Got to Minister To a Princeton Student This Week

I was able to share Christ with a Prince­ton stu­dent!

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.

How God Wants Us To Treat One Another

As promised, here’s the info from last night’s meet­ing:

The Eng­lish phrase “one anoth­er” is expressed as a sin­gle word in Greek: the reflex­ive pro­noun allelous. By find­ing each place that allelous is used in the New Tes­ta­ment, we can quick­ly sur­vey pas­sages that teach us how we should relate to one anoth­er. The fol­low­ing list is rep­re­sen­ta­tive but not exhaus­tive.

Greet One Anoth­er: 2 Corinthi­ans 13:12
Show Hos­pi­tal­i­ty To One Anoth­er: 1 Peter 4:9
Hon­or One Anoth­er: Romans 12:10
Live In Har­mo­ny With One Anoth­er: Romans 12:16
Serve One Anoth­er: Gala­tians 5:13–14
Com­fort One Anoth­er: 2 Corinthi­ans 1:3–4
Encour­age One Anoth­er: Hebrews 3:12–13
Moti­vate One Anoth­er: Hebrews 10:24–25
Teach And Admon­ish One Anoth­er: Colos­sians 3:16
Be For­bear­ing With One Anoth­er: Eph­esians 4:1–3
For­give One Anoth­er: Colos­sians 3:13
Con­fess Sin To One Anoth­er: James 5:16
Bear One Another’s Bur­dens: Gala­tians 6:2
Love One Anoth­er: 1 John 4:7–21

and here are some addi­tion­al resources we did­n’t cov­er last night

Do a search for every ‘one anoth­er’ verse in the NIV New Tes­ta­ment

Do a search for every ‘each oth­er’ verse in the NIV New Tes­ta­ment

Also see the arti­cle: “One Anoth­er” Com­mands of Scrip­ture, which is dull yet infor­ma­tive.

How Are Funds Used?

A donor recent­ly asked me how funds giv­en to our min­istry are used. I thought that was a pret­ty rea­son­able ques­tion, and so I thought I’d post the response on the site.

A donor recent­ly asked me how funds giv­en to our min­istry are used. I thought that was a pret­ty rea­son­able ques­tion, and so I thought I’d post the response on the site. This is going to be long–I’ll make it as short as pos­si­ble, but because we’re talk­ing about mon­ey I want to be pre­cise.

Tech­ni­cal­ly, all funds giv­en to our min­istry are actu­al­ly giv­en to the Assem­blies of God, the denom­i­na­tion with which I am a min­is­ter and which spon­sors Chi Alpha Cam­pus Min­istries. The Assem­blies of God promis­es to dis­burse gifts in accor­dance with the wish­es of the donor and in accor­dance with Assem­blies of God poli­cies.

So what rel­e­vant poli­cies does the Assem­blies of God have?

1) Mis­sion­ar­ies are assigned an amount of mon­ey that they must raise. This is com­mon­ly known as a mis­sion­ary bud­get.

2) This bud­get has two com­po­nents: the per­son­al bud­get and the work bud­get.

3) The per­son­al bud­get cov­ers salaries and ben­e­fits (insur­ance and retire­ment). For home mis­sions, the Assem­blies of God cat­e­go­rizes min­istry assign­ments into one of three cost-of-liv­ing index­es. Because Stan­ford is in Sil­i­con Val­ley we fall into the high­est cost-of-liv­ing brack­et. Per­son­al bud­gets are mon­i­tored very close­ly and are adjust­ed only under extreme cir­cum­stances.

4) The work bud­get cov­ers every­thing else: things like out­reach mate­ri­als, Bibles, office sup­plies, meet­ing space expens­es (dec­o­ra­tions and rental fees, for exam­ple), music equip­ment, retreat expens­es, and min­istry-relat­ed trav­el expens­es. Real­ly any­thing that helps us achieve our mis­sion of min­is­ter­ing to Stan­ford stu­dents, fac­ul­ty, and staff.

5) By Assem­blies of God pol­i­cy, until mis­sion­ar­ies ful­ly raise their assigned bud­get they are not allowed to launch their min­istry. This is because the Assem­blies wants mis­sion­ar­ies to suc­ceed, and as a denom­i­na­tion we’ve learned through painful expe­ri­ence that one of the best ways to guar­an­tee long-term suc­cess is by requir­ing full fund­ing up front.

