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ON CAMPUS
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TRANSFORMING COLLEGE STUDENTS TO TRANSFORM THE WORLD
INSIDE LOOK
HOW TO BUILD A CHURCH +
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THERE IS A AT T H E HEART OF THE GOSPEL.
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CCO student leader Will Matthews (Kent State University)
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GOD SO LOVED H I S C R E AT I O N , HIS COSMOS, T H AT H E S E N T H I S O N E + O N LY SON. AND THIS SON LAID DOWN HIS LIFE TO RECONCILE T H E C R E AT I O N BACK TO ITS C R E AT O R . — There is a mystery at the heart of the Gospel.
The Gospel is good news to the one. It is for all things and one lost sheep.
God so loved his Creation, His cosmos, that He sent His one and only Son. And this Son laid down his life to reconcile the creation back to its Creator.
Everyone and every one.
The Gospel is quite literally cosmic in scale. And. Jesus, the one in whom all things hold together, met and loved individuals. He stopped to say, “Who touched me?” and “Come, follow me,” and “Daughter, your faith has made you whole.” He cried when Lazarus died. He is the good shepherd who seeks the one who is lost. And with reunion comes a party!
When we step on campus, we step into this mystery. Every student needs to know Jesus. Every campus needs a Gospel-centered ministry. Every generation needs to play their part. Together we respond to God’s expansive call. And, like Jesus, we meet the cosmos one person at a time. The field hockey athlete. The construction science major. The joyful one. The sad one. The one who texts, “Can we get together?” The one who hides behind their Instagram feed. Every student on every campus. Every one by one by one.
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WA N T MORE? Watch Cain's story come to life at ccojubilee.org/buildthechurch
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CCO staff Justin and Molly Hare (left) and CCO student leader Cain Compton (right)
“ I N E E D E D A N I N T E R G E N E R AT I O N A L C H U R C H ”
Cain steps out of his pickup truck and strides across the church lawn. Everything from his truck to his clothes suggests that he’s a young man who is not afraid of hard work. When asked how he first found his way to this church, he doesn’t talk about the music, cool sermons, or slick student culture. Instead he simply says: “I needed an intergenerational church.” How does he know he needs that? “My family talked about faith around the dinner table, so I always knew it was important for my life,” Cain explains. “And if I’m going to spend four years with thousands of other people my own age, I need the influence of older and wiser folks around me. I need the family of God to help me grow. I need an intergenerational church.” Two years ago, the members of this small Anglican church plant called Christ the Redeemer Church were meeting to worship in a small theater near Clemson University. They knew they needed to reach out to students on campus. They just weren’t sure how.
At the same time, Justin Hare had finished seminary and he and his wife, Molly, were seeking where the Lord was calling them to serve. When they learned about Christ the Redeemer, the call became clear.
T H E R E WA S S O
“There was so much good ministry happening on campus already, with more than 30 parachurch groups at Clemson,” says Justin. “But something was missing. The missing piece was the Church.”
A L R E A D Y. B U T
As college students struggle to understand the full complexity of their lives and the culture around them, they are desperately searching for what will make sense of everything around them. They are hungry for Truth. They need the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And if their faith is to truly take root and define their lives—in college and beyond—they need to become a part of the Church. Part of a local church. When Cain, a construction science major, first stepped into the little theater which housed Christ the Redeemer Church one Sunday morning, he knew he was home. “It was clear as day that God wants me to be part of this church,” he
MUCH GOOD MINISTRY HAPPENING ON CAMPUS SOMETHING WA S M I S S I N G . THE MISSING P I E C E WA S THE CHURCH. said. “And when they announced that they had just purchased an old house in need of renovation, I was all in to help!” And that’s when it happened. As Cain served with his hands, renovating the new church building, he was telling his friends on campus about the church. The more he talked about the church, the more his friends started showing up on Sunday mornings. And the more his friends began showing up, the more their friends started showing up.
In a matter of months, what began as fewer than a dozen students and a handful of families grew to three services and nearly 100 students worshiping each week. As Cain was building the church, he was building the church. One friendship at a time. When Cain is asked what he senses the Lord has for the year ahead, he pauses. Then he wonders, “How do we reach the whole campus for Jesus?” This is the question of a young disciple who has a vision for life-long mission, and this is the question of Christ the Redeemer Church. It’s why CCO staff step onto campus every day, and it’s why Justin and Molly step into the lives of students like Cain—to see a generation of college students transformed by the power of Jesus Christ and His Gospel, in partnership with the local church, reaching the world for the glory of God. To reach every student on every campus. The call to reach everyone.
