One of the things that we (Campus Crusade for Christ) has been talking about lately has been the idea of “sending” every student that is involved in our movements. This doesn’t sound new on the surface, but there is a significant difference – our definition of sent.

In the past “sending” was one of two things, coming on staff or into some other vocational ministry. This definition was not something that we necessarily said out loud, but it was something that did come through often to students who were involved in our movements. I remember feeling this when I was a student – this was easier for me since I was planning on coming onto staff with Campus Crusade.

The was this is changing is powerful – sent is not what you do for your pay, but whether you see yourself as someone who represents Christ in a missional way where you are.

Something I want to say to all of you who are supporting us: you are sent laborers! God has called each of you to make an impact by representing him and sharing the Gospel where you are; it is not something that is reserved for pastors or ministers. You are missionaries! You are ministers! You are ambassadors from Jesus to your family, neighbors, co-workers and friends.

Yesterday, Holly Sheldon, a staff member who spent many years in East Asia and is now spearheading the 100% Sent push, shared 5 things that hold up ordinary Christians from having great impacts over time. They are:

• Kingdom vision and context.
• A Team
• A Plan
• Ongoing Equipping
• A Coach or a Receiving Partner

Kingdom Vision and Context

Every Christian needs to have a vision for Christ’s Kingdom and it’s preeminence over all things. If we see it as an add-on to the rest of life we’ll fail to live up to the call of the Great Commission that is on our lives. We have to have a mental context of the Gospel going to every tribe, tongue, nation, town, villiage, crossroad, valley, county, city, church, sub-division and family… you are a missionary of the Kingdom somewhere.

A Team

Who are your partners in reaching your circle? Is it your spouse? Someone else in your church or small group? Do it with someone!

A Plan

Do you kow where you’re aiming with the Gospel? What are you going to do to help people hear the call and message of the gracious forgiveness of God? How will you speak to them about the deadly ramifications of sin and how Christ has worked to free them from it?

Will you hold a Bible study that you’ll be intentional about inviting people to? What passage will you study (don’t do Revelation)?

Will you have dinner parties that will be intentional places to mix your friends who are believers with your friends who aren’t? (Bring your team!)

Ongoing Equipping

What are you doing to expand the ways that you are able to express and explain the Gospel? Are you going to conferences to learn apologetics better? Are you taking the time to learn how the culture is changing and how we need to react to it or change with it? Are you reading books like UnChristian, The Reason for God, or Come Help Change the World? Keep growing in your equipping!

A Coach or a Receiving Partner

Do you have someone who is helping you grow, holding you accountable or coaching you to try new things? This will usually be someone outside of your situation, someone you look up to, someone that knows you well and wants to see your grow and be fruitful through the power of the Holy Spirit. Perhaps God is calling you to go somewhere – who are you working with who can coach you from within the culture or the location you’re going to.

Also, if God calls you to go, please let us know! We want to support you in prayer and perhaps financially. We’d love to return the favor!

Keep praying for us while we’re out here in Ft. Collins, CO at the US Staff conference. If you want to get an idea of what’s going on you can follow the Twitter feed of people responding to the talks and events by searching for #csu09ccc – a link is here: http://twubs.com/csu09ccc. You might see a lot of me on there. I am helping to lead the Social Networking team.

Thank you!

“Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.” – B. Franklin

The sign that said that caught students’ attention too. On April 24, we spent about 10 hours at Georgetown University for Georgetown Day, the campus’ annual excuse for an all-day block party on the quad complete with bands, free food and about 10,000 people. Georgetown Day sees a lot of alcohol consumed by students (as we got to campus at 10:30 a.m., the liquor store’s line was out the door).  Beer is on many minds already; God, maybe not.

Needless to say, our table about beer, God and happiness provoked some interesting conversations. With a survey about the Ben Franklin quote, we requested thoughts on God, the nature of love and happiness, and even the meaning of Jesus’ death. Below is a quote from a corresponding website, BeerIsProof.org:

“To Ben the issue was simple. Simple enough that a cold beer from the local pub was proof that God loved him. What about you? Consider laughter, music, sunsets at the beach and the miraculous combination of chocolate and peanut butter. Do these things suggest that the genius behind it all wants us to be happy?”

Without endorsing drinking, we managed to have over 100 conversations and at least one person who said that he wanted to invite Christ into his life.  Apparently anything can start a conversation about Jesus.

Go big or go home – and bring someone with you.

The semester is over. Students have moved home, gone to their summer projects or graduated and started “real life.” Last week at an end-of-the year retreat to help us look back before we look forward, we named as our greatest “wins” things that happened in our homes and extended “off hours” hangout times – out on the quad until midnight, at our place drinking tea over movies and life discussions, at campfires at the staff guys’ house, or at gatherings sharing home-cooked meals on couches rather than in fluorescent-lit meeting rooms facing front.

