Friday, December 16, 2005

Recruiting Prayer Requests

Please pray for the following requests for our recruiting team:
1. Pray for our recruiting efforts at the Campus Ministry Christmas and Winter Conferences. Pray that God would lead us directly to students whose hearts He has prepared to work with us. Pray that God will provide staff for next summer from this year's conferences.

2. Pray for our recruitng efforts at Passion in Nashville, TN. They are expecting around 15,000 college students and recent graduates. Pray that God would lead the most interested students to us and that several would join our staff next summer.

3. We have accepted 11 new staff this semester. They are planning on attending New Staff Training in January. This is one of our largest groups of new staff to ever join our ministry in the winter.

4. Pray for me and Joe King, a database developer who is donating his time, as we spend countless hours this week working on getting our recruiting database closer to being finished and accessible. This is incredibly significant because it would exponentially increase our ability to effectively track with our recruits at a local level and give them needed SV experience. Pray for wisdom and insight for us as we work through the countless issues that this involves. Joe has traveled to Orlando to spend this past week and next with me getting the database up and running, so pray we are able to get all the major (and most of the minor) issues resolved so we can all start using the database more effectively.

Database update: We are still working on it. Every day since Monday - each morning through every night until about 2am with literally no breaks except to eat. (working on it about 18 hours a day!)

Today my brother-in-law is moving and I must go over there for a few hours to help and say goodbye, then back to working on the database.

We’ll probably still be working through the weekend and into next week.

Pray that by the time Joe has to leave, than I can do 100% of what I have been doing on a weekly basis for the last couple years, and then obviously the other important features of being online for others to use it. But more importantly, at the minimum, I need to be able to do what I’ve been doing – ie. be able to reply to the email requests, communicate the database with the company we use to send out our monthly Venture Corps emails, be able to import new contacts after events, etc.

We basically have torn what all I’ve done over the last 3 years into separate pieces and are putting it back together into this new enhanced format, which is obviously much more time consuming than it sounds.

Wednesday, December 07, 2005

Congress Passes Tax Incentives for Charitable Giving

When hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast region, tens of thousands of Americans were left homeless. Thousands of Americans volunteered and gave to support those in desperate need.

As the recovery process began, Congress recognized that all American charities would need support. In order to help charities like Campus Crusade for Christ in this time of great need, Congress changed the charitable deduction rules.

Cash gifts for any purpose given by an individual between August 28 and December 31, 2005, will generally be deductible up to your full income.

Campus Crusade's The Great Commission Foundation has prepared two resources to help donors maximize this opportunity:

Tax Relief Overview Brochure (PDF, 878KB)

Frequently Asked Questions (Word)

Tuesday, December 06, 2005

Campus Crusade Featured in an ABC News, Good Morning America Segment


Today on Good Morning America, there was a story worth watching online.

"Are Students Losing Their Religion on Campus? Many Young People Turn Away from God in College, But It Doesn't Have to Be That Way"

ABC's Good Morning America asked for our help casting their parenting segment called "Keeping the Faith in College."

The story line revolves around a student from a religious family who goes off to college and falls for the temptations of college life. The student wakes up to the emptiness of a party lifestyle and returns to the faith of her parents. Practical do's & don'ts for parents are suggested from the story.

ABC spent a day at the University of Georgia interviewing Ashley and her boyfriend, Ethan. They taped her in her sorority house, walking across campus, leading her evangelistic Bible study at a sidewalk cafe, praying, studying the Bible and attending our weekly meeting. They also interviewed a Campus Ministry staff member regarding our ministry helping students and giving tips for parents of college students. Ashley's parents were also interviewed in their home in Nashville as well as taped worshipping in church.

To view the story yourself, click here:
Keeping the Faith in College, on Good Morning America

Friday, December 02, 2005

Momentum in the Fall


In Student Venture, the fall is a big time for reaching out to new students. In every way imaginable and with every group possible, we seek to take the Gospel to those who may have never heard. Sometimes it's with official groups that have a name, like the freshman football team or the marching band. Other times it's with informal groups of friends. Always it's for the purpose of sharing with the students how they can have a personal relationship with Christ. Keep reading for three stories of exciting outreaches from one Student Venture city this fall.

Keep in mind, most every new staff person we see join our ministry experiences responses like this all the time. Please pray our recruit efforts will continue to generate more workers.

*** MAKING A DIFFERENCE ***

From one of our staff guys in Atlanta: Recently we hosted an outreach for the Freshman Football team from a local high school. Because the outreach was held on a day where the students got out of school early, we had lots of time with the guys. They didn't have to be back for practice for almost 3 hours so we did lots of crazy, messy games that the guys really enjoyed. We had a couple of older guys share about the difference that Christ has made in their lives since becoming Christians a year ago. We even had a guy who had graduated from their high school share his personal testimony about his relationship with Christ with them. Finally, we shared with the 35 football players how they could have a personal relationship with Christ. We talked about sin, football and God's "game plan" for our lives. The guys stayed fully engaged as we talked about scoring a touchdown, winning a game and how to win the "ultimate victory". They seemed to really understand the Gospel and we challenged them to consider the "cost" of following Jesus. When we led them in a prayer of salvation, 26 guys indicated that they had placed their faith in Christ for the first time. Now they are starting the follow up process, beginning to get established in their faith and learning how they can grow closer to God.

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We've started middle school ministries at many of the schools that feed into the high schools where we have established ministries. Some of the high school students help lead the middle school meetings, give their testimonies, lead discussion groups, etc. Just last weekend, we had a "semi lock-in" for students from these middle schools at a local entertainment complex. On Wednesday before the lock-in on Saturday, we had 30 registrations and knew of about 10 others that were coming for sure. We felt like there was momentum for it and that there would be a lot of kids that would just show up. Little did we know. On Saturday night, there were scores of middle school kids in line to sign in. And they kept coming! They were everywhere! 130 kids showed up for putt-putt, go-karts, arcade games, pizza, ice cream and a movie. We were able to share the Gospel in the midst of the craziness and 15 middle school kids indicated that they placed their faith in Christ! What a great night!

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We had a "Freshman Rally" earlier this fall at one of our schools. This is a "broad sowing" event designed to reach into every pocket of the freshman class. We made bright orange T-shirts for the freshmen that we knew that said, "Hey freshman, got your pool pass yet? Get it at the freshman rally." The big night came and the school auditorium was buzzing with excited freshmen. We used water balloon launchers to launch free t-shirts into the crowd. We played Family Feud between a team of guys and a team of girls, with the loser of each round having to do some gross stunt. We had a contest to see who could eat the caramel apple (that was actually an onion) on a string the fastest. The rally was a great momentum builder with about 140 freshmen coming and 22 indicating that they placed their faith in Christ.