At the Mudhouse

Paula and I are sit­ting in the Mud­house in Spring­field, MO typ­ing away on our lap­tops. We flew in a lit­tle ear­ly for the South­ern Mis­souri Dis­trict Coun­cil and we’re con­nect­ing with old friends and col­leagues.

Paula and I are sit­ting in the Mud­house in Spring­field, MO typ­ing away on our lap­tops. We flew in a lit­tle ear­ly for the South­ern Mis­souri Dis­trict Coun­cil and we’re con­nect­ing with old friends and col­leagues.

So far it’s been great–we’ve got­ten togeth­er with Levi Augur (an alum­nus from our min­istry back at SMS), his par­ents (who gra­cious­ly allowed us to stay at their house), Joss Wal­ter (the first pas­tor to ever book us for a ser­vice), and Rich Avi­la (anoth­er pas­toral-type per­son we know). We’re stay­ing with Joe and Jayne Zick­afoose, who are cur­rent­ly prepar­ing to go estab­lish uni­ver­si­ty min­istry in Scot­land. It’s great!

While we were in the air our stu­dents back at Stan­ford orga­nized and led the week­ly wor­ship ser­vice by them­selves. I can’t wait to hear how it went–Paula and I are very excit­ed at the lev­el of pas­sion and own­er­ship they’re dis­play­ing!

My wife just informed me it’s time to go grab lunch, so I’m sign­ing off. I may edit this lat­er to add more details and cor­rect any spelling/grammatical errors.

Stanford Limits Freshman Access to Alcohol

Begin­ning next year, Stanford’s all-fresh­man dorms will no longer be allowed to serve alco­hol at events in their lounges, hall­ways or out­door areas.

I was both tick­led and sad­dened when I read the news in the Stan­ford Dai­ly today: Stan­ford To Ban Alco­hol At All-Fresh­man Dorm Events.

Begin­ning next year, Stanford’s all-fresh­man dorms will no longer be allowed to serve alco­hol at events in their lounges, hall­ways or out­door areas.

Seems rea­son­able to me, espe­cial­ly since almost all fresh­men are way under 21 and there­fore are not allowed to drink alco­hol. Nonethe­less, the move pro­duced con­tro­ver­sy: Junior Nic Kanaan, a res­i­dent assis­tant in Otero, said he believes the pol­i­cy will have unin­tend­ed neg­a­tive con­se­quences. “I think this new pol­i­cy will make a kind of intro­vert­ed drink­ing cul­ture that could poten­tial­ly be more dan­ger­ous, because it’s behind closed doors and you can’t see what’s going on…”

For­tu­nate­ly, the uni­ver­si­ty sim­ply reit­er­at­ed its log­i­cal­ly com­pelling posi­tion: Admin­is­tra­tors counter that allow­ing drink­ing in fresh­man dor­mi­to­ries is ille­gal, detracts from efforts to cre­ate a safe and com­fort­able atmos­phere and has failed to pre­vent seri­ous alco­hol-relat­ed inci­dents among fresh­men in recent years.

Per­son­al­ly, I can’t believe this is even an issue. It just seems clear to me that the uni­ver­si­ty is oblig­at­ed to pre­vent ille­gal behav­ior.…

Retreat Tomorrow

Tomor­row Paula and I will be head­ing to Jen­ness Park with a bunch of our students–it’s retreat time!

Tomor­row Paula and I will be head­ing to Jen­ness Park with a bunch of our students–it’s retreat time!

Out speak­er’s going to be Scott Mar­tin, and I ful­ly expect the retreat to rock!

John W Templeton Student Internship

Stu­dent Intern­ship
John Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion
Rad­nor, PA

The John Tem­ple­ton Foun­da­tion and its new Divi­sion, Tem­ple­ton Ven­ture Phil­an­thropy Asso­ciates, is seek­ing a stu­dent intern for the sum­mer of 2003.

