This week I'll be with Cru at CSU #cru13

Hi friends,

You may have noticed the absolute lack of Internet Activity from me the last few weeks. I've been huddled in meetings, helping plan the bi-annual Cru staff meeting in Fort Collins, Colorado. There will be about 5,000 of us together for the next week. A lot of my tweets and posts this week will likely be related to that conference.

Some of you may enjoy being a part of that. You can see our basic schedule here, and much of the time will be livecast at that same link. We have a lot of great speakers coming in, too. If there's a certain speaker you're excited about leave me a comment and I'll make sure to let you know when they're speaking.

Meetings start tomorrow morning at 9 Mountain time.

Short films to encourage spiritual conversations, and a chance to win an iPad Mini

My friends at the Global Short Film Network are holding a contest right now to encourage people to use short films to have spiritual conversations. I asked my friend Joe Poe to send us a brief introduction to the contest and the Short Film Network. Here it is below!

In this fast-paced, ever changing culture, people are engaging their friends with new forms of technology daily. Communication and technology are intertwined in a way that has become a natural mode of conversation. Global Short Film Network provides a tool for our culture in the form of short films. We believe that the power of story, told through films, connects with the heart and provides the pathway for the gospel to be heard.

Now till the end of April, Global Short Film Network is hosting a contest to showcase using short films as a tool that connects a person’s story to the spiritual issues within the film. By doing so you have a chance to win an iPad mini. To enter, we are asking people to share a series of short films from our website to a group of friends, peers, co-workers, etc. Each film comes with discussion questions that provide deeper discussion. If you are having trouble brainstorming ways to share short films to multiple people, here is an Outreach Guide to help get you started.

Everyone is entered to win by simply filling out the submissions page on our contest website. For a complete list of rules on how to enter, please visit www.gsfncontest.com. 

Failure, Creativity and the Gospel

I've been writing a short series of articles for Cru staff on creativity and the gospel. I posted the first one here (Creativity, Limitations and the Gospel) and since you can't see it on the Cru staff web unless you're on staff with Cru, I thought I'd share the second one here as well: Creativity, Failure and the Gospel. Enjoy.

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Artist Derek Holzer says, "I consider it axiomatic that, for any art work to be considered experimental, the possibility of failure must be built into its process."

If we don't fail – if failing isn't even a possibility – then we aren't trying hard enough. We're not innovating. We're not doing anything new. We're static.

After 9/11, increasingly unpredictable situations in the field meant the U.S. military needed more adaptive soldiers. Col. Casey Haskins, who was, at that time, the head of military instruction at West Point, explained the shift that was made in their educational approach, "You had to make it cool to fail."

Here are 3 ways failure helps us to become better ministers of the gospel:

1. Failure teaches us.

I know not to put a hot pan on a plastic tablecloth because I once ruined a pan, a tablecloth and my dinner. That’s also how I learned to check my jeans for my wallet before washing it. And, immediately afterward, how I learned not to "dry my wallet" in the microwave. Failure gives us a visceral lesson that's stronger than memorized guidelines. Failure in sharing the gospel teaches us what works and what doesn't.

2. Failure redirects us.

I visited a team once that believed that "the Gospel didn't work" where they ministered. They had built a decent ministry by collecting believers in their area. I asked how they were attempting to share the gospel and the simple answer is that they were not … they were afraid that failure would drive away the "faithful." With a little encouragement the team agreed to try to share the gospel. Many of their attempts failed (the gospel was unclear to some who heard), but some worked. And they began to incorporate the gospel into their ministry. Someone even came to Christ through (gasp) a religious tract.

Sometimes we settle for "what works" in ministry. This leads to stagnation. This is the same as saying, "This is successful and I don't want to fail by trying something new." Don't (only) do "what works" – be constantly on the lookout for improvement and "what works better."

3. Failure gives us something to laugh about.

I shared Christ with a cult leader once using a survey I had invented. He backed me into a corner and shared his own version of things without him ever hearing the true gospel. I have friends who handed out cigarettes to anyone who would come to their church services. Failure makes us laugh, reminds us that we are human and that it's not our technique or skills that draw people to Christ, but the power of God. If we refuse to fail, we take ourselves too seriously. We think too highly of ourselves.

