Wat Tyler’s Peas­ant Rebel­lion.

Few of us are aware of the way his­to­ry and cul­ture ‑not to men­tion our per­son­al age — influ­ence our feel­ings about youth­ful­ness and lead­er­ship. In order to cre­ate an ethos con­ducive to includ­ing emerg­ing lead­ers, we’ll need to ask our­selves the ques­tion, “At what age does some­one have capac­i­ty to lead?”

Recent­ly I spoke on a Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus and was star­tled at the youth­ful­ness of the stu­dent body. This hap­pens to me every year. In truth, the stu­dents are the same age under­grad­u­ates have always been. I’m just one year old­er. Every year, as our church lead­ers age, the young look younger. The cor­re­spond­ing dan­ger is that we may over­look many of our ablest lead­ers.

His­to­ry is sprin­kled with tales of the exploits, achieve­ments and lead­er­ship of young adults, even teenagers. Colum­bus and all the explor­ers of the new world relied on hard work­ing teens to man their crews. Think about this: Mid­dle school age chil­dren set­ting off on adven­tures that many adults would lack the courage to under­take. In times past, teenagers could lead armies in bat­tle and young pages could be made knights as ear­ly as age 12.

Con­trast this to the head dea­con who said of his new “young” pas­tor, “We’re let­ting him stretch his wings a lit­tle.” Many emerg­ing lead­ers won’t stretch their wings with­in a cage of past accom­plish­ments and exist­ing insti­tu­tions. Emerg­ing lead­er­ship will go where it can fly. One ques­tion we must ask our­selves is, do we real­ly want young lead­ers? Or are we only look­ing for some­one to serve in and man­age a pro­gram we’ve cre­at­ed.

A tip of the hat to Jor­dan Coop­er for find­ing this.

I keep describ­ing the stu­dents at Stan­ford as “future lead­ers.” I ought to know bet­ter, but I some­times nail them into a box that I ought to be rip­ping apart on their behalf.

I will say one thing though–while some stu­dents are ready to lead some­thing major from the moment they set foot on cam­pus, oth­ers aren’t ready even years after grad­u­a­tion (this isn’t just at Stan­ford, this is every­where I’ve been). I guess a huge part of my job ought to be fig­ur­ing out which ten­den­cy a giv­en stu­dent has…