Life Church Down The Road

I’ve been think­ing about LifeChurch.tv late­ly (check the Wikipedia arti­cle on them).

In case you’re not famil­iar with the church, it’s one of the best-known exam­ples of the mul­ti-site church move­ment. At present, Life Church uses live video feeds to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly have the same ser­vice in Okla­homa, Ari­zona, Texas, and Ten­nessee. They also stream the ser­vice over the inter­net.

They both start new church­es and acquire exist­ing church­es (that’s their lan­guage, not mine. They are very clear that they are not propos­ing merg­ers — they are propos­ing acqui­si­tions — lis­ten to Kevin Pen­ry). If you’d like to be acquired you can sign up online ask the dust divx movie online .

One thing I want to praise them for: they make their resources avail­able online for free. They’re clear­ly very King­dom-mind­ed.

But some­thing about LifeChurch’s approach wor­ries me.

I’ll explain what it is after some nec­es­sary dis­claimers:

  1. I have no fun­da­men­tal the­o­log­i­cal prob­lem with mul­ti-site church­es. If you think it’s okay for a sin­gle-site church to have two ser­vices on a Sun­day morn­ing then you’re incon­sis­tent to oppose mul­ti­ple-site church­es. Once you cede the split­ting of the con­gre­ga­tion it’s all just a mat­ter of degree (if this is not clear to you then spend some time think­ing through your prob­lems with mul­ti-site church­es and how they are also applic­a­ble to a church that has an 8:00am ser­vice and an 11am ser­vice).
  2. There are a lot of ways to do mul­ti-site church and there is cer­tain­ly diver­si­ty with­in the move­ment. My con­cerns about LifeChurch’s approach don’t apply to all the ways mul­ti-site is done.

Here’s my con­cern: if LifeChurch’s phi­los­o­phy becomes the norm (an excel­lent test of the sound­ness of a phi­los­o­phy) then we lose some­thing vital to the health of the church.

Let’s say LifeChurch con­tin­ues to grow and spreads into 10 or 15 states. They reach 100,000 in aggre­gate atten­dance. 200,000. 500,000. 1,000,000. These num­bers are not unrea­son­able — mul­ti-site church­es seem to be scale-free net­works and thus will exhib­it the win­ner-take-all phe­nom­e­non. The largest mul­ti-site will be about twice as large as its next-great­est neigh­bor and so on down the line.

In effect, LifeChurch (or some­one like it) will become the Wal-Mart of church­es soon, and just like Wal-Mart the over­whelm­ing nature of their dom­i­nance will be sur­pris­ing and will take a while to sink in. And just like Wal-Mart, that will bring some good and some bad along with it.

What hap­pens when the pri­ma­ry leader of the Amer­i­can gigachurch laps­es into stu­pid­i­ty, heresy, or moral fail­ure? How does that affect Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca?

This isn’t an unre­al­is­tic con­cern — evan­gel­i­cal­ism has a his­to­ry of each of these blun­ders. And the high­er-pro­file a per­son is the more prone they seem to be to falling into one or more of these.

  • Stu­pid­i­ty: pub­lic dis­plays of igno­rance, par­tic­u­lar­ly on polit­i­cal or sci­en­tif­ic issues
  • Heresy: say­ing things about Jesus or the Bible that just aren’t true
  • Moral Fail­ure: finan­cial impro­pri­ety or sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, for exam­ple

As things stand now, when Joe Preach­er on tele­vi­sion has a moral blowout that church is destroyed but the rest of us rock on, sad­dened but unaf­fect­ed.

Imag­ine a sin­gle church which con­tains 35% of all evan­gel­i­cals in Amer­i­ca (and a hand­ful in Eng­land and Aus­tralia) hav­ing the same blowout. It’s a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

That’s bad enough, but what I real­ly wor­ry about is the lack of ide­o­log­i­cal diver­si­ty such an arrange­ment would bring about. Evan­gel­i­cals are already prone to sheep-like behav­ior, but at least we cur­rent­ly hang out in dif­fer­ent flocks.

