Historical Jesus booklet by Craig Blomberg

A short booklet (28 pages), Jesus of Nazareth: How Historians Can Know Him and Why It Matters was released for free this morning by the Christ on Campus Initiative. It’s written by Craig Blomberg death at a funeral online

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, a well-respected scholar.

One thing I really appreciate about this piece is that Blomberg footnotes his sources well and provides an annotated bibliography at the end. So if he makes a claim someone finds sketchy they are welcome to investigate it more thoroughly. Christian outreach pieces are rarely considerate in this way, and I applaud the decision.

Highly recommended if you (or your friends) have questions about what we can possibly know about a man who lived 2,000 years ago.

found via JT

Notable Pentecostal Leaders from Secular Universities

It struck me the other day that there are a lot of Pentecostal/Charismatic/Third Wave leaders with degrees from secular universities instead of Bible colleges/Christian liberal arts schools, so I started putting a list together.

The list is heavy on the Assemblies of God because those are the circles I run in, and it’s also minister-heavy for the same reason. I’d love to add some business leaders. I’m leaving out Chi Alpha missionaries because we’d swamp the list.

In alphabetical order:
For Their Undergrad

  1. Bret Allen (pastor, Bethel Church of San Jose) – Eastern Washington University
  2. John Ashcroft

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    (politician and author) – Yale for undergrad, University of Chicago for law school

  3. Rocky Barra — (pastor of Connection Church in Canton, MI) — Eastern Michigan University (for both undergrad and master’s)
  4. Glen Berteau (pastor of Calvary Temple in Modesto, CA) – Louisiana Tech
  5. John Bevere (author and conference speaker) – Purdue
  6. Brady Boyd (pastor of New Life Church in Colorado Springs) — Louisiana Tech
  7. James Bradford (pastor of Central Assembly in Springfield, MO) — University of Minnesota (all the way through Ph.D.)
  8. Frank Cargill (district superintendent of Oklahoma) — Oklahoma State University (undergrad), University of Oklahoma (master’s),and the University of Central Oklahoma (another master’s).
  9. Dennis Cheek (pastor/church planter & Vice President for the Kaufmann Foundation) — Towson University (undergrad), another undergrad from Excelsior College, a master’s University of Maryland Baltimore County, a Ph.D. in curriculum and instruction/science education from Pennsylvania State University, and a Ph.D. in theology from the University of Durham.
  10. Alicia Chole (author and conference speaker) – UT Austin (through her master’s)
  11. Earl Creps (church planter, author, educator) – University of Pittsburg for undergrad, Northwestern for Ph.D.
  12. Mark Driscoll (pastor of Mars Hill in Seattle) — Washington State University
  13. Denny Duron (pastor of Shreveport Community Church in LA) – Louisiana Tech
  14. Jonathan Gainsbrugh (evangelist and author) — University of Virginia
  15. Randy Garcia (pastor of Fortress Church in San Antonio, TX) — University of Texas at San Antonio
  16. Paul Goulet (pastor of International Church of Las Vegas) — University of Ottowa
  17. Wayne Grudem (theologian) — Harvard
  18. Stanley Horton

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    (theologian and author) — B.S., University of California, S.T.M. from Harvard

  19. Roger Houtsma (founder of World Outreach Ministries) — UC Berkeley
  20. Tim Johnson (Congressman) – University of Illinois – Champaign/Urbana
  21. Steve Lim taming of the shrew the download (Academic Dean at AGTS), UC Berkeley
  22. Mike McClaflin (Africa Regional Director for Assemblies of God World Missions) — University of Wyoming
  23. Lee McFarland (pastor of Radiant Church in Surprise, AZ) — University of Colorado
  24. Marvin Miller (director of Rayne Project Ministries) — Whitter College
  25. Donnie Moore (evangelist) – University of the Pacific
  26. J. P. Moreland (apologist and scholar) — University of Missouri
  27. Marilyn Musgrave (Congresswoman) — Colorado State University
  28. Rich Nathan – (pastor of Vineyard Community Church of Colombus, OH) – Case Western Reserve University
  29. Sarah Palin — (politician) — University of Idaho
  30. Ray Rachels – (Southern California District Superintendent) – Troy State University
  31. Cecil Robeck (scholar) — San Jose City College (for his AA)
  32. Mark Rutland – (president of Southeastern College) – University of Maryland
  33. Anthony Scoma (pastor of Southwest Family Fellowship) — University of Texas (Austin)
  34. Charlie Self — undergrad and Ph.D. from UC Santa Cruz (break for Graduate Theological Union in the middle)
  35. Sean Smith (evangelist) – University of the Pacific
  36. Zollie Smith

