Stanford: A Wellspring of Innovation

Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty changes the econ­o­my of the whole world!

Yet anoth­er way Stan­ford is chang­ing the world: here’s a list of com­pa­nies found­ed by mem­bers of the Stan­ford com­mu­ni­ty. Among them:

Hewlett-Packard
Cis­co Sys­tems
Sil­i­con Graph­ics
Sun Microsys­tems
Elec­tron­ic Arts
Yahoo!
EBay
Nvidia

Turns out that 40% of the rev­enue in Sil­i­con Val­ley is gen­er­at­ed by com­pa­nies that emerged from Stan­ford, and the employ­ees earned around 6.5 bil­lion dol­lars in 1999. Wow!

By the way, that 6.5 bil­lion dol­lars would work out to $650 mil­lion dol­lars in tithes. For com­par­ison’s sake, the Assem­blies of God gave $350 mil­lion in 2001.

Give And It Will Come Back To You

In one of the most remark­able news items I’ve come across in a while, a sick African child receives an unex­pect­ed oper­a­tion.

Man­taine Min­is, 6, was liv­ing in a hut in a remote vil­lage in Kenya, in need of life­sav­ing heart surgery, when the improb­a­ble hap­pened one day in June. A group of stu­dents and par­ents from the Lan­g­ley School in McLean was on safari at the Masai Mara Nation­al Reserve, where Man­taine’s father is a game war­den.

That’s when some­one from the vil­lage told a Lan­g­ley teacher about Man­taine’s heart prob­lem. From there, things seemed to unfold quick­ly.

The teacher, Joseph Leku­ton, knew that one of the par­ents was a Fair­fax Coun­ty heart sur­geon. He also knew that peo­ple of the Masai vil­lage, who did­n’t own much, had sold 14 cows last year to raise mon­ey to donate to relief efforts in the Unit­ed States after the Sept. 11 ter­ror attacks.

So he helped launch a camp­fire dis­cus­sion about the Masai gift and about what a group of peo­ple from an Amer­i­can sub­urb could do to return a kind­ness.

I’ll let you read the rest of the sto­ry on your own, so I’ll close by quot­ing Jesus in Luke 6.38: If you give, you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full mea­sure, pressed down, shak­en togeth­er to make room for more, and run­ning over. What­ev­er mea­sure you use in giving–large or small–it will be used to mea­sure what is giv­en back to you.

Stanford’s Student Body

Stan­ford’s class of 2006 is very diverse!

In a recent arti­cle about the arrival of the fresh­men at Stan­ford was this lit­tle tid­bit:

For the first time in the uni­ver­si­ty’s his­to­ry, the major­i­ty of the mem­bers of the Class of 2006 are per­sons of col­or. Accord­ing to sta­tis­tics from Office of Admis­sion, 40.6 per­cent of the new class are white, 23.4 per­cent of the class are Asian Amer­i­can; 11.6 per­cent are African Amer­i­can; 10.3 per­cent are Mex­i­can-Amer­i­can; 5.5 per­cent are inter­na­tion­al stu­dents; 3 per­cent are oth­er Lati­no and 1.9 per­cent are Native American/Native Hawai­ian. In addi­tion to being the most eth­ni­cal­ly diverse, the class is the one of them most geo­graph­i­cal­ly diverse ever admit­ted.

Who Are The Davises?

Who are Glen & Paula Davis?

I first put this page online because a pas­tor asked me if there was some infor­ma­tion about us online, because he want­ed to copy our bio for the church bul­letin.

I thought about it, and real­ized that all the infor­ma­tion was scat­tered about and not in one place. It also occurs to me that vis­i­tors to the site might want to know a lit­tle bit more about me them­selves.

So here goes:

First, I should men­tion that we’re the Assem­blies of God mis­sion­ar­ies to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. Now here’s some per­son­al stuff:

Full Name: Glen Tal­bot Davis
Born: May 3, 1974
Real­ly Began to Fol­low Jesus: at a sev­enth-grade chapel ser­vice
Bap­tized in the Holy Spir­it: as a col­lege sopho­more in UL Chi Alpha
Called to Min­istry: as a col­lege junior at a Chi Alpha con­fer­ence
Pre­vi­ous Min­istry Expe­ri­ence: five years on staff with Chi Alpha at South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty
Edu­ca­tion: Mas­ter of Divin­i­ty (AGTS, 1999)
Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana, 1996)
Strengths: preach­ing sim­ply about com­plex sub­jects, orga­ni­za­tion­al lead­er­ship, refut­ing false beliefs, using tech­nol­o­gy effec­tive­ly
Often Heard Say­ing: “Con­trast breeds clar­i­ty”
Deeply Influ­enced By: The Pur­pose-Dri­ven Church, The Spir­it of the Dis­ci­plines, Mere Chris­tian­i­ty, The Mas­ter Plan of Evan­ge­lism
Favorite Comics: The Far Side, Calvin & Hobbes, Dil­bert
Vision for Stan­ford: Estab­lish a cred­i­ble, con­sis­tent and per­va­sive Spir­it-filled gospel wit­ness on cam­pus.
Core Com­mit­ments (Val­ues):
     I must nur­ture inti­ma­cy with God.
     I must cul­ti­vate my char­ac­ter.
     I must build my mar­riage.
     I must hone my skills.
     I must main­tain healthy rela­tion­ships.
     I must rig­or­ous­ly ana­lyze my beliefs.

