disciple, husband, father, college minister
If you’re a regular visitor to the site, you’ve no doubt noticed the substantial redesign. Play around with the menu (lifted with permission from netscape devedge) and you’ll notice that it’s messed up. I’m going nuts trying to fix it. Argh!
update: the menu is functional, although uglier than I’d like. I’ll try to make it spiffy soon.
Back at SMS I used to head to the campus bowling alley in the student union and help students process questions about God. It was right when the television series Ed (about a bowling alley lawyer) was getting popular, and so I called myself the Bowling Alley Theologian. It was a lot of fun.
I had flashbacks today as I spent 5 hours in a long and rambling conversation with a student. We talked about the existence of God, the nature of truth, epistemology, morality, the nature of Scripture, archaelogy and the Exodus, evolutionary psychology, the mind-body problem, and the relationship between facts, faith, doubt, and skepticism.
It was a lot of fun.
The NY Times had a fascinating article on Governor Arnold that included this unique little perspective: Everybody pities the weak. Jealousy you have to earn. (source).
That’s an interesting way to express the nature of ambition, no?
Happy Valentine’s Day, Paula!
I wanted to get you the universe’s largest known diamond, but since it’s 2,500 miles across the ring would probably be a bit awkward. Still, a 10,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 carat diamond would be quite the accessory.
side note: at first I assumed this was some sort of bizarre typo in the paper, but then I did some additional research. Just google for BPM 37093 to find many more links. Thanks to OxBlog for the original link.
In other news, Pastor Joss Walters (of Kansas City, MO) suggested that we screen Brother Cole more carefully before allowing him to enter the hallowed ranks of Chi Alpha.
I would like to suggest that [Brother Cole] would need to [pass] a test … to establish whether or not he could properly connect with this audience. The test could begin with a Game Cube or PS2 followed by a brief sermon on “WHAT IS MARILYN MANSON SO UPSET ABOUT?” [edited slightly for brevity]
Schools like Stanford are steering wheels for our society: as goes the campus, so goes the culture. Our leaders are shaped in Stanford’s lecture halls–four of America’s nine Supreme Court Justices are Stanford grads!
And it’s not just America that Stanford influences–the president of Peru is a Stanford graduate. In fact, 1/4 of the students are from another country, and the two most represented nations are China and India.
Today they learn, but tomorrow they lead. These future world-changers must be reached with the gospel while they are more open than they will ever be again!
If you want even more amazing reasons, check out my list of famous Stanford alumni.
My friend Andrew Careaga (aka Cleopatra) correctly pointed out that being number one isn’t always a desirable thing, so I thought I’d give him some props. Check out his site.
Anyway, today was extremely productive. Tim Smith (the Chi Alpha @ Sacramento State guy who gamely tried to recruit Glen Cole to our Chi Alpha family) and I met with John Harris and Doug Reid of Capital Christian Center in Sacramento. Doug is the student ministries pastor and John works on his staff to reach college students.
Doug recently came on staff and commissioned a demographic study of all the students in Sacramento. He was floored when he realized that there were more college students than high school students (150,000 collegians) and that he only had 1.5 staff people focusing on them (out of a student ministries staff of 20).
Being a sharp guy, Doug realized that he needs to radically realign his ministry to touch college students.
We had a great meeting and I think that we’ve got some great ideas for synergizing their outreach with what Chi Alpha is doing. Alongside Noble’s model in Springfield, MO (if you don’t know I don’t have time to explain it) this could really be a huge stride forward for Assemblies of God college ministry.
Afterwards, Paula and I got to hang with Tim and Julie at California Pizza Kitchen afterwards. Good food and good friends.
If you’re a Chi Alpha person reading this blog, know that we always have extremely productive days in Northern California / Nevada that culminate in highly fun and relational meals.
Come west, young leader! There are over 80 sizeable colleges to choose from…
I just learned that Harvard is launching a porn magazine featuring students download boondock saints the .
Harvard students. Nudity. One shudders.
Actually, they’re probably shuddering themselves. It gets cold in Boston.
Seriously, I can’t help but wonder how long it is until someone at Stanford tries to copycat Harvard (consider our copycat mascot as evidence).
Once again for the record, Chi Alpha thinks porn is bad. The fact that Harvard is now complicit only makes it worse!
Stanford has been dominating the world of hoops lately, but for some strange reason Duke is still ranked number one. Sports Illustrated has a really good piece explaining why we ought to be ranked first.
John Stossel did a report on 20/20 that makes for fascinating reading, Lies, Myths, and Downright Stupidity, in which he explodes the most common media-fed rumors that mess up our lives and our society.
Some of the myths he hits: that there’s a relationship between being cold and catching a cold, that we have less free time than we used to (we have a lot more free time than our parents did or than we did growing up), and the idea that money can buy happiness.
It’s good read and will give you fodder for late-night dorm conversations.