Category: Stanford/Ministry News

Back at SMS I used to head to the cam­pus bowl­ing alley in the stu­dent union and help stu­dents process ques­tions about God. It was right when the tele­vi­sion series Ed (about a bowl­ing alley lawyer) was get­ting pop­u­lar, and so I called myself the Bowl­ing Alley The­olo­gian. It was a lot of fun.

I had flash­backs today as I spent 5 hours in a long and ram­bling con­ver­sa­tion with a stu­dent. We talked about the exis­tence of God, the nature of truth, epis­te­mol­o­gy, moral­i­ty, the nature of Scrip­ture, archael­o­gy and the Exo­dus, evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy, the mind-body prob­lem, and the rela­tion­ship between facts, faith, doubt, and skep­ti­cism.

It was a lot of fun.

Schools like Stan­ford are steer­ing wheels for our soci­ety: as goes the cam­pus, so goes the cul­ture. Our lead­ers are shaped in Stan­ford’s lec­ture halls–four of Amer­i­ca’s nine Supreme Court Jus­tices are Stan­ford grads!

And it’s not just Amer­i­ca that Stan­ford influences–the pres­i­dent of Peru is a Stan­ford grad­u­ate. In fact, 1/4 of the stu­dents are from anoth­er coun­try, and the two most rep­re­sent­ed nations are Chi­na and India.

Today they learn, but tomor­row they lead. These future world-chang­ers must be reached with the gospel while they are more open than they will ever be again!

If you want even more amaz­ing rea­sons, check out my list of famous Stan­ford alum­ni.

My friend Andrew Carea­ga (aka Cleopa­tra) cor­rect­ly point­ed out that being num­ber one isn’t always a desir­able thing, so I thought I’d give him some props. Check out his site.

Any­way, today was extreme­ly pro­duc­tive. Tim Smith (the Chi Alpha @ Sacra­men­to State guy who game­ly tried to recruit Glen Cole to our Chi Alpha fam­i­ly) and I met with John Har­ris and Doug Reid of Cap­i­tal Chris­t­ian Cen­ter in Sacra­men­to. Doug is the stu­dent min­istries pas­tor and John works on his staff to reach col­lege stu­dents.

Doug recent­ly came on staff and com­mis­sioned a demo­graph­ic study of all the stu­dents in Sacra­men­to. He was floored when he real­ized that there were more col­lege stu­dents than high school stu­dents (150,000 col­le­gians) and that he only had 1.5 staff peo­ple focus­ing on them (out of a stu­dent min­istries staff of 20).

Being a sharp guy, Doug real­ized that he needs to rad­i­cal­ly realign his min­istry to touch col­lege stu­dents.

We had a great meet­ing and I think that we’ve got some great ideas for syn­er­giz­ing their out­reach with what Chi Alpha is doing. Along­side Noble’s mod­el in Spring­field, MO (if you don’t know I don’t have time to explain it) this could real­ly be a huge stride for­ward for Assem­blies of God col­lege min­istry.

After­wards, Paula and I got to hang with Tim and Julie at Cal­i­for­nia Piz­za Kitchen after­wards. Good food and good friends.

If you’re a Chi Alpha per­son read­ing this blog, know that we always have extreme­ly pro­duc­tive days in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia / Neva­da that cul­mi­nate in high­ly fun and rela­tion­al meals.

Come west, young leader! There are over 80 size­able col­leges to choose from…

Col­lege Win­ter Retreat was great, but I’m just now recov­er­ing from all the work. I was real­ly pleased with out every­thing turned out. Our speak­er, Sam Hud­dle­ston, real­ly con­nect­ed with the stu­dents and chal­lenged them deeply. The stu­dents were respon­sive to the chal­lenge and were touched by God. Every­thing was good! Num­bers were up (a lot), the loca­tion was phe­nom­e­nal, and the core goals were accom­plished. Woohoo!

You can check out our retreat pho­tos–some of them are quite good.

I just ran across an inter­est­ing arti­cle in the LA Times that I deemed wor­thy of com­ment: The nation’s lead­ing lawyer [Jay Seku­low] for evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians was born and raised a Jew in Brook­lyn, but decid­ed in col­lege that Christ was the Mes­si­ah. (read the whole arti­cle: Evan­gel­i­cals’ Cham­pi­on to Argue Case at High Court)

Seku­low has argued 11 cas­es before the Supreme Court and is the chief coun­sel for the Amer­i­can Cen­ter for Law and Jus­tice.

