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!