On The Road Again

I’m in Man­te­ca, CA right now. The hotel we checked into last night fea­tures free broad­band access from each room! I love liv­ing in Cal­i­for­nia…

We’re in Man­te­ca because we went to Tahoe yes­ter­day to do an on-site inspec­tion of a poten­tial con­fer­ence facil­i­ty for our dis­trict win­ter retreat. It went well, and I think we’ll wind up hav­ing it there. We won’t make a firm deci­sion until we get hard prices, how­ev­er.

We’re cur­rent­ly bound for Pasade­na to vis­it Bri­an and Court­ney Jacob­son, friends and alum­ni from our min­istry back in Mis­souri. We’ll spend the hol­i­day week­end with them, and we’re quite excit­ed about it!

Also, we’re going to get a chance to vis­it Crave, Sad­dle­back Church’s col­lege min­istry. I’ve been want­i­ng to vis­it them for a while, and this is my big chance! We’ll actu­al­ly be there tonight.

Any­way, I’m sure glad that our hotel has net access. At home our con­nec­tion has been down since last week­end, so I was feel­ing email deprived.

Funny Photo and a Spiritual Growth Help

Nathaniel recent­ly sent me this pho­to in an email attach­ment. I got a chuck­le out of it. You can see the full-sized ver­sion in our gallery.

In addi­tion, I just stum­bled across an arti­cle by one of my favorite authors on one of my favorite web­sites. It’s about doing well in col­lege (spir­i­tu­al­ly speak­ing). It’s writ­ten to pas­tors more than to stu­dents, but it’s still help­ful read­ing. It talks about twelve reaons col­lege stu­dents lose their faith and how to han­dle each of the twelve! Check out Off To College–Can We Keep Them? by phi­los­o­phy prof J. Budziszews­ki.

The Christian Foundations of Western Civilization

The impor­tance of Chris­tian­i­ty to the his­to­ry of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion is being increas­ing­ly over­looked, which is why I was so delight­ed to come across a rather lengthy sum­ma­ry of a new book: For the Glo­ry of God: How Monothe­ism Led to Refor­ma­tions, Sci­ence, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slav­ery by Rod­ney Stark (Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty Press) [see the Ama­zon page].

Dr. Stark is a sol­id aca­d­e­m­ic writ­ing with­in his field, so this book is extreme­ly cred­i­ble.

Here’s an excerpt from the sum­ma­ry: Stark does­n’t argue so much the virtues of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion as the fact (yes, fact, not the­o­ry) that you can­not under­stand West­ern civ with­out ref­er­ence to Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and the way that it fer­til­ized the soil in which those “extra­or­di­nary episodes” grew. The book focus­es on four episodes: (1) the efforts at church reform that cul­mi­nat­ed in the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion and the Catholic Counter-Ref­or­ma­tion, (2) the rise of mod­ern sci­ence, (3) the fabled witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th cen­turies, and (4) the abo­li­tion of slav­ery and the slave trade.

In each case, Stark shows that a belief in a great God who makes moral demands and who rewards and pun­ish­es in the after­life is an essen­tial com­po­nent of what hap­pened.

This is infor­ma­tion Chris­tians on cam­pus des­per­ate­ly need! Read the whole sum­ma­ry (or read a slight­ly less char­i­ta­ble review, although if you read that you should also read this unre­lat­ed review with the last para­graph of the Post review in mind).

Christians and College Athletics

If you’re an incom­ing fresh­man, trans­fer stu­dent, or grad­u­ate student–welcome!

I just ran across an inter­est­ing arti­cle talk­ing about the rela­tion­ship between Chris­tians and col­lege sports, a rela­tion­ship which can be summed up in the phrase [Recent scan­dals] may lead the faith­ful to ask a new ques­tion: Should a Chris­t­ian stu­dent think twice before get­ting involved in high-pro­file col­lege sports like bas­ket­ball or foot­ball? What kind of val­ues will he or she learn in that set­ting?