Full Name: Paula Kay Davis
Born: August 4, 1974
Real­ly Began to Fol­low Jesus: July 23, 1990 at a Bible Study
Bap­tized in the Holy Spir­it: August 1990 at a Bible Study
Called to Min­istry: Sum­mer 1992 at a youth con­fer­ence
Pre­vi­ous Min­istry Expe­ri­ence: five years with Chi Alpha at South­west Mis­souri State Uni­ver­si­ty, two years as board mem­ber of New Life Church (Spring­field, MO)
Edu­ca­tion: Bach­e­lor of Sci­ence (Uni­ver­si­ty of Louisiana, 1996)
Strengths: Orga­nized, hard­work­ing, good lis­ten­er, sen­si­tive to oth­ers, teach­able
Pas­sions: To see myself and oth­ers shaped more into the image of the Mas­ter; to help hurt­ing peo­ple expe­ri­ence the love of the Father.
Hob­bies: Enjoy sewing, cook­ing and spend­ing time with friends

And a recent addi­tion:
Full Name: Dana Marie Davis
Born: March 25, 2004
Often Heard: scream­ing incon­solably
Hob­bies: poop­ing, spit­ting up, and cry­ing

UPDATE: our anniver­sary is 12/21/1996.

Possible Email Glitch

In which I men­tion that my email serv­er might be drop­ping mes­sages.

Some­one just told me that they emailed me four times with­out ever hear­ing a response from me. I nev­er received any of the mes­sages.

I men­tion this in case you’ve sent me a mes­sage to which I’ve not replied. It’s pos­si­ble there’s a glitch with my email serv­er, although it’s equal­ly pos­si­ble that the per­son sim­ply made some mis­take on their end.

If I haven’t replied to a mesage, I apol­o­gize. Please resend it and I’ll get right back to you!

World Leaders Trained on US Campuses

The world sends it’s lead­ers to Amer­i­ca for high­er education–here’s a list.

Here’s anoth­er rea­son the Amer­i­can uni­ver­si­ty is such a strate­gic mis­sion field–there are about 14,000,000 uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents attend­ing col­lege in Amer­i­ca and almost 4% of them are from oth­er nations.

The most recent sta­tis­tics I could find show that over half of them are from Asia and 7% are from the Mid­dle East. Many of these nations for­bid any sort of mis­sion­ary work–but they send their future lead­ers here to be trained! In fact, the Nav­i­ga­tors claim that 7 of the top 10 coun­tries that send stu­dents to the U.S. are closed to typ­i­cal miss­sion­ary efforts.

That’s impres­sive enough, but I’ll up the ante even fur­ther. I’ve heard that every major world leader except Sad­dam Hus­sein has stud­ied in Amer­i­ca, but I was­n’t able to ver­i­fy that claim. What I can do is list of some of the world lead­ers trained on Unit­ed States cam­pus­es. Imag­ine the poten­tial world impact of reach­ing the future lead­ers of the world today (inci­den­tal­ly, I have a relat­ed essay focused on Amer­i­ca)! The polit­i­cal scene is so tumul­tuous that I won’t both­er pre­tend­ing this is cur­rent. Assume that they’re pos­si­bly out of pow­er unless you hear their names on the news.

Ehud Barak, For­mer Israeli Prime Min­is­ter, Stan­ford
Ale­jan­dro Tole­do, pres­i­dent of Peru, Stan­ford
Ben­jamin Netanyahu, Israeli Prime Min­is­ter, MIT
Benizar Bhut­to, first female Prime Min­is­ter of Pak­istan, Har­vard U
Car­los Sali­nas, pres­i­dent of Mex­i­co, Har­vard U
Lien Chan, Pre­mier of Tai­wan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go
Lee Teng Hui, Pres­i­dent of Tai­wan, Iowa State and Cor­nell
Saud Al-Fasial, For­eign Min­is­ter of Saudia Ara­bia, Prince­ton
Adul Al-Awa­di, Kuwaiti Min­is­ter of State, Har­vard
Kai-Wen Mao, Chi­nese Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion, UC Berke­ley and Carnegie-Mel­lon
Dhoukan Al-Hin­dawi, Deputy Prime Min­is­ter of Jor­dan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land
Osama al-Baz, Chief Advi­sor to Pres­i­dent Mubarak in Egypt, Har­vard
Bir Birkram Sha Dev Biren­da, King of Nepal, Har­vard
Tahir al-Mas­ri, Prime Min­is­ter of Jor­dan, Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas
Yosuko Mat­suo­ka, For­eign Min­is­ter of Japan, Uni­ver­si­ty of Ore­gon

