Chad & Melanie Hartnell Love Us

I just received an email from Chad Hart­nell, an alum­nus of our min­istry back in Spring­field, who had some very kind words for us. With his per­mis­sion, I share them here:

Con­grat­u­la­tions on the new addi­tion to your fam­i­ly! Melanie and I have enjoyed receiv­ing newslet­ters detail­ing what the Lord is doing on the Stan­ford cam­pus. How excit­ing! I had and have absolute­ly no doubt that the Lord is using you and Paula to accom­plish great things for His king­dom! I also want­ed to under­score how much your and Joe’s lead­er­ship is impact­ing my life right now.

We are blessed to be a part of a won­der­ful church in Tam­pa. Mel and I recent­ly returned from lead­ing a mis­sions trip to South Africa for near­ly three weeks. Melanie admin­is­trat­ed peo­ple’s finances, orga­nized the details, and was the point per­son for the team. She def­i­nite­ly has the spir­i­tu­al gift of admin­is­tra­tion. She did an impec­ca­ble job! Our expe­ri­ence in Chi Alpha mis­sions was the mod­el we used in team prepa­ra­tion. We had 10 peo­ple on our team who ranged from the 20’s to the 60’s. We were all over the gen­er­a­tional map, but we con­nect­ed with each oth­er and with the South Africans in a pow­er­ful way. Thanks to what we expe­ri­enced in Chi Alpha, we were able to lead a mis­sions trip that not only trans­formed peo­ple’s par­a­digm about mis­sions, but also laid a strong foun­da­tion for the church’s mis­sion vision for the future.

I still have the five-fold phi­los­o­phy tat­tooed on my fore­head. In fact, I am observ­ing that many church­es have a dif­fi­cult time keep­ing a bal­ance among all five areas. Lead­er­ship gets excit­ed about one area and for­gets about the oth­er four until peo­ple start feel­ing a void. I know that sea­sons exist that change the bal­ance, but I am still learn­ing what that looks like. “Bal­ance” is prob­a­bly one of the most dif­fi­cult issues in life because it con­stant­ly changes. I think it is eas­i­er to achieve, how­ev­er, if you know what it is you need to bal­ance. Thanks to you and Joe, I know that a church (as well as a cam­pus min­istry) must be found­ed on worship,discipleship, fel­low­ship, prayer, and wit­ness. I just real­ized yes­ter­day why we had the struc­ture in place for Spring Lead­er­ship Retreat. We were plan­ning activ­i­ties around our five-fold phi­los­o­phy to bal­ance our growth in each area. The light came on a lit­tle late, but it makes com­plete sense now. What a great struc­ture!

I put this up not only for the sake of my van­i­ty (although there’s prob­a­bly a lit­tle of that), but also to rein­force the mes­sage I keep repeat­ing: col­lege min­istry is strate­gic min­istry. What we do in these few years with stu­dents shapes the rest of their lives.

To all of those who pray with us and sup­port us finan­cial­ly, I say thank you. And I also say: your part­ner­ship bears fruit both now and for years to come.

Chi Alpha In Kansas

Chi Alpha at Wichi­ta State Uni­ver­si­ty got some press recent­ly:

Kayleen Hall­berg, 22, said her spir­i­tu­al life got back on track after she joined the rough­ly 60-mem­ber Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship.

Last week, she staffed a booth for the Chris­t­ian group that drew her inter­est three years ago after “back­slid­ing” from her Chris­t­ian upbring­ing.

“I was the typ­i­cal col­lege stu­dent: par­ty­ing, once I got away from home,” said Hall­berg, a fifth-year senior study­ing man­age­ment and finance.

Chi Alpha “gave me focus and direc­tion. There’s a lot of focus on char­ac­ter and integri­ty.”

(source: Wichi­ta Eagle, 8/28/2004)

Way to go, Chi Alphans!

Lightning Is Scary

“The sci­en­tif­ic mind at such times does not try to think up pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures. Rather it says: Yipes.” (The Straight Dope)

Dallas Willard Rings The Bell

Dal­las Willard wrote an excel­lent paper called Liv­ing In The Vision of God (9 page PDF) about why min­istries so often stray from their orig­i­nal mis­sion (think of the YMCA, Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty, most denom­i­na­tions, etc).

TOIP — Theology Over IP

Regent Sem­i­nary (in Van­cou­ver) is web­cast­ing some out­stand­ing lec­tures from renowned schol­ars like Eugene Peter­son, Alis­ter McGrath, Gor­don Fee, and N. T. Wright! (link via The Ooze).

Faith & Financial Prosperity?

Inter­est­ing com­par­i­son of the Amer­i­can and Euro­pean work eth­ic. If that arti­cle inter­ests you, also take a look at our ear­li­er Reli­gion and Eco­nom­ic Growth Linked. (hat tip: OxBlog)

Squirrel Day

I have told sev­er­al of my friends about this great hol­i­day that I grew up with. I am not sure that any of them believed me. So here is the proof.

For years around Ville Plat­te the open­ing day of squir­rel season—the first Sat­ur­day in October—has been known as “Squir­rel Day.” Schools close ear­ly the day before—some don’t open at all—because atten­dance by stu­dents and teach­ers alike is cut in half. Busi­ness­es shut­ter their win­dows. Every­body heads for “camp,” they call it, and that can mean a sleep­ing bag in the back of a pick­up truck or a deluxe hunt lodge wired for elec­tric­i­ty, with air-con­di­tion­ing and big-screen TVs. “Squir­rel Day is the Cajun Passover,” explains Ville Plat­te native Tim Fontenot. “There’s a mass exo­dus into the woods.”