Jay Seku­low is an excel­lent exam­ple of what I keep telling people–college stu­dents are the lead­ers of tomor­row and they are unique­ly open to rethink­ing their belief sys­tems. Reach­ing stu­dents today changes the world of tomor­row.

One of Stan­ford’s more unfor­tu­nate tra­di­tions, Full Moon on the Quad, made news late­ly. The San Jose Mer­cury News wrote an arti­cle Stan­ford Stu­dents Hos­pi­tal­ized After ‘Full Moon’ Par­ty.

lead para­graph: Four Stan­ford stu­dents were hos­pi­tal­ized with alco­hol poi­son­ing and three oth­ers were arrest­ed on alco­hol-relat­ed charges Thurs­day night dur­ing “Full Moon on the Quad” — a pop­u­lar annu­al tra­di­tion in which seniors kiss con­sent­ing fresh­men under the moon­light in what is billed as an alco­hol-free par­ty, Stan­ford said today.

Full Moon may be billed as an alco­hol-free par­ty, but that just means that many stu­dents get soused before show­ing up to tongue-wres­tle.

Also, I noticed the Mer­cury News did­n’t men­tion the ever-present nudi­ty (the oth­er moon on the quad that night)… sigh.

Accord­ing the Stan­ford Dai­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty is grow­ing con­cerned about Full Moon’s row­di­ness: Full Moon’s Future Cloudy: “I have seri­ous reser­va­tions about this event hap­pen­ing again,” said Assis­tant Dean and Direc­tor of Stu­dent Activ­i­ties Nan­ci Howe. “But it is too ear­ly to say what the future of Full Moon is.”

By the way, while look­ing for oth­er news sto­ries on Full Moon I ran across Naran­ja Dor­m’s gallery of Full Moon pho­tos.

FYI: US News & World Report recent­ly released its 2003 col­lege rank­ings, and Stan­ford came in fifth over­all. Pret­ty neat!

I was more impressed, how­ev­er, by a brief chat I had with Louie Giglio (founder of Pas­sion Min­istries) today. No–I don’t know him per­son­al­ly. Yes, we actu­al­ly did have a chat.

Any­way, he told me that Stan­ford was his favorite cam­pus. He just loves this place! That made me hap­py.

Final­ly, Stan­ford starts school next week. That means it’s like we’re accoun­tants dur­ing tax sea­son. BUSY! If we fall behind on our emails or oth­er­wise fail to be respon­sive please for­give us.

I just learned that there’s a web­site list­ing all 35 cur­rent pro base­ball play­ers who are Stan­ford grads: see the ros­ter.

Just found it inter­est­ing…

I was recent­ly informed by one of our XA stu­dents that 2 of the new 15 appointees to the New York Times edi­to­r­i­al board are Stan­ford grads: Philip Taub­man (deputy edi­to­r­i­al edi­tor) and Andres Mar­tinez (Eco­nom­ics, For­eign Affairs & Fed­er­al Reg­u­la­to­ry Issues).

You can read the full bios at http://nytimes.com/ref/opinion/editorial-board.html.

Why does this mat­ter? Because every­one in pol­i­tics reacts to and com­ments on what’s being said in the NY Times edi­to­ri­als.

I just learned that Bill Bright died yes­ter­day. Even though he and I would have prob­a­bly dif­fered quite strong­ly on some points had we talked in per­son (one of the rea­sons I min­is­ter with Chi Alpha instead of Cam­pus Cru­sade), I still held him in the high­est esteem pos­si­ble and would like to pub­licly hon­or him.

In case you aren’t famil­iar with him, Bill Bright found­ed Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ, wrote an extreme­ly influ­en­tial book­let called The Four Spir­i­tu­al Laws, and was respon­si­ble for the cre­ation of The Jesus Film–arguably the most effec­tive evan­ge­lis­tic tool in his­to­ry.

Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ is a tremen­dous min­istry, and the fact that it will con­tin­ue strong is a tes­ta­ment to Bill Bright and his lead­er­ship.

May the peace of God be with his fam­i­ly and friends…