Fall marks lots of new beginnings in ministry on a college campus, including new students, new Bible studies, and new opportunities for gospel to go forth. Below are some highlights from the start of fall at Sac State. Thank you for your faithful partnership and prayers for all the ways God is at work!

Bible Studies

We would love to see every pocket of campus reached with the gospel, and one way we do that is by hosting Bible studies. On Monday nights, Andy, our student intern is leading 15+ students (above) through the book of Luke, and each week we have celebrated that more new students have come.  Additionally, on Thursday evenings, two of our student leaders, Evan and Kaitlyn, have been leading a culturally-specific study for students who identify with Asian American culture.  

We are also praying that God would allow for the re-launch of our ministry to sororities and fraternities this fall. Pray with us!

Evangelism Hour

Each week, we give our students opportunities to learn how to share their faith on campus, the context that they are most familiar with. Last week, I (Cameron) was joined by Victoria (above), a transfer student at Sac State, who is wanting to learn more about having spiritual conversations with her friends and classmates. We approached a girl studying on the quad, who turned out to be a follower of Jesus. She answered all of our questions and was encouraged that fellow believers were engaging in these conversations. As we walked away, Victoria’s response was “those questions were so easy!” 

While conversations are different with every student, we trust that God is working in those whom we approach, but also in our students as they see how easy it is to initiate spiritual conversations.

Faculty Prayer Times

One encouraging opportunity we’ve had as a ministry is to prayer walk Sac State’s campus with several of the faculty. These professors are living out their faith as they serve and care for their departments, fellow faculty, and their students. Last week, Cru’s ministry to faculty, Faculty Commons, partnered with these professors to hand out care packages to their departments. Afterwards, we prayed for more opportunities for God to reach these men and women. Our students have also been encouraged by witnessing the faith of these professors as they depend on the Lord in their workplace. Pictured above: Cameron with two other Cru staff members, a student with Cru, and a professor.

Prayer Requests

• Praise God for the work he is doing in both our returning and new students’ lives!  
• Please pray for our upcoming Fall Retreat on Oct. 21-23.  Pray for deepened relationships with the Lord and each other, and a greater fervor for reaching the lost!
• Pray for ministry to the Greeks (sororities) to be launched again this semester. 
• Pray for our family as we welcome baby girl this month!

After the last year and half of doing primarily virtual ministry, our team has been curious to see what ministry back on campus looks like now that schools have partially reopened. Would there even be students on campus to talk to?  

Our team spent the past few weeks assessing the situation at Sac State and the local community colleges. Using a contactless survey that students could scan and fill out  on their phones, we were able to connect with more than 400 students (like those pictured below)!  Many students are navigating hybrid schedules of online and in-person classes, and we are continuing to figure out how to best care for and meet these students where they are at.

“I am interested in exploring my faith and taking my next steps in being closer with Jesus. I honestly have a lot to learn… but I wasn’t sure where to start for a long time.”  – Jessica, Sacramento State University

Jessica, who had completed our survey, sent this text message to a member of our staff team.  College is a time when students are wresting with what they believe and what life is all about.  One of our focuses this semester is providing opportunities for spiritually open and interested students to ask deeper questions about Jesus, the Bible, and faith.  We have launched an “Explore Group” where students like Jessica can come together and explore these questions and what the Bible says together. 

“I wanted to check if there are any ongoing campus Bible studies for a few new students at Sac City.”  – Andy, Sacramento City College

Andy was involved in one of our groups prior to the pandemic, where he learned to share his faith and faith-journey with others as they learn about Jesus.  Returning to campus, Andy has been eager to continue growing in his faith and has even invited others to join him. To serve students like Andy, our team has formed “Journey Groups” where students who identify as Christians can journey together in college and learn how to engage in spiritual conversations with the people God has placed in their lives.

Thank you for your prayers, encouragement, and investment in what God is doing in these students’ lives!  We are so grateful for your partnership! – Jeff and Cameron

PRAYER REQUESTS

• Praise God for the doors he has opened for us to be back on campus talking to students!  
• Praise God for the students who are already involved in our explore and journey groups.  Pray that they would grow in their love for Jesus, understanding of the gospel, and in taking steps of faith to make Him known. 
• Please pray for our family as we continue to adjust to the new rhythms of work and school!  We are tired, but grateful for the opportunities before us. 
• Pray for our team to be refreshed after the initial push of being back on campus, and for continued energy!

