Chi Alpha @ Stanford

FYI: Our first meet­ing is this Wednes­day night at 8pm (we’ll be meet­ing on the sec­ond floor of Tresid­der Union in the Sequoia Room). The meet­ing should last about an hour and a half.

I’ll be talk­ing about Nur­tur­ing A Vibrant Faith, which will kick off our theme this quar­ter: Pre­scrip­tions for Spir­i­tual Health.

Feel free to bring your room­mate, your pal, or your arch­en­emy bent on world domination!

We had fun at our “I Sur­vived My First Day of Classes At Stan­ford” Shindig! Since I only gave every­one about 20 hours of notice, I was very pleased with the turnout.

I was also extremely pleased at the diver­sity of the group: how­ever you slice it we had rep­re­sen­ta­tion! This is one of our pas­sions: to see a com­mu­nity on cam­pus that mir­rors the pop­u­la­tion of heaven.

In case you’ve not thought about the diver­sity of heaven before, recall the words of John: After this I looked and there before me was a great mul­ti­tude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, peo­ple and lan­guage, stand­ing before the throne and in front of the Lamb. They were wear­ing white robes and were hold­ing palm branches in their hands. Rev­e­la­tion 7.9, NIV

Just a reminder that we’ll be hav­ing our first “real” meet­ing next Wednes­day night on the sec­ond floor of Tresid­der Union. We should know the room tomorrow!

Wow–tomorrow you find out why you really came to Stan­ford: for the classes!

In honor of this momen­tous (and poten­tially trau­matic) event, you’re
invited to the “I Sur­vived My First Day of Classes At Stan­ford”
Shindig Wednes­day night at 8pm. This is going to be an infor­mal
time to hang, meet a few folk who also intend to fol­low Jesus, and swap
war sto­ries about the size of your read­ing list this quar­ter. Oh yeah,
we’re also dead-set on hav­ing copi­ous fun!

We’ll be meet­ing on the sec­ond floor of Tresid­der Union
on top of that spi­ral stair­case on the side of the build­ing that faces
White Plaza. Show up any­time after 8pm! If you feel uncom­fort­able walk­ing
on cam­pus after sun­down, don’t for­get about the free SURE
escort ser­vice.

FYI: Chi Alpha’s first wor­ship & teach­ing type meet­ing of
the year will be next Wednes­day night (Octo­ber 2nd) at 8pm on
the sec­ond floor of Tresid­der Union (prob­a­bly). We’ll announce the exact
room next week (we’re hav­ing some sched­ul­ing issues–please bear with
us).

When Do We Meet?
Our meet­ings run from 8:00 to 9:30 p.m. Wednes­day nights dur­ing the Fall, Win­ter, and Spring quar­ters when­ever school is in ses­sion (in other words, don’t come look­ing for us over Christ­mas break).

It’s easy to remem­ber: W8: Wednes­day at 8. So don’t W8–mark your cal­en­dar now!

Where Do We Meet?
We meet in Room 300–300 (inter­ac­tive map).

If you hap­pen to live off-campus, we rec­om­mend that you park at the Stu­dent Union or in the Oval. Park­ing is free in pay spots after 4 p.m., and you can also park in zones labeled A, C, and Z after 4 p.m.

What Will Hap­pen?
Here’s a typ­i­cal meeting:

• Begin with multimedia-driven con­tem­pla­tion about God and His char­ac­ter, includ­ing singing songs to and about God.
• Segue to a teach­ing based on the Bible (you can lis­ten to our past mes­sages to get a feel for what this is like)
• Ques­tion and answer time
• Pray for people’s needs
• Hang out for a while eat­ing snacks and swap­ping stories

Almost every prayer request I’ve received so far men­tions anx­i­ety about room­mates, so I thought I should offer some thoughts on the subject.

I’ve had over thirty room­mates in my edu­ca­tional career. They’ve ranged from sem­i­nary stu­dents to drug deal­ers, and I even woke up one morn­ing to find an unknown neo-nazi sleep­ing in my roommate’s bed!

