What’s your perspective?
This is a question that the CRU movement has been asking Ball State students over the past three weeks as a part of our fall outreach. While the final week was the actual outreach, weeks one and two were spent in intercessory prayer on behalf of the campus, and training the movement to engage in outreach using a CRU-published evangelism tool called “perspective” cards (not unlike a deck of playing cards). The movement boldly initiated spiritual conversations with non-Christians in order to get their perspective on the nature of God, the meaning and purpose of life, and other related questions. Then, after listening to their perspective, we kindly ask for an opportunity to share ours, which gives us the opportunity to share the gospel with them. Over the course of one week, hundreds of students were invited into a spiritual conversation, talking about life’s most important questions.
Sadly, most students give little to no thoughtful reflection on these questions. One student named Scott told me “I don’t really have a perspective.” Despite this reality, the Lord uses outreaches like these on a number of levels. Consider how many students are thinking about spiritual realties this week as a direct result of those conversations. Consider that more than 160 students received training to use this tool in order to initiate spiritual conversations with strangers, many of whom have never taken such bold steps to publicly identify themselves with the name of Jesus through this outreach. What about all those people who in the future will come to know Christ as their savior as Cru students graduate from BSU with training and power to initiate gospel conversations around the world? And we can’t forget about Nicki, a Chinese international student who placed her trust in Christ after going through the “perspectives” cards with some of our students.
What’s even more amazing is that while weeks one and two were meant to be preparatory for our final stage of the outreach, the Lord decided to use those two weeks to do more in our midst than we could have ever imagined! Having just arrived home from our annual Fall Retreat, and beginning our prayer week, nearly half a dozen students placed their trust in Christ, all because of prayer! One of those freshman who placed his faith in Christ at Fall Retreat, attended a seminar on evangelism that same day and during prayer week already shared his new-found faith with two students on campus, all the while calling our men to step up to the plate and do the same! That same week, while a group of cru students were praying fervently for our campus, a Japanese international student interrupted the prayer meeting saying, “I want to know who this Jesus is.”
This is just the tip of the iceberg! Though 300 staff and students attended our fall retreat, more than a dozen students have received Christ, many others have altered their future career plans in order to serve the Lord in ministry, we simply cannot put a number on all that the Lord has done this fall. But one thing we do know, the Lord is working, and in surprising ways.
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