You don’t have to imag­ine the poten­tial impact, min­istry to inter­na­tion­al stu­dents has already had world­wide ram­i­fi­ca­tions. Con­sid­er this telling exam­ple:

A num­ber of years ago, Hal Guf­fey (for­mer pres­i­dent of Inter­na­tion­al Stu­dents, Inc.) was speak­ing to a group of Chris­tians about the oppor­tu­ni­ty to befriend inter­na­tion­al stu­dents. At the end of his talk a young lady from anoth­er coun­try approached him. She told him that though her father had not become a Chris­t­ian as a result of his stu­dent days in the U.S., nonethe­less he had returned home with a favor­able impres­sion of Chris­tians. Many years lat­er he found him­self in a posi­tion to decide whether Chris­t­ian mis­sion­ar­ies should be allowed to remain in his coun­try. He decid­ed they should be allowed to stay. (source)

If you know of any oth­ers world lead­ers who should be on the list, let me know via the com­ment box!

Revisions To Core Areas

Some minor site updates: revi­sions for clar­i­ty and pre­ci­sion.

I’ve made some revi­sions to the core essays on this web­site: I think I’ve made them more read­able and more infor­ma­tive. The ones that have under­gone the most change are:

1) What Is Chi Alpha? (changed rad­i­cal­ly)
2) Com­mon Ques­tions About Sup­port­ing Mis­sion­ar­ies (added new ques­tions and intro)
3) Why Uni­ver­si­ties Need Mis­sion­ar­ies (added a clos­ing sec­tion)
4) How to Become a Part­ner In Min­istry (changed the word­ing for clar­i­ty)

Let me know if you find any­thing unclear or con­fus­ing!

Using Your Doubts To Stimulate Your Faith

Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine has a great essay on how your doubts can build your faith. Here’s an excerpt:

Doubt in our faith can lead to the gate­way of spir­i­tu­al growth. Doubt calls us into deep­er exam­i­na­tion. It draws us onto the path of undy­ing curios­i­ty for real Truth. As Fred­erich Buech­n­er said, “my doubts keep me mov­ing.”

…

Bri­an McLaren, in his soon-to-be-released book Adven­tures in Miss­ing the Point, writ­ten with Tony Cam­po­lo, address­es the ques­tion of allow­ing doubt to take hold. Some­one asked Bri­an, “Well, won’t an open­ness to doubt lead to spir­i­tu­al insta­bil­i­ty and inse­cu­ri­ty?” “Yes,” he respond­ed, “but couldn’t an unwill­ing­ness to ques­tion lead to false secu­ri­ty that could be even more dan­ger­ous?” Being coura­geous enough to ask “why” (or even “why not”) can lead to a deep­en­ing of faith. Jesus nev­er said to us, “I will nev­er leave you or for­sake you … well, I take that back: I’ll only leave you when you start to doubt and ques­tion. And when you doubt, I’m out­ta here.” I believe Jesus, when He said He would nev­er leave us or for­sake us, He meant He would stick by us at all times, even in the tough times, the times when we won­der if he is even lis­ten­ing at all. Doubt can be painful, but it has the poten­tial for an incred­i­ble spir­i­tu­al break­through.

How To Link To The NET Bible

Finally–how to link to a verse in the NET Bible using their perl script!

As I men­tioned ear­li­er, I’ve been going crazy try­ing to fig­ure out how to link direct­ly to a verse in the NET Bible.

Their web­mas­ter final­ly sent me an email explain­ing how to do it!

Here’s what you want­ed:
The link goes to John 3:16

http://www.bible.org/cgi-bin/netbible.pl?book=joh&chapter=3&verse=16

You’ll note that the way our perl script is for­mat­ted, no one can take a verse out of con­text. That is, when you want a spe­cif­ic verse from the NET Bible, you’ll get the para­graph in which that verse occurs. (Para­graph breaks are sort of arbi­trary, but at least it’s a help to the con­text.) The only oth­er thing you need is a list of our abbre­vi­a­tions. For­mat: they are all first three let­ters (gen, deu, 1ch, 2sa, mat)

With fol­low­ing excep­tions:
  Judges: jdg
  Phile­mon: phm
  Philip­pi­ans: phi.

Cool! This will be use­ful when­ev­er I have a lit­tle time to reply to some of Nota Bene and Integri­ty Blog’s thoughts.

I Knew The Air Was Bad, But…

In the Bay Area a 2.5 week old baby has inhaled more pol­lu­tants than the gov­ern­men­tal stan­dard for a life­time.

OK, I knew that the air in Cal­i­for­nia was sup­posed to be bad, but this is ridicu­lous! By the time a Bay Area babies are two and a half weeks old, they have inhaled more pol­lu­tion than the gov­ern­ment rec­om­mends over a life­time!

At least now I have some­thing to tell peo­ple who imply that I moved to Cal­i­for­nia just because of the mag­nif­i­cence of the scenerey and not due to the call of God… I’ll try to explain it between hack­ing coughs evi­denc­ing the onset of emphy­se­ma.