    (Executive Director AG US Missions) – Florida State University

  37. Sam Storms — University of Oklahoma
  38. James Watt (politician) – University of Wyoming

For Grad Work Only

  1. Chris Carter (scholar — APTS) — PhD from Aberdeen University
  2. John Carter (scholar — APTS) — PhD from University of Illinois in educational psychology
  3. Roli dela Cruz (scholar, APTS) — PhD in textual criticism from Birmingham University
  4. Gordon Fee (scholar and author) — Ph.D. from USC
  5. Richard Hammar (AG legal counsel) – Harvard Law
  6. Rich Israel (scholar) — Ph.D. from Claremont
  7. Todd Labute (scholar — APTS) — PhD from Marquette University
  8. Everett Wilson (scholar) — Ph.D. from Stanford University
  9. George O. Wood (General Superintendent of the Assemblies of God) — Law degree from Western State University College of Law in Fullerton, California
  10. Amos Yong (theologian) — M.A. from Portland State and Ph.D. from Boston University

Why compile a list like this?

First, if you’re a student at a secular school don’t assume that you can’t go into vocational ministry. As this list shows, some of the most well-known ministers in the Pentecostal world come from the same place you do. And the trend isn’t abating — when I was in seminary I learned that half of my classmates at AGTS had gone to non-Christian schools for their undergrad just as I had.

Second, if you’re a youth pastor (or a parent) don’t be scared to send your kids with a ministry calling off to secular schools to major in business or physics something. Bible colleges aren’t the only route to ministerial preparation — and for many people they’re not the best route.

Third, don’t feel alone if you’re in ministry and graduated from a secular university. At least in the Assemblies of God it’s pretty easy to feel isolated, because they have all these Bible college alumni reunions at every big minister’s gathering and there’s never a gathering for “went to a pagan school.” You may feel alone, but you’re not even close to alone.

Anyway, there are no doubt dozens more who aren’t coming to mind right now. I welcome contributions to the list — leave any updates in the comment section or email/facebook me. (If you’re reading this on Facebook, by the way, you’re only reading a copy. Click on the link at the top to go to the original where you can leave a comment). When you make a suggestion, please indicate your source (personal conversation, published bio, heard them mention it in a sermon, friend of a friend, etc).

edit 3/20/2008: first update is Mike McClaflin — thanks to Dennis and Jen for this!
edit 3/21/2008: Rich suggested Roger Houtsma along with Gordon Fee and George O Wood (I’m leaving those two off for now because only their doctorates that came from a secular school — trying to decide what to do with that). I’m also leaving off Mark Batterson for now because he started his undergrad at University of Chicago but finished at a Bible college. I also added a third reason for the list.
edit 3/21/2008: Charlie also suggested several Ph.Ds, so I’ve started a second list of those who did grad work at non-Christian schools.
edit 3/28/2008: Brady Boyd, Marvin Miller, JP Moreland, Mark Driscoll, Sam Storms, and Wayne Grudem added
edit 6/18/2008: Frank Cargill, Dennis Cheek, Randy Garcia, Jonathan Gainsbrugh added
edit 7/1/2008: added Anthony Scoma — doh! How did I overlook my bud?
edit 7/9/2008: added Rocky Barra — thanks to David Moore for the pointer
edit 7/24/2008: removed Doug Peterson and added Roli dela Cruz, Chris Carter, Todd Labute, and John Carter per Ekaputra Tupamahu’s suggestions in the comments below. I haven’t tracked down a bio on each person, so their undergrad degrees might also be from secular schools.
edit 8/29/2008: added Sarah Palin, governor of Alaska and VP nominee.