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“ I H AV E A V I S I O N T H A T P I T T S B U R G H W I L L O N E D AY B E A S F A M O U S F O R GOD AS IT IS FOR STEEL.” —SAM SHOEMAKER These words spoken over Pittsburgh in the 1950s are credited with sparking several Gospel movements in the city—including the CCO. When considering the story of the EveryCampus movement, it’s hard not to connect the dots: A coalition of organizations; a movement to reach every campus in America with the Gospel of Jesus Christ—that started in Pittsburgh. In May of 2017, the CCO hosted leaders from collegiate ministries across the country. Leaders from Cru and InterVarsity USA began discussing what it would mean to combine efforts to establish Gospel communities on every campus in
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the United States. This Pittsburgh meeting is where the EveryCampus movement was born. EveryCampus is a coalition of organizations like the CCO with a common goal: to mobilize prayer and start Gospel movements on campuses across the country. A longing for revival. And it starts with prayer. By the end of 2019, we want to prayer walk all 5,000 campuses in the country. There are more than 2,000 campuses left to pray for. Will you join us? Will you commit to pray?
V I S I T E V E R Y C A M P U S . C O M T O D AY + P R AY E R W A L K A C A M P U S N E A R Y O U .
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ONLY 2% OF COLLEGE STUDENTS
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She didn’t understand what was happening, and Azure was worried. Two weeks ago, her best friend Ashley had stopped speaking to her, and Azure didn’t know why. The two had been friends since the fourth grade; now they were sophomore field hockey teammates at Kent State University. They also shared a distressing bond—both had lost a parent in high school. For Azure, the loss of her mom drew her deeper into relationship with Jesus. “As I struggled, my aunt came alongside me and taught me what it means to turn to God.” Now Azure wanted to provide the same comfort to her friend, and they had recently begun to dive deeper into
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CCO students Ashley Bonetz (left) and Azure Fernsler (right)
conversations about grief, God, and the meaning of it all.
student, I just needed someone to listen.”
When Ashley suddenly cut off all communication, Azure, a student leader in Kent’s athlete ministry, confided in CCO staff member Kaleigh Ritter. Kaleigh was concerned and asked Ashley if they could get lunch sometime. In the past, Ashley had held her at arm’s length, so Kaleigh was surprised when she responded, “Great. Let’s get together.”
“She looked relieved,” Kaleigh remembers. “She said that she absolutely didn’t want to talk about God. Then she proceeded to rant for an hour about God. She hated God because He let her dad die.”
When they met, Kaleigh tried to put Ashley at ease. “I know this is my job, but we don’t have to talk about God. We can talk about anything. I know that sometimes when I was a
When asked about a starting place for evangelism with college students in 2019, Michael Gamble, Kaleigh’s co-worker, said this: “Many students start from a place of pain, a place of ‘I’m too hurt to even care.’ If you get beneath the surface, below the Instagram selfies
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STUDENTS ARE EXPERTS AT M A N A G I N G THEIR PUBLIC IMAGES. THEY ALSO BECOME E X P E R T S AT MASKING THEIR PA I N . G E T T I N G B E N E AT H T H E SURFACE REQUIRES A REAL INVESTMENT IN STUDENTS’ LIVES.
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pain and hope. Ashley came home to Jesus.
CCO student leader Jalil Nelson (left) and CCO associate Ted Schumacher (right)
and 140-character tweets, there’s a lot of ‘There can’t be a God—look at what’s happening in the world. Look at what happened to me.’” It takes a while to get to these deeper places. On social media, students are experts at managing their public images. They also become experts at masking their pain. Getting beneath the surface requires a real investment in students’ lives.
And so Kaleigh, Michael, and Kyle Schumacher, a CCO staff member who works with football players, schedule their ministries around what works for students. They ask probing questions. They pray the Holy Spirit would move students’ hearts and minds, in whatever time is available.
Read about Will Matthews, a Kent CCO student leader and entrepreneur whose faith was built through the creation of a food truck. ccojubilee.org/faithbyfoodtruck
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Then Ashley asked, ‘Where do we go from here?’”
If this is true for students in general, it is even more so for Division I student athletes, high achievers who are required to juggle full class loads with demanding practice and travel schedules. “If you get an hour with a student athlete,” Kaleigh says, “you’d better make the most of it. An hour is a sacrifice for them.”
WA N T M O R E ?
