Things My Students Have Said About Me

Actual comments my students made about me on a recent survey:

  1. the balder the better
  2. exuberant, zany, wacky, over the top
  3. Unique, John Stewart meets the apostle Paul.
  4. prone to shouting in high pitched voices
  5. pedagogic connoisseur — appreciates good teaching and apt quotes.
  6. occasional diarrhea of the mouth
  7. …unconventional
  8. wonderfully inappropriately humorous, great at coming up with mathematical-scientific analogies for facets of spirituality (balloons and 2nd derivatives anyone?), best at representing Jesus on film

It’s great to feel loved. And mocked.

Visualizing the Authorship of the New Testament

Inspired by the folks over at the ESV and at Blogos, I submitted a data set to the Many Eyes repository showing the percentage of the New Testament written by each author.

I got my data from Tischendorf’s 8th edition Greek New Testament because it was free and publicly available — big kudos to them for making all their work so easily usable.







It occurred to me to do this because counting the Greek words has always seemed to me to be a better measurement of the New Testament document lengths than counting verses or chapters, which are less precise measurements and are contingent on the whimsy of church history rather than being an intrinsic part of the text. 

Plus I vividly remember the day in seminary when I realized that Luke had written more of the New Testament than Paul had. It was an epiphany for me.

The Big 1–0

I remember seeing a sermon series once titled “Marriage: Closest Thing To Heaven, Closest Thing To Hell.” Brilliant title.

Ten years ago at this time I had just finished hiding my car from my groomsmen to prevent any untoward pranks and was at First Assembly of God in Lafayette, LA getting ready to be married under the auspices of Eric Treuil (who was using the authority invested in him by God and the state of Louisiana). 

Three quick memories:

  • Paula was very beautiful in her bridal dress.
  • I began fidgeting with my ring while still in the sanctuary, a habit I’ve continued to this day. I don’t know why, but whenever I’m thinkig about something I’ll either spin it around on my finger or take it off and put it back on a few times. Whatever the cause, you can see me doing it on the wedding tape as we recess out of the sanctuary.
  • I had a pile of eclairs as my grooms cake courtesy of high school buddy George Byron Noel. He’s a really good chef and my cake was delicious (as my brother can attest, since he ate approximately half of it 🙂 ).

We headed out on a honeymoon that included a stop in New Orleans and culminated in a stay at Southern SALT (now known as the Uprising) where I will be preaching in just a few days. It’s funny how things seem to come full-circle sometimes.

10 years. Much closer to heaven than hell by my reckoning.

Happy anniversary, Paula. I’d marry you again in a heartbeat. 

Revamped Website — RSS funkiness ensued

I just reworked the way this website is structured pretty radically. 

I’ve been using WordPress as my blogging tool for quite a while, and I love it. But it was getting harder and harder to do all that I wanted to through it. I’ve got lots of different things happening on this site and trying to show them all through WordPress using various plugins and hacks just wasn’t working well.

So I needed to change, but I didn’t want to give up WordPress.

So instead I decided to use Planet as the central engine for this website — it integrates all the different sub-applications I use (WordPress, Gallery, my quotes database, delicious).

The big downside is that my RSS feeds just got changed (and thereby became funky). If you’re a reader by syndication (this includes all of you in Facebook land) I apologize for the sudden influx of old content marked new.

I’ll be tweaking with the site for the next few days, but there shouldn’t be a big change in the feeds like that again.

Humility Smackdown

Curt Harlow just found out that I have publicly called myself the world’s #1 speaker on the subject of humility.

In case you were unaware, that’s Curt’s tagline. He probably even has it tattooed in an indelicate place.

So he called me up, “Glen, you are not the world’s number one speaker on the subject of humility and you know it. That’s my schtick.”

I believe my reply can best be summarized as “neener-neener.”

So we have four options:
1) We can each humbly agree that the other person is right. This option is appealing, but I just can’t see Curt going for it.
2) I can apologize for stealing his joke and print up business cards for him proclaiming his humble status. I’m sure Curt would prefer this solution, but he really set himself up to be knocked when he started the joke. Jokes are made to be expanded, refracted, and revised.
3) We can rumble. Curt’s bigger than me, so I don’t plan to pursue this course of action.
4) I can call myself the world’s number two speaker on the subject of humility in a tone of voice that implies I know that makes me more humble than the number one guy.

And so I choose option number 4. I am clearly the world’s number TWO speaker on the subject of humility and I am humble enough to be content with that ranking.

Successful Seminarians

Somewhere I heard that most of today’s best-known pastors didn’t go to seminary. As I recall, this observation was brought up in the context of criticizing the very concept of graduate-level ministerial training. The implication was that the time spent learning about the Bible would have been better spent learning about marketing (or the internet or psychology or something practical).

This criticism didn’t have a lot of weight for me — I just knew seminary had been good for me and I continued to recommend it to any minister who loved learning.

But I realized this morning that the allegation was untrue. Not only have lots of the big-name pastors gone to seminary, I would say that the majority of those that we first think of are seminarians.

  • Andy Stanley — Dallas Theological Seminary
  • Craig Groeschel — Phillips Theological Seminary
  • Rob Bell — Fuller Theological Seminary
  • John Ortberg — Fuller Theological Seminary
  • John Piper — Fuller and the University of Munich (Ph.D.)
  • Tim Keller — Gordon Conwell and Westminster Theological Seminary (Ph.D.)
  • Rick Warren — Fuller Theological Seminary

There are several who haven’t. Bill Hybels hasn’t gone to seminary, for example. I don’t think Ed Young, Jr. has, either. Joel Osteen hasn’t. Mark Driscoll is, I believe, finishing up a seminary degree right now.

