Ben and I were surrounded by guns and lo

Ben and I were surrounded by guns and locked down for 4 hours 7 years ago http://ow.ly/cT8Hx

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Helping Japan

Like you, we’re deeply concerned for the Japanese. Campus Crusade for Christ has had a ministry presence there for many years with some results. You may be interested to know, however, that 80% of major crises (including earthquakes, wars and famines) in the last twenty years have taken place in the 10/40 window region. Also, 40% of church-planting breakthroughs among Muslim people groups followed some kind of natural disaster. These statistics don’t apply to Japan, but they do show that disasters can cause a hunger for God in people.

All of our staff are okay and are thinking of ways to mobilize their Christian students to help bring both relief and the Gospel to their people. Already, the Jesus Film Project is raising funds to send 50,000 DVDs of the film to Japan immediately. They are also offering Jesus films in Japanese for $5 through the end of the month if you know of anyone from Japan to give them to.

GAiN, Campus Crusade for Christ’s humanitarian ministry will be in Japan and is taking donations if you are looking for other ways to help besides the Jesus film. Of course, other groups are as well, such as Samaritan’s Purse and World Vision.

Please pray for God to move in the hearts of the Japanese people. God can move spiritual mountains which may be a barrier to His Good News. He is moving in the hearts of the Japanese. (Read Sus’ post on how God literally moved the physical mountains of Japan’s Honshu island.)

Sources:
This image is available on Wikimedia Commons.
Statistics from Ethne 2009.

The Importance of Our Christian Worldview

“You are a king, then!” said Pilate.

Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.”

“What is truth?” retorted Pilate. ~ John 18: 37 – 38a NIV

The Roman governor looked at the condemned prisoner standing before him and asked, “What is truth?” Jesus had just told Pilate that He had come into the world to bear witness to the truth. What Pilate did not realize was that standing before him was the very Author of truth Himself.

In John 14:6 Jesus declared “I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.” How you and I view this statement and others in the Scriptures impacts our lives, our relationship with God and our eternal destiny.

Recently, Sus took a graduate-level course, “Christian Worldview,” through Campus Crusade’s Institute of Biblical Studies; all our staff, both field and headquarters, are now required to complete eleven courses in advanced Biblical studies to equip them for ministry in today’s world. During the worldview class Sus learned that everyone essentially has a worldview (whether they know it or not) which determines what they believe about God, truth, eternal life, the nature of Man, who is Christ, and much more. Their worldview is the foundation explaining the “why” behind what you may see that person (or a group of people) doing.

Perhaps you have heard the term “postmodern.” This is a philosophy that has run rampant on our college campuses and in our culture for a number of years. Postmodernists do not believe in absolute truth; rather they believe truth can be defined by each individual. They would view Jesus’ statement in John 14:6 either as intolerant or only meaningful for those who chose to believe in Christ.

Christians need to know their worldview. We need to be aware of and acknowledge the power of God in the spiritual realm. We need to have a natural history that honors God as Creator as an alternative to the secularism of our American culture. Finally, we also need to know and share God’s overarching plan revealed to us through the Bible and throughout history with believers and nonbelievers. Mike’s office team just completed The Truth Project (at thetruthproject.org) and recommends this video series for learning a Christian worldview.

During this course, Sus was able to learn about different religious and philosophical trends that form the majority of worldviews today. She also learned some practical tools to help discern a person’s worldview, which affects how to approach them with the gospel. In our next newsletter we will share how she used this approach with three young adult nonbelievers. She was also encouraged that her blogging, as an evangelistic storyteller, is a culturally relevant way to connect the reader’s needs to God’s story.

Thank you so much for your prayers for us. We thank God for you and for the role you play in our ministry!

Prayer Opportunities for Lent

One reason I’m writing tonight is because of several prayer opportunities we thought you would want to know about. Perhaps you’ll be interested in one of these.

• Our ministry in Europe started praying for the 40 European countries during the 40 days of Lent. It’s not too late to sign up for a daily prayer request for each country. Read more on PrayEurope.com or go directly to the sign-up for an email reminder.

