Glen Davis

An arti­cle in the Jan­u­ary 25th edi­tion of the San Jose Mer­cury News talked about Stan­ford’s spir­i­tu­al lega­cy: Church Remains At School’s Heart.

When Leland and Jane Stan­ford decid­ed to place a church at the cen­ter of cam­pus, the fac­ul­ty balked. A library — a place of books and thought — would be more appro­pri­ate, the pro­fes­sors opined. But Jane Stan­ford stood firm.

“The church is the only insti­tu­tion that makes or has made or pre­tends to make a stand against immoral­i­ty in all its forms,” she said. “Edu­ca­tion does not; nor does that sci­ence in which you are inter­est­ed and which you con­sid­er all-pow­er­ful.”

Sad­ly, the church has (in my esti­ma­tion) fall­en far. Few would regard it as the heart of the uni­ver­si­ty today, and the spir­i­tu­al menu offered at the Church has broad­ened beyond mea­sure: both the founder of the Ba’hai faith and the Dalai Lama have spo­ken there. I think the arti­cle puts it well: For some, the church is a com­mu­ni­ty trea­sure more akin to a muse­um than a reli­gious insti­tu­tion.

The arti­cle is accom­pa­nied by a brief his­to­ry of Memo­r­i­al Church.

Learn more about Memo­r­i­al Church online.

I spoke at Bethany Col­lege’s chapel yes­ter­day, and I told sev­er­al lit­tle-known sto­ries from this his­to­ry of col­lege min­istry. I thought I should put them online. I apol­o­gize for the abrubt nature of these sto­ries, I basi­cal­ly cut’n’­past­ed them from my speak­ing notes. I’ve pro­vid­ed a link to help you do more research on any of the sto­ries that inter­est you. If you want a quick sur­vey that’s bet­ter-writ­ten, try Why Col­lege Revivals Spark Mis­sion­ary Advance.

First: At the very begin­ning of the 18th cen­tu­ry, Nick was a stu­dent at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Halle in Ger­many. He was a pas­sion­ate fol­low­er of Jesus, and he came to wield great influ­ence with his fel­low stu­dents. He went on to found a church, and the Mora­vian Church found­ed by Count Nicholas von Zinzen­dorf sent out more mis­sion­ar­ies in twen­ty years than all the Protes­tant church­es of Europe had sent in the last 200. They began an around-the-clock prayer meet­ing for world mis­sions that last­ed for 100 years with­out inter­rup­tion. His slo­gan was “I have but one pas­sion, ‘tis He, ‘tis only He.” [learn more about the Mora­vians]

Sec­ond: In 1726, John Wes­ley was a stu­dent at Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty and he formed a group called the “Holy Club” to study the Bible and reach out to the poor. They began to live their lives by a strict set of rules, care­ful­ly order­ing their life to give the max­i­mum oppor­tu­ni­ties to serve God. They were so dis­ci­plined that oth­er stu­dents mocked their method­i­cal life with the name “Methodists.” Lat­er, John and his broth­er Charles along with George Whit­field, anoth­er alum­nus of the Holy Club, were instru­men­tal in spread­ing the gospel across Amer­i­ca in what we today call the First Great Awak­en­ing in Amer­i­can his­to­ry. [learn more about John Wes­ley]

Third: In August 1806, on a hot and humid Sat­ur­day after­noon, fresh­man Samuel Mills and four oth­er stu­dents gath­ered in the maple grove of Sloan’s Mead­ow along the Hoo­sack Riv­er for a twice-week­ly prayer meet­ings. Sud­den­ly, rain began to pour down and so the stu­dents sought shel­ter from the dri­ving rain on the side of a huge haystack. There, with the rain falling from the sky Mills shared his grow­ing pas­sion that the gospel be preached around the world. They prayed, and God showed up. That prayer meet­ing result­ed in the emer­gence of mis­sions in North Amer­i­ca, and every sub­se­quent mis­sions movement—including ours—traces its roots to that prayer meet­ing of col­lege stu­dents. Their great mot­to was “we can do this if we will.” [learn more about the Haystack Prayer Meet­ing]