But from what I can tell the majority of nationally-known Christian pastors have gone to seminary.

I’m not saying that going to seminary will guarantee you a numerically fruitful ministry — but I can guarantee you that it won’t prevent you from building a numerically fruitful ministry, either. And you’ll be a better person for having gone.

In an age when seminary gets a lot of knocks, I thought that was worth sharing.

Introducing Alexander Davis

Alexander Davis was born 11/17/2006 at 12:24pm after a very quick labor (from the time Paula began to push until the time he was completely outside was four minutes). He weighed 6lbs and 7oz and was 19.75 inches long.

Our plan is to refer to him as Xander (instead of the full Alexander or the briefer Alex). We’ll see how it takes. Dana seems to like it, so that’s a plus.

We’re still deciding about the middle name. We’ve got it narrowed down to three and we want to sleep on it before making our choice.

I’m too wiped to type much more now, check back later for more details. Until then, enjoy the photo gallery.

Research On Glossolalia

I just read about some cutting-edge research about speaking in tongues (you may have also seen this referred to as “glossolalia”).

Summary quote:

“We noticed a number of changes that occurred functionally in the brain,” comments Principal Investigator Andrew Newberg, MD, Associate Professor of Radiology, Psychiatry, and Religious Studies, and Director for the Center for Spirituality and the Mind, at Penn. “Our finding of decreased activity in the frontal lobes during the practice of speaking in tongues is fascinating because these subjects truly believe that the spirit of God is moving through them and controlling them to speak. Our brain imaging research shows us that these subjects are not in control of the usual language centers during this activity, which is consistent with their description of a lack of intentional control while speaking in tongues.”

I pass this along because we so often focus on research findings which seem to challenge the faith (or more frequently on research findings which challenge our interpretation of the faith), it’s always interesting to spot those that correspond to exactly what we would expect based upon a straightforward reading of the Bible.

Thoughts on Worship

A few weeks ago I was discussing worship with David Jones, the leader of Reformed University Fellowship at Stanford, and he put something into words that I’ve been trying to articulate for a while, “Worship is both expressive and formative.”

In other words, worship doesn’t only show what we feel and believe, it also shapes what we feel and believe.

My students will only hear me preach a given sermon once — but they may sing a worship song dozens of times. And if we’ve chosen catchy yet superficial junk for them to sing we’ve done them a real disservice.

And that’s why we don’t just sing any old song in our Chi Alpha meetings. They have to be catchy while also being profound and ennobling. In other words, they have to both sound good and be good.

For what it’s worth, I think that Chris Tomlin and Ben Pasley (of Enter the Worship Circle) stand out for really hitting the mark consistently. Of the old hymn writers, Isaac Watts really had it going on.

As The World’s Number One Speaker On The Subject of Humility…

Off-Road Disciplines: Spiritual Adventures of Missional Leaders (J-B Leadership Network Series)As the world’s number one speaker on the subject of humility, I’d like to draw your attention to a book in which I am a recurring character.

Earl Creps has just written Off-Road Disciplines, a book for church leaders trying to navigate all the change our culture keeps throwing at us.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I am quoted many times throughout the book. If you have never read yourself quoted in a book before, let me assure that it can be disconcerting.

There’s no way I can be objective about this book. It’s written by a friend and almost all the recurring characters are friends.

So I will simply say that I enjoyed it and I think I would have enjoyed it whether or not it was by a friend. It’s just filled with fascinating little snippets.

The History Channel recently offered me part of the answer in a documentary about the researchers who devote their lives to discovering Atlantis. These passionate and sincere people consider themselves consummate professionals in their field. They employ expensive, high-tech equipment and sacrifice the respect of mainstream science to live on the perpetual verge of one of the greatest discoveries of all time. Spurred on by an ancient text (Plato, in this case), they spend years surveying vast stretches of ocean in a quest to assemble clues to cataclysmic events in the distant past. The disdain of their scientific peers only increases their fervor by making these faithful into professional martyrs. Sometime before the last commercial on the TV program, I grasped the parallel to the post-Christian experience of the Church: ancient texts, outrageous theories, huge expense, persecution complex, and a passionate devotion to things that matter only to insiders. (page 21)

I have to believe I would find that gripping no matter who wrote it. Or consider this simple evidence that demonstrates a truth I have long believed but been unable to show data for:

…in a survey of magazine indices I found that the first references to postmodernism in Christian periodicals did not appear until four to thirteen years after the first references are indexed in secular journals.

That’s the most concrete, data-based illustration I’ve ever seen of the culture lag in which the church is trapped.

Plus he coins two phrases that I love: “overchurched underachiever” (so busy with church stuff they have no time for real stuff) and “orthodoxy creep” (a tendency to doctrinalize every opinion).

Anyway, on to the important stuff: me.

My first appearance in the book is on page 45: 

After hearing a talk supported by PowerPoint, Glen (half my age) said politely, “I thought you had a degree in communication.”

Ouch. The words hurt Earl the first time and me the second.

I am featured again five pages later: “Glen helps me with technology and the Internet.”

My best role, however, comes in the chapter on humility.

No, really.

A [ministerial] life representing an attitude of “I know!” “You’re wrong!” and “You need me!” serves as what my friend Glen calls a “blocker,” standing in the way of the spiritually hungry rather than motivating them to investigate Jesus further. (page 83)

At last, I am portrayed as the humble sage I know and love.

So I’ll stop quoting from the book before I paint myself in an unflattering light again. 😉