Red Cup Report: Weber State, SDSU and Wake Forest

From Mac Smith (also in early reports) at Weber State in Utah:

"We had 7 students become Christians during my call to faith at Large Group where 161 students showed up. Some 60 students that were already Christians stood to give Jesus an area of their life where they were trying to get their thirsts met on their own. We have never done so well with contact cards during the first week of school. Last year we got 60 and that was the most that we had ever received. This year through the Red Cup Proxe we gathered 130 contact cards and then another 30 at the interest table. 100 more students signed up...praise God! We trained every student leader to share the gospel and pray with each person so almost everyone that went through it heard the gospel and was prayed for."

From the staff team at San Diego State University:

(They posted a video of the call to faith at their first large group.)

"At a call to faith at SDSU’s first meeting of the year 18 students stood to commit to letting God fill their soul. What a joy in heaven! At the end of the night we counted 11 cards that were filled out by students saying they made a decision for faith. Follow up is extremely important to us, so we are on this to see what God is doing and how we can help them grow. We had 200+ chairs and some standing and the room was packed. We had our meeting right in the dorms, and it was so fun to be with God right in the fray of campus creating worshipers with Him!"

UC Davis Staff (doing Red Cup next!) gave a shout out to SDSU:

"Your large group tonight served a couple of our UC Davis students who were home for the summer. The two girls brought their brothers and the one who was an adamant atheist stood up to receive prayer for God to do something about the sin in his life. Are you kidding me right now?! That’s amazing! Thank you for the work you’re doing 500 miles away! Really makes InterVarsity feel like one big family! "

From Kevin Boyd at Wake Forest in North Carolina:

He writes on his blog that in 2 days, they had 119 participants, 37 contact cards, 10-12 gospel presentations, and students 33 who expressed interest in either a GIG or Small Group.

“Talking to others about Jesus is not as scary as I thought it would be. It was actually exciting getting to share the gospel and talk about how Jesus quenches our 'thirsts'. I am so thankful that we took this leap of faith and followed through with this proxe station because I believe it was a growing experience for everyone involved.”
- Hannah, Wake Forest senior

"My favorite part...was this one guy who Kevin shared the gospel with. He walked away like he was going to leave but continued to stand around. Then he started grabbing people and making them participate! He would stop his friends and say, "Hey, hey do this thing... what are you thirsty for? Hey, who's got the stickers? Come here and make him do this!" I was struck with how natural it is for someone who has encountered the gospel to tell the next guy about it. It was awesome!" - Brittany, Wake Forest senior

PRAY FOR:

The 24 students from 3 schools in Duluth/Superior who were trained in Red Cup last night. They are starting the Red Cup today at the University of Minnesota Duluth!

Red Cup Report: The Origin Story

As our New Student Outreach development team (four field staff and I) tossed around ideas, Serene from SoCal shared about a thrist-themed campaign had gone well. She described the idea & how it'd gone. We ended up going with it (& adding the iconic red plastic party cups), but I never knew where it had actually happened until Krizel Reyes, campus intern at Allan Hancock College last year, told me it was her students. Here's how she tells the story (from her blog):

"After Ignite, an annual evangelistic training conference held for the IVCF SoCal Region, student leaders felt burdened to respond. The theme focused on the concepts of “hearing” and “obeying”. However, some of the students expressed deep frustration and hurt because they felt like they couldn’t hear God’s voice. During reflection time, I led a meeting with the students and encouraged them and prayed for them as they took the time to listen for God’s voice. To their surprise, much of the words and scripture they heard were affirmed through other students who heard the same message. As we collected our thoughts, we shared two specific verses: Isaiah 55:1-5 and Revelations 21:6, both of which point out the concept of thirst. In visions, they saw students in need of drinks but a lack of liquid supply or they saw buildings in flames but not enough water to extinguish it.

To obey what we’ve heard, we decided to implement an on campus outreach, where we created a proxe station (an interactive art wall) that involved a specific question for students to answer: “What do you thirst for?” Some examples of the responses included companionship, financial stability and love. We then would transition the conversation to Jesus and how he cares about our concerns and works in the areas they thirst for. It challenged our community to enter into meaningful conversations and to boldly proclaim their faith in Christ Jesus."

