Preaching in Lodi

Last night we had a great ser­vice with Chan Kei­th in Lodi, CA. A col­lege-aged lady who was vis­it­ing the church that night chose to fol­low Christ!

I love my job…

Also, Nic­ho­lette Lock­wood, a stu­dent from our for­mer min­istry in Spring­field, MO moved in last night. She’ll be stay­ing with us for a month this sum­mer.

Right now I’m focused on two tasks:
1) Help­ing to select the Chi Alpha leader for North­ern Cal/Nevada.
2) Help­ing to plan Chi Alpha’s Win­ter Con­fer­ence in 2004.

Does The Bible Teach That Jesus Is God?

It is some­times alleged that the Bible does­n’t real­ly claim that Jesus is God. This is a list of pas­sages that estab­lish the doc­trine. This list isn’t writ­ten to per­suade non­be­liev­ers that Jesus is in fact God, but to per­suade every­one that the Bible indeed claims that He is.

Pas­sages That Explic­it­ly Assert Jesus’ Divin­i­ty

  • In the begin­ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
    Word was God    . (John 1:1, NIV)
  • No one has ever seen God. But his only Son, who is him­self God,
    is near to the Father’s heart; he has told us about him. (John 1:18, NLT)
  • Then he said to Thomas, “Put your fin­ger here; see my hands. Reach out your
    hand and put it into my side. Stop doubt­ing and believe.” Thomas said
    to him, “My Lord and my God!”     Then Jesus told him, “Because you have
    seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have
    believed.” (John 20:27–29, NIV)
  • Keep watch over your­selves and all the flock of which the Holy Spir­it has
    made you over­seers. Be shep­herds of the church of God, which he bought
    with his own blood    . (Acts 20:28, NIV)
  • Theirs are the patri­archs, and from them is traced the human ances­try of
    Christ, who is God over all, for­ev­er praised! Amen. (Romans
    9:5, NIV)
  • …we wait for the blessed hope—the glo­ri­ous appear­ing of our great
    God and Sav­ior, Jesus Christ,     who gave him­self for us to redeem us
    from all wicked­ness and to puri­fy for him­self a peo­ple that are his very own,
    eager to do what is good. (Titus 2:13–14, NIV)
  • …to those who through the right­eous­ness of our God and Sav­ior Jesus
    Christ     have received a faith as pre­cious as ours… (2 Peter 1:1, NIV)

Con­tin­ue read­ing “Does The Bible Teach That Jesus Is God?”

Reno Rocks!

We got back from Reno yes­ter­day. It was a great trip!

If you ever need to trav­el to Reno, you real­ly ought to look into stay­ing at the Pep­per­mill, a hotel/casino. Their rates are great and the rooms are won­der­ful!

We stayed in three dif­fer­ent hotels this week­end (for per­fect­ly good rea­sons which I won’t go into here), and the Pep­per­mill blew the oth­er two away.

Reno and Roomies

Paula and I are head­ing up to Reno to preach this Sun­day. We’ve got a min­is­te­r­i­al meet­ing in Susanville tonight (about 90 min­utes from Reno), so we’re just going to spend the whole week­end up there. I prob­a­bly won’t be able to check my email again until Mon­day.

Side note–we’ve had stu­dents liv­ing with us the last few days. A lot of stu­dents are in-between hous­ing right now, and so we offer our pad to those who are in a home­less zone. Nate left yes­ter­day to go do his sum­mer stud­ies at Prince­ton. Jim­my is leav­ing Sun­day to go do his mil­i­tary ser­vice in Sin­ga­pore.

I guess today is the last time we’ll see Jim­my for a long while. In fact, it’s pos­si­ble that we’ll nev­er see him again. That’s an incred­i­bly sad thought…

On a more upbeat note, Shih-Yang and Andrew will be mov­ing in Sun­day (while we’re still gone). Talk about room­mate flux!

Lunch With Andy Carver

Today I had an inter­est­ing lunch with Andy Carv­er, all-around cool guy and for­mer con­gres­sion­al can­di­date (Lib­er­tar­i­an). He’s work­ing on his Ph.D. in Man­age­ment, Sci­ence, and Engi­neer­ing. He also dri­ves a real­ly nice motor­cy­cle.

Any­way, we had lunch to talk about God. Andy is some­where in the agnos­tic realm (he thinks there’s prob­a­bly some­thing out there, but despairs of know­ing exact­ly what it is–he’s just does­n’t see how you can choose between the major world reli­gions).

We talked for about 2 or 3 hours. We’ll have to get togeth­er again some­time soon, we both seemed to real­ly enjoy our­selves!

Here’s the thumb­nail ver­sion of my half of our dis­cus­sion:

Why choose Chris­tian­i­ty?

1) God exists
2) God is good
3) God has revealed Him­self in Jesus
4) The Bible is God’s trust­wor­thy mes­sage

We spent a lot of time talk­ing about the dif­fer­ent rea­sons I find each tenet plau­si­ble (and have in fact cho­sen to base my life upon them).

At the end, Andy allowed me to pray a sim­ple prayer for him: God, I know you love Andy. Please reveal your­self to him in a way that makes sense to him and is per­sua­sive to him. Bless him in his stud­ies, in his rela­tion­ship with Glo, and in every­thing else he puts his hand to. In Jesus name, Amen. He seemed to gen­uine­ly appre­ci­ate it.

Towards the end of our con­ver­sa­tion I asked his per­mis­sion to make a lit­tle post­ing about our meet­ing. He grant­ed it, and you just fin­ished read­ing the result.

Seminar With Barna, Osborne, and Slaughter

This morn­ing Paula and I went to a simul­cast spon­sored by CCN about Inno­va­tion and Risk-Tak­ing in Lead­er­ship.

