http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/ en tim.henderson@uscm.org Copyright 2008 2008-06-17T13:41:00-05:00 http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/crucomm_30/ http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/crucomm_30/#When:12:41:00Z Cru.Comm, short for Crusade Communities, is a small group Bible study curriculum designed with a logical progression, that in the course of 3-4 years, could take a new Christian, ground them in the basics of the faith and grow them into a Christ-centered laborer. Version 3.0 has been completely rewritten and redesigned.  The same Christ-centered teaching model that our staff have been trained in through Bible Study Methods and Biblical Interpretation and Communication tracks now informs each Cru.Comm study.  And they’ve been redesigned with a new brighter, cleaner look.  We’re pretty excited about the improvements and hope they’ll be helpful to you. Each of the over 100 studies in Cru.Comm presents classic, transferable Crusade teaching through a distinctively redemptive lens, in a way that is easy to use in a dynamic, interactive small group community. Each study is designed to first teach the leader the passage and then provide them with questions they can use to lead their group through a process of self-discovered learning. See some free samples of Cru.Comm and a list of the full content. Open the full version of Cru.Comm (subscribers only) Cru.Comm, short for Crusade Communities, is a small group Bible study curriculum designed with a logical progression, that in the course of 3-4 years, could take a new Christian, ground them in the basics of the faith and grow them into a Christ-centered laborer. Version 3.0 has been completely rewritten and redesigned.  The same Christ-centered teaching model that our staff have been trained in through Bible Study Methods and Biblical Interpretation and Communication tracks now informs each Cru.Comm study.  And they’ve been redesigned with a new brighter, cleaner look.  We’re pretty excited about the improvements and hope they’ll be helpful to you. Each of the over 100 studies in Cru.Comm presents classic, transferable Crusade teaching through a distinctively redemptive lens, in a way that is easy to use in a dynamic, interactive small group community. Each study is designed to first teach the leader the passage and then provide them with questions they can use to lead their group through a process of self-discovered learning. The previous version of Cru.Comm (version 2.0) is available on CD from New Life Resources for as little as $9.00 a disc. For the time being version 3 is exclusively available via web-based subscription. It’s a sweet deal—you should check it out. * CDs for Staff. * CDs for Students and Churches. * Online Subscription Information. In the meantime here are some free samples and a list of the full content. Have at it. Also, be sure to read How to Use Cru.Comm. It will help you and your Bible study get the most out of this tool. If you are a subscriber here is the full content of Cru.Comm Tools 2008-06-17T12:41:00-05:00 http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/the_compass_20/ http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/the_compass_20/#When:12:35:00Z As legendary discipler Roger Hershey says, a mature disciple is one who walks by faith, communicates their faith, and multiplies their faith. The Compass is a tool from Centerfield Productions designed to help staff and student disciplers guide other students through the process of becoming mature disciples. Version 2.0 has been freshly updated for the 2008 school year with a sweet new look that matches the new design of Cru.Comm.  In addition to over 45 lesson files, The Compass contains a number of other resources including a series of four talks by Roger Hershey on the right reasons, people, components, and content for discipleship. Discipleship is at the heart of our mission to turn lost students into Christ-centered laborers. The Compass is a tool that can give clarity to discipleship program on your campus and help your disciplers do an excellent job. See some free samples of The Compass and a list of the full content. Open the full version of The Compass (subscribers only) As legendary discipler Roger Hershey says, a mature disciple is one who walks by faith, communicates their faith, and multiplies their faith. The Compass is a tool from Centerfield Productions designed to help staff and student disciplers guide other students through the process of becoming mature disciples. Version 2.0 has been freshly updated for the 2008 school year with a sweet new look that matches the new design of Cru.Comm.  In addition to over 45 lesson files, The Compass contains a number of other resources including a series of four talks by Roger Hershey on the right reasons, people, components, and content for discipleship. Discipleship is at the heart of our mission to turn lost students into Christ-centered laborers. The Compass is a tool that can give clarity to discipleship program on your campus and help your disciplers do an excellent job. The previous version of The Compass is available on CD from New Life Resources for as little as $7.50 a disc. (It has the identical content in a prior design.) The newest version is available exclusively via web-based subscription to Centerfield’s resources. It’s a sweet deal—you should check it out. * CDs for Staff. * CDs for Students and Churches. * Online Subscription Information. In the meantime here are some free samples and a list of the full content. Have at it. The Compass is organized under three main headings: Walk, Communicate, and Multiply, which corresponds with our understanding that a mature disciple is one who walks, communicates and multiplies their faith. You can find over 40 lessons to prepare you to lead great discipleship appointments with students. Before you get started though we’d strongly recommend you first listen to each of Roger Hershey’s excellent talks on the right reasons, people, components, and content of discipleship. The first is free. The last three require a subscription. Also, be sure to read How to Use The Compass. It will help you and your disciple get the most out of this tool. If you are a subscriber here is the full content of The Compass Tools 2008-06-17T12:35:00-05:00 http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/the_compass_for_churches/ http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/the_compass_for_churches/#When:11:52:00Z The Compass for Churches is an adaptation of The Compass which was originally designed for use by college students.  Like the original, The Compass for Churches is built around the understanding that a mature disciple is one who walks by faith, communicates their faith and multiplies their faith.  The basic lessons are the same but the language and scenarios have been modified to connect better with a different audience.  If you are trying to disciple the people in your church (which we’d humbly submit is a great idea!) then this tool could be a great help. See some free samples of The Compass for Churches and a list of the full content. Open the full version of The Compass for Churches (subscribers only) The Compass for Churches is an adaptation of The Compass which was originally designed for use by college students.  Like the original, The Compass for Churches is built around the understanding that a mature disciple is one who walks by faith, communicates their faith and multiplies their faith.  The basic lessons are the same but the language and scenarios have been modified to connect better with a different audience.  If you are trying to disciple the people in your church (which we’d humbly submit is a great idea!) then this tool could be a great help. The Compass for Churches is available exclusively via a web-based subscription to Centerfield’s resources. It’s a sweet deal—you should check it out. * Online Subscription Information. In the meantime here are some free samples and a list of the full content. Have at it. The Compass for Churches is organized under three main headings: Walk, Communicate, and Multiply, which corresponds with our understanding that a mature disciple is one who walks, communicates and multiplies their faith. You can find over 40 lessons to prepare you to lead great discipleship appointments with members of your church. Before you get started though we’d strongly recommend you first listen to each of Roger Hershey’s excellent talks on the right reasons, people, components, and content of discipleship. The first is free. The last three require a subscription. Also, be sure to read How to Use The Compass. It will help you and your disciple get the most out of this tool. If you are a subscriber here is the full content of The Compass for Churches Tools 2008-06-17T11:52:00-05:00 http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/the_gospel_for_the_ashamed/ http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/the_gospel_for_the_ashamed/#When:13:47:00Z In the West it seems we are in transition. We are moving away from being a guilt-based culture, towards a shame-based culture. Because of that transition, many of our students have grown up experiencing shame more than guilt, but they’ve done so in a country where the Christian community’s expertise lies in dealing with guilt more than shame. Which probably means that to many of them, and maybe to many of our staff as well, the offer of the gospel has not sounded as sweet as it actually is. In Genesis 3 Moses records the fall and it’s immediate effects. In particular he shows three completely novel and deeply negative experiences that would forever accompany mankind: guilt, shame, and fear. In vv. 12 and 13 Adam and Eve play the blame game, highlighting their guilt; in v. 7 they cover their nakedness of which they are newly ashamed; and in v. 10 they hide from God, fearing the one that has only ever been their benefactor. Every one of us since that day has known all three of those states. Guilt, shame, and fear are part of our lives. But interestingly, it seems that people in different parts of the world have tended to primarily experience their falleness through one more than the other two: In the East sin is primarily experienced through shame. (Think for instance of the role shame has played in Japan.) In much of Africa, and other cultures where animism and witchcraft are prevalent, fear holds sway. Historically in the West, and in particular in the US, we have experienced mostly guilt. We are a nation of laws. And when you violate laws, you’re guilty. Transition Toward ShameBut in the West it seems we are in transition. We are moving away from being a guilt-based culture, towards a shame-based culture. It’s not hard to see why. Guilt is the experience of one who has broken the law. If there is no law, there can’t be any guilt. For a generation of students who don’t necessarily agree that there is a fixed moral code they are obliged to obey, guilt is a concept with little meaning. But they still do things that are wrong, and that they somehow know are wrong. In particular they tend to do wrong things with their bodies. We are awash in a sea of sex and sensuality. Pornography, premarital sex, promiscuity, abortion, homosexuality, sexual abuse, and eating disorders, are all issues of the body, and shame (often, but not always) zeroes in on sins committed by and against the body. So as belief in absolute laws has diminished and as sins of the body have increased, we have moved away from guilt and towards shame as the primary experience of our falleness. Because of that transition, many of our students have grown up experiencing shame more than guilt, but they’ve done so in a country where the Christian community’s expertise lies in dealing with guilt more than shame. Which probably means that to many of them, and maybe to many of our staff as well, the offer of the gospel has not sounded as sweet as it actually is. One thing to note that’s really important, though it’s not my main point - we also experience shame because of things done to us, not just things we’ve done. When a woman is raped, or a boy is molested- they too experience shame, though it’s a different shame. It’s not their fault (that is, they aren’t guilty) if they’ve been a victim of someone else’s sin. There’s shame over what we’ve done, and shame over what’s been done to us. People who have experienced those things don’t need to be forgiven for what happened to them, but they do need the restorative power of the gospel. They need to hear God say what’s true of them. Though they have no share of blame in what’s been done to them the truth of the gospel is still what they need to hear, to restore their lost sense of self. How We Have Communicated the GospelFor most of the United States’ 200 year history (and throughout much of the West for longer than that) people have primarily experienced guilt. And because of that we’ve tended to speak of the gospel as a solution to our guilt. Which it is, wonderfully so. And so we say things like, “Jesus died to pay the penalty for your sins.” That’s guilt language. Or we’ll tell the judge illustration, a parable in which you have committed a crime, and you stand before a judge who happens to be your dad. He declares you guilty, because you are, but then he pays your fine on your behalf. The purpose of the story is to help show someone how God can solve the problem of their guilt. I’m not repudiating any of that. It’s all true and it needs to be told. For millions and millions of people that is the ache in their soul and it’s where the gospel intersects with their lives. They know they are guilty and they want their guilt expunged. But I have tended to think and communicate as though guilt is the consequence of sin. What I am suggested here though is that it is only one of the consequences of sin. Perhaps there are millions more who primarily experience their falleness through a slightly different lens. The gospel can speak to them too, because Jesus didn’t just come to take away guilt. He also came to erase our shame so we don’t need to hide from him anymore, and our fear so we can respond to his love. He came to take away our sin in all it’s manifestations: Guilt and shame and fear and anything else that might be missing from that list - though I think that most everything falls under one of those headings. Sam’s ExperienceI’ve been thinking about this for several months. I’ve talked about it with my staff, servant team, Bible study, and the movement at large. Sam is one of the students I’ve worked with who identifies himself as one who experiences shame more than guilt. As we talked about his experience three things he said struck me as significant. The first was that for most of his life he didn’t just think that he had done bad things, but that he was bad himself. That’s the essence of shame. Guilt focuses on what we do. Shame focuses on who we are, or who we perceive ourselves to be. When Jesus died for us, he didn’t only die to take the blame for what we’ve done, but to restore who we have become, to who we were meant to be. Second, Sam told me that he often has just wanted to disappear. That is a dead giveaway for shame. What do you always want to do when you are ashamed? Hide. It’s universally instinctive. Shames makes us what to hide, disappear, flee, isolate. The third thing that he talked about was the antidote for that. He told me about a friend of his who didn’t have any solutions, or real advice, but who told him that he didn’t want him to disappear. That he’d miss him. That Sam was his friend and he didn’t want to lose the relationship. He moved toward him and didn’t let Sam become isolated. The solution to shame is relationships, it’s community, even though we hate it at first. We want to hide. But what we need is someone to coax us out of hiding and into community. Shame says, I’m bad and therefore, I want to hide and isolate. The solution is found in relationships: when another human creates an area of safety where there’s enough affection for us to trust them and come out of the shadows and be known. A Complete AtonementJesus died for all our sin; not just a facet of it, the whole thing. He paid for our guilt. He took the wrath of God. He was punished for our violation of his laws. He also drank to the bottom the cup of shame. Crucifixion is a shameful thing. Jesus was crucified in his underwear. Obviously that wasn’t the worst thing going on, but it’s hard to be exposed in front of people. Hebrews 12 says, ”For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame.” Remember that guilt focuses on what we have done, shame focuses on who we are - our being. Then take a look at this. It’s from 2 Cor 5:20-21. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. ”God made him who had no sin to be sin.” I never really understood what that was saying. I think it means Jesus didn’t just take away the guilt of what we’ve done, but also the shame of what we’ve become. He became sin. He identified with what was wrong in us, not just in our actions, that he might do away with it. And finally, he also faced fear head on. Luke says that in the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus’ terror was so great that he literally sweated blood. He suffered from a condition called hematidrosis in which extraordinary grief causes your skin to excrete blood. He knew the fury of the wrath of God fully, and it terrified him. But he faced it so we wouldn’t have to. Implications for Ministers of the GospelI think these things can inform how we communicate the gospel to this generation of students. Number one, since his atonement was complete- that there might not be any guilt, or shame, or fear left for us, our communication of the gospel should be complete too. Because we minister in a transitional time, we need to cast as broad a net as possible. Regardless of which trigger resonates most with any given student- guilt, or shame, or fear, we can offer each of them the sweetness of Christ and his ability to meet their need. It’s worth going back and looking at how Jesus communicated the gospel, particularly to those who had cause for shame. I’ve spent some time in Luke 7 which has been instructive. It might be profitable to look at that with your team and search for insights into how Jesus interacted with “the sinful woman.” Number two, if community is the antidote for shame, we need to make sure we have healthy, attractive, welcoming communities, and learn to unleash their evangelistic power. Until this year I had barely given a nod to body evangelism at Penn State. It is now a major focus in how we share the gospel. We developed a campaign called Community 2:8 and have seen some measure of success with it. You can read more about Community 2:8 in the Strategy section of this site. Centerfield Productions is a division of CruPress, a publishing house of Campus Crusade for Christ. The team consists of Crusade staff with other full-time roles, primarily in the field. Centerfield’s Ideas, Strategies, and Tools are born out of the experience of these staff and their attempts to solve the problems they face on campus. Tim Henderson and his wife Kellie have been on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ since 1993. He is currently the Campus Director at Penn State and the Director of Centerfield Productions. His email is tim.henderson@uscm.org. To download a pdf version of this article, please click here. Ideas 2005-08-05T13:47:00-05:00 http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/community_28/ http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/community_28/#When:18:28:00Z “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” 1Thes 2:8 That passage seems an apt description of what effective evangelism might look like in a culture that longs for community and desperately needs the gospel. We’ve found it helps us connect Crusade’s long standing value of initiative evangelism with the culture’s affinity for relationships without diminishing either.  Initiative Evangelism in a Culture That Longs for Community For years I’ve been beating my head against a wall trying to figure out how to be more effective in evangelism. I know and agree with our definition of successful witnessing: “Taking the initiative in the power of the Holy Spirit to share Christ, and trusting God for the results.” That’s a good definition and we teach it to our students. But our incredibly high ratio of exposures to involved new believers has left me longing for our evangelistic approaches to be not only successful, but also effective. I want to see more people come to Christ, get involved, and grow in their faith. This year my staff and student leaders and I came up with an evangelism campaign that has been revolutionary for us. A larger portion of our movement is involved in personal evangelism than before and kids are coming to Christ. It’s been a huge success. 1 Thessalonians 2:8 The campaign is called Community 2:8 and is based on 1 Thes 2:8 which says, “We loved you so much that we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well, because you had become so dear to us.” That passage seems an apt description of what effective evangelism might look like in a culture that longs for community and desperately needs the gospel. We’ve found it helps us connect Crusade’s long standing value of initiative evangelism with the culture’s affinity for relationships without diminishing either. And to top it all off, it’s biblical. We used to run a campaign called “First and Ten” that Cynthia Hagen and I developed at West Chester University. First and Ten had two components. “First” reminded us to first pray, following the divine order of evangelism: “Talk to God about people before you talk to people about God.” “Ten” referenced a top ten list of friends, acquaintances, classmates, or scary lost people– pretty much anyone you wanted to commit to sharing the gospel with by year’s end. Students would come up with a list, pray for the people on it regularly, and look for (or create) opportunities to share with them. Community 2:8 builds on the evangelistic foundation of Pray and Share, and adds the community components, Introduce and Invite. Introduce suggests that our students make sure that the non-Christians they are reaching out to get a chance to know as many believers as possible. The more Christians they know the better. The more they get a chance to rub shoulders with godly people the more opportunities there are for the gospel to be both explained and lived out before them. And if they know 8 or 10 people in Cru, or 4 or 5 in a Bible study they are much more likely to be willing to attend where they can again hear the gospel and see it in action. Which brings me to the final step, Invite. We ask our students to invite their friends to Cru socials, and unofficial parties our students hold. We remind them to invite non-Christians to go to movies or basketball games with no spiritual content