Chi Alpha @ Stanford

We (Paula and Glen) are out of town this week, and change is in the air!

This week’s Chi Alpha will start slightly earlier than usual because we are trying out a new schedule that includes half an hour of fellowship with one another. The location will remain the same at Bldg 300-300.

Date: 22 April 2003, Tuesday
Time: 7:30pm to 9:30pm
Location: Room 300-300
Speaker: Steve Smallwood

Steve pastored Paula and Glen when they lived in Missouri, and now he’s in charge of student spiritual development at Bethany Bible College (near Santa Cruz). Steve is an incredibly authentic guy who possesses much wisdom–I think you’ll really like him.

I’ll update the rest of the website to reflect the new time as soon as I can. I have sporadic net access while I’m here in Missouri.

We just got back from Spring Retreat–it was awesome!

The photos we took are now online.

We also have an MP3 of Scott’s closing session. Owing to some technical challenges we weren’t able to get the first two sessions at all, and the third is of extremely poor quality. The fourth one (this one) came out pretty well, though.

In closing, here’s one testimony of what God did: Shaowei had been tormented by vivid nightmares. At retreat, he mentioned it to his friends over supper and they all told him that he should ask the retreat speaker, Scott, to pray that the nightmares would cease.

So Shaowei and his friends went to the worship session, and Scott preached about the power of the Holy Spirit. At the end of his sermon he invited people forward to be prayed for. As he was inviting people up, Scott paused and told the audience that God had informed him that someone in the room was plagued by nightmares and that the person should come forward to receive prayer (in the Bible, this is referred to as a ‘word/utterance/message of knowledge’ and is mentioned in 1 Corinthians 12:8 and demonstrated in passages such as Acts 9:10-19).

Needless to say, Shaowei’s eyes were about to pop out of his head! In his words, “I walked towards the pastor, ready to tell him what I need prayers for, but when I approached him I started crying for no reason, and I broke down before him. He laid hands on me, and I lost control of myself. I saw the images of all the nightmares I ever had flash before me… I felt fear from the nightmares come, and then dissolve away one by one as the Lord told me, ‘Be peaceful, be healed.’ Last night, I had one of the most peaceful sleeps in my life. I am deeply indebted to the Lord for his deliverance.”

Praise God!

Note to guests: these are the notes from a message I shared at one of our Chi Alpha meetings. My goal in this message was not to establish Christianity as true, but rather to demonstrate that God’s existence is a reasonable belief. Most everything I said applies to any theist, whether Christian, Muslim, or Deist.

But Smart People Don�t Believe in God!
There’s a widespread assumption that faith isn’t a viable option for smart and well-educated people: [Carl] Sagan was fascinated by the phenomenon that educated adults, with the wonders of science manifest all around them, could cling to beliefs based on the unverifiable testimony of observers dead for 2000 years. “You’re so smart, why do you believe in God?” he once exclaimed to [cleric Joan Brown] Campbell. Newsweek, 3/31/1997

Likewise, Anne Lamott in her book Traveling Mercies notes that “None of the adults in our circle believed. Believing meant that you were stupid. Ignorant people believed, uncouth people believed, and we were heavily couth.”

Is it true that smart, well-educated people don’t believe in God? Not at all!
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I’ve just added a photo gallery. I’m still refining it, but you can see a few photos here. Most of them are in the ‘Featured’ folder (which is where the random images on every page get pulled from).

UPDATE: I’ve also changed the Flash navbar. If your browser has it cached it will look abnormally large until your browser re-downloads it (but after that I think you’ll be very pleasantly surprised).

These are a condensed version of the notes from Glen’s Chi Alpha message on 4/1/2003.

Since war is a such a regular part of human experience, it’s crucial that we reflect on war and answer two urgent questions about it:
* What should we think about war?
* What should do in a time of war?

First, what should we think?

You can divide people into four camps:
1. Pragmatists: We gotta do what we gotta do. Us or them. No rules in love or war.
2. Principalists: War is always regrettable but not always evil. It must be waged according to certain rules.
3. Pacifists: War is always evil, killing is tantamount to murder, so to die helpless is preferable to taking up arms in defense of one’s life, family, country, or values.
4. Passivists: Not my problem. I’m not a soldier nor a governmental leader. I’m sorry that people are dying, but it’s no skin off my nose.

I would suggest that for a Christian, two of these perspectives aren’t even an option. We can’t be pragmatic or passive about these issues. No, our choices are between principled war or total pacifism. Which we choose depends on our understanding of the Biblical teachings.
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The Call is coming to San Francisco this Saturday from 7am to 7pm.

Admission is free, but parking will cost $10 a car. The organizers strongly encourage you to arrive early and to take public transportation–many people will be turned away due to lack of space and of parking.

Please be aware that there will be no food available at the Call. Water will be for sale, but there is a voluntary fast for from 7am to 7pm. Bring food if you need it.