Notes from Faith in the Halls of Power

I read D. Michael Lindsay’s Faith in the Halls of Power: How Evangelicals Joined the American Elite a while ago and have been meaning to post some excerpts from it for a while now. It’s a fascinating sociological study of American evangelical leaders (not just the leaders of American evangelicalism but also leaders in society who are evangelicals). In addition to existing research, Lindsay based his conclusions on interviews with 360 leaders drawn from four categories: political leaders, intellectual leaders, business leaders, and ministry leaders.

Here are some paragraphs that caught my attention.

Page 33:

I found the following quote from German theologian Martin Luther on one political leader’s desk: “The very ablest youth should be reserved and educated not for the office of preaching, but for government, because in preaching the Holy Spirit does it all, whereas in government one must exercise reason in the shadowy realms where ambiguity and uncertainty are the order of the day.”

And this is why we count it a success when our graduates go into the workforce, governmental service, or academia. We do want some graduates to follow us into vocational ministry but not most.

Page 77:

At the same time, evangelicals were establishing campus outreach groups. Some, such as the Princeton Evangelical Fellowship, had been present on elite campuses for a couple of decades. The Crusader Club—later renamed the Ambassadors—began as a group of evangelical students from Princeton’s Class of 1912. Their influence is remarkable. One of its founders, for example, was Samuel Shoemaker, who later helped establish Alcoholics Anonymous. Shoemaker’s twelve-step program for overcoming addiction was formulated in this campus group.

Campus ministry has a disproportionate impact on culture — I’ll have to add this to my list of anecdotes. It’s going to go right up there with the long-term impact of the Holy Club at Oxford watch what we do is secret online .

Page 79:

Another important factor is that evangelical young adults tend to become evangelical adults: They are much less likely than others to abandon their faith. Hence, evangelical children attending selective universities become alumni and donors. This development may be at the crux of the evangelical intellectual renaissance.

He footnotes Hout, Greeley, and Wilde “The Demographic Imperative in Religious Change in the United States”, American Journal of Sociology 107:468–500 (2001) for this data. I’m encouraged by this observation — I’ve intuitively known for a while that if students make it through college with a fervent faith in Christ they’re likely to maintain it for a lifetime. It’s nice to see that research agrees with me. 😉

Page 85:

Evangelicals’ support is geared not only to the Ivy League but also to a variety of selective, nonsectarian institutions. For example, one of the CEOs I spoke to gives scholarship money to his undergraduate institution, Amherst College. The funds are primarily awarded to active student volunteers in such a way that ‘the scholarships have [typically] been given to Christians.’ Several people told that they prefer not to give money to what they call the ‘crappy schools’ that populate the evangelical subculture but instead prefer to contribute funds to ‘serious’ places like Harvard and Yale, while targeting particular scholars or programs that welcome and engage evangelicals.

Very interesting. Very interesting indeed. If anyone wants to establish a Center for Evangelical (or even Pentecostal) Spirituality at Stanford, give me a call. I have some ideas…

Page 90:

This kind of intellectual exploration of Christianity is not uncommon among the leaders I interviewed, especially those who attended secular universities. Typically, these explorations begin with private reflection and individual reading, often books by evangelical authors seeking to offer a defense of Christian convictions. The most popular of these writers is C. S. Lewis, who was an Oxford tutor and Cambridge professor of medieval literature. Lewis, who died in 1963, wrote dozens of scholarly and popular books, but perhaps his most famous is Mere Christianity, a slim volume published in 1952. The book is based on a series of fifteen-minute radio talks he delivered on the BBC in the 1940s. Nearly one in four of the people I interviewed mentioned Lewis’ influence on their own spiritual journey, and many have read his works multiple times. One CEO told me, “I’ve read Mere Christianity six times… I almost have it memorized.”

