ExCrusader Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 Hi All! Anyone here that used to be on staff with CCC? I was on staff with Student Venture in the early 90's. It was really an eye-opening experience. I was miserable on staff but that misery caused me to stop and really think about my beliefs from an objective point of view for the first time. And, of course, they crumbled under the weight of honest inquiry and lack of evidence. I have to say that life is so much better now! Just curious if there are others like me out there! Thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lunaticheathen Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 No, since I deconverted before college. But I was attacked by the chapter at Tuscaloosa, for forming a pagan student group. As in physically. They charged into a meeting of ours, starting a fight and throwing rocks and garbage. Not kidding, even a little bit. Sorry, but fuck those cunts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akheia Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 YIKES. I thought T-town was a little cooler than that. Most of the folks I knew going there in the 90s were some flavor of heathen. Things have changed, apparently. Welcome, ExCrusader I wasn't on staff with CCC, but I was closely associated with a group of them back in the day; the campus group I was reluctantly part of went on pro-life marches with them and stuff and we went out to eat and hang out with their leaders all the time. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chikirin Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 As a student I was in Chi Alpha, which was a pentecostal version of Campus Crusade. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCrusader Posted February 28, 2012 Author Share Posted February 28, 2012 Good to hear from all of you! I don't know if I'm really lucky to have escaped the creepy and insular little world of Crusade (I so rarely run into others who were once on staff), or if there are more of us out here who just aren't very vocal. Crusade is a strange and ugly corporate machine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmot Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 Good to hear from all of you! I don't know if I'm really lucky to have escaped the creepy and insular little world of Crusade (I so rarely run into others who were once on staff), or if there are more of us out here who just aren't very vocal. Crusade is a strange and ugly corporate machine. Can you go into any more depth about how it is a strange and ugly corporate machine? I am curious. My wife and I supported a CCC couple for a couple of years and I finally managed to pull the plug on it when we ran into some financial difficulties. Also, CCC was not on my campus but Intervarsity was. One of the formative experiences in driving me towards atheism was an encounter with my campus' IVCF staffer. He basically tried to sell us a commission based ministry program, and I about puked. Also, my brother was heavily involved in CCC. He went to China for a summer to evangelize. I think he has been heavily influenced, in a negative way, by this organization. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kruszer Posted February 29, 2012 Share Posted February 29, 2012 I did a missions project with Campus Crusade. It was one of the best summers I ever had! Totally gave me a lust for travel and I thank them for that. I still have that book by Bill Bright(?) I think it was called "Born Crucified" - any of you have to read that? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCrusader Posted February 29, 2012 Author Share Posted February 29, 2012 @ marmot: Campus Crusade is very much run like a corporation, IMO. At least that's how it was in the late 80's/early 90's. There are slogans and acronyms for EVERYTHING. When I was on staff the push was for our New Life 2000 campaign. We (along with a few other organizations who signed on) were going to reach the world for christ by the year 2000. We were supposed to go out and consider every meeting with every person a divine appointment. We were supposed to keep track of our evangelistic opportunities and have a certain number each week. Equally importantly, we were to follow up with our converts and disciple them so that they could evangelize and disciple others. It's a giant MLM scheme! We had little booklets and formulas to explain everything from how to become a christian to how to be filled with the holy spirit. Conferences and projects were filled with (spiritually) motivational speakers and strategy meetings. Prayer and fasting became a dictate from upper management on more than one occasion in my ministry. The huge, indescribable, wonderful god I thought I knew shrunk down to a predictable, trivial, corporate business venture right before my eyes. It was really ugly. The amount of money spent on stupidity within the organization was also astounding. Sending upper middle class college kids to (post-christian) foreign countries to do sports and share the gospel while, in other places, people are starving always struck me as wrong. One project I went on to the Philippines got diverted because of political events and all of the people had to be immediately flown to other locations. One group went to the gospel starved state of Hawaii. Yes. Hawaii. I could go on and on. I was horrified by the hypocrisy and waste. