Jayson & Carrie Whelpley

One of the things that I look forward to as I take the DC Metro System (buses and subway) to get to campus is the time to learn, both from reading and by listening to “podcasts”. For those who don’t know, podcasts are syndicated shows that you can download and listen to on an MP3 player… they’re like radio shows that you can listen to any time. There are a lot of them that I like to listen to from news and politics to sermons and Christian radio shows… even talks from conferences!

Today, as I was listening to a podcast that Campus Crusade for Christ puts out to encourage and empower people to share their faith with their friends and neighbors, I decided that I would share how to take advantage of this with all of you!

First off, you’re going to need a music player on your computer that can download podcasts… my suggestion is a program from Apple called iTunes (don’t worry, it works with a Windows computer). You can get it from iTunes.com.

After you download it and install it, open up iTunes and click on the “iTunes Store” link.

After the page loads you’ll have a lot of options in front of you, let’s start by searching for Cru’s podcast on reaching out to your friends, called the “Overflow Show”. To do that, go to the top right and type in “Campus Crusade for Christ” in the Search iTunes Store box and hit Enter.

It should bring up a page with a number of different options, including “Campus Crusade Today” as well as the “Overflow Show”, click the subscribe button next to the Overflow Show (or you can click on the logo for more information).

When you click the button it may or may not take you to your “Podcast” screen, if it does not click on Podcasts on the main menu underneath Music. It should now look something like this:

If it’s just showing the title Overflow Show click the gray arrow next to it to show all of the episodes. If you want to download all of them, click the Get All button. Notice the orange circling arrow, that means that it’s already downloading the newest episode! It should be ready listen to pretty soon (depending on your internet connection speed)! If you notice, there’s now also something on the menu to the right that says Downloads and has a similar spinning arrow from now on when you start iTunes up it will check to see if there are new episodes of your podcast and try to download them, this will let you know how many new episodes of podcasts it is currently downloading.

Now, if you want to try other podcasts that are listed in the iTunes program click on the iTunes Store button again and it will take you back to the last page you were at. You have a few options…

You can click the See All button and see other podcasts that were found under the “Campus Crusade for Christ” category (or you could look at the list on the bottom – for those of you in Central PA area, there are even some of the talks from Penn State’s Cru movement).

You could go back to the main page and browse through the podcasts and look for other ones you might like.

Sometimes you might run across a link for a podcast on a webpage, often when you click on it your iTunes will start up automatically and it will subscribe you to the podcast. Such is the case with the talks from our recent RADIATE07 (formerly known as Christmas Conference), I took the audio from the talks and uploaded them as a podcast and you can subscribe to them using this link:

RADIATE07 Podcast

If you have an iPod or another MP3 player you can now load them onto it (follow the instructions that came with your MP3 player) and listen to them wherever you go. You can also listen to them on your computer or burn them onto CDs to take with you in the car. Have fun with your new podcasts, and let me suggest some of the ones that encourage me (just for the record, I don’t necessarily agree with everything in the podcasts, but I find myself encouraged to seek God’s face because of them often); search for them in iTunes:

Campus Crusade Today
Grove City Alliance Church
Mars Hill Bible Church
McLane Church – Edinboro
National Community Church Audio Podcast
Overflow Show
SermonIndex.net Classics Podcast
Veritas Media

I hope this encourages you and gives you a new way to learn and grow in your walk with Christ!

Grace & Peace,
Jayson

Please continue to pray for the campus community at NIU where the shooting occurred a few weeks ago. This week they are resuming classes. Also, pray for Campus Crusade for Christ’s ministry there and a unique opportunity that they have to minister.

Jeff Highfield is the campus director at Virginia Tech and led the team in ministering to the VT community after the tragedy last April. This week he’s going to head to NIU and speak there on healing through God’s power and being around God’s people. The Cru group at NIU did not lose any students, but the VT movement lost one significant leader which I’m sure will lend some credibility to what Jeff has to say. Pray that students would hear his talk and really be hearing what God has to say to them.

I’m sure you’ve all read or heard about the shootings at Northern Illinois University last week, I wanted to pass on some information and some things you can be praying for in relation to this tragedy that seems to be happening more and more frequently. Here are some things that the Campus Director for Cru passed on for us to pray about:

Update from the NIU Team-

Thank you for your prayers and support. We feel loved and embraced by you and praise God for the body of Christ.

Six people have died, including the gunman (who actually went to high school with one of our staff). The building this happened in was our former room for our weekly cru meeting.

No one in Cru was injured in the shooting. Our staff are doing well and are safe. They are doing an awesome job of connecting with students as well as w/ the university.

One girl in Cru who was supposed to be in that class was taking a nap Thursday afternoon and overslept for class.

A student that used to be involved with us a year and half ago was shot in the head, we are awaiting the news of his condition.

A friend of a student in Cru was sitting directly behind a girl who was shot in the head and died.

One of our staff (along with a couple of her disciples) was just 100 yards away from the building when students were fleeing from the gunman. They were not in any immediate danger though.

Through all of this God is opening up incredible doorways for conversing and reflecting the gospel both for our staff and our students.

Our students have been amazing! They have organized prayer vigils and are seeking to engage in conversations with their peers about the shooting and the hope that is found in God.

It is really something seeing our Cru worship leader on National TV leading times of prayer on the campus (what a testimony of God’s work!)

You may be asking yourself, “How can I help?”

1. Pray

2. Would your teams or movements consider writing cards or notes of encouragement that we can pass along to university administration, hall directors, CA’s, police officials. It could be simple statements of we are praying for you and support you during this challenging time and simply sign it “your friends from Campus Crusade for Christ”. We really want to find ways to overwhelm the university with compassionate acts.

If you have other ideas, please, please share them with us.

Please pray for…

The university has asked us to be on call to counsel students (though right now most students have gone home).

We are enlisting the help of churches to create care packages and notes of encouragement for university staff, police, and admin.

We had a Hello Industry concert planned for Feb 21. We are seeking God on wisdom on how to proceed with that. Classes may not even have resumed by then.

We are talking with National people about how to really find ways to reflect Christ to the entire campus and they… have been a tremendous blessing in helping us personally as well as helping us think how God might want to use this.

Salvation for NIU

Pray against the Westboro group that is on campus creating a mockery of Christianity. They have pledged to protest and picket the funerals of the victims. Stephanie actually spoke with the Westboro people on the phone today. WOW, they are so lost and so misguided. Please pray for them and that God would silence the wickedness and foolishness of their message.

Our staff team and their families

Please join us in praying for the campus community at NIU as well as for strength for the Crusade team there.

For our friends who get updates by email, if you want to take a look at Brett’s video you’ll have to go to our site to see it. Usually you can’t watch flash videos in emails since it’s actually hosted on the site here.

Sorry for the confusion.

The link to the post with the video is here.

Brett is one of my favorite guys from Western PA. I had the chance to disciple him this past summer on Summer Project. He really is seeking to glorify God and bring the Gospel to his campus, he’s also quite aware of what kinds of things can help do this. I was looking through Facebook (an online social network that is huge on college campuses) and came across this video…

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

How awesome is that?!