While these investigations usually begin in private, most of the people I spoke to said a campus group helped solidify their faith. These groups are the backbone of evangelical networks.

It’s good to know that Chi Alpha is a vertebrae in the backbone of the major evangelical networks in America, because sometimes we feel like vestigial organs. I need to get the last sentence of that quote into the hands of every Assemblies of God pastor in my district. 😉

Also, it’s worth noting that most converts read literature before converting (at least, those who go on to positions of influence do). I should give away more books…

Page 91:

Collectively, they [the evangelical campus ministries] reached a sizable number of undergraduates. At Princeton alone, for example, I found approximately four hundred undergraduate students—close to 10 percent of the student body—regularly involved in one or more evangelical groups on campus. And the number of students involved with the Harvard chapter of Campus Crusade has increased fivefold over the last two decades. These findings mirror wider trends within the Ivy League. They still do not reach large segments of the student body (except perhaps at Princeton), but these and other evangelical groups like InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and campus ministries for particular ethnic groups have seen similar groups. Taken together, these point to a significant shift on the campuses of America’s top universities.

Woot!

Pages 140–141

“Being There,” an essay by poet and journalist Steve Turner, has become a manifesto for expanding the evangelical presence in mainstream culture. Turner urges evangelicals to create professional and personal communities in cultural centers so that they can reach general audiences. This is sometimes referred to as a “ministry of presence.” Increasingly evangelicals have recognized the value of “being present” in centers of elite cultural production…. Across the evangelical landscape a “theology of the city” has emerged. Several people I spoke to said they were inspired by a passage in Jeremiah 29 where the prophet admonished the exiled Jews to seek the peace and prosperity of their cities, even though they were in areas populated, and ruled, by Babylonian pagans. I was struck by the number of people—all of whom were working places of elite cultural production—who referred to this passage. Evangelicals living and working in these cosmopolitan centers identify with the exiled Jews, for any of them feel a great deal of tension between the worlds of their faith and their profession. They referred to urban centers as “flashpoints” on the “battle lines” between people of faith and their secular opponents and pointed to missionary activities of the early church that centered along trade routes. These are justifications evangelicals offer for their involvement—not necessarily explanations that they give to outsiders, but ways they legitimate their involvement to fellow believers.

The essay he references is Steve Turner “Being There: A Vision For Christianity and the Arts” Trinity Seminary Review 21 (1999): 25–33 – I can’t find it online, otherwise I would link to it.

Page 165:

As another business leader told me [explaining why he wasn’t a pastor], “There are plenty of Christians working on Sunday morning…. There is no more Christian hour in the country than from eleven to noon on Sunday mornings. But Tuesday afternoon seemed open.”

Page 177–178:

Evangelical business leaders also say faith influences advertising and corporate sponsorships. I interviewed Jockey’s CEO, Debra Waller, in the company’s Manhattan showroom, which was lined with larger-than-life photos of models in Jockey underwear. I told Waller that I had never conducted an interview surrounded by so much human flesh. She replied, “Well, we have intentionally decided to stay away from the more provocative, sexy type of advertising.” When pressed about the extent to which her evangelical faith shapes advertising decisions, Waller, who remains personally involved in approving all of the firm’s advertising, pointed out that all Jockey models wear wedding rings in photo shoots involving both men and women, implying that the couple in the ads is married. She also stipulates, “a man and a woman can’t look like a pretzel…. People hugging each other in this situation would be very believable,” but the ad must not demonstrate anything more “intimate” than that.