The Foun­da­tion awards grants around the globe for projects that involve sci­ence and reli­gion, spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and well-being, char­ac­ter devel­op­ment in youth, and free enter­prise. A fla­vor of some of this work is on the Foundation’s web­site. Suit­ably qual­i­fied stu­dents might assist in a range of research-relat­ed tasks that might include search­es of the WWW, sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses, project design and day-to-day man­age­ment, sur­vey admin­is­tra­tion, and econo­met­ric mod­el­ing. Interns work a min­i­mum of 10 hours per week to a max­i­mum of 40 hours. Com­pen­sa­tion will be deter­mined based on back­ground and whether aca­d­e­m­ic cred­it is being sought.

Inter­est­ed stu­dents should send a brief resume high­light­ing skills and work expe­ri­ence and a short cov­er let­ter in Word for­mat to Mar­ta Oliv­er at moliver@templeton.org. Ques­tions may also be direct­ed to this e‑mail address. Please do not call the Foun­da­tion.

My Week At A Glance

Run­ning around with my head cut off.

Last week­end I promised my dad that I’d put some per­son­al news on the site, and I’ve been not doing that ever since. Sor­ry!

Last week­end was pret­ty neat: Paula and I got to share in two church­es: Cameron Park Chris­t­ian Cen­ter and Lake­view Assem­bly. They were both quite cool in dif­fer­ent ways. It was­n’t even that much driving–they’re with­in two hours or so of one anoth­er!

The work week was pret­ty busy: the stu­dents returned from spring break, and I real­ly felt that I need­ed to talk about the war head-on. What good is faith if it does­n’t inform your every­day view of the world?

At the same time, I don’t think it’s my job to tell peo­ple what to think; rather, I’m to help them learn to think in a Bib­li­cal way. So I opt­ed to talk about the sub­ject of war­fare in gen­er­al, what we should think about it, and what we should do in a time of war. All that to say, I had a lot of prep work to do!

I put my notes on the group web­site so they could fol­low up on some ref­er­ences I made.

As usu­al, we went to the Stan­ford Cof­fee­house after­ward and stayed up for far too long talk­ing.

Wednes­day I made a TON of phone calls. My ear still hurts (not real­ly).

Thurs­day Paula and I decid­ed to have some stu­dents over for a home-cooked meal and we stayed up entire­ly too late talk­ing (notice the pat­tern).

Fri­day I was sick (no doubt due to the afore­men­tioned pat­tern).

Which brings me to today. I got sun­burn on my ears. I hope they don’t peel too vis­i­bly while I’m preach­ing tomorrow–I bet that would be dis­tract­ing.

Genes and God: Contrasting Perspectives

Lon­don’s Tele­graph had an unusu­al­ly bal­anced arti­cle on how lead­ing sci­en­tists think about God.

The occa­sion? The 50th anniver­sary of the dis­cov­ery of DNA.
The play­ers? Wat­son & Crick (dis­cov­er­ers of DNA, both athe­ists) and Fran­cis Collins (head of the Human Genome Project, devout Chris­t­ian).

In Crick­’s mind, “The god hypoth­e­sis is rather dis­cred­it­ed.” Indeed, he says his dis­taste for reli­gion was one of his prime motives in the work that led to the sen­sa­tion­al 1953 dis­cov­ery.

“I went into sci­ence because of these reli­gious rea­sons, there’s no doubt about that. I asked myself what were the two things that appear inex­plic­a­ble and are used to sup­port reli­gious beliefs: the dif­fer­ence between liv­ing and non­liv­ing things, and the phe­nom­e­non of con­scious­ness.”

And accord­ing to Wat­son, “Every time you under­stand some­thing, reli­gion becomes less like­ly,” said Wat­son. “Only with the dis­cov­ery of the dou­ble helix and the ensu­ing genet­ic rev­o­lu­tion have we had grounds for think­ing that the pow­ers held tra­di­tion­al­ly to be the exclu­sive prop­er­ty of the gods might one day be ours.”