When we cre­ate an evan­gel­i­cal pope who has far more direct influ­ence over his orga­ni­za­tion than the Pope has over the Catholic church, we will lose some­thing vibrant and vital about evan­gel­i­cal­ism. If we’re not care­ful, we’ll lose a vital part of the gains of the Ref­or­ma­tion.

LifeChurch (and the entire mul­ti-site move­ment) have a lot to offer and are doing some won­der­ful things. On the whole, I have high praise for them.

But it is not unqual­i­fied praise.

Entertainment I Adore

Yes­ter­day I men­tioned some of my least-favorite enter­tain­ment, today is the oppo­site-enter­tain­ment I adore.

Radio: Den­nis Prager is the man. He’s smart, rea­son­able, and thinks out loud in an inter­est­ing way. If your local radio does­n’t car­ry him then it’s your loss. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ira Fla­tow and Hugh Hewitt.

Tele­vi­sion: Myth­busters is clear­ly the best show in the his­to­ry of some­thing. I just can’t decide whether it’s the best show in the his­to­ry of the uni­verse or the best show in the his­to­ry of tele­vi­sion. Hon­or­able men­tions: Dog the Boun­ty Hunter, 24.

Books: Steven Brust is one of the great­est authors of our gen­er­a­tion. If you like nov­els about assas­sins with sar­cas­tic lizards, that is. Hon­or­able men­tions: Ter­ry Pratch­ett, C. S. Fried­man

Music: Rich Mullins rocks the free world. Or rocked the free world. Or what­ev­er. He’s dead but his music con­tin­ues to inspire me. Hon­or­able men­tions: U2, Men With­out Hats

Entertainment I Could Do Without

Social net­work­ing sites like the Face­book often ask you to list your favorite books, movies, and music. I under­stand the rea­son­ing they’re using, but some­times I won­der about what peo­ple real­ly dis­like.

Lest ye won­der the same about me, here’s my list of enter­tain­ment I could do with­out:

  • In radio, I could do with­out Fresh Air with Ter­ry Gross. I just don’t like her inter­views. She’s got a won­der­ful rep­u­ta­tion and so I’m sure she’s great at what she does, but I just don’t con­nect with her. And I LOVE talk radio.
  • On tele­vi­sion, I could do with­out Project Run­way. Paula loves this real­i­ty show, but I just don’t get it. Most fash­ion is ugly any­way — nobody real­ly likes it except for those in the fash­ion indus­try. Even the super­mod­els who demo the out­fits don’t wear that stuff when they don’t have to.
  • In the world of let­ters, I could do with­out the books by Bri­an Her­bert. Frank Her­bert’s son has been writ­ing sci­ence fic­tion nov­els just like his dad did. One prob­lem: he’s not his dad.
  • And in the world of music, I could do with­out hip hop. I know it’s hip (by def­i­n­i­tion — see name) and all the kids are dig­gin’ it, but it just does­n’t do it for me. I can appre­ci­ate the bizarre genius that goes into craft­ing the rhymes and that are rockin’ our times, but Dr. Seuss retired that genre years ago. Every­thing else is pure­ly deriv­a­tive.

So that’s my anti-pro­file. You may now judge me by the things I don’t like.

I’d Like To Thank The Academy…

I was in the Stan­ford Book­store today when I hap­pened to see a book called Stan­ford Spir­it. I noticed it was a com­pi­la­tion of essays by cur­rent Stan­ford stu­dents, so I picked it up to see if any were by peo­ple I knew — and one of our Chi Alphans has a con­tri­bu­tion!

You can down­load a dig­i­tal copy for free at
http://www.lulu.com/content/382219 — look for the chap­ter by Mari­bel Diaz.

In addi­tion, Lisa Ooi just had her debut pub­li­ca­tion in Cell (yes, THAT Cell) with the stir­ring “A Rapid, Reversible, and Tun­able Method to Reg­u­late Pro­tein Func­tion in Liv­ing Cells Using Syn­thet­ic Small Mol­e­cules”

Con­grat­u­la­tions to them both.

Facebook Friend?

