Cru(sade)?

This is the explanation of the CCC name change that I wrote for my ministry partners:

As you may have already heard, starting in 2012 Campus Crusade for Christ will be changing its name to Cru. Although I was not directly involved in the process of selecting a new name, I wanted to let you know what our organization's leaders communicated to us about the heart behind the name change.

First of all, this change has been in the works for a long time. In the 1950s when Bill and Vonette Bright started the ministry, it was not unusual to refer to movements as “crusades.” However, since that time the word crusade has developed an increasingly negative connotation—especially when associated with religion. For many, the word crusade suggests violence, arrogance, and coercion – the opposite of what we want to communicate. Also, as Campus Crusade for Christ has gone on to expand its ministries beyond the university setting, the first C in the name has become less and less fitting. As early as the 1970s, Bill Bright was already considering a name change.

However, changing the name of a large organization is not an easy task. In addition to the difficult process of finding (and agreeing upon) an appropriate name, everything the organization produces with its name on it must be altered. The organization also runs the risk of disappointing those who support it. For these reasons and others, no established organization wants to change its name unless it is truly necessary. I suspect this is why CCC avoided changing its name for so long.  

The Preacher's Duty

"Consider then the preachers dutie to you. It is not onely to tell you Christ raiseth the dead. It is also to convince you Christ raiseth onely the dead. It is to persuade you of your death; to reduce you, by whatever means he can, physicall, morall, or philosophicall, to a knowledge of that last truth of yours, and so set you free to believe that first of his; so to enforce this mortui estis, this ye are dead, upon your mindes, that the scales of this deceitfull life may fall from your eyes, and ye see vita vestra, Christ, who is your life."

- Robert Farrar Capon

Brian Welch - I Am Second

Brian Welch - I Am Second

Wow!

Bridging the Gulf

I grew up going to a mid-size Covenant church in central Connecticut. When I was in high school we built a new, very modern sanctuary, but before that we had a smaller one with real pews and a lectern off to the side and blue drapes over the windows that looked like they had been installed in the sixties. In back there was a place for a choir, although most Sundays the space was empty because the choir only sang once a month. To the left of the choir-people who sat on the same side as the pastor's lectern there was a little alcove, and I remember when I was very small I used to imagine that God lived in that alcove. I suspected that if I walked back there and went inside, suddenly I would be under a starry Bethlehem sky and the baby Jesus would be there, glowing in the moonlight while a serene Mary and Joseph admired him silently.

A - gnosticism = "Without Knowledge"

“It is wrong, always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.” 

                                             - William Kingdon Clifford

When the issue of God's existence is on the table someone usually says something like this. The atheist is confident that God does not exist. The theist is confident that God does exist. But the agnostic simply says, “the evidence is insufficient, so I will not make a judgment.”

What the agnostic often fails to realize, however, is that the judgment not to make a judgment is in itself a judgment—and it is a judgment that stems from a deep, moral sense. The agnostic, whether or not he states the fact explicitly, believes that it is wrong to make a judgment without sufficient evidence.

It. Is. Wrong.