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It’s worth it. Jalil, a sophomore student leader, says, “Their job is important because they look at us from the inside out. As athletes, we’re looked at from the outside in—we’re looked at for how we perform at games and it can feel like that’s all you are. It can be really depressing. But they care about our
personal lives and our relationship with God. It’s like you have this thing inside you, this thing you need to survive, and they take the time to bring it out.” When Ashley finished ranting to Kaleigh, the two sat in silence. Then Kaleigh spoke carefully. “This isn’t the way things are supposed to be,” she said. “You should be angry at death. It grieves God too.” Their time was almost up for the day, so Kaleigh asked Ashley if they could get together again. Ashley opened up to Azure; Kaleigh and Ashley started meeting weekly. “I shared the Gospel along the way,” Kaleigh says. “I told Ashley that Jesus wants to have a relationship with her, and it’s an honest relationship where she can say, ‘I hate this,’ and Jesus can handle it. And he takes it and says, ‘You are worthy of love.’” One day, Kaleigh and Ashley met at their usual spot. But something unusual happened. “I didn’t plan any of this,” Kaleigh remembers, “but suddenly I felt led to ask her, ‘Is a relationship with God something you want?’” And she said ‘Yes.’” Still a bit shocked, Kaleigh asked Ashley if they could pray together. They did, and Ashley came home to a relationship with her Creator, the One who sees her from the inside out, the one who walks with us in
Kaleigh, Ashley, and Azure began meeting weekly to read through the book of John. Ashley grew in confidence with the Bible. She wondered how to follow Christ in her relationship with her boyfriend. She continued to grieve the loss of her dad, but now with hope. Soon Ashley wondered how she and Azure could reach out to their field hockey teammates. Now the two of them lead prayer before games. They also pray for their teammates, wondering who is ready to attend the athlete fellowship or who might need an invitation to pray before a game. “Sometimes I just look at Ashley and wonder ‘Who are you?’” Kaleigh admits. “In the space of two months, Jesus brought Ashley from avoiding all things Christian, even her best friend, to a saving relationship. And less than a year later, Ashley has become Azure’s partner in ministry. The Lord is so surprising. And so, so good.”
“ T H E C C O S TA F F CARE ABOUT OUR PERSONAL LIVES AND OUR R E L AT I O N S H I P WITH GOD. IT’S L I K E Y O U H AV E THIS THING INSIDE YOU, THIS THING YOU NEED TO SURVIVE + THEY TA K E T H E T I M E TO BRING I T O U T. ”
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TO REACH EVERY CAMPUS Only 10% of young adults who identify as Christian demonstrate a resilient faith—that is, a faith marked by regular church involvement, personal commitment to Jesus, a trust in Biblical authority, and a desire to transform the broader society in the name of Jesus. This is one of the findings that Barna president David Kinnaman explores in his latest book, Faith For Exiles. And he insists that this is good news. Why? Because despite every cultural force insisting they turn the other way, students keep showing up. In spite of the info-saturated, social media-driven, hyper-connected culture they are immersed in—or maybe because of it—college students crave something different. As they experience the isolation and anxiety that this digital connectivity ironically nurtures, they are searching for something more—more authentic, more real, more hopeful. More True. This is why we step onto campuses like Clemson and Kent every day, and into the lives of students like Cain and Azure and Ashley. We want to meet students where they live, so that we can share the most authentic, real, hopeful news there is—the very True and very Good News of Jesus Christ. We want every student to hear this message, and that means we need to reach every campus. This is why we have joined the EveryCampus movement—along with InterVarsity, Cru, Navigators, and others, we have committed “to mobilize prayer and Gospel movements to reach every campus in the country.” It all starts with prayer. This is why our goal is to prayer walk every one of the nearly 5,000 campuses in the United States before the end of the year. Will you pray with me for every student, that they would grow into resilient disciples of Christ? Would you prayer walk a campus near you? As we pray for revival on college campuses, our vision remains the same: to see a generation of college students transformed by the power of Jesus Christ and His Gospel, in partnership with the local church, reaching the world for the glory of God. Every campus. Every college student. Every single one. Vincent J. Burens President & CEO, CCO
20,000,000 COLLEGE
STUDENTS
10%
5,000
OF YOUNG CHRISTIAN
COLLEGE
ADULTS ARE
CAMPUSES
RESILIENT DISCIPLES
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P R AY — Join us at 9:38 every day in prayer for every student on every campus. A few seconds or a few minutes, wherever you are. Pray over a specific campus, that the Lord would cause revival to break out in the hearts of students and faculty. Log a prayer walk today at everycampus.com.
GIVING T U E S D AY
S E RVE
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Join the mission to reach every student for Christ by serving or partnering with us. Volunteer, associate, and full-time positions are available at ccojubilee.org/careers.
DECEMBER 3RD
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Make a recurring, one-time, or planned gift at ccojubilee.org/donate.
O UR C OM M I TME NT TO F I N A N C I A L I N T E G R I T Y. The CCO has been awarded four stars: the highest possible rating f rom Charity Navigator eight years in a row. Only 4% of organizations achieve this recognition.
On Campus is produced by the CCO Marketing & Communications team: Peter Chace, Interim VP for Marketing & Communications Amy Maczuzak, Senior Editor | Tyler Marwood, Marketing Coordinator India Jade Orban, Designer | Jennifer Pelling, Writer & Editor Additional photography courtesy of Andrew Rush. Special thanks to Bonnie Liefer.
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