Chi Alpha @ Stanford

This quar­ter in Chi Alpha, our theme will be Con­struc­tion Zone: Putting the Pieces Together. Jesus told Peter: “I will build my Church, and the gates of Hell will not pre­vail against it.” God is at work build­ing a Church (note the cap­i­tal C) of which Chi Alpha is a part. The empha­sis will be on how God uses the Church to meet our deep­est needs.

Please note that both our meet­ing time and place have changed: we’re now meet­ing on Tues­day nights from 8pm to 9:30pm in room 300–300 (between Memo­r­ial Church and the Clock Tower).

Here’s an overview of what we’ll be talk­ing about and when (sub­ject to change):

• How God Meets Our Deep­est Needs (Jan 7)
• We Were Planned for God’s Plea­sure (Jan 14)
• Wor­ship: A Stair­way to Heaven (Jan 21)
• We Were Formed For God’s Fam­ily (Jan 28)
• Chi Alpha: A Place You Can Belong (Feb 5)
• We Were Cre­ated To Become Like Christ (Feb 12)
• Spir­i­tual Growth Is A Team Sport (Feb 19)
• We Were Made For A Mis­sion (Feb 26)
• Peer-to-Peer Faith Shar­ing (Mar 4)
• Body By God: How Do We Mea­sure Up? (Mar 11)

This is a very impor­tant date: the eleventy-first birth­day of J. R. R. Tolkien (bio).

As fans are no doubt aware, the novels begin with the sentence: "When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be cel­e­brat­ing his eleventy-first birth­day with a party of spe­cial magnificence, there was much talk and excite­ment in Hobbiton.”

In honor of this momen­tous occa­sion, we’re going to have a party fea­tur­ing a game of pin the ring on the hob­bit, snack foods men­tioned in the works of Tolkien, and the time-honored toast, “The Pro­fes­sor.” We’ll also show the extended DVD ver­sion of LOTR: The Fel­low­ship of the Ring (but you don’t need to stay for that). There will be much more, but I hope that whets your appetite to come!

Come to our place (direc­tions) at 7pm tonight. The toast will be at 9pm (to coin­cide with the world­wide toast­ing of Tolkien by other fans).

We will we will have a small hand­out high­light­ing Tolkien’s moti­va­tion for writ­ing fan­tasy nov­els, but this be very low-key: there will be no gospel pre­sen­ta­tion or invi­ta­tion to receive Christ. This is just an oppor­tu­nity for us to have fun together and cel­e­brate the good­ness of life.