I just learned that one of my friends is being recruit­ed by the Face­book.

I real­ly hope this works out, because then I’d be the coolest per­son in cam­pus min­istry by dint of that asso­ci­a­tion.

Pic­ture me at the next Chi Alpha con­fer­ence: “Par­don me, I need to take this call — my caller ID says it’s from Facebook.com Head­quar­ters. I’ve been urg­ing them to rethink the way they han­dle groups and I think the con­ver­sa­tion we had at a BBQ last week is final­ly bear­ing fruit.”

Now all I need to do is get an alum­nus into Google…

Georgetown Evicts Evangelical Groups

George­town Uni­ver­si­ty just kicked six cam­pus min­istries off cam­pus.

Cam­pus Min­istry Removes Affil­i­ates — The Hoya (cam­pus paper)
George­town Rejects Evan­gel­i­cal Groups — Inside High­er Ed (col­lege news blog)

Chi Alpha was among the groups banned. Pray for God’s peace and wis­dom to attend the lead­ers of the group as they decide what to do next.

At Stan­ford we are for­tu­nate to have a very strong rela­tion­ship with the Deans for Reli­gious Life. How­ev­er, the news from George­town is a reminder that this isn’t the only pos­si­ble state of affairs.

Paul was very wise when he remind­ed Tim­o­thy to pray for his impe­r­i­al over­lords.

“I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, inter­ces­sion and thanks­giv­ing be made for everyone—for kings and all those in author­i­ty, that we may live peace­ful and qui­et lives in all god­li­ness and holi­ness.”
1 Tim 2:1–2, NIV

I often tell stu­dents that this is the foun­da­tion of a sep­a­ra­tion of church and state. We want the gov­ern­ment (and any oth­er bureau­crat­ic bod­ies) to leave us free to wor­ship with­out oner­ous over­sight or reg­u­la­tion — because exter­nal involve­ment nev­er works out to our advan­tage in the long run.

In any event, my prayers are with those just boot­ed from George­town (and with the Chi Alpha folks in par­tic­u­lar as sev­er­al of them are close friends).

Suckerpunched…

I was bit­ter­ly dis­ap­point­ed at the ref­er­ence sec­tion at Bere­an Chris­t­ian Store in San Jose. I had gone in with a coupon fig­ur­ing I’d pick up a sweet and expen­sive com­men­tary at reduced rate. After scour­ing the com­men­tary sec­tion I con­clud­ed that there was not one sin­gle com­men­tary in the store worth own­ing.

It made me very, very sad. I hate to be one of those min­is­ters who is always whin­ing about how Chris­t­ian book stores are dumb­ing down the faith, but I was almost sick inside at the low qual­i­ty of the books on offer.

As I was on my way out, I noticed Break­ing The Mis­sion­al Code was for sale. Since I had a coupon and the book had been rec­om­mend­ed to me by sev­er­al friends and I did­n’t want to leave bit­ter at the store, I picked it up.

It’s an easy read and I was gen­er­al­ly appre­cia­tive of their thoughts (espe­cial­ly their warn­ing to the rapid­ly swelling mis­sion­al net­works to not neglect tra­di­tion­al mis­sions in favor of church plant­i­ng), and I was almost done with it when I got suck­er­punched at the end.

A recent devel­op­ment in church plant­i­ng is that of plant­i­ng church­es on or near col­lege cam­pus­es. Lead­ers are dis­cov­er­ing that when church­es are plant­ed on cam­pus they are more strate­gic at reach­ing unreached and dis­con­nect­ed peo­ple on the col­lege cam­pus. They rep­re­sent a shift from col­lege and cam­pus min­istries that focus on those who already embrace the faith to that of plant­i­ng the gospel among those who have nev­er or sel­dom heard.
Break­ing The Mis­sion­al Code, Ed Stet­zer & David Put­man p. 232
empha­sis added

I feel vague­ly slan­dered…

I think per­haps the authors mis­un­der­stand what cam­pus min­istries do. And they also over­es­ti­mate the abil­i­ty of church­es to thrive on the col­lege cam­pus — some cam­pus­es are very reach­able that way and oth­ers are not. It’s a tool in our tool­box for reach­ing col­le­gians, not a replace­ment tool­box.