From Field and Stream

The Wisdom of Crowds

On my flight to Bal­ti­more about two months ago I read The Wis­dom of Crowds by James Surowiec­ki. I actu­al­ly did­n’t plan to buy the book–I just saw an auto­graphed copy at Kepler’s and picked it up on impulse.

The first page of the intro­duc­tion sucked me into wild intel­lec­tu­al romp from which I’m still recov­er­ing.

Since that flight I’ve rec­om­mend­ed it to dozens of peo­ple and pur­chased it for two (to whom I owed a book). I’ve been mean­ing to write about it ever since, but I kept get­ting dis­tract­ed. Plus I saw that two of the blog­gers I read com­ment­ed on it: Jor­don Coop­er and Todd Hunter (who com­ment­ed not once, not twice, but thrice), so I knew the book was get­ting the buzz it deserved.

So what’s the big deal? What’s the idea that is still rock­ing my world? Sim­ply this: giv­en the right con­di­tions, diverse groups of peo­ple col­lec­tive­ly solve cer­tain types of prob­lems bet­ter than experts.

This isn’t a bolt from the blue: the basic idea has been kick­ing around for a long time, but the book is mag­nif­i­cent nonethe­less. The anec­dotes are pre­cise and illu­mi­nat­ing, the data is detailed, doc­u­ment­ed, and con­vinc­ing, and the writ­ing sparkles.

What Prob­lems Do Groups Solve Bet­ter?
There are some prob­lems you need experts to han­dle (prob­lems of skill are the most impor­tant kind: land­ing a plane or oper­at­ing on the brain are good exam­ples), but there are sev­er­al broad types of prob­lems that groups tend to out­per­form experts on:

  1. Cog­ni­tion Prob­lems: ques­tions with fac­tu­al answers
    How many jel­ly beans are in a jar?
    Where is a sunken sub­ma­rine?
  2. Coor­di­na­tion Prob­lems: how do we all work togeth­er when it’s in our best inter­est to do so?
    How can we dri­ve safe­ly in heavy traf­fic?
    How should we deliv­er this prod­uct to mar­ket?
  3. Coop­er­a­tion Prob­lems: how do we work togeth­er when we have diver­gent goals and val­ues?
    How can we con­trol pol­lu­tion while pro­mot­ing indus­try?
    How can bor­row­ers get mon­ey from lenders at the best rate for each?

Under What Con­di­tions Do Groups Solve These Prob­lems Bet­ter?

There are four key qual­i­ties that make a crowd smart. It needs to be diverse, so that peo­ple are bring­ing dif­fer­ent pieces of infor­ma­tion to the table. It needs to be decen­tral­ized, so that no one at the top is dic­tat­ing the crowd’s answer. It needs a way of sum­ma­riz­ing peo­ple’s opin­ions into one col­lec­tive ver­dict. And the peo­ple in the crowd need to be inde­pen­dent, so that they pay atten­tion most­ly to their own infor­ma­tion, and not wor­ry­ing about what every­one around them thinks.
from The Wis­dom of Crowds Q &A, empha­sis added

Note that these cri­te­ria (diver­si­ty, decen­tral­iza­tion, aggre­ga­tion, and inde­pen­dence) often tend to move us towards a solu­tion that not every­one is hap­py with. In Surowieck­i’s own words:

The wis­dom of crowds isn’t about con­sen­sus. It real­ly emerges from dis­agree­ment and even con­flict. It’s what you might call the aver­age opin­ion of the group, but it’s not an opin­ion that every one in the group can agree on. So that means you can’t find col­lec­tive wis­dom via com­pro­mise.
from The Wis­dom of Crowds Q &A

What Can Go Wrong?
When any of the above cri­te­ria are not met, groups often per­form abysmal­ly worse than experts or even iso­lat­ed idiots. Some spe­cif­ic chal­lenges:

  1. Cas­cades (p 40f and through­out the book): peo­ple imi­tate each oth­er with­out under­stand­ing and every­body jumps off a cliff because all their friends did. Think about the stock mar­ket in the late 90s.
  2. Group­think (p 36): peo­ple don’t feel free to dis­agree and groups reach sub­op­ti­mal deci­sions that almost every­one can see a prob­lem with but no one is will­ing to com­ment on. This is one of the car­di­nal sins of the Assem­blies of God, by the way.
  3. Polar­iza­tion (p184-190): peo­ple egg one anoth­er on until the entire group adopts a more rad­i­cal view than any of the mem­bers would have advo­cat­ed going in.

Sum­ma­ry Thoughts
Surowieck­i’s real con­tri­bu­tion, in my esti­ma­tion, is detail­ing the cri­te­ria under which groups out­per­form experts and the con­di­tions under which groups fail cat­a­strop­i­cal­ly.

Also, his end­notes rocked–they’re as good as the foot­notes in Gor­don Fee’s com­men­tary on 1st Corinthi­ans. If you read this book and did­n’t read the notes, go back and read them right now!

The most stim­u­lat­ing idea in the entire book for me was using of arti­fi­cial mar­kets to pre­dict future events (pages 17, 79, 103, 220–221, espe­cial­ly 278–280, and 285). I have no idea how it applies to my con­text, but it was a fas­ci­nat­ing con­cept.

Learn More
You can read an excerpt from the book, read an arti­cle by the author or hear him dis­cuss the book on NPR.

An Outreach Strategy We Will Not Be Employing…

A Bible study at Hoot­ers? Seems like the gents there might get dis­tract­ed by the bob­ble and lose sight of the Bible… (hat tip: Nathaniel)

Dave Da Vinci

If you’ve read the Da Vin­ci code, you’ve got to read Dave Bar­ry’s relent­less mock­ery of it. I laughed out loud in Tresid­der Union sev­er­al times.

hat tip: twen­tysome­one)