6) Also by Assem­blies of God pol­i­cy, the mon­ey that comes in goes first to sup­port the mis­sion­ary finan­cial­ly and then to sup­port the mis­sion­ary’s work. In oth­er words, if only 75% of funds come in one month then it’s the work bud­get that gets short­changed instead of the per­son­al bud­get. This is accord­ing to the the­o­ry that a mis­sion can sur­vive with­out office sup­plies for a month, but if the mis­sion­ary gets evict­ed because they can’t pay rent the mis­sion will suf­fer much more last­ing harm.

7) Once a month mis­sion­ar­ies are issued a check from the Assem­blies of God. That check con­tains only what has been giv­en that month up to the amount of the assigned per­son­al bud­get. There is a 5% admin­is­tra­tion fee tak­en off the top. Inci­den­tal­ly, that’s an incred­i­bly low admin­is­tra­tion fee: I’ve seen oth­er mis­sions orga­ni­za­tions with rates as high as 20%!

8) The work bud­get and any excess funds sit in des­ig­nat­ed accounts. When the mis­sion­ary has a work expense (say we mail an evan­ge­lis­tic CD-ROM to every stu­dent on cam­pus), we pay it out of our own pock­et and sub­mit that expense to the Assem­blies for reim­burse­ment. We are reim­bursed if and only if there are suf­fi­cient funds avail­able. That reim­burse­ment is tacked onto next mon­th’s check along­side the per­son­al bud­get.

9) Here’s the bit to remem­ber: the per­son­al bud­get acts like a cap where­as the work bud­get acts like a spring­board. We can­not receive more than our assigned salary, but we can receive a the­o­ret­i­cal­ly unlim­it­ed amount for min­istry expens­es (as much as peo­ple are will­ing to give). We are respon­si­ble to doc­u­ment each min­istry expense and demon­strate to the Assem­blies of God that it was a legit­i­mate use of God’s mon­ey.

So here’s the bot­tom line: mon­ey giv­en is used to pay the min­is­ter first and any excess is used to pay for min­istry expens­es.

We also have answers to oth­er com­mon finan­cial ques­tions and an arti­cle on the Bib­li­cal mod­el for fund­ing mis­sion­ary work and a step-by-step guide to mak­ing a dona­tion.

You can see all the arti­cles relat­ed to giv­ing to our min­istry.

Another Long Weekend That Was Well Worth It

Anoth­er round of preach­ing in church­es.

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.

Free Internet Accountability Software

I found this very inter­est­ing: Atten­tion all you free load­ers and moochers, this is the thing you’ve been wait­ing for. Final­ly some­thing you get for FREE that is actu­al­ly going to help you. Imag­ine that!

Here is how X3watch works. Let’s say you’re brows­ing the Inter­net and you’re look­ing at porn. The soft­ware makes a log of the porno site and then every 2 or 4 weeks your two des­ig­nat­ed account­abil­i­ty part­ners will get an email list­ing all the skin sites you’ve been on. Oh no-bust­ed! Now that’s what we call real account­abil­i­ty. No more secrets dude!

Give me this pro­gram NOW! Click Here

Soft­ware brought to you by triple‑x church, some crazy Chris­t­ian guys who are tack­ling the porn indus­try head-on.

Preaching At the San Francisco Worship Center

preach­ing to the inner-city youth

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

Rob-Dog McGuire

an old col­lege friend gave me a call

This morn­ing I heard from an old friend from col­lege, Rob-Dog McGuire. It was very exciting–I haven’t talked to Rob in over five years!

He’s work­ing with Teen Chal­lenge in New Orleans and seems to be doing quite well.

Any­way, if you’re an old col­lege friend and need to find Rob, drop me a line.

36 Hours

anoth­er long week­end of min­istry

Sat­ur­day morn­ing we were up ear­ly to go hear Doug Fields and Bo Bash­ers talk about youth min­istry at an event spon­sored by the Church Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Net­work. It was great–CCN does these simul­casts from the Bay Area and they want a live stu­dio audi­ence. If you show up, you get in for free! There were prob­a­bly twen­ty peo­ple in the audi­ence.