Year Two has seen God answer our prayer for genuine community marked by transformation.  Internationals, skeptics of all varieties and even a few Jewish students have hung around to consider the claims of Jesus. Things have come into the open that normally don’t.  We haven’t seen the masses come to meetings, but lives are changing. Praise God!

Lean, mean and on the scene!

This year we had a ready-made community of 9 staff and interns and three apartments to invite students into.  With the close of the year comes (hopefully temporary) end of this fun chapter. This fall, it will be just 3 of us. Some of the interns will be fundraising and going elsewhere, one is moving on to pursue a masters and the other couple will be moving to an established ministry where their gifts will be a better fit.  Every change comes with pros and cons, but we’re excited to see what the year will bring! Pray that God would fight our battles for us, and provide a way to move closer into the city.

Pray for:

• As we hope to move from Arlington into DC at some point, pray that we’d find affordable housing that can fit lots of students.
• This summer we’ll be taking classes again – this time to help us learn how to lead a team and structure a movement. We’re pining for summer project but recognize our need for training.
• We’ll be working on developing a larger support base in DC this summer before and after our assignment, pray for contacts and perseverance in that work.

Note: First off, it’s a miracle! We’re actually putting out our March Prayer Letter in March! Secondly, we’ll be posting some pictures of our trip to North Africa soon, we have to edit out ones that would identify too specifically where it was that we went, even though we were very very safe, there are still security issues involved.

To the Ends of the Earth

What would college ministry be without a few ridiculous “pick-up-and-go” weeks every so often? Last year, spring break came to our team.  This year with no incoming students, we decided it would be the perfect year to divide, conquer, and see the world: two bussed it to a conference in Panama City, FL for Cru’s annual outreach to the American beach partiers, a few went to Venezuela, and a handful of us headed to North Africa to experience the culture and see what ministry looks like there.

As we regrouped, the contrast was incredible.  The Florida group found about what you would expect from Americans – a fair amount of spiritual interest dulled by an assumption that they’ve heard it all before. Meanwhile the Venezuela group marveled at the openness, watching 30 students express the desire to start a relationship with Jesus.  As for our N. Africa trip, Jayson may have been the only one to even talk about the gospel, and only once, to correct an error in a Religion text book.

This isn’t surprising, considering the high cost of discipleship for those who profess Christ in North Africa. While foreigners have a certain degree of religious freedom, nationals only worship Jesus in the safety of homes for fear of being cut off from society by families and often left with no livelihood.

Thoughts on Reentry

It’s hard to not be shaken by the contrast in Jesus’ approach to sharing the message and that of the 21st Century American church.  He remains honest and unapologetic about the difficult aspects of the faith, comfortable saying, “take it or leave it.”  We hurry to assuage all objections with comfort and user-friendliness to assure even the most demanding spiritual consumers. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with eliminating barriers that would deter a seeker. But the message of Jesus is neither a product, idea or personality accessory to add to our repertoire, nor an experience to make us more well-rounded, self-actualized or nice.  It is a call to respond in either marriage or rejection to the God who is romancing us, a decision about what we will leave and to whom we will cleave.

Oddly enough, this thought gives me great hope for our movement and the city of Washington, DC.  Over the past months, our team has groaned and pleaded with the Lord over many students who linger unfulfilled in indecision about Jesus. But as they ask the right questions week after week, I can’t help but look forward to the energetic certainty that will follow when they take their vows, having fully counted the cost.  Given the masses whose complain (rightfully) of Christian hypocrisy, I will take three slow-cooked, thorough believers who knew what they were getting into over 50 fast floaters into a comfortable faith, not expecting spiritual resurrection to require death or sacrifice of any kind.

Rubber Meets Road

Last month, we mentioned our February conference (called “neXt”). Here “M,” a new Chinese believer decided to tell her parents about her faith, thus instigating her parents to cut off all financial and emotional support.  Now, a month before graduation, she finds herself sleeping on friends’ floors, trying to get a work visa in order to stay here and minister to other internationals, while I am challenged by her sturdy confidence in a God she has just met.  Please pray for M and for her parents, (prominent figures in the Chinese government) to come to faith.  We serve a God who specializes in the unlikely!

Pray For

• Health & National leadership for movements in North Africa and Venezuela.
• Freedom of staff there (and here) from judging their worth by performance or people’s response.
• Courage for students who have much at stake in livelihood & reputation if they profess following Jesus.

Classes in have barely started in DC, but our team has hit the ground running this week with lots of time in planning and prep for the semester! This weekend, we have visitors — four Aussie students who are in the states for a summer project!  Pray for their health, rest and favor this week as they visit some of our campuses to meet students and share their faith, and for a citywide dinner/prayer time we’ll be hosting for them and our students on Sunday night.

