A New Name for Campus Crusade for Christ

While I am not sitting with the 5,000 other staff and volunteers in Moby Arena in Fort Collins, I have been watching and listening to live sessions of the biennial staff conference. I knew this would be a big year to miss, as it marks the 60th anniversary of Campus Crusade for Christ, and brings with it a big change for the future of the U.S. ministries: a new name.

Changing names is a big deal. When I got married, I was a little sad to give up the last name that had been with me through my entire life, and it's not that I didn't want to take on my husband's last name-it's just that I had such a history with my old name. I think this is what is also difficult about moving on from the name "Campus Crusade for Christ." There is so much history and influence associated with that name. It is a name that boldly says who we are about serving, but as our scope has grown past universities, doesn't best articulate who we want to reach.

During the extensive renaming process, researchers found that 9 percent of Christians, and 20 percent of non-Christians, were turned off by the original name. This is obviously a barrier to our mission as well. A total of 1,600 alternatives were considered, and "cru" was the best option.

The past few days have been filled with questions about this decision, and what it means for our ministry. To help answer some of these questions, I have included links to videos from the President, Vice President, and Co-founder of CCC. Through this time, I have been really impressed with the humble attitudes our leaders have shown as they have sought God and handled backlash from disagreeing people, and I am honored to work with such godly people.

Though our name is changing, our mission & vision remain the same, and I think that is what's most important to remember as we undergo this transition."cru" may have no meaning now, but will one day have a rich heritage and be full of stories of lives transformed by the gospel, just like "Campus Crusade for Christ."

My prayer right now is that this change doesn't stir up dissension within the body of Christ, but unifies us in such a way that the gospel will be more attractive and more real in the lives of those looking in.

See also: Steve Sellers, VP of CCC was interviewed on fox & friends.

Uncles For a Week

Maybe some of them are uncles every day, but they were ours for just one week in Accra. Andy, Derrick, Jamie, Dale, and Jon flew over from Minneapolis to encourage us halfway through our trip, and get a taste of Ghana for themselves. They came with us on campus to meet students and share how God has worked in their lives-some of them for the first time. They met with local executives and professors to talk about partnering together to strengthen the ministry in Ghana. They brought us M&Ms and Starbucks instant coffee! They challenged our students to take what they had learned in Ghana and use those skills for a lifetime-maybe even in Ghana next year. They were a refreshing part of our trip and we are so glad they joined us. Thanks for giving your time to come to Ghana for a week!

"No Hawking"

When people walk up to the window of your taxi or tro tro to sell whatever goods they have it's called "hawking". This happened everywhere we went. Sometimes we would buy bananas or phone credit, which we needed to buy often, but most of the time we would just say "no thanks" and watch with amazement as women balanced all sorts of large loads on their heads. It was a tie for the most impressive, between a rack of sunglasses and a huge silver tub filled with firewood.

Neman: A New Man

There were several times this summer in Ghana where I (Ben) was thinking, “Man, I have the coolest job in the world.” Getting to talk to people about Jesus all the time is amazing. Yet,there are times when it is hard and can seem redundant. But I am frequently amazed at God’s grace and am humbled at how He uses messed up people like myself to bring the message of reconciliation to people. I would love to share about one such experience.

It was a Monday, and we were planning on doing a Jesus Film showing in a nearby village after our time on campus. As a result, we were going to cut our time sharing Christ on campus short at 4:00 so we could grab dinner and change before being picked up. The showing ended up being cancelled, so I rallied the troops (39 of us), and shared that we weren’t going to stop for the day, but persevere for another hour and a half before heading back to our hostel.

This was our “Killing the Giants” week of Summer Project. Basically, the heart behind this was to come up with a faith-stretching, yet attainable goal for how many people we wanted to share Christ with that week. As a result, the students and staff were motivated to initiate more conversations and reach more people. The week before, we shared the gospel a lot and finished with 119 gospel conversations. This week, we came up with a collective goal of 688! (Just to ease the suspense, we ended the week having shared the message of Christ 694 times!)

I went with a student named Eli to meet people, and we stumbled upon a man named Neman sitting on a bench. We talked with him for about 45 minutes, and learned right away that he did not consider himself a Christian, had never before heard the gospel clearly, and had justifiable complaints against what he say from Christians at the church he attended. He had to leave before we were able to dig deeper, but I set up an appointment to meet him at 1:00 the following day.

That next day, one of our National Directors Derrick and his son JP joined me in meeting up with Neman. They had flown to Ghana for a week, along with several businessman and friends to get a glimpse of what God is doing through our partnership with Ghana. As we met Neman, he could recount word for word things that Eli and I had mentioned the previous day. We talked more about the gospel, and just had an amazing conversation. Neman was studying to be a lawyer, and the questions he asked and the evidence from Scripture to back up what we were telling him was vital. I don't think I have ever seen a more genuine and real transformation of someone understanding the gospel for the first time. He got excited as we continued, saying things like, “I have never heard this before! This makes sense to me for the first time. I have never understood what people meant when they claimed to be Christian.”

That afternoon, Neman prayed to receive Christ and started a personal relationship with God. We took some pictures together afterwards, and he invited us to come to dinner at his house to share with the rest of his family. We weren't able to due to our schedule, but encouraged him to let God use him to reach the people around him. Romans 10:14 says, “How then will they call on in whom they have not believed? And how are they to believe in him of whom they have never heard? And how are they to hear without someone preaching?” Neman left excited to share the best news in the world, that we didn’t have to and couldn’t work ourselves into a relationship with Christ by “being good”, but rather that Jesus was “good on our behalf”. Placing our faith in Him and His finished work on the cross literally transfers our identity to being hidden with Him and being forever right with God.

This is why we want to reach college students; because they are the next leaders of the world. Neman really is the kind of guy that can change families, villages, countries, and the world for Christ. Of all the conversations I had during our 5 weeks in Ghana, talking with Neman was the highlight.

Reminiscing

"Indulge in enjoyable recollection of past events."

Just over a week ago we left Ghana and landed in Washington D.C. People talk about reverse culture shock happening when you get back from another country, but there was no such thing for us. Everything is so familiar and so normal. It is easy to enjoy being in our own home, walking on clean floors (if I am a good housekeeper that day), and eating whatever we want, whenever we want. And while being home is great, there are so many stories and memories I want to capture before I forget details and peoples' faces are forgotten. Many are scribbled down in my journal-some barely legible from bumpy dirt roads-but they need to be shared. The people we met and experiences we had are too sacred to remain tucked away in a book I may not open again once it's finished. Each post this week will capture the people and events that touched us most in Ghana. Today, I will share about the Art Market.

It's technically called the Art Center, but we started calling it the Art Market so that's what I'll call it. We made two visits here near the end of our trip, and that was still not enough time to get through the whole market. Here we are inside one of the many shops that sells wood carvings:
This is where we did most of our shopping, though I spent my fair share of time inside trying to find the perfect dress (no luck). Ben loved going in each shop and bargaining for the best price. I was happy to let him have that job! After a while they all look the same to me, though each vendor claimed their items were uniquely handmade. If you would so much as look at an item, the vendor would do whatever he could to sell it to you, and if we walked out of there empty-handed, he would walk ahead of us and tell his friends what we were looking at so they could offer us similar items. It was quite exciting!

Here is a drum shop that actually did sell hand made drums by the store owner. We brought one back with us. It was priced right, at about $30 USD, when they sell for much more in the states.

One of the shops was called "God's Time Is Best Music Shop". There were many businesses that had very Christian names, which we found amusing.