Exercises in Failure:

1. Have a "fail week" where your team sets out to share the gospel in a way that they don't think will work – knocking on doors, street preaching, 4 Laws via Twitter, whatever. At the end of the week share your stories. What did you learn? What is of value in this technique? How could you make it better?
2. Take your favorite hobby and use it to share the gospel with at least 20 people.
3. As a team, share your greatest gospel-attempt failures (encourage one another – have a laugh, tell each other what a great attempt it was). What lessons can you learn from one another?
4. Take those failures from #3 and try them again. Modify them or make them better if you like.

Creativity, Limitations and the Gospel

As you know, I'm on staff with Cru, a non-profit Christian organization and a caring community passionate about connecting people to Jesus Christ. I recently wrote an article for the Cru staff web, which you can't read because it's behind a password protected wall. I thought you might enjoy it so I'm republishing it here. I've written a follow up article about failure and the Gospel and have one more coming about criticism and the Gospel, which will eventually make their way here. You will likely also be able to find them on CruPress Green. Obviously, this was written for Cru staff so there's some in-house jargon. If you have questions, leave a comment and I'll explain.

Paintings have edges, stories have endings, plays have a final curtain. Limits define creativity and make it more vibrant. Our limitations are the first and possibly greatest allies to our creativity, whether in life, in the arts, or in sharing the gospel. As T.S. Eliot said, "When forced to work within a strict framework the imagination is taxed to its utmost – and will produce its richest ideas. Given total freedom the work is likely to sprawl."

Designer John Maeda says, "With more constraints, better solutions are revealed."

If we’re honest with ourselves, sometimes we need greater creativity as we present the gospel. It could be we are working with a new population or with a culture that has shifted beyond the idea of a “presentation” at all. While we should not too quickly abandon those expressions of the gospel which the Holy Spirit continues to use, likewise, we shouldn't limit new attempts at creative expression of the gospel.

There are practical and logistical limitations as well – time frames, organizational policies, our target audience's availability or emotional capacity, legal issues or a hundred other things you experience each day in your ministry.Our first and greatest limitation on our creativity is the gospel itself. As we embrace new techniques and attempt innovative outreaches, we cannot sacrifice orthodoxy. The truths of the gospel remain the same regardless of how we choose to communicate them.

The trick in creativity is to allow these barriers to invigorate and empower our creativity rather than backing away from them.

Imagine, for instance, that you come across a man who is blind and illiterate, lives in another state from you and comes from a Buddhist background. You met on an airplane and he wants you to interact with him about the gospel. The solution you come up with will be unique and creative, driven by the particular limitations of how to share the gospel with this individual.

Many of the innovations in Cru's history have been driven by limitations. Whether it's Dr. Bright moving "God loves you" to the beginning of his gospel presentation (limitation: people were turned off starting a conversation by hearing they were going to Hell), or the advent of the JESUS film (limitation: Hollywood wasn't taking the Biblical text seriously), or Josh McDowell first translating his materials (limitation: it turns out many Russians spoke Russian).

Here are a few exercises that may help you try something new and creative with the gospel:

1. Whatever is your favorite gospel tool (whether the Romans Road or the Knowing God Personally booklet or something else), "retire" it for a few weeks and try something different.
2. Create your own "gospel tool." Remember, we're going for creativity, not necessarily transferability. Don't be afraid to try something crazy.
3. Have everyone on your team sit in a circle and deal out 4 cards each from the Soularium tool. In the order you received your cards, go through and show how you could connect each picture to the 4 points of "Knowing God Personally."
4. Pick the most difficult to reach subculture you can think of. Spend some time with someone from that group and try to come up with a way to share the gospel that is specific to that person and their subculture.
5. Create a gospel presentation that uses no words. Then one that only uses questions.
6. Write out a gospel presentation that never uses any of these words: grace, sin, redemption, resurrection, propitiation, sacrifice, crucifixion, wage, separated, decision, gift.

Don't be afraid of failure, that's part of creativity (and something we'll talk about in another article).

