Category: Stanford/Ministry News

I thought this was kind of cool: Stan­ford is one of the four key uni­ver­si­ties spon­sor­ing a new open source course man­age­ment sys­tem (the oth­er three are MIT, Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan, and Indi­ana Uni­ver­si­ty). The new project is called Sakai and Stan­ford’s ver­sion will go live on cam­pus in 2005.

Scan­ning the news that backed up for me while I was away, I notice that Stan­ford was the best sports pro­gram in Amer­i­ca for the 10th year in a row.

Woohoo!

I hon­est­ly did­n’t think we’d get it this year. Shows what I know.

Along ath­let­ic lines, I found Supreme Court Jus­tic San­dra Day O’Con­nor’s com­ment at grad­u­a­tion pret­ty fun­ny:

“I am expect­ing to see any day at the Court a ne exeat peti­tion from Stan­ford for an order to pre­vent these depar­tures. As I count it, we have at least four Stan­ford votes on the Supreme Court at present.” (refer­ring to coach­ing changes–basketball coach Mike Mont­gomery and ten­nis coach Dick Gould are leav­ing)

One of the bit­ter­sweet things about col­lege min­istry is watch­ing the peo­ple in your min­istry grad­u­ate and move on.

That’s fresh on my mind because I bumped into two stu­dents who recent­ly walked the line.

This week­end Julia Heng (who just got her mas­ter’s degree in Man­age­ment, Sci­ence, and Engi­neer­ing) dropped by for a few min­utes to return some stuff she had bor­rowed from us. I had­n’t seen her since our grad­u­at­ing stu­dents celebration–she’d been galla­vant­i­ng around the coun­try with her par­ents (it was her mom’s first time in Amer­i­ca). Then she head­ed back to Sin­ga­pore.

And then this morn­ing I had break­fast with Nate Flake. Nate just grad­u­at­ed from Stan­ford with a degree in lin­guis­tics. He speaks more lan­guages than any­one else I know.

He was­n’t able to join us for the cel­e­bra­tion that we hold right before grad­u­a­tion, and he’s been on the road since receiv­ing his diplo­ma. This was the first time since then that we’ve been able to con­nect.

And tomor­row he flies to Chi­na for a year. He’s not sure what he’ll do there, he just knows that he does­n’t want to teach Eng­lish. He’s angling for a job as a trans­la­tor or some­thing.

Good luck and God­speed, Julia & Nate! We’ll miss you.

I get blown away some­times when I think about how inno­v­a­tive Stan­ford is. I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out which dorm room Google was found­ed in (I bet it’s in Escon­di­do Vil­lage).

Any­way, I start­ed think­ing again about the incred­i­ble tech­no­log­i­cal break­throughs at Stan­ford when I read that the Farm raked in $45.4 mil­lion last year from roy­al­ties.

That’s a lot of mon­ey.

Wow. Wow back­wards.

Dana is two months old now! We took her to the doc­tor for her check up and she is doing great. She now weights 10 lbs 1 oz and is 22 3/4 inch­es long. She is grow­ing so fast!

New things that Dana can do now: smile, coo, and move around in her bed. She is hard­ly ever in the same posi­tion that we put her in.

As always you can see new pic­tures of Dana in her pho­to album.

5 star dig­i­tal cam­era

Hey–glad you stum­bled across the site.

You’re wel­come to poke around here and learn more about Paula and I. Just so you know, this web­site is a tool we use to keep fam­i­ly, friends, and min­istry part­ners up-to-date on our lives and min­istry.

So if you came here want­i­ng to learn more about Chi Alpha, check out Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford or nation­al Chi Alpha.

If I’m Freak­ing You Out
If you just stum­bled across this web­site while search­ing for some­thing else and are grow­ing increas­ing­ly hor­ri­fied as you read of my nefar­i­ous plans to engage stu­dents in spir­i­tu­al dis­cus­sions, allow me to explain myself.

Some stu­dents are real­ly uptight about reli­gion, but most are not. Stu­dents gen­er­al­ly enjoy hav­ing a non-pushy and thought-pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sion with some­one about inter­est­ing things like the mean­ing of life, the exis­tence of God, the nature of moral­i­ty, and the pow­er of reli­gious belief.

Those are the peo­ple I inter­act with. I don’t roam about the cam­pus like a lion seek­ing unwit­ting stu­dents to devour. I talk with peo­ple about things they want to talk about.

For the record, Chi Alpha is an orga­ni­za­tion in good stand­ing with Stan­ford Asso­ci­at­ed Reli­gions and is also a reg­is­tered vol­un­tary stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion at Stan­ford. That means our pres­ence is sanc­tioned by the uni­ver­si­ty.

So chill.

If I’m Freak­ing You Out Now
If, on the oth­er hand, you were fine with every­thing I said until I explained that I’m not pushy and obnox­ious, read on.

Being pushy and rude isn’t the Bib­li­cal mod­el for evan­ge­lism. Don’t believe me?

