Bruce Wilkinson, one of the authors (the other author was a ghost) of the Prayer of Jabez and some other stuff, spoke in chapel on Wednesday the something-or-other of (probably) October last semster, which was the Fall '03 semester.

Mr. Wilkinson has this new ministry thing going in southern Africa. He relocated to Johannesburg, SA, some time ago. See here for a good article on that. When he spoke in chapel he talked about some good ideas they've been working with, like one for helping people become self-sufficient subsistence farmers on their own tiny plots of land to curb the hunger problem in the troubled continent of Africa. I think his group is this one, Global Vision Resources.

Now, as we should all know, AIDS is basically destroying the entire continent of Africa. As many of us know, to our credit except that it's obvious if you've ever looked up any information, abstinence or, more properly, monogamy, is the only actually completely safe sex. As very few of us probably know (to our shame), Uganda is the only success story in the history of AIDS. Condoms were part of the emphasis in Uganda; so was abstinence; so were very many other things. Anyways, if there's any hope for Africa, it's abstinence or, more properly, monogamy.

That is why I, personally (myself being the Head Snipe) think Mr. Wilkinson's idea of having American, Swazi, and South African college students go to every single school in Swaziland and talk about abstinence is a very, very good thing. Exactly what we need.

However, here are some interesting facts, and following that will be some unfortunate observations:

SOME INTERESTING FACTS

Wilkinson spoke at Dallas Baptist University about his work in Africa in chapel on Wednesday that week. He asked for 100 volunteers and got 212. The next day, Thursday, he spoke in chapel at Houston Baptist University and got a smaller number: it was either eleven, or twelve. Out of those eleven or twelve, ten or eleven were female. Wilkinson proceeded to criticize the women of HBU for not letting the men be leaders. He also criticized the students of the school for not being like the DBU students. The next day Wilkinson was approached by the president of HBU, and Wilkinson apologized to him about the matter. HBU students have told me that the full story can be read in their school newspaper The Collegian, but I have not yet been able to locate a copy.

Wilkinson implied that he had not planned to give this challenge of asking for volunteers for the mission trip, but had been impressed by the Spirit to do so; IE, it was completely unplanned. I heard that Wilkinson had actually given the same challenge at some other Baptist school the day before. This would strongly imply he's either lying, or crazy or kind of weird, but I was not able to confirm or dis-confirm it.

UNFORTUNATE PROBLEMS

I talked to dozens of very intelligent people. Without exception, all of them found something applaudable in the chapel service. For myself, I think it's great that DBU students have such a great passion for the LORD. With just one exception (he admitted his mind was focused elsewhere at the time), all of the dozens of smart people I know had some complaint or other. Everyone offered qualifications: the optimists made the complaints their qualification, and the pessimists made the applaudable factors their qualifications, but everyone agreed on major themes. There were, to the best of my memory (but it's been a while), three major themes:

1. It was suggested that Wilkinson was planning God's will for Him, designating a miracle 100 volunteers without special revelation. If this is the case, it's what he does often: see, for instance, this article about when he told a church in Kenya that God's will for it was to grow from 10,000 to 100,000 members and send 1,000 missionaries by the year 2010. He tends to tell us God's will for our lives in remarkable detail. Is he speaking as a prophet, or is he only challenging us? If the latter, why did he tell DBU of the Spirit leading him and "the miracle 100"?

2. It was suggested that Wilkinson was trying to force a response by manipulating emotions. This was the heaviest charge. I've always thought that DBU students are very susceptible to emotional manipulation because of the way chapel usually is and the way Foundations is set up. We have passion, but we're altogether brainless. Maybe the students at HBU are the other way around, intelligent and shrewd but altogether cold and dead in their Christianity. I wouldn't know; I've never been. I know that their version of our Foundations for Excellence course has freshmen reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, a book many DBU students have likely never even heard of.

3. It was suggested that Wilkinson was decrying prayer when he told students that they don't need to say they're going to pray about a decision. We concluded that he probably meant, "Don't say you'll pray about it and use that as an excuse for not answering God's call now." If so, that's not so bad, but how dare he say something like that without qualification.

4. It was suggested that Wilkinson was encouraging DBU students to act mindlessly. He did say that we should back out of this if our parents didn't want us to, so that was appreciable. However, he didn't want us to make our decision based on wisdom and thought, but on the Spirit's leadership (not so bad) and on (apparently; see number 2) emotion.

Head Snipe talking. We'll see if we can't get some other perspectives up here. Anyone is welcome to submit. I've not yet seen an email from an objector, but I expect I'll have the decency and honesty to post reasonable contrary objections. Here's my personal conclusion: what the man is doing seems good, and I would generally tend to support it; his method of recruitment, however, is insulting and heretical.