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I read an interesting quote this morning.

American missionary and martyr Jim Elliot reflected in his journal: “When it comes time to die, make sure that all you have to do is die.” Source: WitandWisdom.

It’s an interesting thought. I remember reading biographies of early American heroes during my teen years. I was surprised that some would come to the end of their life and say something like, “If I could only life my life again, I would do it differently.”

I think this may be what Jim Elliot was reflecting on. When it comes time to die, there should be no regrets, nothing we wish we had said, nothing we truly wish we had done.

That’s my prayer today. That I’ll live my life so that when it’s time to die, all I have left to do is to die.

MinistryNet has begun. We launched last night. We have 67 people from 26 countries. Yesterday Kay and I went to church with Oumar from Mali, Jeengul from Kyrgyzstan and Richard from Singapore. We walked to the conference meeting last night with Kamel from Jordan and Eric from France. We ate breakfast this morning with Andrey and Ella from Ukraine, and talked about their 6 and 3 year old children.

Some of the MinistryNet participants are blogging several times throughout the day. You can check
http://ministrynet.blogspot.com/
regularly throughout the day to see what is happening, get summaries of what each speaker is saying, and pray for our time together.

Kay and I are so blessed to meet people from around the world, who are bound together by a commitment to spend their lives helping make sure everyone knows someone who truly follows Jesus.

This item on the history and future of the internet came out in today in Tony Whittaker’s Web Evangelism Guide. It’s an 8 minute presentation. The facts from 1994 to 2005 are accurate. The projections for the next 10 years (2005 to 2014) are based on directions from the internet of the past 10 years.

It’s a very amazing, thought-provoking presentation. I encourage everyone to watch it. Pay special attention to the growing role of social networks and personalization. I thought the ending thoughts of “It’s what we wanted. It’s what we chose.” is very powerful.

What if this perspective plays out fairly accurately? The issue is not whether it’s right or wrong (personalized, use of private info, somewhat invasive use of info from your social network to further personalize your experience, etc.). The issue is what if it does work out this way? What can we do to make sure there is spiritual truth included in the powerful information engines that drive content at people. What if the world’s population decides that giving up personal privacy is worth it for the quality of information we can receive?

I remember watching a Francis Schaeffer film series How Should We Then Live? in the 1980’s. The series was a similar thing, taking the past and using it to project the future world and asking Christians how should we then live to be ready. In it, Shaeffer said that people will give up all rights as long as they are guaranteed two things — personal peace and affluence. People will submit to authoritarian police states to guarantee safety (personal peace). Personal peace and affluence. Sounds much like personalized information and easy life through access to info, even if it’s not accurate. Personalized is more important than accurate, more important than free.

What should we be doing today to make sure the gospel is accessable to people through these powerful information engines that we see developing?

“I prayed for this child, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.” [1 Samuel 1:27]

Kay and I have a granddaughter. Abigail Grace entered this world at 1:06 AM (CST), Sunday, Feb. 20. She weighed 7 pounds and 10 ounces and is 20 inches long. She has dark hair (for now anyway!). She is alert and doing well. Her mom and dad (Daniel and Michelle) are doing well. They are so excited, that they aren’t sleeping much.

Daniel, Michelle and Abigail live in Arlington, Texas (between Dallas and Ft Worth).

God was so gracious to let us be here to participate in the great wait and the joyous welcome of this precious little girl. We are having lots of fun holding her. We are very blessed.

Yes, of course there are photos! We’re grandparents, aren’t we??? Kay and I are glad you asked to see them! In case you missed it, click here for photos. Or you can click here. Or here. (We didn’t want you to miss the photos!)

Don’t know if this U.S. News & World Report article or not. It has some interesting quotes that might be useful to ministries that work with college students and professors. [Disclaimer: I served in ministry for 10 years to Christian Leadership Ministries, Campus Crusade for Christ’s ministry to university professors. I am biased!]

Some quotes. [Color emphasis is mine.]

Large majorities of undergraduates, for instance, say they seek meaning and purpose in their lives, yet just 8 percent report hearing professors discuss spiritual or religious issues in or out of the classroom, according to a major study of campus religious life by University of California-Los Angeles researchers. “There is a poor fit today between students’ interest in spiritual matters and the universities’ general lack of interest in those concerns,” says Alexander Astin, founder of UCLA’ s Higher Education Research Institute.

Riley found that these schools are providing intellectual heft to a generation of spiritual seekers that is already influencing American society, business, and government.

True, total enrollment in colleges with some kind of sectarian affiliation hasn’t grown as a percentage of total college enrollment during the past 20 years. But at schools with an intensively religious focus, she notes, student numbers have surged.

In doing so, they exemplify a form of profound intellectual diversity that is, paradoxically, often threatening to the self-described champions of that ideal on the majority of the nation’s campuses. “There is still pressure,” Marsden says, “to uphold the view that diversity trumps everything else, including the view that there may be absolutes.” Yet it’s precisely that devotion to absolutes that seems to account for the appeal of God on the Quad ‘s quietly thriving colleges.

It seems that college students are looking for respected influencers, like their professors, to be talk with them about spiritual things. They are looking for absolutes. The do see the shallowness of current tolerance and diversity. They will go to where they find intense discussions about spiritual matters.

This seriousness about serious issues is what led to the construction of a number of internet websites in the mid and late 1990’s. Leadership University, Español Leadership University, Origins, Stonewall Revisited, Academic Initiative, William Lane Craig Philosopher, Doug Yeo Bass Trombonist, Probe Ministries, and Loving Monday.

We believed (and still do) in the purpose statement, Telling the truth at the speed of life.