• Con­sid­er the Gold­en Rule (Matthew 7:12), where­in Jesus tells us to treat oth­ers the way we want to be treat­ed. That applies to evan­ge­lism, too. If you would­n’t want an athe­ist, Mus­lim, or Mor­mon talk­ing to you a cer­tain way, don’t talk that way to oth­ers.
• Notice Peter’s advice that we are called to live in such a way that peo­ple ask us ques­tions about our beliefs, and when they do we answer them gen­tly and respect­ful­ly (1 Peter 3:15–16)
• Con­sid­er Paul’s prayer request in Colos­sians 4:3–4, in which he prays for oppor­tu­ni­ties. Note that he does not announce his clever plans for trick­ing peo­ple into talk­ing with him. He prays that God would bring the con­ver­sa­tions about.

In oth­er words, I’m not shirk­ing back from pro­claim­ing the gospel clear­ly, nor am I capit­u­lat­ing to some insane cam­pus speech code, nor am I liv­ing in fear of the sec­u­lar sta­tus quo. I’m mere­ly being wise and bib­li­cal.

Just think about it: I’m an ordained min­is­ter and nation­al­ly appoint­ed mis­sion­ary with the Assem­blies of God, which the world’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion and which is con­sid­ered by many to be the most effec­tive mis­sion­ary move­ment in the his­to­ry of the world (reflect on this: we did­n’t exist 100 years ago and are now one of the largest reli­gious move­ments any­where). The Assem­blies of God did­n’t send us to reach Stan­ford because we’re some kind of cow­ard­ly wimps. They sent us because they believe we are called, gift­ed, and guid­ed by God for this task.

So chill.

This is not par­tic­u­lar­ly relat­ed to Stan­ford, but it is relat­ed to uni­ver­si­ty life in gen­er­al.

Alexan­dra Rob­bins went under­cov­er as a soror­i­ty girl to fig­ure out what life is real­ly like in the mod­ern Greek scene. She dis­cov­ered a world of dys­func­tion, and she writes about it in her new book Pledged: The Secret Life of Soror­i­ties.

If you’d like to learn more, read an eye-open­ing inter­view with the author.

Excerpt: NEWSWEEK: Why did you go under­cov­er?
Alexan­dra Rob­bins: Orig­i­nal­ly I was open­ly going to be a re­porter in a house on a spe­cif­ic cam­pus. I had been to some meet­ings, and I had start­ed to bond with these girls. Then one day, the advis­er of the soror­i­ty sat me down and she said some­thing like “I can’t let you be here unless the nation­al office allows you, and I real­ly don’t think they’re going to.” And then she said, and I’ll nev­er for­get this: “And if they do let you in, I sim­ply can­not allow you to write about the drugs.” I called the nation­al office, and it turned out that the 26 nation­al Pan­hel­lenic soror­i­ties had insti­tut­ed a media black­out because they were upset with the MTV show “Soror­i­ty Life.” It turned out that the only way to get behind the scenes in a soror­i­ty house was to fly under the radar.

Last night’s Chi Alpha meet­ing was off the charts–Curt Har­low spoke and did an excel­lent job!

That would have been encour­ag­ing enough, but we had a high-water mark in atten­dance (all the peo­ple who some­times show up showed up at once, and we had six first-time guests). That was extreme­ly grat­i­fy­ing. I try not to be dri­ven by num­bers, but I def­i­nite­ly like hav­ing more bod­ies in the room…

I was on cam­pus today and noticed a huge crowd in the Stu­dent Union–turns out that some­one had set up a screen and a sound sys­tem and was show­ing the PAC 10 tour­na­ment.

We won our first game, by the way.

Any­way, it was inter­est­ing to watch how many stu­dents were engrossed in the game. It’s the week before finals here, and usu­al­ly that means stu­dents are cram­ming like crazy.

I guess they just love dom­i­nat­ing at a major sport.

At the Cam­pus Min­is­ters’ Con­fer­ence in Atlanta last week­end, Curt Har­low stuck a video cam­era in my face and told me to be pro­found. You can see my best effort in a two-minute video at chialpha.com.

Before you cast any stones–try being pro­found on the spot. It’s not as easy as you might think. In fact, it’s only due to the edit­ing genius of Curt Har­low that I did­n’t come off look­ing like a rav­ing lunatic.

Any­way, I high­ly rec­om­mend that you poke around the video blog archives. There’s some good stuff there.

If you’re a min­is­ter, know that there are sev­er­al out­stand­ing sermon/sunday school ideas you can *ahem* bor­row.

If you want to use one of these video snip­pets in your meet­ings (as a call to wor­ship or to illus­trate a ser­mon point) here’s how to inte­grate it into Pow­er­Point.

1) Upgrade Quick­Time to Quick­Time Pro. It’ll cost you thir­ty bucks and you can do it online in sec­onds.
2) Open the mov file in Quick­Time Pro and click File/Export to export it as an avi file.
3) You can now either insert it into Pow­er­Point or edit it in Win­dows Movie Mak­er (free with Win­dows XP). Be sure to down­load the lat­est ver­sion.

If you’re using a Mac­in­tosh, you can prob­a­bly just insert it into Pow­er­Point with­out dink­ing around.

I used the one titled “Gross Stuff phone booth dvdrip ” this week to open the meet­ing, and it worked real­ly well.