Heh. It’s that story that made me want to read the book after I stumbled across it in Andy Crouch’s review

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Pages 10 and 220:

Surprisingly, more than half of all leaders talked about embracing the evangelical approach to faith—“deciding to follow Jesus,” in evangelical parlance—after high school. Evangelicalism’s most prolific pollster, George Barna, has found that “if people do not embrace Jesus Christ as their savior before they reach their teenage years, the chance of their doing so at all is slim.” This suggests that American leaders’ spiritual journeys are noticeably different from those of the general population. Faith is important to them, but they generally embrace it later in life.… a majority of those [evangelical leaders] I interviewed (56 percent) embraced evangelicalism after age seventeen, and over one-quarter were not raised in churchgoing families.

This finding is extremely significant for explaining the strategic importance of college ministry. While most Christians get saved at a young age, those Christians who wind up exerting the most influence on society disproportionately come from those saved in campus ministry (especially at elite universities) or later. The number I hear tossed around is usually 80% — “80% of everyone who gets saved gets saved in children’s or youth ministry.” If that is accurate (and I don’t know what the real statistic is), then someone who converts in college is 5 times as likely to become a significant leader in our culture as someone who converts as a child.

Page 224

…sociologist Sally Gallagher has shown that though evangelicals pay lip service to male headship in the family, few families actually behave that way. Evangelical women join the American workforce at the same rate as women in the general population. And contrary to claims that evangelical belief contributes to domestic violence, churchgoing evangelicals have the lowest rates of domestic violence of any religious group in the country. Evangelical fathers are more active and expressive with their children and more emotionally engaged with their wives. This has led sociologist Brad Wilcox to conclude that if evangelicals maintain a patriarchy, “theirs is a very soft patriarchy.”

That needs to be said more often. Evangelicals get a bum rap that we don’t deserve. He footnotes Sally Gallagher Evangelical Identity and Gendered Family Life 2003 and Brad Wilcox Soft Patriarchs, New Men: How Christianity Shapes Fathers and Husbands 2004

Page 289:

The Protestant and Catholic traditions have long recognized the legitimacy of two forms of religious organization: modalities and sodalities. Anchored by geographical function, a modality is a permanent, localized religious structure that serves a range of constituents. The traditional church parish exemplifies a religious modality, serving young and old alike. By contrast, a sodality focuses on particular religious functions and is not tethered to geography in the same way. Examples include medieval Catholic orders and Protestant missionary agencies. Sodalities serve more specialized functions than modalities. During the Reformation, Luther tried to eradicate sodalities from the church, but by the time of William Carey in the nineteenth century, Protestants had rediscovered the tactical benefits of sodalities, finding them helpful in accomplishing goals that were larger than could be undertaken by a single congregation.

Hey, I’m part of a sodality

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. Who knew? It seems that there’s probably a lot of literature on this that I’ve been completely unaware of that would be germane to the contemporary debate about parachurch organizations.

Pages 297 & 300:

Dye’s examination (2002) of the structure of institutional power in the United States reveals that 54 percent of the nation’s corporate leaders and 42 percent of government leaders today graduated from one of twelve highly selective universities…. The eight Ivy League campuses (Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Dartmouth, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, Princeton, and Yale), the University of Chicago, Duke University, Oxford University, and Stanford University.

He footnotes Thomas R. Dye Who Is Running America? The Bush Restoration. 7th ed. (2002).

Two thoughts:
1) Stanford made the list!
2) Chi Alpha still isn’t touching most of those campuses. Sad.hitman dvd

The Year of the Rat

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Winter quarter is winding down, and so we had our last official function this Friday. One of our students, Andy, made an awesome little treat. Take a cherry, cover it in chocolate, affix a Hershey’s kiss to the non-stem end, add some almond chips for ears, and decorate the face. Voila!

I’m not sure what the proper name for this treat is, but I’m personally calling them “Calorie Vectors.”

They’re cute as a button. Unfortunately, I’ve had to kill five rats in my apartment over the last two weeks, so I took visceral satisfaction in slowly lowering the little chocolate rodents into my mouth and swallowing them like a snake.

Anyway, good luck to all my students with their finals! Enjoy spring break.

