10 Things Your Support of Cru Has Accomplished This Year

For those of you who support the ministry of Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ), God has done some pretty amazing things this year.  It is really quite staggering.  Thanks to your help, students and faculty all over the world are hearing the gospel and are experiencing life-change.  Here are some of my favorite highlights of what God has done:

1. Your financial support has given 10 million people a chance to know God personally this past year.  That works out to someone every three seconds hearing the gospel.  (And this is just through the US Campus Ministry arm of Cru.)
2. Thanks to your help 127,000 people began a relationship with Christ – enough to fill two Astrodomes to max capacity.
3. At the University of Iowa, over 1,500 students crammed into a 1,000-seat venue to attend an outreach with an Illusionist called the “Maze.” Another 1,000 students were turned away due to maximum capacity.
4. The Portland Winter Conference changed the life of one young man, a former member of “The Century” club in his fraternity.  His goal used to be to sleep with 100 women in a year.  Changed by the power of the Gospel, he is now a student leader on his campus.
5. This winter around 3,000 students showed up for our Korean American Winter Conferences.  Most people don’t even know that we have a ministry targeting Korean American students; much less that it is one of our largest ethnic student ministries.  We also have ministries targeting African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native American, as well as international students.
6. Thanks to your support nearly 1,000 international students from 57 nations attended our Vision 2011 Conference.  Half of those students were not yet Christians.
7. The students who attended our Winter Conferences pledged over a quarter million dollars to missions for this coming year.  Over $150,000 of that was given in cash during those conferences.
8. Your support has given 42,000 high school and middle school students an opportunity to know Christ, and 4,500 began a relationship with him.  Did you know that over 70% of our high school and middle school ministries are run by volunteers?
9. More than 3,200 faculty and students went on summer mission trips this summer, investing their lives in others.  Midshipmen at the Naval Academy went on mission projects to Haiti, Venezuela, and Kenya – even though they had less than one month off for the summer.
10. This past year you have helped send and sustain 750 foreign missionaries to 35 nations around the world – many of whom are serving in the least evangelized parts of the world, such as the Middle East, Asia and Europe.

As I reflect on all that God has done through your support I am reminded of the passage in Ephesians that says it is purely by God’s grace that any of us know him.  Paul goes on to say, “For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do” (Eph 2:10). Thank you for the GOOD WORK you have been part of in reaching students and faculty for Christ around the world!