But Collins (who has suc­ceed­ed Wat­son as head of the Human Genome Project), believes that reli­gion and sci­ence “are nice­ly com­ple­men­tary and mutu­al­ly sup­port­ing”, he said. As one exam­ple, his research to find the faulty gene respon­si­ble for cys­tic fibro­sis pro­vid­ed sci­en­tif­ic exhil­a­ra­tion and “a sense of awe at uncov­er­ing some­thing that God knew before that we humans did­n’t”.

“The tragedy is that many peo­ple believe that, if evo­lu­tion is true, which it clear­ly is, then God can’t be true… God decid­ed to cre­ate a species with whom he could have fel­low­ship. Who are we to say that evo­lu­tion was a dumb way to do it? It was an incred­i­bly ele­gant way to do it.”

“Jim, who I know much bet­ter than Fran­cis, avoids bring­ing this top­ic up when we are hav­ing a con­ver­sa­tion.”

The arti­cle con­cludes with what I found to be a sad­ly amus­ing sto­ry of Crick­’s antipa­thy to faith. You real­ly ought to read the whole thing.

Just a Little Botox For the Site Header

I just redesigned the site header–if I did it cor­rect­ly it should allow the page to load faster even though the head­er is larg­er and more com­plex.

I just redesigned the site header–if I did it cor­rect­ly it should allow the page to load faster even though the head­er is larg­er and more com­plex.

Please let me know if you have any prob­lems, because I’ve been doing some exper­i­men­ta­tion in Flash and I’m def­i­nite­ly at the begin­ning of the learn­ing curve.

UPDATE: I’m get­ting some weird results from the indi­vid­ual entries–I’m hop­ing it’s just a cache prob­lem. I’ll take a look at it again in the morn­ing. Even if it’s doing what it seems to be doing it does­n’t make the site unuse­able (just ugly).

The World Has Gone Crazy…

You know the world is going crazy when the best rap­per is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the Amer­i­ca’s Cup, France is accus­ing the US of arro­gance, and Ger­many does­n’t want to go to war.

I found this quote on Andrew Carea­ga’s blog, and I had to repeat it:

You know the world is going crazy when the best rap­per is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the Amer­i­ca’s Cup, France is accus­ing the US of arro­gance, and Ger­many does­n’t want to go to war.

We live in inter­est­ing times…

Some Remarkable Stanford Alumni In The News

Four Stan­ford alum­ni in news that has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the war.

FYI: This has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the war cur­rent­ly rag­ing in Iraq. Go to http://news.google.com/ if you want up-to-the-minute info.

I just ran across four Stan­ford alum­ni:

The Pres­i­dent of Peru Ale­jan­dro Tole­do is a Stan­ford grad who will be speak­ing at the 2003 Stan­ford grad­u­a­tion cer­e­monies. He has three degrees from Stan­ford: two mas­ters and one doc­tor­ate. read all about it

CNN anchor­woman Daryn Kagan grad­u­at­ed in 1985. She’ll be cov­er­ing the Oscars. read all about it

Two of Stan­ford’s own will be help­ing inves­ti­gate the Colum­bia space shut­tle explo­sion. Nobel lau­re­ate Dou­glas Osheroff and Sal­ly Ride (who also helped inves­ti­gate the Chal­lenger dis­as­ter). read all about it

They were once stu­dents here just as the stu­dents Paula and I min­is­ter to today. Touch a stu­dent, touch the future. Touch the future, change the world…

The Luck of the Irish

As you are no doubt aware, last night was St. Patrick­’s day. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, we were in Dublin, CA talk­ing with the mis­sions board of Val­ley Chris­t­ian Cen­ter.

As you are no doubt aware, yes­ter­day was St. Patrick­’s day. Coin­ci­den­tal­ly, we were in Dublin, CA talk­ing with the mis­sions board of Val­ley Chris­t­ian Cen­ter.

Any­way, they blessed our socks off. Thanks so much to the the mis­sions board, the church they rep­re­sent, and to pas­tor Ray Noah!

And I did­n’t even have to kiss the blar­ney stone (although I did wear green–I fig­ured that in a town named Dublin with lit­tle sham­rocks paint­ed on every street sign it was prob­a­bly a good idea to wear green lest I be pinched mer­ci­less­ly).