Chi Alpha @ Stanford

Wel­come to the Stan­ford fam­ily. We hope that your time at the Farm is full of spir­i­tual as well as intel­lec­tual growth. In fact, we’d like to help with that.

We’re Chi Alpha Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship, a com­mu­nity of stu­dents earnestly fol­low­ing Jesus at Stan­ford. We have weekly wor­ship meet­ings on cam­pus, small group Bible stud­ies, ser­vice projects, retreats and fun social activ­i­ties. Learn more about us.

You might be curi­ous about our weekly wor­ship meet­ings, since they’re the thing you’re most likely to check out first. They’ve got music, laugh­ter, and revolve around an expla­na­tion of the Bible.

Here’s an exam­ple. This is the third ser­mon in a series we did work­ing our way through the list of virtues in 2 Peter 1:3–8.

Or down­load the mp3. You can also check out oth­ers in our ser­mon archives.

Any­way, don’t hes­i­tate to con­tact us if you have any ques­tions. The eas­i­est way is to mes­sage our pas­tor on Face­book or send an email to chialpha@stanford.edu.

Whether you’re a new fresh­man explor­ing the mys­ter­ies of the Face­book, a trans­fer stu­dent look­ing for­ward to bet­ter dorms, or a sea­soned grad stu­dent who is wise in the ways of Ramen we’re glad you’re here and we look for­ward to meet­ing you. We also urge you to check us out on on the afore­men­tioned Face­book.

Our first meet­ing is Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 27th at 7:30pm in 300–300 (map). Our Bible stud­ies will be launch­ing within the next few days as well.

You might be curi­ous about what our meet­ings are like. Trag­i­cally, holodeck tech­nol­ogy is still beyond our abil­i­ties. So in place of a fully-orbed, three-dimensional, mul­ti­sen­sory expe­ri­ence we offer these videos:

• I Believe, But Help My Unbelief
• Play To Win
• Every­one Is On The Wor­ship Team (one of my favorites, but the video is a lit­tle ama­teur­ish on this one — sorry)
• You can see our full meet­ing archives at http://xastanford.org/category/sermons/

If you haven’t had a chance yet, be sure to check out our Face­book Group.

Also, we’re going to have a table set up on White Plaza (cam­pus map, satel­lite photo) pretty much every day of NSO. Please stop by and say hello!

• On Tues­day, you can meet us at the Frosh & Faith Open House on White Plaza from 2–4.
• On Wednes­day, we’ll be out on White Plaza from around 10–2.
• On Thurs­day, we’ll be set up on White Plaza from around 10-noon, and then on Can­field Court for an event called GOALIE from 12-2pm. GOALIE is a grad stu­dent thing (yup–we gots some o’ dem, too). Depend­ing on our level of energy, we might trudge back over to White Plaza at that point. Then again, we might just go sip lattes somewhere.
• On Fri­day, we’ll be back on White Plaza from around 10–2.
• On Sat­ur­day, we’re going to have a brunch pic­nic on White Plaza from 10:30 until noon.

So why are we so obsessed with tables? Do we have stock in some sort of fur­ni­ture com­pany? Not at all–we’re just doing what we can. Con­sider this snip­pet from an official-type email:

[Dur­ing NSO] new stu­dents may not be con­tacted by any stu­dent group, includ­ing SAR orga­ni­za­tions, except as fol­lows:
1) Ads may be placed in the Stan­ford Daily, and fly­ers may be posted around cam­pus through­out NSO.
2) Infor­ma­tion tables are per­mit­ted for SAR orga­ni­za­tions (at their indi­vid­ual ini­tia­tive) in White Plaza, start­ing Wednes­day, Sep­tem­ber 21.
3) Active recruit­ing and infor­ma­tional efforts will be allowed start­ing Sat­ur­day, Sep­tem­ber 24.

