Chi Alpha @ Stanford

I received this email from a friend today: I wanted to let you know about a prayer walk through the cam­pus we are doing tomor­row at 1:00 start­ing at the gates of the Uni­ver­sity at Palm Drive. We will be meet­ing at the Cal­Trans park­ing lot at Alma and Uni­ver­sity. We have stu­dents, fac­ulty and staff from both the uni­ver­sity and hos­pi­tal com­ing and the leader of the Evan­gel­i­cal Youth move­ment in Argentina will be com­ing along with Ray Llovio who is on staff with Har­vest Evangelism.

Sounds good–so Sat­ur­day, March 1st at 1pm be at the gates of the university!

God made each of us unique, and He there­fore expects each of us to make a unique
con­tri­bu­tion in His service. 

Con­sider: Xvxn though my typxwritxr is an old modxl,
it works quitx wxll xxcxpt for onx kxy. Xvxn though thxrx arx 46 kxys that work
wxll xnough, just onx not work­ing makxs all thx dif­fxrxncx in lxgi­bil­ity, cor­rx­ct­nxss,
and xffx­ctivxnxss. Somx­timxs it sxxms that our group is somxwhat likx my typxwritxr,
not all thx kxys func­tion propxrly. You think, “I am only onx pxr­son. Thxy
don’t nxxd mx. I can slack and it won’t makx much dif­fxrxncx.” But, you
sxx, Christ has madx us dif­fxrxntly. Xach of us is uniqux, and xach of us is
rxquirxd. It is writ­txn, “God has arrangxd thx parts in thx Body, xvxry
onx of thxm, just as Hx wan­txd thxm to bx.” And also, “Thx wholx body,
joinxd and hxld togx­thxr by xvxry sup­port­ing lig­amxnt, grows and builds itsxlf
up in lovx as xach part doxs its work.” So thx nxxt timx you think you
arx only onx pxr­son and that your xffort is not nxxdxd, rxmxm­bxr my old typxwritxr
and say to yoursxlf, “I am a kxy pxr­son madx by God for a pur­posx and am
nxxdxd vxry much.”

This week we’ll talk about exactly how “You Were Shaped To Serve
God” and how we all work together to do God’s will.

Please join us this Tues­day from 8:00–9:30 p.m. in room
300–300. It’s located between Memo­r­ial Church and the Clock Tower.

Just a reminder that William Lane Craig will be speak­ing tomor­row night (Sat­ur­day Feb 22) on “The His­toric­ity of the Res­ur­rec­tion.” (7pm in TC Sequoia Lec­ture Hall 200).

He spoke tonight at Berke­ley on “The Exis­tence of God” and packed Wheeler Audi­to­rium out–by my esti­mate at least 1,500 stu­dents showed up for a facil­ity that could acco­mo­date around 750.

The moral: be sure to arrive early!

I urge you to invite any friends who are wrestling with mak­ing or main­tain­ing a com­mit­ment to Jesus–His res­ur­rec­tion is the crux of the mat­ter, and Dr. Craig is one of the most effec­tive explain­ers of the Chris­t­ian faith on the planet.

From his bio: Dr. William Lane Craig is Research Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Tal­bot School of The­ol­ogy, Biola Uni­ver­sity in La Mirada, CA. With two doc­tor­ates — one in phi­los­o­phy under the emi­nent philoso­pher of reli­gion John Hick and one in the­ol­ogy under arguably the great­est liv­ing Ger­man the­olo­gian Wolfhart Pan­nen­berg — Dr. Craig is widely con­sid­ered to be a lead­ing fig­ure in the phi­los­o­phy of reli­gion and the pre­mier evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian apol­o­gist. He has par­tic­i­pated in dozens of debates on the exis­tence of God, the foun­da­tions of moral­ity, and the con­tentious claim that sal­va­tion is in Christ alone. Fur­ther­more, Dr. Craig has over 175 pub­li­ca­tions appear­ing in the best aca­d­e­mic and top pop­u­lar jour­nals and presses. His diverse research inter­ests include the phi­los­o­phy of reli­gion, the phi­los­o­phy of time, and New Tes­ta­ment stud­ies. He is the cur­rent pres­i­dent of the Evan­gel­i­cal Philo­soph­i­cal Soci­ety and the Phi­los­o­phy of Time Society.

