(The summary below is from a report Scott does for the Pacific Southwest (PSW) region of Cru at the beginning of Fall.)

Summer’s over and Fall is upon us.  But what did God do in and through our various summer missions?  Let’s not miss looking back to see what He accomplished, give Him thanks, and be encouraged for the road ahead.  We want to give you a quick snapshot of what the Lord accomplished through the PSW’s efforts in summer sending this year.

National Summer Sending

As a national Campus Ministry, Cru sent 3,936 students around the US and the world, on 251 projects (including KCCC and Jesus Film)!  There were 82,386 gospel exposures with 5,477 decisions for Christ!  Overall, summer sending increased this year, even though student participation was down in 2013.

New on the scene was Mission Summer, which potentially provides a summer mission experience to every student – whether he/she is involved with Cru or not!  It is an online approach that connects students nationally and locally while guiding students through training on Moodle.  This year’s national pilot had 249 students!

PSW Summer Sending

We are SO encouraged to see that we sent 380 students on Summer Projects this summer!  That’s up from 297 last year and even 355 in 2012.  We also accepted 7 student staff to work alongside us on these projects!

On the Global Missions front, the majority of our projects had an incredible number of spiritual conversations!  And among our three East Asia projects alone, there were 89 decisions for Christ!  Even on our Japan project, a notoriously difficult place for the gospel, they had over 300 spiritual conversations, 155 gospel presentations, and one person receive Christ!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, our US projects of Santa Monica, SoCal, and Ocean City, NJ all had well over 1,000 spiritual conversations each.  Santa Monica hit an all time high of 80 students and 70 decisions for Christ!  And the Whitmores spearheaded two brand new San Diego Summer Launch weeks, which doubled student participation from the previous year!  Way to go!

Post-Project Survey Results

You may have guessed that confidence in “Initiating Spiritual Conversations” and “Sharing My Faith” increases significantly on Summer Projects.  But did you know that this year’s survey shows that the greatest gain in confidence for students is in “Explaining Spiritual Multiplication”?!  So, if your students just aren’t quite getting this whole Spiritual Multiplication thing, send them on project!

Also, slightly greater gains in those areas, on average, are experienced on US Projects.  But our Global Missions Projects win the day when it comes to “Explaining the Spirit-Filled Life”!

Here are some other encouraging statistics from the post-project survey of over 500 participants:

These are extremely encouraging results!!  This tells us that the effectiveness and quality of our Summer Projects are high in students’ eyes!

Looking Forward

Praise God for all this, and so many more individual stories we may never hear!!!  Continue to tell of what He accomplished this summer to your team, students, friends, and ministry partners!  Know that God is using these summer mission experiences to save lives, transform students’ lives, move us ahead in His mission on campus, and grow us as staff.