It was inter­est­ing to see how well Doug worked the audi­ence. He’s a real mas­ter at con­nect­ing with peo­ple. Before the satel­lite broad­cast began he learned most every­one’s name, where the lead youth pas­tors were sit­ting, and made small talk with sev­er­al peo­ple. He remem­bered names and called on peo­ple direct­ly dur­ing his teach­ing. I was chal­lenged to get bet­ter at that.

Side note: I don’t think Doug real­ly liked me. He did­n’t dis­like me, either. It was just a weird vibe. Maybe it’s because I was­n’t dressed like a youth pas­tor; I mean, my shirt had but­tons and every­thing! It might also have been relat­ed to the fact that when Paula and I showed up one of the direc­tors asked us to sit in the cen­ter of the front row because every­one else was hang­ing back. His first impres­sion of us walk­ing out was prob­a­bly that we were some sort of weird groupies: we were dressed up and sit­ting in the cen­ter of the front row. And then we gave him weird respons­es: he asked all the youth pas­tors to raise their hands (and we did­n’t) and then he asked all the oth­er church staff to raise their hands (we did­n’t). I think we con­fused him.

Still, it was great mate­r­i­al.

After that we drove up to Tehama, CA. It’s way north, and pret­ty remote. We were to speak at the local Assem­bly of God church Sun­day morn­ing, so the pas­tor put us up in a hotel overnight.

I have to say that Tehama AG has the nicest church build­ing that we’ve been in so far. It’s the old­est AG church struc­ture in Amer­i­ca (built back in the 1800s) and it’s the old­est church in North­ern Cal­i­for­nia. Sim­ply gor­geous.

After the morn­ing ser­vice we drove down to Cuper­ti­no to speak at Abun­dant Life Assem­bly of God’s mis­sions ban­quet. That was fun.

Then we came home. It was a long week­end (with over 500 miles on the car), but it was great!

When Good Christians Use Bad Logic

I just ran across an inter­est­ing par­o­dy of Chris­t­ian legal­ism. If you’re not famil­iar with the phrase, it gen­er­al­ly refers to fix­at­ing on an arbi­trary action as a proof that you’ve for­sak­en the faith and are on a greased slide to hell.

Any­way, this essay takes the same log­ic that can be used to jus­ti­fy tra­di­tion­al legalisms and applies it to snow­mo­biles. That’s right: snow­mo­biles are the dev­il’s play­things!

If you were raised in a evan­gel­i­cal church you might find this fun­ny. If you weren’t you’ll prob­a­bly just find it weird…

Stanford Law Prof Loses Supreme Court Case

in which Con­gress gets the thumbs up to do what­ev­er they want as regards copy­right

Lawrence Lessig, a Stan­ford law pro­fes­sor, just lost his case in Supreme Court.

He was argu­ing that the Con­gress has over­stepped its Con­sti­tu­tion­al author­i­ty through its abuse of the copy­right sys­tem.

As an edi­to­r­i­al aside, I’d like to say that I’m pret­ty dis­ap­point­ed by the defeat. I’m no expert in the law, but min­is­ters are con­sid­ered to have some exper­tise when it comes to moral­i­ty (which ought to under­gird the law).

The laws gov­ern­ing copy­right in our soci­ety are exces­sive. First and most impor­tant­ly, we are los­ing a pub­lic domain. Lessig’s (non-legal) argu­ments about the hypocrisy of Dis­ney are very compelling–Disney keeps its copy­right on Mick­ey Mouse despite mak­ing most of its mon­ey off rein­vent­ing char­ac­ters that have passed into the pub­lic domain (Beau­ty & the Beast, Cin­derel­la, Snow White, etc).

But that just deals with the longevi­ty of copy­right in Amer­i­ca. I also con­sid­er that my fair-use rights are being infringed upon by rigid copy­right schemes. To my knowl­edge, every empir­i­cal study has shown that elec­tron­ic redis­tri­b­u­tion of prod­ucts increas­es sales. You can read more about it.

For the record, I urge every­one to obey the law as it is writ­ten and to agi­tate for change in the mean­time.

Lessig will prob­a­bly nev­er read this, but I think he’s fight­ing a good fight.