Fourth: Just after Christ­mas in 1900, Charles Parham gave the stu­dents at Bethel Bible col­lege in Tope­ka Kansas an assign­ment: search the Scrip­tures and deter­mine if there was any way a per­son could know whether or not they had been bap­tized in the Holy Spir­it. On Jan­u­ary 1st 1901, just after mid­night, a young stu­dent named Agnes Ozman asked Parham to lay hands on her and pray that she might be filled with the Holy Spir­it and that she would speak in tongues as a result. That event launched the great Pen­te­costal revival which has swept and is sweep­ing the world. Today 9 out of every 10 peo­ple who are com­ing to faith in Christ are doing so in the con­text of a Spir­it-filled Church. [learn more about Agnes Ozman]

Fifth: In 1886 Dwight Moody invit­ed 251 col­lege stu­dents to a retreat in Mount Her­mon, Mass­a­chu­sets. He wasn’t real­ly plan­ning to talk about world mis­sions, but a strong bur­den grew among the stu­dents there. By the end of the con­fer­ence, pre­cise­ly 100 of the 251 stu­dents signed a pledge stat­ing “we, the under­signed, declare our­selves will­ing and desirous, God per­mit­ting, to go to the unevan­ge­lized por­tions of the world.” That was the begin­ning of the Stu­dent Vol­un­teer Mis­sions Move­ment. Their watch­word was “the evan­ge­liza­tion of the world in this gen­er­a­tion.” Two Prince­ton stu­dents took it upon them­selves to go on a speak­ing tour of Amer­i­can col­leges recruit­ing for mis­sions. As a result, over 12,000 stu­dent vol­un­teers went into for­eign mis­sions before World War I broke out. [learn more about the Stu­dent Vol­un­teer Mis­sions Move­ment]

Sixth: In 1951, Bill Bright began min­is­ter­ing to col­lege stu­dents at UCLA. That began a move­ment known as Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ that has grown far beyond col­lege stu­dents and is now one of the most pow­er­ful mis­sions forces in the world. For exam­ple: they have shown a movie rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the gospel of Luke to over 5 bil­lion peo­ple in over 200 nations. I actu­al­ly believe it’s been shown in every nation on the plan­et! [learn more about Bill Bright and Cam­pus Cru­sade]

Sev­enth: And in what is prob­a­bly the most amaz­ing sto­ry of col­lege revival that I’ve ever come across: I give you the sto­ry of a revival that began when five non-Chris­tians gath­ered for prayer.

To pro­vide a con­text: our nation was found­ed in 1776. In the 1790’s, a poll con­duct­ed at Har­vard revealed not one believ­er which was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed to train min­is­ters. At Prince­ton, a sim­i­lar poll showed only 2 Chris­tians. When the dean opened the chapel Bible one day a pack of play­ing cards fell out because stu­dents had cut out a hid­ing place for them. “Chris­tians were so few on the aver­age cam­pus and were so intim­i­dat­ed by the non-Chris­tians that they met in secret. They even kept their min­utes in code so no one could find out about their clan­des­tine fel­low­ship.” [source]

Right around then at Ham­p­den Syd­ney Col­lege in Vir­ginia five non-Chris­t­ian stu­dents were so dis­gust­ed with the lev­el of immoral­i­ty around them that they held a secret prayer meet­ing to ask for God’s help. Some­how the oth­er stu­dents found out about it and tried to break down the door! The pres­i­dent of the col­lege heard the riot and came to see what the prob­lem was. The stu­dents told him and these were his words: “You don’t mind cheat­ing, you, don’t mind steal­ing from rooms, you don’t mind the lying and the pro­fan­i­ty you get on this cam­pus, but you object to a prayer meet­ing. Well, I do not!” He then knocked on the door and said author­i­ta­tive­ly, “This is the pres­i­dent of the col­lege speak­ing. Will you please come out?” The stu­dents unlocked the door and came out not know­ing what to expect. Pres­i­dent Smith said, “Gen­tle­men, come to my study, we’ll pray there togeth­er.” That sparked a revival on cam­pus that result­ed in half of the stu­dent body con­vert­ing to Christ and more impor­tant­ly: that was the begin­ning of the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing.

