THE SLAMERS

“So how did you get involved with Cru?” I (Scott) asked Jessica, a senior at Long Beach State University.

“I was walking to class one day last year, and I saw one of those signs in the grass advertising Cru.  So I decided to check it out.”  she responded.  It’s just that simple sometimes.  A sign in the grass, a survey at the union, or a card handed out on the way to your car.  Now Jessica is helping other students at “Beach” learn about Cru and about Jesus.

The Cru movement has been small recently at Long Beach State, even though our presence on campus dates back to the 1980s!  We only have a couple staff that work with students on campus just one day per week.  They’re on the team that splits their time between Long Beach State University and Cal State Fullerton, a combined student population of over 75,000!

To give momentum to the small but growing movement there, several of our office staff came out last week to give some extra manpower to their official re-launch.  We set up a table by the bookstore, put up banners, and handed out hundreds of cards with a personal invitation to check out Cru. (See pics above)  At 3:30 pm a small group of new students showed up to find out more about Cru at our informational meeting!

• Pray that these students would find a place in Cru to be encouraged to live out their faith on campus, or to come to faith if they don’t yet know Jesus.
• Pray for more students like Jessica, to see a sign or respond to a card and come check out Cru.
• Pray for God’s grace upon the movement there to gain official club recognition again this year.  They are still waiting to hear if they will be accepted or de-recognized in light of the new “all comers” policy. (For more on the “all comers” policy, click here)
• Pray for us as we coordinate the placement of all 220 staff & interns for their summer2015 assignments.  For wisdom & grace in the process.
• Praise God for Summer Mission trip directors for San Diego and Ocean City, NJ! Pray for two more for Santa Monica.  
• Pray this weekend (11/21—11/23) for the 450 Junior & Senior students coming to our Crossroads Conference. They will learn about investing their lives for God’s Kingdom in whatever career He calls them to.

Print versions of this update below…(Good format to print out prayer requests for the fridge:))

Prayer Letter November 2014  Prayer Letter November 2014 Prayer Card

In this months Prayer Letter and Prayer Card, we share about the 3 main ways college students are coming to faith in Christ.

Prayer Letter October 2014 Prayer Letter October 2014 Prayer Card (These pdf versions can be better for printing and viewing)

(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.

This Fall we’ve experienced some of the greatest challenges on campus we’ve encountered in a long time.  Read our prayer letter below to find out how the California State University system has made it very difficult for Christian clubs and organizations to charter on campus with their new policy.  And read how God is working on one campus in San Diego in spite of being de-recognized.

In December of 2011, the Chancellor of the California State University system (23 campuses and almost one-half of a million students) signed an executive order extending the non-discrimination policy for student organizations (click here to read Executive Order 1068).   The non-discrimination policy was extended to an organization’s leadership as well as membership.  This becomes a problem when a Christian club has a requirement of their student leaders to hold to the Christian faith.  Even though that makes sense, it is seen as discrimination based on religion.  There is a good amount of authority given to the individual universities within the CSU system in how they will execute this order, so Cru teams have been engaging with individual university administrations up and down the state to become a recognized group.  We’re really just feeling the effects of this order now, as the universities have taken time to figure out how to implement it themselves.  Our campus teams have been holding in tension working to get official club status while not compromising Biblical integrity.  So far, this has resulted in 2 campuses being recognized, several being de-recognized, and many more still in the process.  The benefits to being a recognized student organization on campus vary, but can include more ability to meet on campus, reserve rooms, get significantly discounted fees, and to post media on campus.  Taking these privileges away makes it more difficult to reach students on the CSU campuses.

But with God, every roadblock is simply a new opportunity!  Our teams have seen the challenge through this lense and God is moving in significant ways!  You can read about how God is doing that specifically at San Diego State University in our prayer letter this month.

September Prayer Letter

September Prayer Card

(For printing purposes, the text links below are better quality)

Prayer Letter September 2014     Prayer Letter September 2014 Prayer Card   

Over the course of the summer in Santa Monica, we saw God do amazing things!  68 people received Christ as their Lord and Savior!  That alone is enough to make the summer a success.  But God is also sending back to their 25 campuses, 80 students equipped and experienced to lead others in reaching the lost on their campuses for Christ! 

Sometimes a prayer letter (see previous post) isn’t enough space to share all we want in one month.  So below is a more detailed list of the things and experiences Becky and I had this summer on the Santa Monica Summer Project. 

• Moved our family of 4 into a 1-bedroom apartment in Venice.
• Set up a beach motel for 80 students (including 10 bunk beds) and figured out who would stay in each room
• Each developed/trained 2 staff members
• Baptized 8 students in the Ocean
• Made an epic trip to the dollar store to put together welcome gifts for 80 students
• Trained and oriented a staff team of 24
• Trained and oriented 80 students for an 8-week summer mission
• Coordinated child care for several special events
• Led devotional times
• Led prayer times
• Celebrated Scott’s 40th birthday
• Counseled students in walking with Jesus and life decisions
• Developed 5 themed weeks of project
  • “Laying a Foundation”
  • “Holding Fast to Him”
  • “His Heart, Our Part”
  • “All For One”
  • “Leaving a Legacy”
• Gave a sermon on God’s grace from Luke 15
• Initiated tons of conversations
• Shared the gospel many times
• Shared our testimonies several times
• Led 3 people to receive Christ!
• Contained a small Scabies outbreak among the students
• Composed team job descriptions for all of our ministry teams (outreach, prayer, community, etc.)
• Shared the ministry of the Holy spirit several times
• Hand-picked each of the 80 students to be in a small group with one of our 16 staff
• Co-led a staff team of 24 and Lead Team of 8
• Confirmed Becky is my favorite co-worker:)
• Got a sunburn
• Coordinated with Trinity Church for all our meeting venues
• Rode our bikes on the ocean bike trail
• Co-led a training time for students on how to lead a small group
• Hand-picked each student to have a role after the staff team left
• Developed relationships with business owners and pastors in the community
• Got real good at parallel parking
• Got 1 parking ticket
• Ate out too often for too much
• Printed hundreds of pages of material at Fedex Office
• Trained our staff team in The Growth Model and The Grid
• Spoke to the student women about pursuing purity with guys
• Ate a student-cooked dinner 5 nights a week
• Weekly we participated in
  • an all-project outreach
  • church service
  • weekly student meeting
  • family fun night
  • ministry training session
  • day off
  • project social
  • a Bible study
• Played in a student vs. staff softball game
• Coordinated the turnover of project leadership from staff to students
• Put on an epic men’s conference
• Rode the rides at the Pier as a family
• Played at the beach and swam in the ocean
• Learned to lead with a new co-worker
• Saw God show up in the students’ lives, our lives, and our kids’ lives!

Slamer Prayer Letter Summer 2014

Prayer Letter April May 2014

Slamers’ Summer 2014

Prayer Letter March 2014

Prayer Letter February 2014