Chi Alpha is one of many Chris­t­ian orga­ni­za­tions on cam­pus co-sponsoring this event: the full list is Asian Bap­tist Stu­dent Koinonia, Car­di­nal Life, Cam­pus Cru­sade, Chi­nese Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship, Chi Alpha, Fel­low­ship in Christ, Har­vest, Inter­Var­sity, IVGrad, ReJOYce, and United In Christ.

Pei Ling won our “find the typo in the Spring Retreat brochure” con­test, and she gets to go for free!

For the rest of you, Spring Retreat will cost $71.

I’ll make a more exten­sive post­ing soon, but here’s the essen­tial info.

When: April 11–13
Where: Jen­ness Park (reg­is­tra­tion includes all that wall climb­ing stuff)
Who: Chi Alphans from around Nor Cal and Nevada
What: chal­l­leng­ing preach­ing, exu­ber­ant wor­ship, and mucho fun!

Don’t for­get the Power Evan­ge­lism sem­i­nar this weekend:

A sem­i­nar by Dr. Gary Greig & Cather­ine Greig
Sat­ur­day, Feb 15
Ricker Din­ing Hall
sem­i­nar begins at 7pm

I’ve cre­ated a sim­ple tool to help you invite your friends to Chi Alpha.
It’s a small Flash file (<100k) you can email to your friends.

Right click on this link to down­load it: check_out_xa.swf

1) Email it to one per­son at a time–if you send it to every­one you know
they’ll assume it’s junk mail (and they’ll be right).

2) Talk to the per­son about Chi Alpha first. Some­thing like this is much
bet­ter as a reminder than as an ini­tial exposure.

3) Use some­thing like this for the body of the mes­sage (but be sure to put it in your own words):

Hey–how’s it going? Keep­ing on top of all your classes?

Come as my guest this Tues­day at 8–it would be the high­light of my week!

Please give me some feedback–I want to make this use­ful for you! I
tried to make it cool yet keep it small, so there’s no jazzy ani­ma­tion or
any­thing. If you think it should be a lit­tle larger and have some whiz-bang
stuff, let me know. If it’s already too big, let me know. What­ever you
think–let me know!

Evo­lu­tion vs. Athe­ism: The Evo­lu­tion­ary Argu­ment Against Naturalism

Annen­berg Audi­to­rium
Thurs­day, Feb 13
Lec­ture begins at 7:30pm
Q & A ses­sion to follow

A lec­ture given by Dr. Alvin Planti­nga, John A. O’Brien Pro­fes­sor of Phi­los­o­phy at Notre Dame.

Usu­ally thought to be wed­ded and even mutually-entailing the­ses, Dr. Planti­nga argues that evo­lu­tion and nat­u­ral­ism exhibit quite the oppo­site relationship.

Dr. Planti­nga is per­haps best known for his work in the field of epis­te­mol­ogy, and recent pub­li­ca­tions include a tril­ogy on the sub­ject, con­sist­ing in War­rant: the Cur­rent Debate, War­rant and Proper Func­tion, and War­ranted Chris­t­ian Belief.

The lec­ture is spon­sored jointly by Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ and Cor­ner­stone Min­istries.

I STRONGLY encour­age you to attend if pos­si­ble. Alvin Planti­nga is one of my per­sonal heroes, and I can­not speak highly enough of his con­tri­bu­tions to Chris­t­ian phi­los­o­phy and the Body of Christ as a whole. Come and bring a friend!

Today there will be a twenty minute prayer vigil in mem­ory of the Colum­bia astro­nauts at Stan­ford Memo­r­ial Church at noon (spon­sored by the Office for Reli­gious Life).