transitioning to new content management software

I’m migrat­ing the site from Mov­able Type to Word­Press, so please par­don any tem­po­rary funk­i­ness. I’m also try­ing to refor­mat things to dis­tin­guish use­ful con­tent from fun con­tent using a cool tech­nique I ran across free cha­rade movie down­load .

A Message to Stanford Students

Hey–glad you stum­bled across the site.

You’re wel­come to poke around here and learn more about Paula and I. Just so you know, this web­site is a tool we use to keep fam­i­ly, friends, and min­istry part­ners up-to-date on our lives and min­istry.

So if you came here want­i­ng to learn more about Chi Alpha, check out Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford or nation­al Chi Alpha.

If I’m Freak­ing You Out
If you just stum­bled across this web­site while search­ing for some­thing else and are grow­ing increas­ing­ly hor­ri­fied as you read of my nefar­i­ous plans to engage stu­dents in spir­i­tu­al dis­cus­sions, allow me to explain myself.

Some stu­dents are real­ly uptight about reli­gion, but most are not. Stu­dents gen­er­al­ly enjoy hav­ing a non-pushy and thought-pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sion with some­one about inter­est­ing things like the mean­ing of life, the exis­tence of God, the nature of moral­i­ty, and the pow­er of reli­gious belief.

Those are the peo­ple I inter­act with. I don’t roam about the cam­pus like a lion seek­ing unwit­ting stu­dents to devour. I talk with peo­ple about things they want to talk about.

For the record, Chi Alpha is an orga­ni­za­tion in good stand­ing with Stan­ford Asso­ci­at­ed Reli­gions and is also a reg­is­tered vol­un­tary stu­dent orga­ni­za­tion at Stan­ford. That means our pres­ence is sanc­tioned by the uni­ver­si­ty.

So chill.

If I’m Freak­ing You Out Now
If, on the oth­er hand, you were fine with every­thing I said until I explained that I’m not pushy and obnox­ious, read on.

Being pushy and rude isn’t the Bib­li­cal mod­el for evan­ge­lism. Don’t believe me?

  • Con­sid­er the Gold­en Rule (Matthew 7:12), where­in Jesus tells us to treat oth­ers the way we want to be treat­ed. That applies to evan­ge­lism, too. If you would­n’t want an athe­ist, Mus­lim, or Mor­mon talk­ing to you a cer­tain way, don’t talk that way to oth­ers.
  • Notice Peter’s advice that we are called to live in such a way that peo­ple ask us ques­tions about our beliefs, and when they do we answer them gen­tly and respect­ful­ly (1 Peter 3:15–16)
  • Con­sid­er Paul’s prayer request in Colos­sians 4:3–4, in which he prays for oppor­tu­ni­ties. Note that he does not announce his clever plans for trick­ing peo­ple into talk­ing with him. He prays that God would bring the con­ver­sa­tions about.

In oth­er words, I’m not shirk­ing back from pro­claim­ing the gospel clear­ly, nor am I capit­u­lat­ing to some insane cam­pus speech code, nor am I liv­ing in fear of the sec­u­lar sta­tus quo. I’m mere­ly being wise and bib­li­cal.

Just think about it: I’m an ordained min­is­ter and nation­al­ly appoint­ed mis­sion­ary with the Assem­blies of God, which the world’s largest Protes­tant denom­i­na­tion and which is con­sid­ered by many to be the most effec­tive mis­sion­ary move­ment in the his­to­ry of the world (reflect on this: we did­n’t exist 100 years ago and are now one of the largest reli­gious move­ments any­where). The Assem­blies of God did­n’t send us to reach Stan­ford because we’re some kind of cow­ard­ly wimps. They sent us because they believe we are called, gift­ed, and guid­ed by God for this task.

So chill.

She is growing and changing

Dana smilingDana is almost 2 months old! It is so hard to believe that she is almost out of the new­born stage…

She is grow­ing and chang­ing each day. This last week she has mas­tered the smile and is work­ing on lift­ing her head as she plays on her bel­ly. To see new pic­tures of Dana vis­it her pho­to album.

XA in Arkansas is Tearing it Up!

This news from Uni­ver­si­ty of Arkansas Chi Alpha leader Ron­nie Hoover. They’re build­ing a min­istry cen­ter, and are hav­ing great suc­cess at rais­ing the funds:

Hey every­one,

Many of you know that I gave away $1600 to our stu­dents after read­ing to them the para­ble of the tal­ents. I gave away 50s, 20s, and 10s. The stu­dents were to go out and mul­ti­ply their tal­ents just like in the para­ble. Well, they brought back just over $10,000 last Wednes­day night. PTL!