Also, check out this interesting video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JHS8adO3hM. Even atheists think we should be sharing our faith!

In these past few weeks we’ve seen God moving in a lot of ways on many of our campuses, but one of the ways we’ve also seen some success is with a number of websites we’ve set up, like EveryDCStudent.com.

We’ve been doing advertising on the hugely popular social networking site, Facebook (if you don’t know what it is, visit the Wikipedia article). We’ve paid almost nothing – just over $11 to show the ads more than 35,000 times! We could have spent all day every day handing out fliers on campus and we wouldn’t have been able to get that many out… even better, all people have to do is click on something and they’re there. They don’t have to go home and remember to look up this random site that they have no vested interest in; just click.

The main site that we were able to set all of these up through also gives us statistics of how many people have been visiting. As of right now we have had over 250 visits to the site and 3 people have indicated that they have received Christ after visiting the site!

Hopefully we’ll have the chance to follow up with these people in the next few weeks, but we have to wait for them to contact us again through the site. Please be praying for the effectiveness of these sites and of the advertising.

Update: There have now been 6 people who have indicated that they have made the decision to follow Christ while viewing our websites!

For the abridged version that we sent out as a prayer letter, go to the 2007 Newsletters section of our site.

The amount that can go on in a few weeks is amazing!

Just a month ago we had completed moving out of our house in Grove City. With everything packed into a 10’x20’ box or in the back of our car we left 417 East Washington Blvd as our home for the last time. Even now, as I type this, it’s still weird to me and a little sad as well. Even though I complained about the “nothing to do” when I moved there after we got married, I have developed things about it that I love and will miss… almost all of them revolve around the people who have become a part of our daily lives there.

The first destination that we were headed for when we left on May 20th was Ocean City, MD for Summer Project. As I look back on the past 6 weeks I consider my expectations officially blown away. Like everyone, I have the tendency to idolize the past and had my doubts that this summer could come anywhere close to how good last summer was… I was wrong.

After spending a week getting the student housing ready for the arrival of 26 students who thought they were ready for everything that God had to dish out, the 29th came and so did they. There was everything from excitement and laughing to one guy who retreated immediately to his bedroom to journal and sleep, all the time with a distinct deer-in-the-headlights look.

I can speak about “my” guys – the men that I had the absolute privilege to disciple this summer: Adam, Brad, Brett, Justin and Tim. My group had it all: two deep/quiet guys who were athletically gifted; the loud, opinionated Democrat who challenges specifics of whatever is said, but is fully seeking Truth; the diesel technology major who possesses less social graces than most; and the guy who came to Christ just 10 months ago who is seeking after the Lord hard. They were coming from Slippery Rock, Penn College of Technology, Indiana University of PA and George Mason University and I am excited to be sending them back to their schools to lead in the movements that they’re a part of.

Just a few months ago I was worried that we weren’t going to have enough guys to really fill up the project, but God did his part and filled it out… and it was full of boys who were ready to make the commitment to become men after God’s heart. We spent time each week talking about what it means to move out of boyhood into authentic manhood. By the end of our time in Ocean City they all made a public commitment to reject passivity in their lives, to accept responsibility for their decisions (both good and bad), to lead courageously to point others toward Christ even when they don’t want to and when it’s uncomfortable to do so and to expect the greater reward of obedience to God even when it’s easier to settle for less.

Carrie and I got to experience living out the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a number of very specific ways. Both of us got to usher someone from death into life… within a week of each other. Each Saturday all of the students and staff would spend some time on the beach or boardwalk initiating conversations with the visitors and tourists at the beach. There were a team of students who would set a vision for what we would try to do to start these conversations each week; this week in particular we were simply asking people if there were things in their life that they wanted prayer for – and praying for them there and then if they wanted. Twice that day I approached people who were a little intimidating, a biker couple complete with the leader riding gear and green fading tattoos and a guy sitting on the back of a bench with a black hooded sweatshirt emblazoned with a giant red skull with nails driven through it. The biker couple joked a bit with us, but turned us down, but after asking the guy who was dressed in clothing that wouldn’t be out of character for some of my closer friends, he responded with a sober and serious, “ Yeah, I could definitely use some prayer…”
The night before, Mark, one of the students on our project, was up on the porch of the student housing talking on the phone when he heard sirens of the ambulance turn down the one of the side roads just down from the house, he walked toward the scene and saw a few more ambulances and police there. There was a car flipped over in the road and they were pulling two people from inside of it. When Mark told us about it that morning we all commented that it was odd since the side road was short and none of us could figure out how it had flipped and how it had not hit any of the cars parked on the side of the road or any of the other cars driving at the time.