My four talks from the Epicenter Conference

This year I spoke at three different student winter conferences, and all three were great... a lot of fun, awesome conversations with students and fun times with staff. The most recent one was a couple weekends ago in Albany, New York, called Epicenter.

One of the fun things about this particular conference is that they let me do a series of talks all focused on telling stories about/by Jesus in a 21st century context. It was the first time I had done those sorts of talks all together, and it was a lot of fun. I thought I'd put them all in one place here, so you could see them if you like.


Here's the first one, talking about what it means to follow Jesus (from Luke 5). If you're one of the Minions around here at BHR, you've likely heard this talk or something like it before:


Talk two, retells some familiar parables from Luke 15:



 Talk three is a new one. I don't want to give away the surprise topic, but it starts with me reading a story. This video is the entire session, including worship and announcements and so on. If you just want to see the talk only, it starts at about 55:30 and ends at 01:27:47.



 And this, my last talk, retells the story of the Good Samaritan. Enjoy!

Five Terrible, Horrible Things About Campus Crusade for Christ's New Name and Why We Still Chose This One

This is probably a post in which I should remind people that the things I say here are my opinion and don't reflect the opinion of Campus Crusade for Christ, and is not endorsed, edited or approved by CCC. 

I was on the team of people who helped choose Campus Crusade for Christ's new name. Cru. That's right. For the last year I've been in meetings at the corporate headquarters in Orlando, I've been on all-day conference calls, I've looked at e-mails and logos and color-swatches and kept my mouth shut about what was going on for the sake of keeping it all under wraps. I didn't make the final call (I have no authority to make a decision like that), but I shared my opinion with our leadership along the way.

The name we landed on, Cru, was not my first choice. In fact, I remember early on in the process, when we still had about a thousand names on the "potentials" list, talking with another member of the team (I didn't get his permission to share this, so I won't use his name) and saying, "I hate that name. If there's one name it won't be, it's that one." He disliked it as well. And, in fact, it was eventually dropped from our list of names and was only added back in later because we needed one more name for a research project we were running, a sort of "benchmark" name, and a lot of our campuses have used the name in the past, so we threw it in because it's what a lot of people called us already.

Now, over time I've grown used to the name (I've known for a few months this was the way things were likely to go). In fact, I'd say I went from depressed to apathetic to excited as this name became more and more real. But, let's be honest, every name has some drawbacks. So let's get them out on the table, shall we? I'll list the worst things about the name and then we can talk about why it's maybe not so bad as it seems at first glance.

1) Rather than completely removing the most offensive word out of our old name, Cru abbreviates it and makes it our whole identity.

This was my initial objection to the name. I've seen several blog posts (mostly by non-Cru staff) and have heard a lot of people say, "When someone asks me what Cru means, I'll just have to say 'it's short for Crusade' and then we'll be back to the same place we were before." I thought this, too. But guess what? No one asks that. I've been testing it out, and so far not a single person has asked me what Cru means when I say that I work with a non-profit called Cru. They don't care what it means. Cru might as well be semantically unrelated to our previous name for all anyone cares. People care about what an organization does for them, not what its name means. So, assuming our name doesn't scare people away, we're going to be fine. When I realized this, I felt better about the name.

2) People are going to be confused by our name and think of other things that sound like Cru.

It's true. A lot of people are going to think of this:

Wine critics are going to think of this:

Oh hey, that one's not half bad. I suppose some people will think of this:

Okay, yes. It's going to be annoying how often we're going to get confused with rowing teams. And yes, it's going to be frustrating to occasionally hear jokes about vineyards and wine bars. I'm guessing we'll rarely hear  about Latin pop, but what do I know? Maybe it will be constant.

On the other hand, we won't get confused with this anymore:

Or this:

Let's keep the drawbacks in perspective, shall we?

3) Please oh please tell me that there aren't going to be constant Cru puns.

But there are. I've already seen "famous" Cru staff being called "Crulebrities." I'm sure we're going to hear about Cru Cuts (a movie ministry, maybe?), a submarine Cru, comparisons to Cru-ella DeVille by the critics. I'm sure there will be other, more creative (cruative?) puns to come.

I don't see much of an up side to this. Unless you happen to like puns, in which case, you're welcome.