To learn more about this last sto­ry, read the arti­cle that I rec­om­mend­ed at the begin­ning: Why Col­lege Revivals Spark Mis­sion­ary Advance.

At our last Chi Alpha meet­ing, we had a guest named Darin, who is a physics major vis­it­ing from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. He came with one of our stu­dents, Shaowei, with whom he went to high school.

To make a long sto­ry short, after the meet­ing I learned that Darin isn’t a Chris­t­ian but he did want some coun­sel from a min­is­ter. We talked for a long time, and he invit­ed me to pray that God would reveal Him­self to him in a way that is con­vinc­ing to Darin.

Please pray for Darin! I think he’s on the verge of fol­low­ing Christ: he just needs some time to process every­thing and to expe­ri­ence God’s pres­ence in his life.

Side note: one of the unex­pect­ed aspects of min­istry at one elite school is that you get to min­is­ter to stu­dents from oth­er elite schools as well. The week­end before meet­ing Darin I met a Har­vard stu­dent named Steve who was vis­it­ing a stu­dent from a group that he went to high school with. Pri­or to that I met a Cor­nell stu­dent. Just thought you might find that inter­est­ing.

As I men­tioned in an ear­li­er post, I preached at an inner-city youth group Fri­day night. I got back around mid­night, went to bed, and woke up to dri­ve to Yuba City.

We spent the night at Jeff and Lori Wright’s place (their son Andrew is involved in Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford), and then we shared at Sut­ter Com­mu­ni­ty Church in the morn­ing.

Side note: when I preach I gen­er­al­ly put my cell phone on silent mode and set it on the pul­pit as a way of keep­ing time. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when I receive a call the phone dis­plays a new mail noti­fi­ca­tion instead of the usu­al clock. That’s rel­e­vant only because Ali­cia Chole called me in-between points 2 and 3. I say this not to chas­tise Ali­cia, but mere­ly because I found it fun­ny. For the record, I did not answer the phone.

Any­way, we went out for lunch after and had a great time with the pas­tor and his fam­i­ly and the wor­ship leader and his wife.

Then we head­ed to the Wright’s house to watch the first half of the Super­bowl.

Then it was off to preach at Cal­vary Tem­ple in Yuba City. There were a TON of peo­ple there, which sur­prised me giv­en that the Super­bowl was going on and that a Cal­i­for­nia team was play­ing. Any­way, we had a great time shar­ing with the peo­ple. I even got to tell a pret­ty fun­ny Raiders joke and not get lynched.

Paula and I would like to pub­licly com­mend Cal­vary Tem­ple and Pas­tor Cio­ci­o­la: they gave us the largest offer­ing to aid our work that we’ve ever received, and they did it while the Super­bowl was being played with a team from their state con­tend­ing for the cham­pi­onship! May God rich­ly bless them with every bless­ing at His dis­pos­al.

And then we left and we returned home around 11pm and crashed.

I got to share with the youth group at the San Fran­cis­co Wor­ship Cen­ter tonight.

That was my first time preach­ing in an inner-city envi­ron­ment: it was fun! The youth seemed to be with me through­out my mes­sage (and I did­n’t even have to bust into rap to keep their atten­tion, although if I had I sup­pose I would have gen­er­at­ed a cer­tain amount of mor­bid fas­ci­na­tion).

It was pret­ty cool, and we had some great Thai food after­wards.down­load skin­walk­ers divx