beware the H1XA virus

ChanchocheI sent this email out to my students last night and received such positive feedback I thought I’d share it here for my fellow campus ministers to adapt for use on their own campus.

In case you just stumbled upon this through some random internet search, I lead a ministry called Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship which is abbreviated with the Greek letters XA. That should be all you need to know in order to laugh/groan/hurl tomatoes at the below email.

Members of the Stanford Community,

In addition to the H1N1 virus — the so-called “swine flu” — sweeping
our campus, there is another and more insidious infection to beware.

I speak, of course, of the H1XA virus — the so-called “divine flu”.

The H1XA virus is extremely contagious. Symptoms include joy,
friendship, and a profound sense of spiritual centeredness. Carriers
can be identified by their cheerful countenance, their moral
lifestyle, and occasionally by their stylish t‑shirts. Should you meet
someone already infected, know that there is no cure (especially if
they already have a t‑shirt). Avoid them lest you yourself be seized
by divine purpose accompanied by rapturous joy and immersion in
meaningful community.

There will be a public meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) night at 7:30pm in
370–370 to discuss this disease in more detail. Please know that
epidemonologists are available to help prevent this disease from
spreading. Bring everyone you know who is not already infected.

Do not despair. It will be tough, but we can pull through this together.

Should conditions on campus become unbearable, we can all flee to the
woods Oct 17–18. Get your escape ticket at http://xastanford.org/events

Sincerely,

Glen (a concerned member of the campus community)

Hope you find it useful. Or at least amusing. I’ll even settle for memorable. 😉

And if you’re a Stanford student who didn’t receive this little charmer, sign up for our mailing list at https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/chialpha-fellowship!

Chi Alpha Favorably Profiled In The Stanford Daily

Halls of Learning - Stanford QuadThe Stanford Daily published an article titled Testimonies On Stanford Faith about people in our ministry (Chi Alpha Christian Fellowship).

The website the article focuses on is testimonies.stanford.edu.

Reading this article was very encouraging to me because I always fear that Chi Alpha will wind up in the Daily because of some boneheaded thing I said in a sermon… this was a much better experience. 😉

Group Text Messaging

7001 New Messages?
For a few years, Facebook was one of the best ways to connect with college students. Not any more. It’s still useful, but not nearly as useful as it used to be. The novelty has worn off and so students aren’t as responsive on it.

So like Steve Lutz I’ve been thinking about text messaging lately. My younger students (frosh and sophomores) seem to be much more likely to have unlimited texting plans than my upperclassmen and grad students.

In the past I’ve just texted people individually, but now I’m experimenting with group text messaging services. 

I considered using Twitter and telling people to subscribe via text. A few problems:
a) College students don’t use twitter.
b) It centralizes the communication too much.
c) I don’t feel confident in twitter’s reliability.
d) The verb “tweet”.

So I’ve been looking into other services. So far I’m drawn to txtBlaster. The thing I like best is that I can deputize as many of the subscribers as I want and allow them to text the entire group, so I can make this a student-driven thing. It’s a free (ad-supported) service. They claim to screen their ads carefully and to target them based on the type of group you set up. So far so good on that front. 

Do you have
a) any thoughts on using text messaging effectively as a ministry tool?
b) another service to recommend (such as TextMarks or txtSignal or even the maligned Twitter)?

P.S. If you want to see txtBlaster in action, feel free to text xastanford to 25278. I’ll be playing around with it for the next few days.

Every Ph.D. Has A Little Crazy Inside

Straight Jacket GuyPh.D. stands for doctor of philosophy. Doctor is from the Latin doctor which means ‘teacher’. Philosophy is from the Greek (the verb phileo ‘I love’ plus the noun sophia ‘wisdom’). From an etymological standpoint, a doctor of philosophy is one who teaches others to love wisdom.

But etymology is often a misleading guide to reality. Just ask a butterfly or a pineapple.

There’s an old joke that Ph.D. stands for permanent head damage. Humor usually has more truth buried inside it than etymology. I am convinced that most Ph.D.s have a little crazy in them.

You see, to earn a Ph.D. one must convince not only oneself but also a committee that you are one of the world’s leading experts about one narrow slice of reality. Ideally, you convince the committee that you know more about this very narrow problem than anyone else who has ever lived.

And here’s where the crazy comes in: this idea that you are uniquely qualified to hold a certain opinion in a very esoteric area becomes a habit which creeps into other areas of your life. You convince yourself that you are right and the world is wrong about something quite trivial. Everyone does this to a degree, but there is one important difference: the Ph.D. believes something absolutely crazy.

At this point you are thinking to yourself, “Glen, I know several Ph.D. holders. They’re nice, normal people.”

