Chi Alpha @ Stanford

Hi, my name is Shaowei, and I am an international student from Singapore. Knowing the Lord has been the best thing that has ever happened in my whole life. My encounter with the Lord has been one that is full of excitement and joy, but it has not been an easy one.

It began when I gave my life over to Christ in July 2000. As a young Christian, I was often unsure of my faith, but I always had spiritual brothers and sisters encouraging me and giving me advice in my walk with Him. When I first came to Stanford in September 2002, I was worried because I heard rumors about how college life can be a stumbling block to one’s spiritual life, because of the heavy workload and because of the intellectualism that shakes one’s faith.

So I sought out several Christian fellowship groups, and the one that caught my attention was Chi Alpha. On our first day, the students and staff were extremely friendly to the newcomers. We had a wonderful time of worship, and Glen, the pastor, gave a very hilarious talk (I still remember he had his doctor’s gear on) that was also very deep and practical to college life. I fell in love with Chi Alpha because I saw how all the students truly loved God and truly loved each other.

Since then, all of us at Chi Alpha have been through thick and thin together. We shared our feelings, prayed for one another, lead worship, ate and had fun together, went for exciting retreats, and shared our faith with others. One way in which Chi Alpha really changed my life was when one of the pastors prayed for me at the Spring Retreat and I was delivered from the frequent nightmares which I had since I was five. Since then, I was able to sleep well and peacefully! Most importantly, Chi Alpha has taught me, both directly and indirectly, how much the Lord loves me, and how to love the Lord.

College life may be busy or intellectually intimidating, but we need to continue to put our trust and hope in the Lord so that He can show us how to live it purposefully. For Jesus said, “I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15:5). I pray that you will find the fellowship group that the Lord has called you to soon. Take care and God Bless : )

I just upgraded the photo gallery software–the new package is awesome!

One of the neatest features is that I can create user accounts for others to upload their digital snaps. If you want an account so you can upload your Stanford Chi Alpha photos, let me know!

Check the photo gallery. I’m still uploading photos.

Thrive Spiritually At Stanford
Will your faith grow stronger or weaker over the next four years? The choice is yours, and the time to make it is now. Generations of students testify that you can thrive spiritually at Stanford, and the key is to intentionally cultivate your faith.

A brief greeting from Glen Davis, the campus pastor of Chi Alpha:

• Read tips for new students from a sophomore who’s been there and a reflection on one student’s first year on campus!
• Check out our recommended reading list for new students to prepare for the intellectual challenges you’ll find here at the Farm.
• Scope out the Christian groups at Stanford. You can find the official list on the Stanford Associated Religions website. Scroll down a little to see it. You can see another list at the Student Groups directory. It’s pretty much the same, just formatted differently.
• Pray. Specifically, pray that God would do a few things:
  1. Ask God to prepare you for the challenges and opportunities you’ll face at Stanford.
  2. Ask God to give you favor with your roommate, and that also request that He perform a powerful work in their life this summer.
  3. Ask God to help you quickly find a community of Christians on campus that you can be strengthened by and have fun with. by the way–we hope that’s us!
• Be encouraged–we’re praying for you all summer long.

Chi Alpha Is Here to Help You
We’ve mentioned plugging into a Christian community of students here at Stanford. In case you haven’t figured it out, we’d love to be the group you check out first!

We hope to help you thrive spiritually at Stanford by providing you with resources, encouragement, and a group of friends who will be there for you. If that sounds like the sort of thing you’re looking for, learn more about us!

To Learn More About Chi Alpha

• Read Chi Alpha in a nutshell.
• IM our fearless leader:
  
• Sign up for Chi Alpha’s group discussion list. Just send an email to majordomo@lists.stanford.edu with the following in the body: subscribe chialpha-fellowship
• Also sign up to receive Chi Alpha’s email announcements (the form is on the sidebar of every page). These are different from the discussion group messages. Those are student-to-student ongoing conversation. This is a weekly update on ‘the haps’ that we send out. The two lists don’t really overlap in content, so we urge you to sign up for both.
• Just poke around the site for a while! We update it regularly, so if you use an RSS reader subscribe to our feed (.92, 2.00, atom)!

Bart Simpson loves Chi Alpha!

Don’t believe me? Click here.

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).

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!

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

There are two easy things you can do to get involved:

1. Drop by one of our weekly meetings.
2. Sign up for our email announcements list. That way you’ll be in the loop about everything we do! The signup box should be on the right-hand side of this page.
3. Consider listening to some of our past messages to get a feel for the group.

Don’t worry: we NEVER share your email address with anyone else and you can always tell us you don’t want any more email announcements and we’ll stop right away.

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.