A student response to the original 'what are you thirsty for?' proxe station

Praise God for the faithfulness of the students at Allan Hancock-- it's going a long ways!

Red Cup Report: University of Missouri --St. Louis

Chioma Chukwu, staff at University of Missouri- St. Louis, shares how the first day of Thirsty (Her name for The Red Cup) went on her campus:

"People said the question of the day on campus was "What's the red cup"? Not a bad day for the first day of two weeks of the Thirsty Campaign!

My students shared the gospel in ways I had never seen them do it before. Since we were able to train them and give them practice doing it at pre-fall retreat, they were just rolling getting all the way to the gospel presentation with multiple people. I saw Daniel approach a group of 4 people checking out the display and say, "Hey people! Have you gone through this yet?"

He shared the gospel with all 4 of them at the same time, and gave them his information, and all 4 were interested in hearing more about Jesus. I have no idea how many GIGs [Groups Investigating God- Bible studies for non-Christians] were started with students yesterday yet, but I know there were some and I know that the gospel was proclaimed thoroughly multiple times! Continue to pray for this kind of boldness in them!

Also, Christians we've met have walked by and have signed up to work Thirsty as they see the success. So not only is the gospel being proclaimed, but we are also gathering missional Christians and training them on the spot on how to share their faith!

I also met a girl at the proxe [grete's note: we call displays with conversation and interaction 'proxe stations' Red Cup is a one] who wants to do a GIG with me and said that she is "looking for a way back to God". I told her she stopped at the right place!"

Keep our campus staff in your prayers!

The Red Cup: Early Reports

This is what happens when designers have to print panels all day...(I start making up nicknames for staff who order them).

But 187 panels and two weeks later the Red Cup displays are out on campus! New Student Outreach is beginning. Mac Smith, staff at Weber State University in Utah-- who's order for 8 panels I filled last week--reports:

"I was nearby as one of our students shared the gospel at the Red Cup proxe station and then prayed with two guys to receive Christ today! One student shared about Jesus in her class because her professor asked her what her Red Cup shirt meant in the middle of the class. 80 + interest cards filled out in one day which is more than one week during last year's NSO! Praise God!"

Julie Helwig, staff at Montana State, said she bought 1,000 red cups from Costco to use with the campaign. Students at University of Colorado-Boulder put red solo cups through a chainlink fence to make a statement:

The Red Cup

The newest national New Student Outreach & Evangelism Campaign

Doug training The Red Cup with an intern posing as a skeptical passerby

Out of my chapter building committee partnerships came an evangelism/new student outreach campaign last year called Choices- you may remember. Well, this year’s is called The Red Cup, using the iconic cups so prevalent at campus parties. Students at the station ask passers-by: what are you thirsty for? Fun, Purpose, Love, Success? What if someone told you, they could quench that thirst forever? Jesus claims just that. (Living water, of course!)

“50% [of people] wanted to stop and talk. We picked a theme than would catch and draw, and it seems to be working.” Said Doug Schaupp, who led the western region’s campus intern training. They used this four-panel display & “script” (we call them proxe stations) on campus at University of New Mexico. Jason Jensen, the regional director, said “I can add an AMEN to Doug’s testimony that the proxe was good. God was merciful and led us to many conversations, many gospel presentations, and at least 11 first time decisions to follow Jesus.”

Check out more photos of the Interns training and presenting Red Cup on the trek website.

Proxe Panels--

The interns and staff spread the word, and it’s fast becoming the most popular campaign materials I’ve ever designed... it’s just that now I have to print them all. I have 35 orders so far, most for multiple copies. I’m racing to get them to chapters before school starts.

PRAISE--I am so grateful to God for wonderful campus partners on this project: Doug, Sam, Serene and Beth, and that it’s so popular with staff and students already. My work is not in vain!

PRAY—Do pray for new freshmen as they as they arrive on campus looking the quench a variety of thirsts.