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCrusader Posted February 29, 2012 Author Share Posted February 29, 2012 I did a missions project with Campus Crusade. It was one of the best summers I ever had! Totally gave me a lust for travel and I thank them for that. I still have that book by Bill Bright(?) I think it was called "Born Crucified" - any of you have to read that? @ kruszer: I probably read that book but can't remember anything about it. I'm glad you had a terrific summer on your project. Projects could be incredibly fun. Not to be totally argumentative, but can you honestly say a ministry using thousands of ministry dollars ought to be sending high school and college kids out "for the best summer they've ever had" and to develop a lust for travel when there are people who don't have their basic human needs being met? Do you remember how many people "came to christ" as a result of your summer project? Was it really economically worthwhile for ministry? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Zephie Posted February 29, 2012 Share Posted February 29, 2012 As a student I was in Chi Alpha, which was a pentecostal version of Campus Crusade. Chi-Alpha! I was part of that for a little bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kruszer Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Projects could be incredibly fun. Not to be totally argumentative, but can you honestly say a ministry using thousands of ministry dollars ought to be sending high school and college kids out "for the best summer they've ever had" and to develop a lust for travel when there are people who don't have their basic human needs being met? Do you remember how many people "came to christ" as a result of your summer project? Was it really economically worthwhile for ministry? I'm sure we thought it was at the time Every time we did an EWAP (entertainement with a purpose we'd invite a bunch of heathens to come party with the Christians and get a Bible blurb at the end. We were sure we were sowing a seed into their future salvation that would have great returns on the investment for eternity (God's word never returns to him void and all that crap.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kruszer Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Projects could be incredibly fun. Not to be totally argumentative, but can you honestly say a ministry using thousands of ministry dollars ought to be sending high school and college kids out "for the best summer they've ever had" and to develop a lust for travel when there are people who don't have their basic human needs being met? Do you remember how many people "came to christ" as a result of your summer project? Was it really economically worthwhile for ministry? I'm sure we thought it was at the time Every time we did an EWAP (entertainement with a purpose we'd invite a bunch of heathens to come party with the Christians and get a Bible blurb at the end. We were sure we were sowing a seed into their future salvation that would have great returns on the investment for eternity (God's word never returns to him void and all that crap.) Though I must add that even as a Christian I was mostly drawn in by the adventure. Jesus and saving souls was how I justified to myself that I really was being altruistic. lol To their credit, missions can be a very trying and challenging time and a good opportunity to work out character flaws as you relate to your team-mates for eight or more weeks. It's never a complete loss. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Akheia Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 That's a positive way to look at it. I hated those EWAP thingies; we called them something different back then, I think, but the idea's been around for ages. They felt so dishonest to me even when I was in church. It's not hard to bribe college students to anything involving free food, but if the message was so awesome and sound, why did we have to bribe anybody? It always seemed like they should be like the some countries during WWII that just about lined up to surrender. It seemed like it should be so self-evident to everybody, not something we should have to wheedle and beg someone to do. The only really cool thing I remember out of those evenings I spent with CCC was a Mexican buffet feed they threw where my Evil Ex brought a boatload of Japanese guys in from the anime club he and I were in (yes, but I'll hipster out here and say I liked anime way before it was easy to find); it had canned corn and the Japanese students all freaked out with joy as apparently that was a huge, rare treat at the time in Japan. They ate their body weight in the stuff and were very polite about listening to the admission price of a short sermon. To my knowledge, none of them converted at any point. But the CCC considered that evening a huge success. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will02 Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 I went to one CC meeting as an undergrad. That was all I could stomach even as a Xian fundie. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kruszer Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 I was also a part of IVCF for a while. They had cuter guys and usually had more fun. Repelling off the parking garage wall and getting caught by campus security comes to mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