Yes. They are. They are also insane about something unexpected. They have learned through experience to keep their craziness well-masked. You have to dig down deep.

Talk with your friend long enough and you will likely discover that they raise hamsters for food. Or that they have a plan for which stores to loot in which order after the next major natural disaster, and actually have a shopping list secreted about their person at all times for just such an eventuality. Or that they believe in flooding preschools with marijuana smoke to keep the kids calm. Or that they keep a bazooka in the trunk of their car. 

And that’s just the way it is. Some things come with accessories — Barbie dolls are one and Ph.D.s are another. You just have to learn to live with it. This is why I have a much higher tolerance for eccentric beliefs in outside speakers for my ministry if they have a doctorate. I expect the crazy. I actually welcome the crazy — it keeps things interesting.

So if you are my friend and are in pursuit of a Ph.D., know that I love you and that I won’t be distressed when you turn crazy in a few years. 

And if you already have your Ph.D., just remember that I know. Somewhere deep in the recesses of your brain is an idea. I don’t know what it is. I don’t even know what it’s about. But I know it is so insane that your family has tried to slip pharmaceuticals into your meals on more than one occasion, which is why you only eat foods that are translucent. Which is crazy.

The Deceptiveness of Sin — Deeper Than You Thought

Justice Preveils?Simon M. Lahama, Adam L. Alterb, and Geoffrey P. Goodwinc report a surprising result in “Easy on the mind, easy on the wrongdoer: Discrepantly fluent violations are deemed less morally wrong” Cognition, Volume 112, Issue 3, September 2009, pages 462–466.

From the paper:

Participants completed a questionnaire in which they read six vignettes describing various moral violations: ‘Punch’ (one man punches another in a bar), ‘Flag’ (teacher burns Australian flag in class), ‘Dog’ (family eats its dead dog), ‘Deface’ (man defaces a memorial), ‘Hitler’ (man taunts Jewish sports fans with Hitler imitation), ‘Kiss’ (brother and sister kiss passionately). 

Each of the participants read three of the stories in an easy-to-read format and the other three in a harder-to-read format. 

In the words of the authors:

…discrepant perceptual fluency decreased perceptions of wrongness compared to discrepant disfluency. Further, and consistent with effects of discrepant fluency on truth judgments (Hansen et al., 2008), it seems that this difference is accounted for by fluent processing decreasing, rather than disfluent processing increasing, perceptions of wrongness.

In normal English: people thought that immoral choices were less serious when they were easy to read about. In theological terms, they excused sin because of how good it looked (or more precisely based upon how easy it was to understand). Apparently cleanliness is next to godliness (or at least legibility is next to living right).

So the next time you have something to confess, be sure to print it on nice paper and use a laser printer. It just might give you the edge you need.

The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? (Jer 17:9)

Where Should Prospective Ministers Go To College?

question markC. Michael Patton over at Parchment and Pen (one of my favorite blogs), recently offered some thoughts on entering ministry. He made a statement that has always seemed like common sense to me, but that I know many people find objectionable: 

If possible, go to a secular university for undergrad and an Evangelical seminary for your masters. You need exposure to both.

I’ve long been mystified that as a matter of course we isolate prospective ministers from their culture for 4 years (more if they go to seminary afterwards). Surely there’s a case to be made for taking our prospective young ministers and forcing them to solidify their own faith and also minister to their peers in a secular setting. Let them prove that they can be both faithful and fruitful before they invest time and money in education that is useless outside of ministry.

I’m sure a Bible college is the ideal route for some people, but it seems to me that we should highlight secular schools as a viable option. It’s certainly borne good fruit for the Pentecostal movement and the impact in the larger evangelical world is even more impressive (Tim Keller, anyone?).

I suppose the most common objection is that secular colleges are harmful to faith, but that’s just not true. And even if it was, I don’t think it would matter that much. If someone who is planning to enter ministry can’t handle Intro to Sociology or the campus beerfest, then I really don’t want them preaching the gospel. They’re a time bomb waiting to explode and take others with them.

But someone who can thrive spiritually at a secular university and make a difference for Christ on campus… give that person a robust theological education and then turn them loose in the pulpit!

Evaluating Sermons

I evaluate a lot of sermons. I don’t just mean that I listen to sermons and decide whether I like them or not — everyone who goes to church does that. I mean that I professionally evaluate sermons and give formal feedback to the preacher. Some I evaluate in my role as a ministry trainer and others I evaluate in my role on a preaching team (before one of us preaches we preach the sermon to each other and get feedback on how to strengthen it).

So I’ve thought about this a lot. Most sermon evaluation forms you find on the internet and at seminaries are not very helpful because they measure too many things.

These were the top hits when I googled for “sermon evaluation forms”
Calvin Seminary’s (30 questions)
The Orthodox Presbyterian Church’s Form for Ministry Interns (41 questions)
Reformed Baptist Seminary’s (35 questions).