“…last night my friend took my car keys without asking and was driving my car around and flipped it over. He’s okay, but I’m not sure what I’m going to do.” The wide-open door to talk to Josh was immediate and obvious. As he, Adam (one of my guys) and I talked for the next hour, we learned that he had grown up going to church and still went every once in a while because he somehow knew he should. The conversation opened up for me to share the truth of the Gospel with him – that God had created us all to have a relationship with us, but it is our sin that prevents us from knowing God personally or experiencing His love and no matter how hard we try we cannot overcome our sin in our own strength, but God did something about it in Christ dying and resurrecting three days later, but it’s not enough that any of us just know it in our head but that we receive it individually as an act of faith. Josh, for the first time, grasped the importance of Christ’s work and prayed and asked Him to save him and take the steering wheel of his life. We did explain that it was not going to make everything instantly better, but that he would begin to see God working and changing his life on the whole as he continued to yield more of it to Christ’s control.

Later that Tuesday, Carrie was also able to be a “worker for the harvest” and saw a high school student, Sam, from Pasadena, CA understand and claim the work of Christ for herself as well. As Carrie explained and offered the opportunity to respond to Christ’s offer of salvation and purpose, she responded, “I already prayed for that, just now.” God does not ask us to bring conviction, just to speak truth and sow the seed for the Holy Spirit to use to convince people of their need for His work in their life.

Wednesday, and yet another opportunity to live out the sacrificial love of Christ… after an international dinner and feeding more than 250 international students who are in Ocean City working for the summer and after our weekly large group worship meeting we were leaving to go back and rest from the day. As we walked to our car we saw two of our students come out from behind a dumpster by the large ice cream shop next door to our meeting place. Finding that more than a little odd, we asked what was going on.

It turned out that they, and another of our students, Breyana, were sitting with a very-drunk girl who was there on “Senior Week” (basically a week of non-stop alcohol and partying that recent high school grads participate in each year). It turned out that the girl, Megan, was too drunk to walk, couldn’t find her friends and wanted to get back to the condo she was staying in, but the only thing that she was sure about was that it was at least 75 blocks away… and she didn’t know what it was called. Carrie and I decided to give her a ride to the condo, because there was no way she was going to get there by herself and in the condition (and state of dress, or lack thereof) she was a prime target for a rapist.

During the drive to her condo she told us she was “sure it was on” 73rd, then 80th, then 79th; she vomited in the back of our car (fortunately, we had been wise enough to give her a garbage bag); called her friends numerous times to no avail; and fell asleep again and again and again. When we finally found her condo building (79th street was the winner), her friends were not there and she had no key. Still her friends were not picking up… after about 45 minutes of waiting with her, Carrie and I decided that we would let her stay on an extra bed in our apartment and let her get a hold of her friends in the morning. Driving back the 75 blocks to our apartment, she was just beginning to sober up.

After giving her a shirt (my “Cru” logo shirt) to cover up what her dress was failing to cover we got her settled in to the bed (with a bucket & some water) and headed to bed ourselves; it was now closing in on 1 AM. It wasn’t long before we heard our new friend yelling in the other room (it was pretty apparent that her friends had finally called back), as I began to worry that she would wake up the other staff saying in the same building I heard the yelling stop and a small tapping on our bedroom door. Her friends were now back at the condo and were mad at her for not coming into the under 21 dance club they had gone to (the club that falsely claims a “strict no alcohol policy”) and wanted her to come back right now and told her that if she wasn’t back in 5 minutes they weren’t going to let her back in.

We got back in the car and drove the 75 blocks yet again. She shared that one of her friends had just learned that she was pregnant the week before, but that it was “okay, because she going to get an abortion,” also as her friend talked to her on the phone a fistfight broke out between two more of her friends over the issue of them drinking when the girl was pregnant. Megan informed us that she was glad that she was going to college at Virginia Tech next fall because she believed that it was going to make everything about her life better.

As we dropped her off with the one friend that seemed sober and to truly be worried about her, Carrie exchanged phone numbers with her. She received a text message from Megan thanking us for the care and help that night. Please pray for Megan and the thousands of recent high school grads that have and will come through Ocean City and towns like it who are so caught up in alcohol, sex, drugs and partying that are trusting that a new location and new friends will make their life better. These are the incoming freshmen at our schools! Also, pray that Megan will arrive at Virginia Tech and see something with that logo of Campus Crusade for Christ on it and check out the group, pray that she will caught by the love and call of Jesus Christ just like Brett, Adam, Brad, Justin, Tim, Mark, Josh and Sam.
Thank you for your prayers! These are just the tip of the iceberg of what goes on during the Summer Projects all around the country – God is working, thank you for being a part of it!