Pray for the new students!

Some specific prayers you can offer on behalf of students.

This Thursday the new students will begin arriving at Stanford for orientation week.

As the website says, 1,752 freshmen and transfer students will take part in NSO 2002 from Thursday, Sept. 19 to Tuesday, Sept. 24.

Wow.

These students needs prayer, and lots of it.

1) That those far from Christ would encounter Him.
2) That those who serve Him would remain pure in the midst of temptation.
3) That those who serve Him would be bold in their witness to God’s overwhelming grace.
4) That all students would select their friends wisely.

Great Weekend With Brian and Courtney Jacobson

Some old friends visit, and we get to visit a Stanford football game.

bj_courtney.jpg We just had a great visit from Brian and Courtney Jacobson, alumni from our last ministry.

It’s interesting: we’ve literally had guests in our house every other week since we’ve arrived. Our rate of visitation was much lower in Springfield, MO. Hmmmm.…

Also, one of the highlights of their visit was the Stanford-San Jose State football game. We won 63–26! Woohoo!

I enjoyed the game (especially since we stomped the other team), but I was pretty disappointed about two things:

1) There were no students there. Class doesn’t start until September 23rd. It just seems lame that at quarter system schools the team has to play their first home game without student support.

2) The stadium was pretty ratty. I was shocked. I was expecting sharp, clean markings on the field. I thought the screen would be high-tech and sharp. Wrong on both counts. It’s not like Stanford’s hurting for money–so why the underimpressive stadium?download few good men a dvd

Mormons Have Their Own Bikes?

In which I announce my discovery that there are special Mormon-only bicycles!

A church recently volunteered to purchase bicycles for Paula and I. That’s a super-practical way to support our ministry since the campus is so vast!

Anyway, the pastor asked me to research bicycles and let him know what we needed.

All the bicycle sites online seemed to be focusing on upper-end triathalon-type bikes, which just aren’t what we need. So I started thinking about it, and I realized that Mormon missionaries probably know more about the type of bicycles we’re looking at than anyone else.

So I decided to do some research, and I was amused to find that there is a company that makes specialty Mormon missionary bicycles. In fact, that’s all that they sell–and no one except Mormon missionaries can purchase them.

I love this quote: As for theft, long a problem for missionaries, Spence notes: “If you see a hippie guy with long hair riding a Liahona down the street, and he doesn’t have a shirt and tie on, you know the bike’s not his.”

I knew that the Mormons have special Mormon undergarments (which I understand Senator Orrin Hatch wears), but I had no idea they had special bikes as well!

Another Example of America’s Universities Gone Insane

Schools go nuts trying to convince freshmen that their morals are stupid.

In BMOC: Big Mandate On Campus, World Magazine covers the amazing indoctrination that some schools put incoming freshmen through. I would have written the article differently, but it’s got a lot of good data.

They don’t mention Stanford, but I’m curious to see what sort of experience the incoming freshmen have in the next few weeks.

Here’s an excerpt: Others say outright that such presentations are designed to shake the soil from new students’ small-town roots, dismantle traditional values they might have brought from home… “I really want [freshmen] to understand that they are no longer at home, they’re not in high school anymore, and a lot of the values and morals they may have had from those experiences may change here over the next four years,” said diversity issues coordinator Marcus Newsom of Wartburg College in Waverly, Iowa.

Thanks to blogs4God for bringing this link to my attention.

Ministry Wishlist

Want to make a one-time gift? Here’s what we can use it for!

DISCLAIMER: this information is on our website because some people actually come here looking for it. Other people get horribly offended at the mention of money and donations online. If you’re not of the former, chill. Just filter out this message and look at some of the more entertaining stuff on this site.

You’re still here? Good. 🙂

Sometimes people are more interested in making one-time donations than in becoming a monthly partner (and sometimes monthly partners want to make a special gift).

If that’s you, then here are some needs that we have in our ministry.

Expensive Items

$10,000,000 to establish a ministry center near Stanford.

Yeah, it really would cost at least that much. We’d be looking at purchasing an existing religious center or a business propert adjacent to campus and then remodeling it.

Failing that, $1,000,000 to purchase a home near Stanford.