Do all the things these long forms ask about matter? A little. But using that to evaluate a sermon is like evaluating your church’s statement of faith based on its grammar. It sort of misses the point. Of course you want a statement of faith that is grammatical, but if its content is sketchy then every moment spent improving its grammar is wasted time. Sinfully wasted time.

In the same way, focusing on the superficials of a sermon when the underlying content is bogus is ridiculous. I realize that’s not the intent of these forms, but that is what they encourage.

So this is the form I use:

Pointers (what should I change?)

Keepers (what was so good I should be sure not to take it out)? 

That’s it — two questions. I sometimes do it on a 3x5 index card. Keepers on the front, pointers on the back (a tip I got from Earl Creps).

And this is the grid I’m putting it through:
1) Was Christ proclaimed clearly?
2) Was the sermon Biblically sound?
3) Was it interesting?
4) Did it ask me to do something appropriate in response?

I try to never give them more than three pointers and three keepers, and I try to be as specific as possible. 

There are lots of other aspects of a sermon I could nitpick, but if the person is preaching an interesting, Biblically sound sermon that exalts Christ and challenges me to obey Him then they’re doing fabulous. Why would I nitpick them at that point? To demoralize them? To clone my habits (“at this point I would have told a joke — you should tell a joke”)?

Anyway, this post probably wasn’t relevant to most of you. But for those of you who have to evaluate preaching on a regular basis, I hope I’ve given you some food for thought.

And to those in my ministry, now you know what I’m trying to do when I prepare a sermon: proclaim the good news of Jesus in a way that is faithful to the Biblical text I’m working with in an interesting way that challenges you to wholeheartedly respond. From time to time, be sure to let me know how I’m doing. 🙂

Jacob Goldman rocks

I recently updated the Recommended Reading Google Shared Items plugin for WordPress to the latest version and it stopped working. 

I contacted Jacob Goldman, the plugin developer, who went above and beyond the call of duty to help me fix the problem. The issue was all on my end, and he helped me straighten it out quickly.

The man deserves a shout-out. 

To Jacob: consider yourself shouted out. Or shout outed. Or something.

To the rest of the world: if you need a web developer check out the company he works for C. Murray Consulting. I can attest that they’ve got excellent customer-service skills and know what they’re doing.

Roku Rocks

Roku Box BackendFor Paula’s birthday I bought her a little device called the Roku Digital Video Player. Basically, it takes Netflix streaming videos and displays them on your television.

This is very good for us since we don’t have any television service. When we moved into our new place a year ago we decided that our cable bill was 90% waste, so we cancelled it and we watch television series on DVD through Netflix or on the computer now.

So I bought this Roku device which takes the 12,000 or so streaming videos available on Netflix (and the 40,000 or so available on Amazon as pay-per-view) and lets you watch them on your normal television.

The Roku box is amazing. It only does one thing and it does it well. The images are crisp, the audio is clear, and the interface is very easy to use. In my opinion, the videos display much better than they ever did on my laptop or our desktop computer.

If you use Netflix and ever watch streaming videos, you should seriously consider the Roku. It rocks.

And it costs less than a few months of cable — even when you combine it with your monthly Netflix bill.

Tell Us How You Really Feel, Don…

I was just reading an essay by D. A. Carson, “Worship Under The Word”.

Carson is, in my estimation, one of the greatest biblical scholars in the world today. And I don’t just say that because he loves university ministry. 🙂 Approximately one gazillion (rounding up from three hundred and forty-four) of his writings are available for free online. They’re worth reading. Or at least saving to your hard drive so you can find them when you search your computer using Google Desktop…

Anyway, in footnote 39 on page 47 of this essay, he makes a rather pointed observation. I have bolded my favorite line.

Perhaps this is the place to reflect on the fact that many contemporary “worship leaders” have training in music but none in Bible, theology, history, or the like. When pressed as to the criteria by which they choose their music, many of these leaders finally admit that their criteria oscillate between personal preference and keeping the congregation reasonably happy—scarcely the most profound criteria in the world. They give little or no thought to covering the great themes of Scripture, or the great events of Scripture, or the range of personal response to God found in the Psalms (as opposed to covering the narrow themes of being upbeat and in the midst of “worship”), or the nature of biblical locutions (in one chorus the congregation manages to sing “holy” thirty-six times, while three are enough for Isaiah and John of the Apocalypse), or the central historical traditions of the church, or anything else of weight. If such leaders operate on their own with little guidance or training or input from senior pastors, the situation commonly degenerates from the painful to the pitiful.

Heh. Heh. Heh.

I would “heh” more, but apparently three times is enough. 🙂