♦ ficino ♦ Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Hi everyone, I was very heavily involved with InterVarsity - was "born again" because of their influence combined with the Assemblies of God. We also had Campus Crusade but I didn't know many people in it. It seemed it was largely athletes; IV was more diverse and, as far as I could tell, more intellectual and more fun (agree, Kruszer). Was it true that Campus Crusade and Bill Bright were heavily funded in the '70s by the Hunt brothers, the guys who tried to corner the world silver market? I can still see those FACT-FAITH-FEELING tracts with the caboose at the end. Someone else pointed out a while ago how those three terms actually worked in conversion the opposite way around! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Android Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 Wow, this topic caught my eye. Back in the early 80's I was involved in CCC in Hawaii (where I grew up). I became involved with them at my college because I was lonely and this nice lady sat down with me out of the blue and talked to me and invited me to the group (found out later it's what she was paid to do). Later I worked at a Christian bookstore that hired a few CCC kids that had come to Hawaii for a summer mission. These kids were all very upper middle class and all gorgeous!. I befriended a few of the girls. They were having the time of their lives in beautiful Hawaii -- getting suntans in their modest one pieces and flirting it up with the cute boys that were on the mission with them. The only downside was the mandatory witnessing on the beaches or the 'spontaneous' skits they had to do in the middle of waikiki. lol. I applied for next year's mission (included my picture on the application) and was rejected and told that it was because they wanted someone from Hawaii who looked more local (I am caucasian). Rejected to serve christ in my hometown! Oh, the humiliation! The next summer I went to a CCC camp and met the father of my firstborn. He wowed me with bible verses and his vision of saving the world. After I got pregnant, he wanted nothing to do with me, and shortly after married another gal that was at that same camp! They became CCC missionaries to Japan for a few years before getting involved with the japanese mafia. No kidding. Yeah, CCC was a GREAT organization. LFMAO. Please tell me they no longer exist. P.S. the owner of that Christian bookstore was a married man twice my age who hit on me while I worked there. Ugh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCrusader Posted March 3, 2012 Author Share Posted March 3, 2012 @ Android: Wow! Those are some interesting stories! CCC does still exist. I still have a couple of old friends who are on staff. Can't bring myself to support them financially (because I won't give one red cent to that ministry) but they're nice people who mean well. I can't believe you were rejected because you looked too caucasian (actually, I guess I can). Sad. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCrusader Posted March 3, 2012 Author Share Posted March 3, 2012 Really, I think many CCC people tend to be upper middle class, republican, white kids who think they are smarter than the other christians. I know we all thought of ourselves as leaders. Fits right in with corporate culture, really. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
marmot Posted March 3, 2012 Share Posted March 3, 2012 Thanks for replying, Excrusader. I just wanted to hear a little more from a former insider's perspective. My sister and I tried to encourage my brother to branch out from the CCC folks because they were his entire social circle and they seemed pretty conservative to us. I also declined to support him when he went to China on his mission trip because I disagreed with that kind of evangelism at the time (I was still very much a Christian). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lunaticheathen Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 I also feel I should add this charming story. In Tuscaloosa, when my pagan student group was officially recognized by the university, we got a booth at the student club fair. It was amusing being seated next to the student Baptists, but they were nice enough, downright civil. When CCC found out we were there, they up and left in protest. But left behind a very annoying "witness" to talk about how stinking liberal and godless the universities had become. As I said, charming. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Android Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 but they're nice people who mean well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Android Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 Yea, they may mean well but I wouldn't give them another cent either. I think it is laughable that people will actually beg others for money to support them to go to colleges in the US and spread the 'gospel'. I mean if you're going to beg for money to be a missionary, at least go to a third world country and build houses or dig wells or something. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ExCrusader Posted March 5, 2012 Author Share Posted March 5, 2012 if you're going to beg for money to be a missionary, at least go to a third world country and build houses or dig wells or something. agreed. CCC is a big time waste of resources in addition to its cheesy corporate hypocrisy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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