Fresh from four weeks of intensive evangelism and discipleship at North Myrtle Beach Summer Mission, Zach (St. Cloud student, left) is excited to help fellow students come to know Christ.  It’s an amazing shift from the Zach of a few months ago, crying himself to sleep at night … wondering what to do, where to start, and how to fix things.    

A weekend partier since high school, Zach’s drinking had started to become more of a “Monday through Sunday” thing. COVID restrictions hijacked the end of his sophomore year, leaving the same 30 or 40 students showing up at the same bars each night, all flush with stimulus cash.

Segueing into summer 2020, underage Zach, ended up in police custody, having blacked out on someone’s front lawn. Considering his major in Law Enforcement, the irony of the arrest sent Zach into deep depression. What had happened to that competitive, athletic, “decent grades” guy he used to be? Sobbing in his bed, feeling unfulfilled and without a future, Zach texted Trevor, his older brother, “I’m so sick of this lifestyle.” Trevor’s reply? “Go to Cru.” 

Trevor, also in Law Enforcement, had encountered God through Cru a few years earlier. At the time, 16-year old Zach couldn’t understand how Trevor had been able to change from the angry brother he’d known his whole life. 

“I’m jealous of your breakthrough. I don’t think it will work for me … but I’ll try,” Zach texted back.

So Zach walked into a church where students had gathered to experience Cru’s virtual Winter Conference. He felt emotionally drained and doubtful — conspicuous —until he heard the band playing a song tailored just for him: Breakthrough. Amazed, Zach felt relief, the weight lifting off of him. 

“Like a toddler in a new world,” is how Zach sums up his spring semester experience of salvation, discipleship, Bible study, and church.  After spring, he decided to go on a Cru summer mission, where God’s loving truth continued to penetrate: “My faults and mistakes no longer define me.” 

Now back at St. Cloud, Zach is leveraging some of his recent training in evangelism, helping Cru reach out to other students, initiating Christian community in the dorms, and emceeing Cru’s weekly meeting. “God has given me a big heart for others.”

Thank you for praying for and investing in the eternities of students like Zach in Sacramento, and the students (like his brother) who will reach the “Zachs” on each campus.  We are so grateful for your partnership and care!

PRAYER REQUESTS

• Please pray for God’s grace and provision amidst unforeseen challenges that COVID-19 poses to our work with students. 
• Pray that God would give students a desire to reach their friends with the good news of Jesus. 
• Please pray for fresh vision and leading as we trust the Lord to move on several campuses.  And pray for God to establish new, sustainable ministries. 
• Pray for the health of our team and family.

Joel transferred to Emporia State University in Kansas mid-year — and then got COVID. Quarantined, and knowing no one on campus, Joel began reading the Bible.

Around that same time, Cru staff from other campuses in Kansas decided to carpool to Emporia every other week, hoping to initiate gospel conversations with willing students.

After starting off with, “Hey can we ask you a quick question?,” they would follow up with, “Would you consider yourself to be a follower of Jesus?” This question helps surface uninvolved Christian students, and/or those ready to become Jesus followers.  

One day, fresh out of quarantine, Joel found himself walking through the student union, responding to a couple of Cru staff, “Yes, I’m a follower of Jesus.” Listening to Joel’s story, the staff rejoiced, feeling themselves part of God’s plan for Joel.

It’s not always that easy or smooth though. For some, these conversations can be nerve-racking. One staff guy named Colin describes one such encounter:

“Braydin and I were getting ready to initiate conversations at the union. Around the corner was a table of five guys. Braydin said we should go talk to them. My response: ”No, man, I don’t want to do that! That’s intimidating.” After all these years, my heart still jumps out of my chest, getting ready to approach someone new. After some coaxing, I agreed to go talk to them. I dropped and did some pushups to get the blood flowing, and we rounded the corner. (Yeah, I know…)”

When Braydin and Colin approached the table, they found that none of the five guys were fully following Jesus. Some had gone to church, while some had questions they thought Christians were unwilling to consider. The conversation continued as they traded jokes and laughed together. Before leaving, Colin and Braydin invited the guys to a Bible study later that day, not really expecting them to show up. But, four of them came!

Now, the students meet every other week to read and discuss the book of John, words written to guide the reader to “life in His name.”