4) The response of some Christians makes us all look ridiculous.

I debated whether to include this one. In the end I decided to include it because I think it's true, and I'm trying to be honest here.

This isn't really the name's fault, but the response in some quarters to the name change has made Christians look unintelligent, petty, and like they are people with a shallow belief system. I'm not saying they ARE those things, but that's the impression they give. A couple quick points on this:

* When someone says "dropping Christ from your name is evidence of dropping Christ" outsiders look at them and think, "Wow, their faith is shallow." If changing the name of your organization threatens your commitment to the things the organization stands for, then you have to wonder if you were committed in the first place. It also just seems silly given that the SAME PEOPLE go to churches without Christ in the name. "Oh, but it's dropping the name Christ that's wrong." Really? Is there a rule book somewhere about these things that I missed? If that's true, then the converse would be true, right? It would be superior to ADD Christ into the name of other organizations. If a single church or organization added Christ into their name in response to our name change, I would be amazed and actually respect that. But that's not going to happen.

* The people who say they think the change is "politically correct" reveal what appears to be a politically motivated faith. Cru doesn't make decisions based on politics. Ever. We don't back certain politicians or bills or laws. It is disconcerting how many Christians are watching our name change through a political lens, saying things about how it's evidence we're losing the culture war, etc, etc. It's simply not something we consider. Our organization exists to tell people about Christ, not to win at politics.

* Non-Christians watch the whole conversation with confused uncertainty. Things I've heard from them:
"Why are Christians attacking you for making your name less offensive? Do they want to offend people?"
"Do all Christians form their opinions by watching Fox News?"
"Why are people accusing your leadership of lying about why the name is changing?"
"Do Christians really think they can tell another person's motives and whether they're good or not without talking to those people?"

"Why isn't it sufficient that you have a cross in the logo? Doesn't that show a commitment to Christ?"

The problem is not so much the positions being taken (that's fine if that's your opinion), but the shrill, hysterical tone taken on by many. It's refreshing when someone comes to us with an honest question about things, instead of shouting THIS IS EVIDENCE OF YOUR APOSTASY. Yes, some people have said that. Oy vey, Christians, pull it together.

5) Loss of financial support.

Whatever name we changed to, the experts told us to expect a short term drop in financial support for the organization. This is because change is hard, and people use the change as a reason to move on. It doesn't matter if we had changed our name to "God's Knights" or "Christ Christ for Christ" this would still be the situation.

However, in light of the fact that we believe this change will widen the population of people who will hear the gospel from us, this is an acceptable loss. I'm proud of our leadership, actually, for making a decision that goes against the "bottom line." It's tempting to make decisions based on our finances, and I think it's amazing that our leadership made a decision based not on money but on effectiveness and potential for spreading the good news about Jesus Christ.

So, in conclusion: there are some real disadvantages to the new name. I honestly believe they are lesser disadvantages than our previous name had, and that many of these current difficulties can be overcome or lived with.

While I was writing this post I got a note from a friend on facebook who said this:

Matt, I have been a Young Life staff/volunteer/supporter for over 40 years. While YL may be a bit more descriptive than "CRU", it's not definitive. Often mistaken for a Life Ins. Co.. The strength is in the work! You and your counterparts in "CRU" will continue to make the work of Christ first and foremost. God and your good efforts will make the name "CRU" shine as a beacon for Christ. Bless you all!!!

That's a good reminder of what matters most... continuing to make the work of Christ first and foremost. I pray that will be true for all followers of Christ (regardless of the names of our organizations!).

Previous posts on this topic: 

* Cru: a name "without meaning"

* The criteria we used in the name change process and why they matter.

* Name change overview 

Cru: a name "without meaning" and why that's (potentially) a good thing

Hey, kids, it's time for a multiple choice quiz. Here's your question: What does "Qdoba" mean?

A) It's an Aztec word meaning "womanly."

B) It's a shortening of the Spanish phrase "Que Adoba?" which means "What is that marinated in?"

C) It's a word that sounds like Spanish but really isn't, just like the food appears to be Mexican, but really isn't.

D) It means fast, friendly, fresh.

The answer, dear readers, is at the end of this post.

