I'm off to Washington!

(I've enjoyed saying that all day...)

Tonight, I leave with a group of students and faculty to participate in the EPA's National Sustainable Design Expo. Our students are presenting the results of their (EPA funded!) residential water reuse system. I'm looking forward to it!

You can pray...

1. for our safety.
2. for this to be an opportunity for me to live out God's love and grace to my students & colleagues.
3. for our students to represent their project and their university as they compete with 41 other teams for a second phase of funding.

I'll post pictures to my Picasa page.

Have a great weekend!

Bloggin' Bout my Generation, Part III

So... what's the answer to this generation dilemma?

I don't have a foolproof solution, but I do have a suggestion.

My generation needs to transition from feeling challenged to feeling called.

We needed challenges. We needed to be pushed out of our comfort zones. We needed to be inspired to sacrificially serve God. We needed See You at the Pole rallies and Newsboys concerts and Summer Projects. Even those of us who haven't gone into "full-time ministry" needed them. (Perhaps we're the ones who needed them the most.) Those experiences, I believe, have made us unique, and we need to not be ashamed of that uniqueness.

But to hold onto our uniqueness, we need a sense of calling. Os Guinness defines calling as "the truth that God calls us to Himself so decisively that everything we are, everything we do, and everything we have in invested with a special devotion and dynamism lived out as a response to His summons and service." Challenges come in lumps (sometimes mountain-sized lumps); calling is continual. Challenges lead to growth in fits and spurts; calling leads to a journey. Challenge brings change from the top down; calling brings change from the bottom up.

Here's to praying we become a generation that answers its call. Not a call to abandon our "normal" lives in exchange for something "better," but to live out our extraordinary relationship with God in our "normal" lives. I think that's how God wants us to change the world, and I think He's prepared this generation of Christians to do it in a unique way.

The other side of the question is how the church can help us do that. I don't exactly know. But I hope current and future church leaders will see this need and dream of ways to encourage a new, called generation.

RTS Professor's Resignation

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/04/09/video

I have mixed reactions to this article.

On the one hand, I respect RTS's right to govern what is taught in their classes. I think they (along with every seminary and Christian higher education institution) have a duty to the church and to God to preserve the truths of Scripture and equip the church's leaders to be lovers of truth and shepherds of people.

On the other hand...

• This issue was not brought up in an RTS class. It was not being taught as what the students "should believe." And even if it were brought up in class, being a lover of truth means understanding concepts that you don't agree with.
• Evolution is a very nonessential issue, and not one worth losing a valued colleague over. RTS has promoted the cone of certainty for so long... Have they decided to abandon it?
• What kind of example/precedent does this set? Who else at RTS is in danger of falling out of favor? How should church's who value RTS as a spiritual & intellectual trendsetter react to similar viewpoints among their leaders & congregation?
• If this professor is worried about the church losing its relevance... Shouldn't he be encouraged for his concern and willingness to step out on the prophet's limb?

Bloggin Bout My Generation, Part II

Earlier, I talked about how my generation of Christians doesn't generally fit into the church.


The great irony is that, in a lot of ways this lack of fitting in comes from the church, itself.


Think about what the church (youth groups, college ministries, Dawson McAllister retreats, See You at the Pole Rallies, etc.) told my generation growing up:

• "You need to step out of your comfort zone."
• "You've got to reach your campus for Christ."
• "He is no fool who gives up what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot live without."
• "Serving God is worth any sacrifice."
• "You have to power to tell your sphere of influence about the gospel."
• "Your generation can change the world for Jesus."
• "Your generation is going to see Jesus return."
• "You should go on a mission trip every summer."
• "You've got to serve out of God's strength, and not your own."
• "You're too busy not to pray."
• "All of life is ministry."
• "All of life is worship."

My generation of Christians learned to live out those truths in high school and college. But now that we've grown up, two things have happened: 1. It's much harder to live out those truths in real life (in which your boss doesn't care whose strength you're serving in), and 2. Many Christians in the earlier generations find these ideas foreign. To many of them, the Christian life is about "family" (by which they mean "children") and "morality" (by which they mean "watching the right movies"). They've never cosidered their comfort zone or their sphere of influence; they have little if any vision about changing the world; they think of ministry and worship as something that happens only on Sunday morning.