Again, it really would cost that much. We’re currently renting about five minutes from Stanford and there’s a home across the street on the market for $1.1 million. And it’s not a really nice house–housing prices are just ridiculous here. This matters because the nature of our ministry is relational, and so we have students over all the time. If we had a home within 15 minutes of Stanford we’d be better stewards of God’s money (not spending it on rent) and we’d be able to up the quality of our ministry to students radically. We’d have more students over more often and accomplish more in the way of discipleship and modeling. Plus, we’d be able to host other ministers in our house for a week or two at a time and expose the students to them and their ministries, thereby increasing the likelihood that students would “get it.”

Midrange Items

$6,000 to set up a multimedia studio.

This would cover a digital video camera, a dedicated computer for video-editing, and the software necessary to do high-quality videos. With such a studio, we could create high-quality training videos for college ministries across America. We could also do some neat stuff in our large-group meetings at Stanford.

$500 for a smartphone.

This would help Glen be more organized–and he needs all the help he can get!

Inexpensive Items

Anything from Glen’s Amazon Wishlist or Delicious Wishlist.

These are almost all books or other resources useful for ministry. Of course, some are just random.

If you would like to purchase any of the above items, either give online or just send a check for the amount needed to
  Chi Alpha #2650299
  1445 N Boonville Ave
  Springfield, MO 65802

Also be sure to email us and let us know what you’ve done so that we know the purpose the funds are designated for!

9/11 @ Stanford

Some comments on how September 11th, 2001 touched Stanford University.

It’s already been a full year. It’s hard to believe. I was scheduled to preach at an AGTS chapel service that morning. As soon as I saw the planes hit I began changing my message, although I fully expected the phone call that came shortly afterwards: “We’ll reschedule–we just feel like we need to devote the full service to prayer.”

In that year I’ve moved from there to here, and I was surprised to learn how Stanford was affected by the terrorist attacks on our culture.

A few items in no particular order:

I found this brief story about the 40 Iranian nationals who study at Stanford interesting. I also thought this administrator’s perspective on their plight was interesting.

I also was shocked to learn that Stanford received fake anthrax mailings last October. Those incidents spawned an emergency response force. I did find it mildly humorous that the biosafety manager had to get special permission to just analyze everything herself. I’m sure the Stanford research laboratories were much better equipped (and the researchers more highly trained) than at the Santa Clara county facilities.

The community as a whole seems less traumatized and polarized than many other campuses: both Berkeley and San Francisco State have seen some pretty angry encounters over Middle-Eastern issues, but tempers at Stanford have been much cooler.

Larry Wall Discusses His Faith in Scientific Perspective

This is a follow-up to our article about famous living scientists who are Christians:

Larry Wall, creator of the programming language Perl, is a Christian. In a recent interview on Slashdot he was asked the following question:

I remember reading at some point that you are a Christian, and there have been suggestions that some of your early missionary impulses (a desire to do good, help others) are perhaps part of the zeal you have put into Perl over the years.

Preferring a scientific view, I am not religious, and have no desire to be. Perhaps there is a God, but if there is, I think he/she has no opposable thumbs; in other words, has no power to change anything; reality is just playing out according to the laws of physics (whatever those are).

Please tell us how in the world a scientific or at least technical mind can believe in God, and what role religion has played in your work on Perl.

If you’re a scientific sort of person, I encourage you to read his answer. It’s question number 7 in the interview.

Pledge Forms Online

Our pledge form is now online in PDF format.

You can download our pledge form

as a PDF file. The form is around 110k.

If you can’t open it on your computer, download the free Adobe Acrobat viewer and try again.

If you don’t know what a pledge form is or why you would want to fill one out, check out these pages:

How Missions Is A Partnership
The Biblical Basis for Supporting Missionaries
Questions and Answers About Support-Raising
How to Partner With Us

College Students Increasingly Irreligious

The 2001 freshman survey indicated record numbers of students with no religious preference.

This is pretty dated, but I just ran across it: according to the 2001 Nationwide Freshman Survey, college students are becoming less and less religious:

RECORD NUMBER REPORT NO RELIGIOUS PREFERENCE

When asked to indicate their current religious preference, an all-time high of 15.8 percent of students reported none, compared with 14.9 percent last year and 6.6 percent in 1966. The growth in students with no religious preference parallels the growth in the percentage of students who report no religious preference for at least one parent. A record high of 12.4 percent of freshmen describe their fathers as having no religious preference, and a record high of 7.8 percent report no religious reference for their mothers.

