Chi Alpha @ Stanford

I just ran across Antithe­sis, a site that pur­ports to be “a voice from the emerg­ing Chris­t­ian counterculture.”

That’s over­stat­ing the case a bit: there is a real (evan­gel­i­cal) Chris­t­ian coun­ter­cul­ture and these guys ain’t it.

Still, their site is worth­while. Their basic premise is that North Amer­i­can Chris­tian­ity has so iden­ti­fied with our soci­ety that we can­not stand against it, for that would be to destroy our­selves. There­fore, they have decided to be a voice for true ref­or­ma­tion and a call to thought­ful reflec­tion on what it means to be a devoted appren­tice of Jesus.

This site is com­ing from a Reformed tra­di­tion (def­i­n­i­tion: that sort of means they per­ceive them­selves to be fol­low­ing in the foot­steps of John Calvin). The rea­son I men­tion that is that I don’t agree with all their the­ol­ogy (and actu­ally have some seri­ous points of con­tention with them), but I still think their fam­ily of sites is worth check­ing out.

There are zil­lions of Chris­t­ian books out there, and many of them are worth­while reads. There are few, how­ever, that are truly out­stand­ing. Here are some that really need to appear on your read­ing list!

Grow­ing Spir­i­tu­ally:
1) The Spirit of the Dis­ci­plines, by Dal­las Willard (author, Ama­zon)
2) Prayer, by Richard Fos­ter (Ama­zon)
3) Life Together, by Diet­rich Bon­ho­ef­fer (Ama­zon)

Under­stand­ing the Bible:
1) The Chal­lenge of Jesus, by N.T. Wright (pub­lisher, Ama­zon)
2) Slaves, Women, and Homo­sex­u­als, by William Webb (pub­lisher, Ama­zon)
3) Sur­prised By The Power of the Spirit, by Jack Deere (author, Ama­zon)

Rea­son­able Answers to Hon­est Ques­tions
1) Mere Chris­tian­ity, by C. S. Lewis (author, Ama­zon)
2) Long Jour­ney Home, by Os Guin­ness (Ama­zon)

Chi Alpha (XA) is a com­mu­nity of stu­dents earnestly fol­low­ing Jesus. Our gath­er­ings are infor­mal, charged with music, given to humor and deal with every­thing from rela­tion­ships to the nature of truth. We are affil­i­ated with Chi Alpha Cam­pus Min­istries, which is spon­sored by the Assem­blies of God, and we wel­come stu­dents from all eth­nic­i­ties, nation­al­i­ties, and reli­gious heritages.

If you’re still con­fused, try this: we’re like a Chris­t­ian club at Stan­ford who meets once a week to learn more about fol­low­ing Jesus.

There’s a higher-resolution ver­sion avail­able in Win­dows Media for­mat: left-click to play, right click to down­load, 7 MB.

For more infor­ma­tion on Chi Alpha, you might also want to check out these links:

• What Are The Meet­ings Like?
• What Does Chi Alpha Believe?
• What’s Impor­tant to Chi Alpha?
• What Does The Name Chi Alpha Mean?

We exist to pro­vide a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment for fol­low­ing Jesus. That means that we try to help one another emu­late Jesus.

Based on a study of the Bible, we believe that there are five key things we should do cor­po­rately to facil­i­ate our indi­vid­ual spir­i­tual growth:
* We ask God to trans­form us and the cam­pus, and to mirac­u­lously inter­vene on our behalf. We call this prayer.
* We talk about what the Bible teaches and how it applies to our lives, and we seek to under­stand our aca­d­e­mic stud­ies and our faith in a com­ple­men­tary way. We call this dis­ci­ple­ship.
* We hang out together and help each other. We call this fel­low­ship.
* We tell God thanks and express our admi­ra­tion for who He is and what He has done. We call this wor­ship.
* We help other peo­ple under­stand God’s love. We call this wit­ness.

Our beliefs can be sum­ma­rized simply:

1) God is real.
2) God has revealed Him­self in Jesus.
3) The Bible is God’s word.
4) God still does stuff.
5) God ought to be the most impor­tant thing in every person’s life.

These beliefs can be described as ortho­dox, evan­gel­i­cal, and Pen­te­costal.