World Assembly

Lord of the Universe, Lord of the University

The International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES), of which InterVarsity is one national movement, just finished their World Assembly in Krakow, Poland last week. Students and staff from across the globe- hundreds of countries, open and closed- praying together from every language and nation. This is the sort of gathering I dream of being a part of-- one where there are hundreds of people for whom everything is different- except our love for Jesus. One of my co-workers wrote about his Bible study with a jailed-for-her-faith attendee:

"With wide, fierce, young eyes, she began in halting English. 'Carrying the cross like Jesus is hard. When they arrested me and my husband. We separated by them. The man teased, ‘There are no problem with your faith. Maybe you had a dream or something, and you are confused. The problem is why you share that news with other peoples? You say, “OK, I don’t share Jesus any more.” Why don’t you say it? Then I let you go, free.’ "

Read the whole post: For Churchy Americans

As an American, citizen of a country with a huge university system, and a large number of campus ministry organizations, I am both humbled and encouraged by the work of our sister movements. I was a recipient of the care and hospitality of the Studenten Mission Deutschland when I studied abroad, a movement where staff support quadrants of the country- not campuses. And yet the IFES has great impact-- here's an idea from a real infographic we drew up. (Disclaimer: the stats are the best we could find, via the internet.)

You can get a taste of the gathering through daily update videos, which are all posted on the IFES World Assembly media page. They all have no words, so someone from any language group can view them. This one, about unity and diversity, is my favorite. And it features 2100's (my team's) founder Eric Miller, who works in Kenya now: he's the old man to the right, who looks like Santa.

Praise God for our brothers and sisters all over the world and pray that students in closed countries can gather safely and freely at their universities.

Like Us and Follow Us

If you're a fan of InterVarsity and a social media user I highly encourage you to check out InterVarsity's facebook page InterVarsity USA and our twitter feed @intervarsityusa. The writing team here (good friends of mine!) do an exellent job giving updates from chapters around the country and finding articles and happenings that affect or interest InterVarsity students, donors and alumni. If you want to feel more connected to the movement, it's a great way to know what's going on. (Besides calling me- I'd be ok with that too.)

My team has 2100 facebook page too. We use it to get feedback and post photos-- but we also have fun posting weekly spoof infographics. If you're an InterVarsity insider or want to be, you'll get the jokes too!

Here's one from a a couple months ago that's still relevant. (Since it's still summer!) It's more tongue-in-cheek than laugh out loud, but you get the idea.

Chapter Building Training

“I came back to my dorm room and sat down and said out loud to myself ‘God exists!’ ” –Meagan, Tufts U.

The chapter building committee and tester meetings in June went very well—it was refreshing to see the dear staff I am serving again. They loved the latest diagrams. Theo, 2nd-year staff from Arizona, said “I understood the figure 8 diagram [how to develop students as bold disciples] in a completely new way when you gave us a linear version. I realized I could plan my whole year using the cycle we’ve been learning!”

This year’s gathering practiced creating a tailored, interwoven series deepening students spiritual commitments, rather than non-contiguous teaching and events on campus. Last year’s training had focused where to spend staff and student energy and how to refocus students on evangelism and mission. While one chapter lost members over the year, all the other chapters grew in members, conversions, and stature on campus. Tufts University, in Boston, had eight new Christians this year, and I worked with the 2100 video team to capture the change. Watch the video!



Chapters in the Chapter Building Cohort:

University of Washington
Wayne State (Detroit)
University of Arizona
University of California Davis
Tufts University (Boston)
Northern Arizona University

Here are the Campus Staff teams, Interns, and their Area Directors, along with Doug Schaupp and Val Gordon, from California and Massachusetts respectively, who led the training. I took the photo on the Wisconsin Capitol lawn during our June training in Madison. After four days of training, it was just a hour before everyone left to fly back home.



I'll be praying for them this year and I invite you to pray, too!

The New Donation Website

I designed it just for you.

You may have noticed when InterVarsity’s new online donation system went live this May. If you didn’t do check it out! Every donor can access and change their giving information securely, like an online banking system. While we are still working out the bugs (several of you know what that is like), it’s one of the best systems around for keeping track of monthly donations and it looks pretty good too (if I do say so myself). The site represents nearly a year of work by many of us, with me as the only designer board for most of that time. Comments from staff have been a flood of positive—professional, up to date, easier for donors. I hope you like it too!

Here's my giving page and if you don't have an online giving account, there's a link to create one (esp. great if you are giving to me monthly!) http://donate.intervarsity.org/donate/to/grete

more previews of the system: