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. 😉