Campus Crusade for Christ

I had a roommate in college who met Jesus late in our freshman year. When Mark and I set up the dorm room in Lever Hall in the fall, he was a brand-new Christian, full of Spiritual Laws with a sudden interest in music by Steve Green, Second Chapter of Acts, and Amy Grant. We got along just great, but we weren't in the same place spiritually. That would be because I was still lost, a lifelong churchgoer, but a stranger to God. But Mark was part of God's showing me who he was. I have fond memories.

Mark got saved through the ministry of Campus Crusade for Christ (CCC). Thirty years on, they're still sharing Jesus on campuses across the country. I sat down last week with John Schneider, the local CCC guy, with his wife Kerri, at the University of South Florida (USF).

I had no idea there were about 120,000 college students in the Tampa Bay area - USF, large as it is, only accounts for about 36,000 of them in campus classes.

(Pause here - I called Mark up last night and we talked for the first time in 25 years. Blink your eyes, and your kids are all grown up. Funny thing, he just last week was seriously thinking about contacting me and catching up. The same week I went to see John. Imagine that. Call it a kiss from God, to both of us. Good times.)

John and others in the CCC ministries live surrounded by people who are just about to be sent to places all around the world. (I hadn't quite thought of college as such, but it's a great image - this Old Faithful geyser that spews graduates everywhere on regular intervals.) So, "sending" is kind of a given in the whole ministry; give people the grounding in Christ and desire for more of Him that will carry them on into the multitude of places, careers and ministries before them.

I asked him why he and his wife, now in their twelfth year at USF, keep doing this. "The effect of Jesus on my life when I was in college was revolutionary...[and] God'll use these students to change the world."

I mentioned my friend Perry at Auburn Christian Fellowship (ACF), who says goodbye to a fourth of his friends every spring. (Campus ministry is really rewarding, but parts of it are really hard...) What's the hardest thing for John and Kerri? "Seeing all that potential in students, and sometimes it isn't surrendered to God. Really sad." Sometimes a student will meet Jesus, have a life-changing experience and then just...drift. It must feel like unfinished work, because CCC's whole idea is to help students encounter God, experience Him in relationship, and express their God-given gifts and passions the rest of their lives.

And the best part? Same thing, but the happy endings. They stay in touch with former students, who are all over the world now: married, single, in careers, parenting, in all sorts of walks and ministries.

What really makes my heart sing is seeing people living out their God-given dreams. Irenaeus said, "The glory of God is man fully alive." And when He leads people into and beyond their dreams, further than any of us ever foresaw...well, it's amazing.

Who would think that CCC, through Mark, would be part of my story 30 years ago, and then come back into it last week? That we would have come so far, and yet not grown further apart? Not me. I keep being surprised at God, which is a little silly. It's kinda what he does. What a treat when it happens, over and over again through the years

Pray for John, for Perry, for all the campus ministers. They need the prayer. We need the practice.