The pre­sen­ters were George Bar­na, Lar­ry Osborne, and Mike Slaugh­ter.

It was pret­ty good. Two slight­ly humor­ous sound­bytes stuck with me:

Lar­ry: So what if peo­ple think I’m a fail­ure? I’ve been one before!”

George: Yeah. You got­ta run with your strengths, right?

and then anoth­er com­ment by Mike Slaugh­ter: We have all these eth­i­cal prob­lems with cloning peo­ple, but we seem to have no prob­lem with cloning church­es.

Those both seemed very fun­ny to me at the time… look­ing at them in print I think the first one in par­tic­u­lar needs tone of voice to make it sound right.

Yet Another Director’s Cup For Stanford!

Stan­ford has now won 9 out of the last 10 Direc­tor’s Cups. The Direc­tor’s Cup is giv­en each year to the best over­all sports school in the nation.

The Car­di­nal claimed NCAA Cham­pi­onships in men’s cross coun­try and men’s water polo in 2002-03, in addi­tion to sec­ond place fin­ish­es in wom­en’s vol­ley­ball, men’s soc­cer, wom­en’s cross coun­try, syn­chro­nized swim­ming, wom­en’s ten­nis and wom­en’s water polo. In all, Stan­ford record­ed 12 nation­al top five fin­ish­es and 24 top 10 fin­ish­es. from the Stan­ford press release.

See the offi­cial NACDA page.

Bye-bye, Grads

2003_grad_group.jpg first pho­to: glen with a hand­ful of MS&E grads
sec­ond pho­to: our grads from the grad par­ty we had on Sat­ur­day. We’re miss­ing a few, but you get the idea.

This was a pret­ty hec­tic weekend–it was grad­u­a­tion time for a num­ber of our stu­dents!

This was my first Stan­ford grad­u­a­tion, so I was­n’t sure what to expect…

Here are some obser­va­tions:

1) Stan­ford does­n’t take grad­u­a­tion too seri­ous­ly. Less secure schools make every­body act for­mal and solemn, but Stan­ford lets stu­dents act cel­e­bra­to­ry at their cel­e­bra­tion. You can see a video of the apt­ly-named “Wacky Walk.” I heard there were streak­ers, but I did­n’t see any. It would­n’t sur­prise me if there were–it fits the school cul­ture.
2003_our_grads_enhanced.JPG

2) The com­mence­ment speak­er was Ale­jan­dro Tole­do, the pres­i­dent of Peru. There’s a video snip­pet from his speech online. He’s got an amaz­ing sto­ry. He was raised in abject pover­ty, and through the inter­ven­tion of the Peace Corps was able to come to Amer­i­ca to get a degree, and ulti­mate­ly to become the first indige­nous pres­i­dent of his coun­try.

3) It was HOT! I’m just glad I did­n’t get worse sun­burn than I did.

4) After the main grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mo­ny, there were around 70 small­er grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies for indi­vid­ual depart­ments. That was the one where they call stu­dents name by name and actu­al­ly hand them a diplo­ma. The one I attend­ed, for the major of Man­age­ment, Sci­ence, and Engi­neer­ing had a rather scrump­tious free buf­fet after­wards.

5) We’re real­ly going to miss our grads. Bye, guys! Don’t for­get to write!

The Gospel According to Gamaliel

In the cum­ber­some­ly-titled arti­cle Sup­port For Authen­tic­i­ty of The Book of Matthew Comes From An Unlike­ly Source, you can learn how archaelogical/historical finds are increas­ing our con­fi­dence in the bib­li­cal text.

One of the first Gospels to be doubt­ed was Matthew. Church tra­di­tion said it was writ­ten by Matthew, a tax col­lec­tor who became a dis­ci­ple of Jesus, a wit­ness to events. Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian cler­gy and schol­ars said they believe the book of Matthew was writ­ten between A.D. 40 and 60, with­in Matthew’s life­time.

But oth­er schol­ars con­clud­ed the Gospel was­n’t writ­ten any ear­li­er than A.D. 85, per­haps as late as A.D. 135, long after Matthew’s death. If the author was­n’t a wit­ness, the think­ing goes, the Gospel becomes less cred­i­ble.

So to schol­ars the dat­ing is impor­tant.

In an essay writ­ten for the book Passover and East­er: Ori­gin and His­to­ry to Mod­ern Times, Israel J. Yuval of Jerusalem’s Hebrew Uni­ver­si­ty report­ed a find in the Tal­mud that appears to show Matthew could have been writ­ten ear­li­er than some schol­ars con­tend.

Yuval wrote that a lead­ing rab­bini­cal schol­ar of the time was “con­sid­ered to have authored a sophis­ti­cat­ed par­o­dy of the Gospel accord­ing to Matthew.”

The par­o­dy, writ­ten by a rab­bi known as Gamaliel, is believed by some well-respect­ed lib­er­al Chris­t­ian schol­ars to have been writ­ten about A.D. 73 or ear­li­er.

The fact the par­o­dy exists and the date when it was believed to be writ­ten “would under­cut bad­ly (bib­li­cal crit­ics’) claims of a late date of A.D. 85–90 or lat­er,” said Bob New­man, pro­fes­sor of New Tes­ta­ment at Bib­li­cal The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary in Penn­syl­va­nia.

Friday the 13th… bwah ha ha ha ha!

It’s pret­ty rare that I notice a Fri­day the 13th while it’s still the 13th. I usu­al­ly notice that it’s a Sat­ur­day the 14th and real­ize yes­ter­day was the 13th and a Fri­day to boot.

In any event, I noticed today.