Put that through a cost/benefit analy­sis (the Stan­ford Daily is expen­sive, fly­ers are gen­er­ally a waste of time as you’ll soon see–or rather, as you soon won’t) and you quickly real­ize that tables are left as our last, best hope.

Take some time to stop by and make our acquaintance!

There’s a new web­site to help Chris­tians bound for sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ties. So if you’re anx­ious about grow­ing in your faith at Stan­ford, read on.

It’s called Thrive At Col­lege, and it’s a spe­cial type of web­site known as a wiki.

In case you’re not famil­iar with the term, it just means that any­one (includ­ing you) can edit any page on the site. And that means it’s an organic resource–growing and respond­ing to the needs of its read­ers. So if you have a ques­tion you want answered or see an oppor­tu­nity to improve exist­ing con­tent you can go ahead and do it with­out log­ging in or any­thing. Just click the ‘edit’ tab at the top of the page you want to alter and watch your will become reality!

Wel­come to all the new Stanford-bound stu­dents. Whether you’re a new fresh­man explor­ing the mys­ter­ies of the Face­book, a trans­fer stu­dent look­ing for­ward to bet­ter dorms, or a sea­soned grad stu­dent who is wise in the ways of Ramen we’re glad you’re here and we look for­ward to meet­ing you. We also urge you to check us out on on the afore­men­tioned Face­book.

Any­way, we’ve got some arti­cles in our archives you might find pretty handy. Each arti­cle is a mix of text and audio or video. The media can be either streamed or down­loaded and in either case won’t play unless you take spe­cific action. In other words, feel free to click on these links in the library: they won’t make noise with­out your permission.

• What Is Chi Alpha? includes stu­dent inter­views (a three-minute video)
• Advice For the Col­lege Bound: I (fear­less leader Glen) spoke at a bac­calau­re­ate ser­vice and it’s pretty much what I’d like to say to every Chris­t­ian frosh (includes seven minute stream­ing audio).
• So You’re Com­ing To Stan­ford includes a stream­ing eight-minute audio devo­tional from Daniel chap­ter 1

Of course, you could always just look over every­thing we’ve ever writ­ten for new stu­dents.

Fill What’s Empty, Empty What’s Full, Scratch Where It Itches
(Bac­calau­re­ate Ser­vice at Trin­ity Chris­t­ian School in Las Vegas)
Length: 7:20
Size: 5 MB
For­mat MP3
Speaker: Glen Davis — 5/23/2004

I (Glen) had the chance to speak at a high school bac­calau­re­ate ser­vice in Vegas at the end of last year, and a lot of what I said to them is rel­e­vant to incom­ing first years as well.

Giv­ing credit where credit is due: the title came from a quote I have seen attrib­uted to Alice Roo­sevelt Long­worth.

A cor­rec­tion: I spoke with­out look­ing at my notes and mis­stated Carly Fiorina’s major. It was actu­ally a combo of medieval his­tory and phi­los­o­phy (source). Oops.

Welcome–I hope you had a good jour­ney to get here!

If you’re check­ing out our web­site for the first time, two links you might want to hit are our tips for fresh­men and the story of one of the sopho­mores in our group.

Also, I just ran across an arti­cle talk­ing about Alpha course, which is one of the events we’ll be run­ning this quar­ter. Just thought you might find it interesting.

Enjoy Stan­ford!

Wel­come to all the new stu­dents com­ing to Stan­ford this Fall Quar­ter. Whether you be a frosh, a trans­fer stu­dent, or a grad stu­dent we’re glad you’re here.

Please check out our group and con­sider look­ing us up once you get to campus!

You might find some help­ful stuff on our new stu­dent info page.

A note about this web­site: we use a blog for­mat to keep our site main­tained. What that means is that arti­cles are listed newest to old­est. Older stuff is archived and can be accessed through the links on the side­bars or the search engine.

We’ve cre­ated short­cuts to our best stuff in the menu bar at the top of the page.

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 : )

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)!