One of the common questions people have asked about the Campus Crusade for Christ name change is "What does 'Cru' mean?"

Now, obviously, for those of us who have been around and know where the name comes from, it's an abbreviation of the word Crusade from our current name (more on that tomorrow, in the post "Terrible, Horrible Things About Our New Name and Why We Still Chose This One"). But a lot of people seem concerned that they will be having conversations like this:

Me: Hi. I work with a Christian non-profit organization called "Cru."

Other guy: Oh yeah? What does 'Cru' mean?

Me: I have no idea.

Other guy: Really?

Me: Well, um, it's a sort of shortened version of the word Crusade.

Other guy: Uhhhhhh....

Me: Because 'Cru' is a way for me to downplay that my group was originally called Campus Crusade for Christ.

Other guy: You're creepy.

Me: I know. But do you want to hear about Jesus? He can totally protect you from creepy people.

What does "3M" mean?

To which I can only say, I doubt it. You're not going to have this conversation, and neither am I. At least, not very often. Let's face it, we have a very high tolerance for ambiguity and lack of meaning in our language. If you disagree, I would merely point out how many times you've used Scotch Tape without considering what it means. Duct tape, electrical tape, masking tape... these all have relatively straightforward clues as to their intended use in their names. But what about SCOTCH tape? Is it for use on alcoholic beverages? For laying out hopscotch boards? Or could it be a racist crack against Scotsmen? (Now that you're wondering for the first time in your life, here's what Scotch Tape means.) We rarely ask what things mean, preferring to know what they do. This is a far more likely conversation:

Me: Hi. I work with a Christian non-profit organization called "Cru."

Other guy: Oh yeah? What do you do?

Our previous name was a highly descriptive and concrete name. The name (originally) represented who we were and what we did. Namely, Campus (we work with college students) Crusade (we don't just "work" on campus actually, we have a cause, a mission on the campus) for Christ (the person and reason we work with college students). Over the last 60 years two things changed: our organization expanded, so that many of our staff don't work on campus, and the semantic range of the word "crusade" narrowed (at least in common usage) so that our name no longer describes us accurately. To most people who hear our name now it says Campus (our organization is only relevant to college students) Crusade (we will kill you in a religious war) for Christ (for Jesus).

Now, we didn't enter into the name change process having decided to choose a more abstract name. In fact, in the over 1,600 names we considered, there were many, many names that were descriptive. There's nothing wrong with choosing descriptive over abstract.

Take, for instance, two Seattle brands: Starbucks and Seattle's Best Coffee. Remember the first time you went to Starbucks? There's no doubt what Seattle's Best Coffee serves. Starbucks, on the other hand... WHAT DOES IT MEAN? I would guess, for most of us, we've attached our own meaning to it. Very few of us walk into the store and think, Ah, their name is a reference to the first mate of the Pequod, although in the plural rather than possessive. Ahoy! A cup of coffee, matey! No, we have an emotional reaction to the name. Starbucks hopes it's one that has something to do with rest, relaxation, a nice place to hang out and enjoy a beverage or have a conversation.

Lots of organizations have these names that don't precisely explain who they are or what they do: Google, Starbucks, Apple, Chevron, Twitter. Part of the reason Campus Crusade for Christ chose to move away from a more descriptive/concrete name was to allow us to have a shot at influencing people's opinion of the organization by way of their experience rather than their opinion about what our name describes.

So, the hope is that having a more abstract name will allow us to infuse the name with meaning ourselves, much as Starbucks or Qdoba or Google has done with their names. The exciting thing about this is that it will force people to look at our organization rather than our history (good or bad). People will look at their own experience with us rather than their expectations of what we should be (or what we were in the 1970s). The potential drawback to this is that people will see us for what we are. So, if we're not living up to our mission, if we're not following through on our promises to our people, if we're not the cutting edge organization that's committed to the Great Commission, that will be obvious and leave us with a poor reputation. I, for one, am proud of Cru and the things we've done in the last ten years, so I'm confident that when people look at us they'll see something attractive, something they want to be a part of.