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Chi Alpha Coast to Coast

I just read a great article about Chi Alpha nationwide

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. It’s full of encouraging testimonies — including stories from several of my friends.

There’s one story I remember from my undergrad days:

Ministry real estate can be scarce on a secular campus. When Treuil came to Lafayette, Chi Alpha had no facilities.

“I inherited a two-drawer file cabinet,” he says.

Today, the Lafayette chapter owns property estimated at $1 million and completely paid for.

A local businessman paid the rent on a house for about 5 years. A non-Christian group was poised to buy the house in 1993 when the landlord offered to sell the property to Chi Alpha. The catch — Treuil had to raise $90,000 in 90 days.

“We didn’t have the money, but we took a step of faith,” he says.

In 90 days God provided more than $90,000 in cash from individual offerings. Pastors opened their pulpits to Treuil. One man donated a Rolex watch. A woman gave Treuil eel-skin purses to sell. About 600 people contributed.

It was pretty amazing to watch God provide like that — and now the ministry there owns not only the original property, but almost an entire block across the street from campus that they use for ministry. God is doing stuff like that through Chi Alpha ministries on 250 campuses! Read the full article.born divx

Orant

I just learned a cool word: orant

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It means to worship or pray with your hands raised. That’s something I do a lot, but I didn’t know it had a name beyond “raising your hands”.

I don’t expect that I’ll ever have a chance to use this word in casual conversation (and I really don’t think it would be good while leading worship — “I said assume the orant position. Do it now!”), but it’s a cool word to have bouncing around in my head.

Even The Opera?

Even the opera is getting in on the multi-site movement

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If you don’t know what I’m referring to, the multi-site movement pathology dvdrip download is a trend among churches to use technology to meet in multiple locations at once.

And now the opera is doing it too.

So what do opera and the church have in common that make them both ideal for a multi-site experience?

Valentine's Day — Chi Alpha Style

Some of the Chi Alpha fellas made a Valentine’s Day video for our Chi Alpha gals. I thought it came out well: http://youtube.com/watch?v=Bs34q2K91Po download lena baker story the online

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It's Been One Of Those Days

Before starting the workday this morning, I finished online traffic school (you can do that in California) due to a speeding ticket from the end of last year. One of the more profound lessons I learned — and I quote — “do not drive with nails in your tires.” I guess I was speeding because I lacked that knowledge. Good thing I got that cleared up.

After finishing traffic school I headed for the shower. Upon emerging, I discovered that Dana had very nearly broken Xander’s finger by slamming the door on it. His pinky was compressed to about 1/4 of its normal diameter and was a dull gray in color. Even after it returned to its normal size and color, we were still a little worried. Fortunately, he had a scheduled doctor’s appointment and the doctor confirmed that his finger was A‑OK. And then gave him three shots. Poor guy.

On top of all that, Paula was sick.

And I got around to answering a letter from my district asking me to serve on the Parliamentary Committee at District Council. That’s right — the Parliamentary Committee. I am officially that guy. I told them yes. If you’re invited to serve then you’re already that guy

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Good stuff happened, too. For instance, I got to talk with a Ph.D. candidate about faith. She came to the Francis Collins lecture and wanted to follow up with some questions. We had a great conversation. I hope I was helpful to her. She seemed quite touched when we prayed at the end of our time together.

But on the whole, it just felt like one of those days.

It's In The Snake Bag

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and I had an email conversation about a worship team meeting tomorrow. The following is an excerpt.

“Where’s the tamborouine?”
“In the snake bag.”

As I wrote that, I felt like a stereotypical Appalachian Pentecostal. Of COURSE we keep the musical instruments in the snake bag. If our musicians don’t have enough faith to retrieve their instruments, then clearly they’re not worthy.

Alas, the real explanation is a lot more mundane.

The snake is a special type of cable frequently used by bands (such as a worship team). We keep ours in a bag. With our tambourine, since it fits so nicely.

But wouldn’t that be awesome to overhear when you’re visiting a church for the first time?