Dur­ing the late nine­teenth and ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, this ques­tion would have been unthink­able. Why? Because col­lege sports was imbued with an ide­al called “mus­cu­lar Chris­tian­i­ty.”

This was the belief that phys­i­cal activ­i­ty and sports, espe­cial­ly team sports, devel­oped char­ac­ter, fos­tered patri­o­tism, and instilled virtues that would serve their participants—and their par­tic­i­pants’ God—well in lat­er life. In oth­er words, team games taught their own high eth­ic, and that eth­ic could and should be a Chris­t­ian one.

Read the whole thing and learn about the ori­gins of the YMCA, bas­ket­ball and the Olympics.

Some Random News And Comments

If you’re a new stu­dent, wel­come! We peri­od­i­cal­ly take time to com­ment on fun­ny things hap­pen­ing in the world and on the web. God likes laugh­ter, and so we try to oblige Him.

1) Have you seen the pho­tos of whale flat­u­lence? I’m not kidding–you’ve got to check this out: Whale Flat­u­lence Stuns Sci­en­tists

2) Regard­ing the black­out in the NE: I expect to find a giant dead squir­rel when it’s all over (squir­rels are, I am told, the num­ber once cause of pow­er out­ages in Amer­i­ca).

3) If you’re not already a fan, you real­ly should check out the Strong Bad emails.

4) Final­ly, in case you were won­der­ing, Com­paq explains where to find the “Any” key.

We return you to your reg­u­lar­ly sched­uled web brows­ing.

Wow–thanks for the love!

I haven’t updat­ed since our last announce­ment because we were del­uged with near­ly 150 emails con­grat­u­lat­ing us on our repro­duc­tive prowess (or words to that effect). Thanks for all the love!

Peo­ple are won­der­ing about names.

So far, we’re think­ing of Gray Davis, Mavis Davis, April Fools Davis (say it out loud slow­ly), Raina Davis (like the last one, only less obvi­ous), and Dave Davis.

Also, we’re think­ing about fun­ny ini­tials: it’s not too hard to find names that spell out GOD, DUD, DED, or SAD.

For the humor-impaired, I would like to clear­ly state that these are, of course, all face­tious.

We have no names in mind, nor do we have a gen­der pref­er­ence.

If you think of any fun­ny names please do let us know!

Preggers

We got back in from D.C. last night, and Paula vis­it­ed the doc­tor today. She received con­fir­ma­tion of what we strong­ly sus­pect­ed while on the road–she’s preg­gers!

Based on what we know now (which isn’t a whole lot), the expect­ed deliv­ery date is April 3, 2004.

Per­son­al­ly, I’m hop­ing she deliv­ers a lit­tle ear­ly on April 1st (just so that no one believes me when I call them on my cell phone to deliv­er the good news)… 🙂

On The Road

We’ll be in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. for Gen­er­al Coun­cil.

This one will actu­al­ly be an impor­tant one–we’re decid­ing on some pret­ty vital inter­nal leg­is­la­tion (how we plant church­es, for exam­ple). Noth­ing should make nation­al news, how­ev­er.

All that to say this: if you send either of us an email, it may be a while before we get back to you. We’re not sure how sol­id our con­nec­tiv­i­ty will be on the road.

“It’s bulletproof, practically.”

I found this quite fun­ny: “It’s bul­let­proof, prac­ti­cal­ly.”

Cheryl Toep­pen, man­ag­er of design ser­vices for Res­i­den­tial & Din­ing Enter­pris­es, describ­ing the fab­ric she bought for seat­ing in the lounge of the new­ly ren­o­vat­ed all-frosh Bran­ner Hall. The mate­r­i­al is 10 times more durable than reg­u­lar uphol­stery fab­ric. [source]

Stanford On The Diamond

I just learned that there’s a web­site list­ing all 35 cur­rent pro base­ball play­ers who are Stan­ford grads: see the ros­ter.

Just found it inter­est­ing…