God is at work on campuses across the country and world! Thank you for being a part of giving students like these an opportunity to hear and respond to the gospel. We are so grateful for your partnership in this work!

PRAYER REQUESTS

Praise God that he draws students like Joel and others to Himself and gives them life in His name!  

Pray that the Lord would raise up many incoming students this summer.  Pray they would be able to get connected to community and have spiritual conversations even before starting classes.

Pray for our team as we adjust to different summer assignments.  Please pray for refreshment, focus, and fruitfulness this summer.

“She told me she had been praying for a few weeks… for God to bring her someone to help her get closer to Him!” said Noah.

Noah (pictured above – back left) is a student leader that the Lord has raised up at American River College (a local community college). This is Noah’s last year at the campus before he transfers, and he has been praying that God would help him to multiply his faith and impact the campus.

Noah and Steven, one of our Cru staff members, were able to share the gospel with another student named Damaris during one of their regular coaching times. Damaris and her friend, Salvador, were hanging out between classes when Noah and Steven struck up a conversation with them.

As Noah and Steven shared with Damaris and Salvador about how to have a relationship with God through Jesus, Damaris opened up about her spiritual background. She grew up being loosely involved with a church, but as stopped going as she grew older. Her spiritual interest has recently been growing though.

After Noah and Steven shared the gospel with her, Damaris decided that she wanted to start a relationship with God! Noah took down her contact information and has been meeting with her regularly to help her grow in her faith.

Praise God that he is answering Noah’s prayers to multiply his faith and impact the campus!

Thank you for partnering with us to raise up students with a passion to impact their campus and reach those who don’t know Jesus!

PRAYER REQUESTS:

Praise the Lord for bringing Damaris to himself. Pray that she would grow in her new relationship with God and get plugged into a solid church in the area.

Praise the Lord for using Noah! Pray that Noah would be able to help ground Damaris in the foundations of the faith and teach her to pass on her newfound faith to others.

Pray for our staff team as we begin the spring semester seeking to find new students that the Lord has already raised up who want to reach their campuses.

Cameron is 32 weeks pregnant with our third child (a boy). Pray for our family as we prepare and transition! 

Winter can be a big time of sickness in our family, especially for the kids. Please pray for health, and for endurance and joy when sickness does come.

Megan and Paulina were total strangers to Cru. They had never been to a Cru event at Sac State, and had never met anyone involved. Yet, somehow they decided to go to Fall Retreat. How did that happen?

“My mom saw a Facebook post about the Cru Fall Retreat and told me about it,” Megan said. Not wanting to go if she didn’t know anyone beforehand, Megan was hesitant. But, her mom wanted her to go so badly that she made her an offer. “If I would go, she said she’d completely pay for me anda friend to go.” So, Megan invited Paulina, whom she had recently met in class. Surprisingly, Paulina said she would go.

So, Megan and Paulina got into a car with Elizabeth, one of the Cru student leaders at Sac State, and drove up the mountain to Fall Retreat. They quickly connected with Elizabeth and others at the retreat, and they found themselves understanding the gospel more deeply through the guest speaker’s talks from Romans 8, and the need to spread the gospel on campus. Once they got back from the weekend, Megan and Paulina became a fixture at Cru events like bible study and Cru community gatherings.

Shortly afterward, they were asked by Elizabeth, who was super nervous because she had never mentored or discipled anybody before, if they would like to be part of a discipleship group led by Elizabeth. Super excited, Megan and Paulina immediately said yes. They soon had their first meeting.

“The first meeting went really well,” said Elizabeth. “We talked about a lot of random things, but also how the Spirit has been working in each of us. I always love hearing them share because I can see how much God is working in their lives and just how passionately they speak of Him.”

They are excited not only to grow in their faith, but also to multiply their faith into others. “Each of them are also eager to go out and share their faith with other students. It’ll be a priority every week!” Elizabeth said.

Soon afterward, Olivia, another student new to Cru, joined Elizabeth’s group. Elizabeth’s hope is that each of the girls she is discipling would start their own discipleship group this semester with other girls who are looking to grow in their faith. This multiplication is something that we want to see happen on every campus in the Sacramento area and beyond. Please pray with us that it would happen.

We’re so grateful for partners like you that are part of making disciples on every campus!

It’s been an exciting first few weeks on campuses in the Sacramento area!