By ortho­dox, we mean that we affirm the his­toric dec­la­ra­tions of the Chris­t­ian faith: specif­i­cally the Apos­tles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed.

By evan­gel­i­cal, we mean that we believe the Bible is trust­wor­thy and we believe that faith requires per­sonal com­mit­ment — no one is born a Chris­t­ian. There’s a Wikipedia arti­cle that explains the nuances.

By Pen­te­costal, we mean that we believe that the min­istry of the Holy Spirit includes mir­a­cles, and this is an impor­tant part of the life of the church. We’re spon­sored by the Assem­blies of God, the world’s largest Pen­te­costal denom­i­na­tion (although we wel­come stu­dents from all back­grounds). Our for­mal dec­la­ra­tion of beliefs is called the Assem­blies of God State­ment of Fun­da­men­tal Truths.

This is a plain-English ver­sion of them:
1. WE BELIEVE… the Bible is God’s mes­sage to us.
SO WE SEEK… to under­stand and obey its truth.

2. WE BELIEVE… there is one God who is three per­sons.
SO WE YEARN… to know Him in all of His com­plex­ity and beauty.

3. WE BELIEVE… Jesus is fully God and fully human.
SO WE REJOICE… that Christ can be a bridge between us and God.

4. WE BELIEVE… peo­ple, through­out his­tory, have sinned against God.
SO WE ARE… deeply aware that we too are marked by will­ful disobedience.

5. WE BELIEVE… God extends for­give­ness to us through Christ.
SO WE REPENT.… and rejoice in our forgiveness.

6. WE BELIEVE… God offers free­dom from sin’s grasp.
SO WE LIVE… lives that are pleas­ing to God.

7. WE BELIEVE… fol­low­ers of Jesus must be empow­ered by the Holy Spirit.
SO WE EXPECT… super­nat­ural power in our daily lives.

8. WE BELIEVE… that God can heal both the body and the heart.
SO WE PRAY… with faith and hope.

9. WE BELIEVE… the mark of sur­ren­der to the Holy Spirit is speak­ing in tongues.
SO WE PRAY… that God would grant us this super­nat­ural gift.

10. WE BELIEVE… in the Church.
SO WE LIVE… in this com­mu­nity of faith, invit­ing oth­ers to join us.

11. WE BELIEVE… God gives lead­ers as gifts to His Church.
SO WE SERVE… those whom the Lord entrusts to us.

12. WE BELIEVE… God com­mands his fol­low­ers to cel­e­brate com­mu­nion and bap­tism.
SO WE PRACTICE… these sym­bolic actions, reflect­ing on their significance.

13. WE BELIEVE… Jesus will return to claim His Church.
SO WE LIVE… in expectancy of his coming.

14. WE BELIEVE… Christ will one day be seen clearly as King on earth.
SO WE LIVE… as cit­i­zens of His King­dom now.

15. WE BELIEVE… God is the ulti­mate Judge.
SO WE LIVE… know­ing that our choices will echo through eternity.

16. WE BELIEVE… we will live with God for­ever.
SO WE LIVE… with hope regard­less of our circumstances.

Our name was inspired by 2 Corinthi­ans 5:20, “We are there­fore Christ’s ambas­sadors, as though God were mak­ing His appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf, be rec­on­ciled to God.”

Tak­ing the con­cept of Christ’s Ambas­sadors, our founders chose to make our name sound sim­i­lar to the names of honor soci­eties pop­u­lar at the time we were estab­lished (1953). Hence, Christ’s Ambas­sadors was ren­dered as Chi Alpha (XA).

Given that we have Greek ini­tials for a New Tes­ta­ment phrase, you might assume that our ini­tials actu­ally stood for the Greek phrase in question.

Oddly enough, you would be wrong.

If you look at the Greek words in 2 Corinthi­ans 5:20 (alter­nate site), you will notice the word that is trans­lated as ambas­sadors is pres­beuo. Being bright, you will instantly notice that this word doesn’t begin with an alpha (a).

For­tu­nately, some resource­ful Greek-speaker decided XA could also stand for the Greek phrase Chris­tou Apos­toloi, which means Christ’s Mes­sen­gers or Christ’s Sent Ones, which is really pretty sim­i­lar to the idea of Christ’s Ambas­sadors anyway…

And it was just so that Chi Alpha got its name…