Additionally, there is a decline in the percentage of students who pray or meditate at least once a week (from 67.7 in 2000 to 65.7 percent in 2001). A new survey question asked students to rate their level of “religiousness” as compared to the average person their age, with results of 31.7 percent rating themselves above average or in the highest 10 percent. This represents the second-lowest figure among all 21 self-rating measures.

Another reason to see Christ proclaimed on the college campus!

Some More Thoughts on Christian Baptism

Baptism is an expression of salvation, and not a means of salvation as held by certain churches. Baptism is of vital importance in the life of the believer and is more than an archaic ritual, yet it is not ultimately salvific.

It’s been quite a while since I’ve had a chance to respond to all the things that Nota Bene and Integrity Blog have said in reference to baptism.

Mea culpa–I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Which I understand is quite a sight, although I’ve never personally witnessed it. Which puts me in mind of Mike the Headless Chicken.

But I digress…

We’re discussing what it means to follow Jesus, and how baptism relates to that. The Catholic position is that baptism is the way one normally becomes a Christian. So far I’ve limited myself to discussing one specific passage that Sean first mentioned. They’ve made a LOT of observations since I’ve posted, so I encourage you to read their blogs to see what they’ve been saying. There’s no way I could respond to it all without this being my full-time job, so I’ll just do what I can. Hey guys: if I misunderstand, misrepresent, or fail to address what you consider to be your strongest arguments please let me know: I am being selective, but I’m trying to be selective with integrity.

In this post I’ll try to provide a broader understanding of baptism. It may be long, so buckle your seatbelts! My basic thesis will be that baptism is an expression of salvation, and not a means of salvation as held by certain churches. Baptism is of vital importance in the life of the believer and is more than an archaic ritual, yet it is not ultimately salvific.

Jack and Sean’s observations fall into two categories: scriptural and historical.

I’d like to begin by offering my own scriptural observations.
The Bible is clear that salvation issues from placing one’s faith [belief plus trust] in Jesus. There are several relevant passages of Scripture, referencing a few should suffice: John 3.16–18, Acts 16.31, Romans 3.23–24, Galatians 3.26–27, Ephesians 2.8–9, 1 John 5.1.

These passages are clear: God adopts us into His family when we place our faith in Jesus. I don’t see such a clarity in the passages Jack references or in the ones that Sean references. I do see an emphasis on the importance of baptism, but I don’t see a demonstration of baptism as a means of salvation.

The only texts Jack raised which might even seem to teach salvific baptism are towards the end of his post, The Church would also point to the words of Peter and Paul on how baptism incorporates us into the Body of Christ: Romans 6:3–4; Col 2:12 … 1 Cor 6:11. [note: I edited slightly for length]. In each of these verses, Paul is speaking descriptively: all the believers had been baptized, so he can speak of baptism as a synonym for being a believer.

Now I’d like to make a few historical comments:
First, I’d like to acknowledge that the early church clearly thought that baptism was salvific.

I’d also like to say that it’s an unpersuasive point. Theology evolves. Over time the church gradually comes to a deeper understanding of the ramifications of the Bible’s teaching and incorporates it into our theology. The most well-known example is the doctrine of the Trinity. All the clues were in the Bible, it just took the Church a few centuries to put them together in a consistent way.

The early church fathers were wrong about baptism. They clearly did not understand the Scriptures at this point. In fact, I’m willing to bet that there were divergent views among the early church theologians about baptism (I just don’t have the historical expertise to know them off the top of my head or the time to ferret them out).

I’d like to close by explaining what baptism does.
Jack asked me what exactly I think baptism does:
1) Baptism forces people to publicly profess their faith in Jesus Christ as Lord.
2) Baptism requires a public display of solidarity with the Church.
3) Baptism is a test of obedience. Someone unwilling to follow Christ in such a small thing cannot be properly called a follower of Christ.
4) Baptism is an object lesson in faith, and provides excellent symbolism that can be used to help people understand the gospel.

Baptism does all these things, and probably a good deal more. It does not, however, save anyone.