By the way, this is why we decided not to make "Cru" an acronym... adding an acronym moves us toward descriptive again, whether it's "Community, Real life change, Uncommon opportunities" or "Christians Really Understand" or (my personal favorite via Chris Zaugg) "Christ Reaching Uthers." We don't want to tell people who we are anymore, we want to show them with our actions.

I hope you like what you see!


Qdoba answer: No one knows what Qdoba means. It's not Spanish. I sent a note to Qdoba a few days ago and haven't heard back from them yet!


Previous posts on this topic: 


* The criteria we used in the name change process and why they matter.
* Name change overview

Campus Crusade for Christ name change: The criteria we used and why they matter

Before you change your name, you need to know who you are. Most of us are given our names, and while a lot of parents give us a middle name to switch to, sometimes you can grow up feeling that your name has stopped representing who you are. That's how Richard Smith of Carlisle decided to change his name to "Stormhammer Deathclaw Firebrand" last May (I'm not joking... you can look him up).

Before we get to the criteria that Campus Crusade for Christ used during our renaming process, I thought it would be important to take a look at our "who we are" statement that we used to remind ourselves what we wanted people to know about who we are.

Here it is (all slides in this post are taken from this talk where Steve Sellers, CCC's vice president of the Americas, announced the name change):

In case you can't see the picture clearly, it says: WE ARE a caring community - passionate about connecting people to Jesus Christ - so they can experience Christ's life-changing presence and the opportunities to share Him with others.

Notice three main aspects of the statement above:

1) a caring community

2) connecting people to Christ/opportunities for others to share about him (evangelism remains a central part of what we do)

3) Life change. Campus Crusade for Christ has been and will continue to be about seeing people's lives transformed by the presence of Christ in their lives. As you can see, this continues to fit well with our mission and statement of faith.

A few news outlets chose to use our name change as an opportunity to manufacture controversy in the hopes of generating more traffic to their sites, but as you can clearly see in this "brand identity" slide, from the very beginning changing the name has been centered on the same values Campus Crusade for Christ was founded on.

Now, let's take a closer look at the criteria used in the naming concepts:

1. Can be used with the new brand strategy concepts. 

The "brand strategy concepts" could be a post all by itself, but basically it boils down to the brand identity above... that our name wouldn't conflict with our promise to be a caring community, to seek life change for people around us through connecting them to Christ, and that we would teach others to do the same.

For me, one of the saddest things from the research was when we'd hear a comment like, "I wish there was an organization that would care about me and help me to find answers to my spiritual questions." Our name prevented outsiders from seeing us that way... they saw us as a people with a cause who would treat them as something expendable. We wanted to make sure that our new name would allow people to look beyond that misconception and see that we would love them, connect them to Christ and teach them to do the same with others.

2. Leads to greater interest and encourages target audience to ask additional questions without being "overly religious."


For me, this boils down to the "airplane test." When Krista and I first joined staff with Campus Crusade for Christ, I was excited to tell people that I was a missionary (something we had been working toward for over a year). I remember being on the plane ride home, and the man next to me asked, "What's your business?" I told him that I was with a Christian non-profit called Campus Crusade for Christ and he immediately, without another word, turned away from me and held his newspaper up over his face. To my dismay, this was a common reaction... people would withdraw (often in a socially awkward or rude way) as soon as they heard our name.

Other staff I've spoken with have stopped using the name of the organization, at least in the early parts of a conversation. Many of us in the campus ministry say something like, "A Christian non-profit that works with college students." We do this not because we're ashamed of our name, but because we'd like to actually have a meaningful conversation with someone instead of being treated like a pariah.

I've been giving the new name the "airplane test" and here's how it plays:

Stranger: What do you do?

Me: I work with a Christian non-profit called "Cru."

Stranger: That's interesting. What does Cru do?

Aside from the unfortunate "Cru do" rhyme, I think we can all admit this is a great leap forward in keeping the conversation open and actually having a meaningful spiritual conversation.

