Monthly Archives: April 2007

Coming Conferences

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It has been a pretty busy month with students finishing their lectures and starting exams. Last week we had a farewell dinner for all the international students at Chinese University before they head back to their home countries. It will be sad to see them go. But it will be encouraging to hear how God uses them in the next chapter of their lives.

We have two staff conferences coming up in the next two weeks here in Hong Kong. The first one is for all the Hong Kong staff and the second one is for the Campus ministry staff. At the second conference I will be helping present the results from a discussion group I have been leading on “Faith and Science”. It has been an enlightening time for me as I have looked at the theological and scientific issues and how they relate to each other, and how we can communicate to students how to deal with apparent contradictions.

Later this month I (Karl) will be starting an English conversation class for our ministry to students from Mainland China. It will be interesting to see how that goes. I have been trying to pull together some material that will be helpful and fun for the students to look at. I’m also hoping to use the material to help point them towards the Bible through discussing some of the English language’s idioms that originate from the Bible.

Our kids have had some exciting times recently. Zac was in a celebrity impersonation competition run by a local TV station a couple of weeks ago. He was pretending to be Bruce Lee. He was selected for the finals but unfortunately didn’t win. But he really enjoyed the experience. Vienna got a chance to be a model for a parenting magazine photo shoot. And Lukas learnt how to walk: the trick now is stopping him getting into things – his reachable height has just doubled!

In the first week of July I (Karl) will be heading to the CM2007 conference in Pusan, Korea. This will be an amazing time as it is the first time there has been an international conference of this magnitude for students in over 30 years. Over 20,000 students from all over the world are registered, 300 of them from Hong Kong. The cost of the conference is HK$4300 (approx NZ$900).

In September we all are planning on going to the Connexions staff conference in Sydney. This is a staff conference for all the Australian staff, and most of the New Zealand staff. We plan to go to one New Zealand staff every three years so we can meet with the New Zealand leadership and catch them up with our ministry and how we’re doing and other pastoral needs. We had originally planned to meet these needs at the New Zealand staff conference next year. After talking with the New Zealand leadership and praying it seems that this conference will better meet these needs. The total cost for our conference (including airfares) will be around NZ$6000 (HK$30000).

I would like to ask you if you would be willing to help us meet these needs of around NZ$7000 (HK$35000).

If you are in New Zealand you can send a cheque made out to “Campus Crusade for Christ” with UDY #193 written on the back to:
Campus Crusade for Christ
PO Box
Auckland

Or you can use internet banking to make a deposit to the account in the NZ file attached. Please remember to specify our name (UDY) to make sure it goes to the right account, and also include your name and address in the details so the office can receipt you for the donation.

If you are in Hong Kong you can send a cheque made out to “Hong Kong Campus Crusade for Christ Ltd” with Udy written on the back to:
Hong Kong Campus Crusade for Christ Ltd
Block B-D, 8th Floor
Unity Commercial Ind. Bldg.
31 Tai Yip St, Kwun Tong
Kowloon, HK

Or you can  make an electronic transfer to the account in the HK file attached. Please remember to specify our name (UDY) to make sure it goes to the right account, and also include your name, phone number and address in the details so the office can receipt you for the donation.

We really appreciate all your support of our ministry and trust that you will be as excited about the opportunities we have as we are.

In Christ,
Karl, Amy, Zac, Vienna, and Lukas.

The Biblical Basis for Modern Science

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This book is by Henry Morris, who is considered the father of modern Creation Science. I am reading a few books at the moment on the interaction on faith and science because I’m on a discussion group on the topic and we’re hopefully going to put together a strategy on speaking about this topic. I actually found this book to be a bit of a frustrating read. Morris’ approach seems to be to use proof texts to support his findings and I feel that many or his proof texts were taken out of context. For example, he uses Job 38:14 “[The earth] is turned as clay to the seal.” to show that the Bible teaches the earth’s rotation – this verse only has turned in the KJV all the others have changed/take shape or other words that describe how a seal leaves its mark on clay; and Isaiah 45:12 “I, even my hands, have stretched out the heavens as a curtain, and all their host have I commanded.” to show that the Bible teaches an expanding universe. It is interesting that he is willing to take an extremely literal interpretation of stretched within the context of a simile, and yet, I am sure he would never have said that God really has hands. He uses this technique throughout the book to attempt to give a biblical basis for all sorts of natural and scientific phenomenon. This causes him to fudge things somewhat when he comes to Jeremiah 10:13 and 51:16 which says that God “makes lightning with rain”. Whereas in other places he uses similar texts to try to prove a scientific observation, here the text is so different from established fact, that he resorts to saying that these instead indicate that rain and lightning are clearly related. What I find frustrating about this is that the verses that he is quoting are not intended as instructions on how the world works, but using commonly accepted observations of the world to demonstrate spiritual truths. He is reading the meaning into the texts, and performing some rather difficult linguistic gymnastics to give the text the meaning he desires. Honestly, I find this approach quite embarrassing. It makes it difficult for Christians to be treated seriously when talking to people who have studied science.

While I believe that God is perfectly capable of creating the whole universe in six days only a few thousand years ago, this book has actually reduced the credibility that the Young Earth Creation movement have in my eyes