Over­all, it’s a good book if you haven’t read any­thing about lead­ing your church to engage the cul­ture before. Oth­er­wise you might find it rep­e­ti­tious. And libelous. 🙂

What Is The Internet?

A friend recent­ly asked me what the inter­net was. Evi­dent­ly there are some strange the­o­ries float­ing around out there, such as the one Jon Stew­art mocks in this clip:

So I gave her an expla­na­tion and she said she thought some oth­er non-tech­ni­cal friends might appre­ci­ate it, so here it is.

Your com­put­er has a few key com­po­nents — a CPU, a hard dri­ve, RAM, and an Oper­at­ing Sys­tem. Every­thing on your com­put­er is com­plete­ly obe­di­ent to your Oper­at­ing Sys­tem.

If you have two or more com­put­ers in your house, you can set up a net­work between them. When you set up a net­work, you’re basi­cal­ly adding addi­tion­al com­po­nents to your com­put­er. But these addi­tion­al com­po­nents are obe­di­ent to dif­fer­ent Oper­at­ing Sys­tems than your own.

So your Oper­at­ing Sys­tem has to ask the oth­er com­put­er’s Oper­at­ing Sys­tem for per­mis­sion before it does any­thing like read a file from the oth­er com­put­er’s hard dri­ve.

To set up a net­work, you need to tell the com­put­ers two ground rules: what “lan­guage” to speak with one anoth­er and how to find oth­er com­put­ers on the net­work.

The Inter­net is the largest net­work of com­put­ers ever cre­at­ed. There is a stan­dard lan­guage (TCP/IP) and a stan­dard way to find oth­er com­put­ers (the unique IP address that every com­put­er on the inter­net is assigned).

When­ev­er you log in to a wire­less net­work, for exam­ple, you are assigned a tem­po­rary IP address that any com­put­er on the inter­net could use to talk to you. Per­ma­nent­ly-con­nect­ed com­put­ers such as web­servers get per­ma­nent IP address­es.

So when we talk about the inter­net, we’re real­ly talk­ing about every com­put­er in the world that has a legim­i­tate IP address and knows how to talk to oth­er com­put­ers using TCP/IP.

As a lan­guage, TCP/IP is too gener­ic to be use­ful for most of the tasks we are inter­est­ed in. So there are addi­tion­al dialacts called “pro­to­cols” which com­put­ers can use to do things like view web pages.

To view web pages, com­put­ers talk using HTTP — Hyper Text Trans­fer Pro­to­col. That’s what the http:// in front of a web address is all about. To upload or down­load files com­put­ers use FTP — File Trans­fer Pro­to­col.

There are a lot of dif­fer­ent pro­to­cols.

So when you type http://news.google.com/index.html into your brows­er address bar, what’s real­ly hap­pen­ing is that your Oper­at­ing Sys­tem con­nects to the Inter­net using TCP/IP and asks a more sig­nif­i­cant com­put­er what the IP address of news.google.com is.

Then it uses HTTP to talk to the Oper­at­ing Sys­tem of the com­put­er at that IP address and asks for per­mis­sion to read the file index.html. The remote Oper­at­ing Sys­tem uses HTTP to answer “Sure” and then pass­es the file along. Your com­put­er then dis­plays the file in your brows­er.

And that’s essen­tial­ly what the inter­net is and how it works.

Chi Alpha Worldwide on the Facebook

A clever Chi Alphan noticed that the Face­book now sup­ports glob­al groups. So they set up one titled: XA- CHI ALPHA WORLDWIDE ‑XA (I don’t know if that link will work or not — I took out the school pre­fix)

So Chi Alphans world­wide, unite!

Dana Broke Wind

Recent­ly we were all sit­ting down to din­ner when Dana fart­ed.

Mom: “Dana, what do you say?”
Dana: “Excuse you, Dad­dy.”

Peo­ple were, in my esti­ma­tion, entire­ly too tick­led by that remark. 🙂