3. Usable with all ministries and also allows for expansion over time.

One of the major drawbacks of our current name is the "campus" piece. While our ministry started on campus and the idea of "reach the campus today and the world tomorrow" continues to be central for us, God has blessed our ministry in allowing it to expand to many, many other places. The Jesus Film Project, for instance, is an important part of our ministry which is not well represented by the word campus. Our Military Ministry, Athletes in Action, Josh McDowell ministries, Family Life, Here's Life Inner City (and our ministries to professionals, politicians, the UN, Hollywood and so on) are all insufficiently represented in our current name. This creates a feeling of disassociation for many of our staff, who feel that the name doesn't include them, and creates confusion for outsiders, who don't realize that our organization has many ministries that aren't focused on college students. Our new name needed to be inclusive of all we currently do and flexible enough to allow us to expand in the future.

4. Taps into Campus Crusade's existing brand equities.

There are some really great things about our current name, and there are some great connections to our ministries which we don't want to lose. Our sixty year history of service is not something we want to lose, so if there was a name which somehow connected to our heritage, we wanted to make sure it had a leg up on the competition (when we look at names later this week you'll see how this played out).

5. Is uniquely ownable.

There was one name I really liked that we couldn't use because there's an organization of 50 who already use the name. Could we have bought it from them? Steamrolled them because we're a bigger organization? Sure, we probably could have. But it didn't seem like it was the best route. Likewise, one of the the early ideas I was really fond of was using "Life" in all our names... we already have Family Life and Here's Life Inner City, and in Australia our campus ministry is called Campus Life (EDIT: Actually, it's called Student Life. Campus Life is yet another organization). Our other ministries could have gone that way also... Military Life, Hollywood Life, whatever. The only real problem is our friends in Young Life. We get confused for one another already, and taking a name so close to theirs would only add to the confusion and frustration.

Add to that the fact that people have been trying to think up names for their Christian organizations for about 2,000 years and you start to realize how many names have been "taken" and how even the most original names are echoes or repeats or semantically close to others that are already out there.

So, there you have it... five criteria we used in the naming process. Tomorrow we'll talk about something that's been creating a decent amount of conversation within the ministry. Cru: why did we choose a name "without any meaning"? 

In the meantime... what do you think of the five criteria? Would you have added any? Dropped any? Any questions about the criteria and how they effected our name change or process?

The Campus Crusade for Christ name change

We had been told a change was coming. Many of our staff -- including Dr. Bill Bright, our founder -- had been debating for years whether to change our name from Campus Crusade for Christ to, well, something else. And this year is our 60th anniversary... sixty years since Bill and Vonette Bright decided that if they could reach the university campuses for Christ today, they could reach the world tomorrow.

But tonight, July 19th, 2011, we were going to finally hear the new name. It had been two years since Steve Sellers,  CCC's vice President of the Americas, had told us that this moment would come, and it was finally here. The energy in the room was high, and as Steve started out his presentation you could practically hear the projected thoughts of thousands of staff filling the gym at Colorado State University: JUST TELL US THE NEW NAME.  

Steve went on, explaining the reasoning behind the name change, the research, the compelling need to change it if we were going to be effective in our mission to tell people about Christ. Follow this link to watch that moment, and Steve's whole talk.

When he said the name, I was surprised that people clapped. Not everyone, of course, but there was applause. I was surprised because change is difficult and I thought any name would be met with skepticism. But there was, at least for some of us, enthusiasm. Some of us liked the name right away, some will get used to it in time, some will always dislike it. That's not a change... some of us disliked our current name. But I'm hopeful that overall we'll all come to embrace "Cru."

In the midst of change, there's likely to be misunderstanding, excitement, hurt feelings, elation, mourning for the past, optimism for the future and a thousand other feelings. But, as our leadership has pointed out over and over again in this process THERE'S ONE THING THAT WON'T EVER CHANGE. We can all take comfort in that.

Next week I'm going to do a series of blog posts about our name change. For the last year I've been on a "response team"... a small group of Campus Crusade for Christ staff members who have given input, opinions and feedback to our leadership in the name change process. I thought it might be helpful to get an "insider" point of view. In the meantime, I'll do my best to answer your questions or point you in the direction of someone who can answer your questions. Here are some of the frequently asked questions in the meantime... if you have a question you want me to address next week, feel free to leave a comment or question here on this post!

Have a great weekend! If you want more information to fill the next couple of days, here's a statement from our President, another from our VP, and one from the director of the United States campus ministry.