In other words, I speak with expe­ri­ence when it comes to room­mates, and the best piece of advice I can give you is this: the way to have a great room­mate is to be a great roommate.

1. For­bear­ance should be your watch­word. If you don’t know what it means, look it up!
2. Be real­is­tic. You’re not guar­an­teed to become best friends with your room­mate. In fact, that’s kind of rare. Usu­ally you get a good friend who’s just on the bor­der of your inner cir­cle, and some­times you sim­ply live in the same room and respect one another. Just accept what­ever comes in that department.
3. Talk frankly about your expec­ta­tions. If you don’t want your room­mate ever touch­ing your stuff, tell them! Be sure to phrase it in a dis­arm­ing way, “Lis­ten, I’m just a lit­tle funny about my stuff. Please don’t touch any of it with­out ask­ing me first.” Also, don’t make that the first thing you say to them. They’re just as ner­vous as you are, and you don’t want to be the roo­mate they had night­mares about!
4. Never ignore con­flict. If you fail to address irri­ta­tion it grows to frus­tra­tion, then to anger, and then to full-blown ani­mos­ity and resent­ment. A year is a long time to seep in bitterness–don’t let it hap­pen to you.
5. Be sure to remem­ber these words of advice from God: If you shout a pleas­ant greet­ing to your neigh­bor too early in the morn­ing, it will be counted as a curse! (Proverbs 27:14, NLT) Be sure to respect your roommate’s sleep time. Remember–that one’s from God Himself!
6. And the most rel­e­vant piece of coun­sel in the whole Bible is the Golden Rule: Do for oth­ers what you would like them to do for you. (Matthew 7.12, NLT) Note that this is a com­mand to engage in good behav­ior, not sim­ply to avoid neg­a­tive stuff. Be proac­tive in treat­ing your room­mate right!

Fol­low the above advice, and you’ll do just fine.

But Sup­pose My Room­mate Isn’t a Chris­t­ian?
What a won­der­ful chance to emu­late Jesus; after all, Christ was known as a friend of sin­ners! How­ever, if you do have a room­mate who isn’t serv­ing Jesus be sure to seek out a net­work of peers who will bol­ster your faith.

In fact, let me take a moment to strongly encour­age you to find a Chris­t­ian group on cam­pus that you click with. I’d be thrilled if you chose Chi Alpha, but my prime con­cern is that you find some­place that will nur­ture your faith. Make find­ing a Chris­t­ian com­mu­nity a top pri­or­ity: Satan feeds off strays!

P.S. If you found this help­ful, you might also want to check out Stan­ford sopho­more Andrew Wright’s advice to fresh­men.

Hi–my name is Andrew Wright. As this is my first blog post­ing, I should tell you a lit­tle bit about myself. I’m a sopho­more major­ing in Inter­na­tional Rela­tions, and this year (2002) I’ll be a peer aca­d­e­mic advi­sor for eight lucky fresh­men in Rinconada!

See­ing that fresh­men will be arriv­ing on Thurs­day, I thought it appro­pri­ate that I throw out some tips for new students.

1) You won’t use half of what you bring! Most of those books you thought you’d bring to look smarter, will only col­lect dust. So will your 5 extra bath tow­els, 3 heavy jack­ets, and pos­si­bly even your stereo sys­tem (should you decide to pirate music on your com­puter). School sup­plies can be bought at fair prices from the book­store. Not only do you have stu­dent dis­count, fresh­men are enti­tled to an even larger dis­count on cer­tain impor­tant items. Not only are they cheap, but that have “Stan­ford” writ­ten all over them (literally)!

2) Present your­self as you truly are! Over-exuberance or first-week acts of folly can quickly lead to a rep­u­ta­tion or expec­ta­tions that you may find hard to live up to. Remem­ber, you have to live with your dor­m­mates for an entire year, so be your­self and you’ll have noth­ing to regret.

3) The pat­terns you set now will deter­mine who you become. Don’t neglect your devo­tional life because the more time that goes by, the eas­ier it will be for you to shrug it off. As Glen once said, “We’re defined by our habits, so choose yours carefully.”