They did so many so many cool things like invest­ing in clay and mak­ing pot­tery, invest­ing in bike parts and putting togeth­er a Mt. bike, host­ing a bake sale, sell­ing a CD of P&W songs, Sell­ing cook­ie dough, suck­ers, and so much more.

We also host­ed a Fund Rais­ing Ban­quet on Sat. night and our goal was 50K. We brought in $51,900.00 in one night. Praise the Lord. All of this mon­ey of course goes to build the new house. Please just take a moment and thank God with us.

I just had to tell,

Ron­nie Hoover

How cool is that?

updating website

I’m migrat­ing from Mov­able Type to Word­Press, so the site will look funky for a few days while I get my tem­plates straight­ened out.

After that, I’ll be sure to give an update on my life (and reply to a friend of mine who men­tioned me on his web­site)…

Dana’s one month check-up

Dana lying down
Today was Dana’s one month check-up, and the doc­tor was very excit­ed with how much she has grown.

As of today, Dana weights 8 lbs 13 1/2 oz. and is 20 1/2 inch­es long.

She is also learn­ing how to smile these days. That is very excit­ing for us!

Also, I’ve added more pho­tos to Dana’s pho­to album!

Puncturing Inflated Grades

I just read a great essay: How to End Grade Infla­tion by Michael Berube (prof at Penn State).

He humor­ous­ly iden­ti­fies the prob­lem: Eng­lish depart­ments have basi­cal­ly worked on the A/B bina­ry sys­tem for some time: A’s and A‑minuses for the best stu­dents, B’s for every­one else and C’s, D’s and F’s for stu­dents who miss half the class­es or threat­en their teach­ers with bod­i­ly harm.

And then pro­pos­es a clever solu­tion: What to do? If we so desired, we could recal­i­brate grades at Penn State, at Prince­ton or at any col­lege in the coun­try. The prin­ci­ple is sim­ple enough, and it’s cru­cial to every div­ing com­pe­ti­tion: we would mere­ly need to account for each course’s degree of dif­fi­cul­ty.

Every pro­fes­sor, and every depart­ment, pro­duces an aver­age grade — an aver­age for the pro­fes­sor over her career and an aver­age for the dis­ci­pline over the decades. And if col­leges real­ly want­ed to clamp down on grade infla­tion, they could whisk it away sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, sim­ply by fac­tor­ing those aver­ages into each stu­den­t’s G.P.A. Imag­ine that G.P.A.‘s were cal­cu­lat­ed on a scale of 10 with the aver­age grade, be it a B‑minus or an A‑minus, count­ed as a 5. The B‑plus in chem­i­cal engi­neer­ing, where the aver­age grade is, say, C‑plus, would be reward­ed accord­ing­ly and assigned a val­ue of 8; the B‑plus in psy­chol­o­gy, where the aver­age grade might be just over B‑plus, would be grad­ed like an easy dive, ade­quate­ly exe­cut­ed, and giv­en a 4.7.

I have to say, I like it. I don’t think any uni­ver­si­ties are going to go for it, but I wish they would…

The Dark Side of Sororities

This is not par­tic­u­lar­ly relat­ed to Stan­ford, but it is relat­ed to uni­ver­si­ty life in gen­er­al.

Alexan­dra Rob­bins went under­cov­er as a soror­i­ty girl to fig­ure out what life is real­ly like in the mod­ern Greek scene. She dis­cov­ered a world of dys­func­tion, and she writes about it in her new book Pledged: The Secret Life of Soror­i­ties.

If you’d like to learn more, read an eye-open­ing inter­view with the author.

Excerpt: NEWSWEEK: Why did you go under­cov­er?
Alexan­dra Rob­bins: Orig­i­nal­ly I was open­ly going to be a re­porter in a house on a spe­cif­ic cam­pus. I had been to some meet­ings, and I had start­ed to bond with these girls. Then one day, the advis­er of the soror­i­ty sat me down and she said some­thing like “I can’t let you be here unless the nation­al office allows you, and I real­ly don’t think they’re going to.” And then she said, and I’ll nev­er for­get this: “And if they do let you in, I sim­ply can­not allow you to write about the drugs.” I called the nation­al office, and it turned out that the 26 nation­al Pan­hel­lenic soror­i­ties had insti­tut­ed a media black­out because they were upset with the MTV show “Soror­i­ty Life.” It turned out that the only way to get behind the scenes in a soror­i­ty house was to fly under the radar.