Chi Alpha in Boston

The Boston Globe has a neat arti­cle that ref­er­ences the Boston area Chi Alphas:

“When I came to MIT, I was expect­ing it to be full of nerds — peo­ple who don’t real­ly put togeth­er sci­ence and reli­gion,” says Ben­jamin Brooks, a senior from Pater­son, New Jer­sey, who belongs to the MIT chap­ter of the evan­gel­i­cal group Chi Alpha. “I was real­ly sur­prised — and still am — by the vol­ume of Chris­t­ian fel­low­ship here.”

and lat­er The Boston Uni­ver­si­ty chap­ter of Chi Alpha holds reg­u­lar “The Gospel Accord­ing to The Simp­sons” gath­er­ings.

The arti­cle is called God on the Quad and talks about the evan­gel­i­cal pres­ence on the Boston cam­pus­es.

Hugh Hefner Deconstructed

I just ran across an inter­est­ing arti­cle I thought most col­lege stu­dents would find inter­est­ing: Hugh Hefn­er’s Hol­low Vic­to­ry (orig­i­nal­ly appeared in the defunct re:generation quar­ter­ly, now host­ed on ChristianityToday.com).

It’s a very insight­ful cri­tique of the main­stream porn indus­try in Amer­i­ca. Well worth read­ing.

Updates

Sor­ry it’s been so long since I’ve post­ed any­thing to the site–I feel as though I’ve bare­ly had time to check my email late­ly, much less update the site.

In any event, Paula and I are set­tling in to our new place. Stuff is actu­al­ly get­ting hung on the walls and the few box­es that remain dwin­dle dai­ly.

Things have Stan­ford have been pret­ty good–as always some bits are encour­ag­ing and some bits are dis­cour­ag­ing. Our small groups are the real high­light for me this quar­ter.

On anoth­er encour­ag­ing note, I just got an email from Josh Wong (one of our alum­ni from last year) and it con­tained this excit­ing lit­tle snip­pet: Ming Fai has also gone to Myan­mar! He said that I encour­aged him to go there, so I am glad to hear that. He is now dri­ving the pro­duc­tion of a movie-CD about Myan­mar to pro­mote aware­ness and to raise funds for the orphans and mis­sion­ar­ies there. I am help­ing him on that.

That was very neat to hear!

What Does It Mean To Be A Christian?

A fel­low Chi Alphan (Lynette, if you must know) asked me to rec­om­mend some online expla­na­tions of Chris­tian­i­ty that she could for­ward to a friend who is inter­est­ed.

There are a ton out there, but here are some that I real­ly like:

Pow­er to Change is prob­a­bly my favorite. It eschews over-the-top flash ani­ma­tion and focus­es on the sto­ries of changed lives.

The next three are all vari­ants on a theme–make the gospel look cool through use of snazzy flash and sound­track. They are actu­al­ly quite cool. To each their own:
1) Got Life?: a play on the “Got Milk?” cam­paign.
2) Wuzup God?: a youthy vari­ant of the bill­boards ask­ing ques­tions. It’s not quite as clear as I would like it to be, but it’s still nice.
3) The Kris­to: very cool, but it annoys me that I can’t skip the intro to get to the inter­ac­tive part nor can I pause it (if some­thing cool comes on tv or I get a phone call then the inabil­i­ty to pause becomes a real drag).

Faith Cards: this is an e‑vangelistic twist on the wide­spread elec­tron­ic birth­day and hol­i­day cards out there. I almost nev­er open them myself, but some peo­ple love them. If that describes your friend (which it almost cer­tain­ly does if this is a friend who for­wards you cute sto­ries), they might appre­ci­ate get­ting one of these.

If you have one that you real­ly like, post it in a com­ment. If I like it too, I’ll update the post and include it in the main text!

Bayesian Analysis of God’s Existence

This caught me off-guard (kudos to Chris­tian­i­ty Today Blog for find­ing it): a sci­en­tist has done a Bayesian cal­cu­la­tion to deter­mine the prob­a­bil­i­ty of God’s exis­tence (which he pegs at 67%).

The sci­en­tist’s name is Stephen Unwin (read an inter­view), and the book detail­ing his thoughts is The Prob­a­bil­i­ty of God: A Sim­ple Cal­cu­la­tion That Proves the Ulti­mate Truth

The open­ing line of his book is “Do you real­ize that there is some prob­a­bil­i­ty that before you com­plete this sen­tence, you will be hoofed insen­si­ble by a way­ward, minia­ture Mediter­ranean ass?”

How cool is that?

I’ve not read it yet–so I have no fur­ther com­ments except to say that it looks extreme­ly inter­est­ing.

Top 10 College Temptations

I just ran across a handy arti­cle called The Top Ten Col­lege Temp­ta­tions. It’s not stuff you’ve nev­er heard before, but it’s a good sum­ma­ry of sim­ple truth.

Bizarre Little Website Glitch

FYI: I just tried to upgrade our pho­to gallery soft­ware, and some­thing went hor­ri­bly awry. All the pho­tos are still there, but some­thing weird is hap­pen­ing with them.

UPDATE: I fixed it. Check out the new pho­tos.

An Awesome Statement of Beliefs

I just ran across a state­ment of faith writ­ten by Mike Yaconel­li (who recent­ly died) for his com­pa­ny, Youth Spe­cial­ties.

I high­ly rec­om­mend What Do You Real­ly Believe?