4) Search thor­oughly, but plug into a Chris­t­ian group quickly. Imme­di­ately you’re going to be bom­barded with tons of dif­fer­ent philoso­phies, and if you don’t have a group to help you explore and rein­force your own you’ll be one con­fused fresh­man! Also, friend­ships and bonds within the group tend to form quickly. And the longer you wait to join a group, the greater the chance you’ll feel awk­ward when you visit the group.

If you have any ques­tions or con­trary opin­ions, just make a com­ment below.

Wow–the school year is upon us. I hope you’ve started packing!

I wanted to let you know that cam­pus min­istries aren’t allowed to spon­sor
any events for new stu­dents dur­ing ori­en­ta­tion week, so we won’t have
any wor­ship ser­vices, prayer meet­ings, or out­reach times your first few
days on campus–we’ll let you know about those when they draw closer!

Our min­istry to you dur­ing this first week will be heart­felt prayer.
We’ve been pray­ing for you daily since we first learned your
name, but our prayers have been some­what generic. We’d like to change
that.

If you have any spe­cific prayer needs, just email me
and let me know what they are. Be sure to tell me if you don’t
want me to share your prayer requests with our prayer team!

This is basi­cally a tweaked, sug­ar­coated ver­sion of our pre­vi­ous arti­cle Famous Liv­ing Sci­en­tists Who Are Chris­tians. That arti­cle lists many more sci­en­tists and pro­vides links to source documentation.

Are Chris­tians Stu­pid?
Chris Carter (the cre­ator of the X-Files) once met with Penn & Teller (the funny magi­cians). Carter knew that Penn & Teller are very out­spo­ken athe­ists, so he asked them if any sci­en­tists believed in God.

They answered, �None of the impor­tant ones.�

That com­ment reflects a wide­spread assump­tion that smart peo­ple don�t believe in God, and they most cer­tainly don�t wor­ship Jesus as God.

In fact, maybe you�re wor­ried that they’re right�that once you come to Stan­ford you�ll learn some deep, dark secret that will tear your faith to shreds. Maybe you�re even wor­ried that you�ll be one of the only Chris­tians here.

There Are Lots of Smart Chris­tians
First, let me reas­sure you that you won�t be the only Chris­t­ian at Stan­ford this year. Some­where around 10% of the stu­dent body is involved in a Chris­t­ian cam­pus min­istry on a weekly basis.

So relax�you�re not alone. Many of your peers believe.

More­over, some of the great­est schol­ars in the world are devoted fol­low­ers of Jesus Christ. Whether you�re major­ing in the hard sci­ences, the social sci­ences, human­i­ties, or the arts there are believ­ers at the intel­lec­tual fore­front of your field.

Con­se­quently, I�d like to directly address the claim made by Penn & Teller that none of the �impor­tant� sci­en­tists believe in God.

Lots Of Impor­tant Sci­en­tists Believe In God
The eas­i­est way to rebut such a claim is to pro­duce a ver­i­fi­able list of impor­tant sci­en­tists will­ing to pub­licly affirm their belief in God, so we’ve done just that!

Here are some highlights:

Dr. Charles Towns is a Nobel lau­re­ate, invented the laser, and almost won a sec­ond Nobel for some cos­mo­log­i­cal work.

Dr. Henry Schae­fer is a Nobel nom­i­nee and the third-most quoted chemist in the world.

Dr. Allan Sandage is con­sid­ered to the world�s great­est obser­va­tional cos­mol­o­gist. The list of his awards would require a ridicu­lous amount of space.

Dr. Fran­cis Collins is the direc­tor of the Human Genome Project, the attempt to iden­tify every gene in human DNA. 

These sound like pretty impor­tant sci­en­tists to me�what do you think?

It makes sense that these out­stand­ing sci­en­tists are believ­ers. Increas­ing our knowl­edge about the world should increase our under­stand­ing of God. As Paul says in Romans 1:20, �since the cre­ation of the world God’s invis­i­ble qualities–his eter­nal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being under­stood from what has been made��

May your time at Stan­ford lead you to a deeper knowl­edge of God as you gain a deeper knowl­edge of this world He has made!