• Our ministry leaders are calling for a 40-day prayer focus, March 17 to April 25, to seek God’s face. They have been asking God where He wants to take us as a movement. Instead of petitioning Him about “that question” our leadership has invited us and the friends of the ministry (you) to join us in simply focusing on God for forty days. You can learn more here and get started with a new devotional each morning on the 17th here. If you would like to use Facebook, a friend of ours, Janey, will have daily devotionals on 40 Days of Worship.

God is at Work in Egypt

All 150 families of Campus Crusade staff are safe and accounted for in Egypt. Campus Crusade for Christ’s main website has a web page where we will keep friends of the ministry up-to-date with our ministry there.

Here’s an excerpt:

“Christians are reaching out to those around them. Our staff in Egypt have noticed an incredible openness among the people. As staff members stand side by side with their neighbors to protect their communities, conversations are happening and many are having discussions about faith they would never have had before.”

Read more and check back often for updates.

NOTE: The photo of Egyptian Christians protecting Muslims while they pray comes from imgur.com

Reaching Students and Faculty on Campuses

We’ll admit it, we’re Narnia fans. Sus read the complete Chronicles of Narnia every year to Ben, Josh, and Jenny when they were growing up. And, of course, we attended The Voyage of the Dawn Treader together over our Christmas holiday. So, we were intrigued when Campus Crusade’s student ministries in Utah and Faculty Commons, Campus Crusade’s ministry to professors, capitalized on the pre-release buzz of the Voyage of the Dawn Treader movie, hosting lectures by Lewis scholar Dr. Christopher Mitchell of Wheaton College.

• At Utah State, a diverse crowd of 220 faculty and students, including graduate and international students, responded in overwhelmingly positive ways to Dr. Mitchell’s description of Lewis’s spiritual journey from atheist to Christian. The event was emceed by a Christian student and a professor who boldly proclaimed his faith. Many atheists and non-Christian students are now talking personally with Campus Crusade for Christ’s staff about the Gospel.
• Fifteen students who attended Dr. Mitchell’s lecture at Westminster College in Salt Lake City were interested in joining a C.S. Lewis book discussion group.
• Faculty Commons worked with Campus Crusade’s international student ministry at the University of Utah, to host a special session with Dr. Mitchell for faculty and for Chinese graduate students. (We’ve learned that C. S. Lewis’ works are very popular in China.)
• Forty-five Christian students at Utah and Utah State took copies of C.S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity, asking God for courage and for opportunities to give the books to their professors.

Like many U.S. campuses today, the British university environment when Lewis was a professor at Oxford, was already skeptical and even scornful about Christianity. In the midst of that atheistic and agnostic terrain, C. S. Lewis influenced his students for Christ, but he also knew that he could reach a lot more people with his writing, particularly through his stories, more than through his books on apologetics. He succeeded beyond all expectations. The Chronicles of Narnia have never been out of print and are popular worldwide, selling over a million copies per year. The Narnia movies have exposed millions more to Lewis’ work.

In addition, C. S. Lewis explained the basics of the Christian faith in everyday language on BBC radio during World War II. (Listen to one of his talks here.) His popular radio talks were later compiled into another one of our favorite books, Mere Christianity. Our staff at Faculty Commons considers this book one of their most effective evangelistic tools. Nearly fifty years after Lewis’s death, it continues to lead skeptical and atheistic professors to faith in Christ. While his apologetics books explain the truths of Christianity in everyday language, his fiction, like The Chronicles of Narnia, harnesses the power of art and imagination to touch all kinds of people from around the world, planting Christian truth in their hearts and minds.

The life of C. S. Lewis is just one example of the impact professors can have on society. Faculty Commons comes alongside Christian professors to give them a voice for their faith on today’s college campuses. Thank you for helping to influence young people through the faith of godly professors around the world.

NOTE: If you’re in Chicago, you might want to visit the Marion E. Wade Center, a major research collection of materials by and about seven British authors: Owen Barfield, G.K. Chesterton, C.S. Lewis, George MacDonald, Dorothy L. Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. We drove past in 2009 and now I wish we’d gone in!! C. S. Lewis came to Christ through reading George MacDonald’s books and talking with J. R. R. Tolkien.

Related Posts: Various quotes from C. S. Lewis