I know what you're thinking at this point: This is not true of every Christian older than we are. After all; it was Christians older than we are that laid down these challenges. For that, I am eternally grateful.


But, I think the fact remains that the church challenged my generation in a way that no generation has been challenged in a long time. And we're now at a point where we can continue to live in that sense of challenge and take risks to follow God, or we can resign ourselves to "normal life." The first sounds thrilling. But the second looks tempting when I'm tired and when I see others doing it.

Undergraduate Corner: What have you learned?

At the end of each semester, I ask my students to write me one page of text describing the three most important things they've learned in my class. The things the learned can be about physics, math, engineering, science in general, life in general, etc.

I think it's important for them (and all of us) to reflect on what they've learned, instead of just rushing off to Summer Break to crash on Mom & Dad's couch.

(This question also benefits me, since I make copies of their answers to go in my yearly evaluation & tenure portfolio! I find they provide a nice complement to the course evaluations.)

So... what are the three most important things you've learned this semester?

Bloggin Bout My Generation, Part I

(Image from www.xkcd.com.)

I was born in July of 1981. By nearly all sociologists' demographics, that puts me right in the middle of the transition between Generation X and the Millennials. And I could see the difference in high school: Most of my older classmates seemed characterized by apathy, emptiness, and nihilism, while most students just a year behind me in school (though only a few months younger) seemed characterized by an almost unending optimism that they could take on the world and win. On the few occasions that I saw them interact, it was like watching Kurt Cobain duke it out with Ross from Friends.

I've never really felt as though I fit into either category. I appreciate the GenXers' honest outlook on life (though I could never understand how they got out of bed each morning), but I also wish I could have the Millennials' optimism (without feeling like I was deceiving myself). I've always felt that, as a Christian, it's my nature to transcend any categories that human wisdom puts me into. (Of course, the fact that I'm an introverted nerd who teaches physics and writes blogs like this one doesn't help me fit in, either.)

These feelings (identifying equally with each generation while feeling equally alien to each generation) lead me to think a lot about the Christians my age. We've definitely come "into life." We're past the "staring out" point in our careers; college is long gone; we're (generally) not going to Newsboys concerts anymore (Are they even still around?); we've forgone seeking "spiritual mountaintops" in favor of enough faith to make it to work each morning; we've got some money in our 401-k's (and hoping it will stay there); and we're trying to be involved in the local church as adults.

I think it's this last characteristic (amid the swirling vortex of all of them) that's giving us the most trouble.

We don't really know what previous generations of Christians think of us: When we were growing up, they seemed to think we were all pregnant drug addicts. On the other hand, they seem to be watching us, like we're the new gila monsters at the zoo.

We don't really know how to make friends at church. (Adults don't seem to do those icebreaker games we learned in Youth Group.)

We don't know where we can serve or whom we should ask about it.

When we do meet someone new at church, we don't know what to talk about.

How can my generation find its way through this challenging time? Should we try to forge a new identity for ourselves? Should we try to be like the previous generations? Should we just "be ourselves," as we were taught at school? Should we disconnect until others initiate with us?

10 Marks of the Early Church

I seem to be having trouble posting on Tuesdays of late! I have an idea for a series of posts cooking, so in the meantime, here's a link to a great article I found this week:

http://www.pastorfairchild.com/2007-02/05/10-marks-of-the-early-church/

What I find interesting is the emphasis on humans being created in the image of God as the foundation of their convictions. Can we say that's the foundation of ours, today?

Commonality, Part II: The University and the Church

The university and the church have a lot more in common than most people think.

For example, this week, my univerity is hosting a faculty & student symposium for members of the campus community to present their work.

It's amazing how different "research" looks in different fields. In the sciences, we spend as little time as possible on background so that we can show as much of our original work as possible. Meanwhile, presenters from the College of Business seem to spend the majority of the time on their title slide (this shocked me) talking about the background and motivation and then speed through their original work. I've also seen Dance students who's talks seem to be entirely historical research, without showing what a scientist would consider an original thesis.

They're all very different---so much so that they hardly seem to understand each other---but they're all equally part of the academic enterprise.

It's very much like the church.