At the end of the last school year, we had movements with student leaders on two campuses in the area. As I write this, the Lord has raised that number to six campuses with student leaders. These students are seeking to disciple students and share the gospel with those on their campus who don’t know Jesus. Praise the Lord!

As our staff team has been busy trying to surface leaders, we’ve also come across students who don’t yet know Jesus and are hungry to hear about him. One of these students is Ruben, a freshman at Cosumnes River College.

Ruben was approached by two of our staff members asking if he’d like to start a Christian movement on campus. He said yes, but it became clear soon afterward that Ruben lacked an understanding of the gospel, relying on his church attendance and good works to secure a relationship with God. One of our staff members was able to share that good works aren’t enough to overcome our debt of sin, and that only Jesus can rescue sinners completely through his life, death, and resurrection. After talking about sin and grace for the better part of half an hour, Ruben began to understand, and was surprised by implications of grace!

Ruben was invited to trust in Christ’s work instead of his own and to begin a relationship with God. He said yes!

Ruben is continuing to grasp grace more deeply as we follow up with him weekly. He’s also seeing the need for the people on his campus to grasp grace, and has thought of at least five people he could share the gospel with. Pray that the Lord would continue to work in Ruben, deepening his relationship with the Lord, and that he would experience God using him to show the greatness of God’s grace to people on his campus.

Thank you for your generous gifts to the Lord and for partnering with us to reach students like Ruben on every campus!

Prayer Requests

• Praise the Lord for his work in Ruben’s life.

• Praise God for raising up student leaders on our local campuses.

• Pray that our student leaders would walk deeply with the Lord, and be active in evangelism and discipleship, using them to reach their campuses with the gospel.

• Pray that God would surface leaders at Sierra College and Sac City College

• Please pray for God to lead and sustain our family during a busy season!  May he be glorified in all that we do. 

“So proud of Bobby!!  The Lord is working!” said Leo, a student leader at American River College, after a student-led outreach on their campus.

ARC Cru regularly meets to share their faith by initiating individual conversations with other students on campus.  This particular day, the group sent out six pairs of students to share their faith.  Five of the attendees had never shared their faith before going out!  In order for all the new people to pair up with someone more experienced, Bobby (above, back row, tilted head) had to take the lead for the first time.

Bobby’s first experience with evangelism was last semester.  Leo had started discipling Bobby and they shared their faith together a few times.  Bobby was astonished at how easy it was to have a conversation with someone, but seemed intimidated at the thought of doing it without the help of someone more experienced. Bobby was faithful to continue to meet with ARC Cru to initiate spiritual conversations with other students on campus, which gave him lots of practice.

Bobby went to Winter Conference with Cru Sac Metro (see picture above), and there he continued to be challenged to share his faith.  During the “Day of Faith”, 1200 students took to the streets to share their faith through evangelism and serving the community in partnership with local churches.

Cru Sac Metro’s assignment for the Day of Faith was to initiate spiritual conversations over social media with people we already knew.  For our students, this proved to be a much greater day of faith than initiating conversations with strangers.  Bobby and the others posted, tweeted, snapped, and insta’d their way into spiritual conversations with friends and family.  Bobby took a step of faith to initiate with his father, who he talks to only a few times a year.

Bobby’s dad was antagonistic.  It wasn’t the reaction he was hoping for.  Yet, Bobby was hopeful.  Lucas, a Cru Sac Metro staff member, reminded him that sharing the gospel with friends and family is a lifelong journey.  This was only the first step in pursuing his dad.

In only one semester, Bobby has gone from sharing his faith for the first time, initiating with his father, to now helping lead others in sharing their faith.  Praise God for Bobby’s faith, and that he is multiplying it in others!

Thanks for being part of helping students share and multiply their faith!

Prayer Requests

Praise the Lord for his work in and through Bobby and other students at American River College. Pray for them to continue to grow and share their faith on ARC campus!

Pray for God to surface more students who are excited to reach their campuses for Christ in the Sac area.

Continue to pray for Paul, a former staff member and the husband of one of our current staff members, Carrie. Paul was recently diagnosed with stage 4 liver cancer. Pray for his complete healing and for Carrie as she cares for their family.

Pray for Cameron and our family as we grieve the loss of her grandfather.

Praise God for the health and joy of our daughters! Hattie is almost 3 months and sleeping like a champ. Abby is 2 years old and so fun to do life with.