whatsoever. We ask them to invite people to our weekly meeting, or special outreaches. Pretty much with any social gathering, whether there is overt evangelistic value or not, we want our kids to be inviting the lost. Pray, Share, Introduce, Invite Please note the order there because it’s intentional. Pray is first because we still believe that this adventure starts in prayer. It is God who draws men and women to faith so we want our students to cultivate the habit of praying for the lost. Immediately on the heals of that comes Share. By which we mean the overt articulation of the gospel. The Four Laws. Life at Large. Your testimony. An explanation of substitutionary atonement. That sort of thing. There is a temptation to move evangelism to the end of the process, waiting for the relationship to really get established. I think that’s a bad idea. For one thing, experience shows that it’s really easy to keep putting it off. We can second guess if it’s “time yet” all the way until graduation. A lot of times our willingness to take a risk and share our faith can diminish over time. What we like to call “waiting for an opportunity” can really just be failure to overcome fear. Also, it seems disingenuous. If the gospel really is important to me, and if I really do like you, I think it makes sense to talk about it early in the relationship. Otherwise when I finally do bring it up it comes across as artificial. The gospel doesn’t need to be our opening comment every time we meet someone, but it seems good to speak about Jesus early and naturally. Why wait? He’s the greatest. Following that come Introduce and Invite as described above. It’s not necessarily that neat and linear, because of course we keep on praying for them and sharing the gospel (or parts of the gospel) whenever it’s appropriate, and we’re allowed to introduce them to a friend before we’ve given them the Four Laws, but nevertheless there’s intentionality in the ordering of Pray, Share, Introduce, Invite. Unveiling and Promoting C2:8 We had the two principal student architects pitch Community 2:8 at our Fall Retreat. They explained the passage and the steps, and shared the key objective we asked each student to personally own: Help one person become part of the community where they can hear, experience, and believe the gospel. To realize that objective they’d need to pray (for), share (with), introduce, and invite several non-Christians. We designed a Community 2:8 card to remind them of the steps and give them a place to record the names of the people to whom they’d reach out. Then, at almost every weekly meeting for the rest of the year we had a C2:8 Moment. Students would explain the campaign, tell a story about someone they’d shared with, or introduce someone who had come to Christ. In a variety of ways they encouraged the rest of the students to be active in sharing their faith and inviting the lost into our community, in the hope that they’d ultimately come into the kingdom. We gave just about zero direction to the C2:8 moments and they were fantastic. Students owned this, ran with it and shared their faith. As the year went on we began to brand almost everything we did as a C2:8 event. Huge parties at a guys house called the Lodge (LodgeFest, LodgetoberFest and LodgecloverFest) were big hits with our students and those they brought. We had a volleyball tournament that surpassed everyone’s expectations. As it turned out our worship team practice was even infused with evangelistic value as our drummer came to Christ. This was a surprise to me since we have a standing policy that you need to be a Christian to lead worship. It’s kind of a long story, but despite some of the messiness it was really a beautiful thing. Community 2:8 and Initiative Evangelism The evangelism model describes three modes of evangelism: ministry, natural and body. Community 2:8 obviously focuses on natural and body. But that doesn’t mean we’ve left ministry mode behind. At Penn State we have done and will continue to do dinner line surveys, Quest surveys, and transitions to the Four Spiritual Laws. I’m not recommending a Community 2:8 style campaign replace that, but that it augment it. There are at least three good reasons not to commit that error: Ministry mode is the best way to train students to share their faith. In that mode they can learn answers to questions, transitions, illustrations, and solidify their ability to express the gospel clearly and concisely. Those skills will serve them well for the rest of their lives. Without them, they will be hard pressed to ever share their faith in the natural mode. Your staff should probably be sharing their faith more frequently than Community 2:8 alone will allow. They can certainly establish relationships and be involved in a campaign like C2:8, but their best contribution is probably to train students’ in evangelism and go after those currently outside the reach of your students relational connections. People come to Christ through ministry mode evangelism. Especially if you can come up with a way of surfacing what Roger Hershey loves to call “hungry hearts” you can expect students to come to faith in this mode. And by the way, Community 2:8 itself is not a departure from initiative evangelism. I’ve noticed I can be sloppy and imprecise in using that term. Ministry mode and initiative evangelism are not synonymous. Neither are natural mode and relational evangelism. We should take the initiative to share our faith regardless of which mode we are operating in. And we should be relational as we share our faith regardless of which mode we are operating in. The terms “initiative” and “relational” describe ideal behavior in all modes of ministry. We should be intentional to move towards people, and treat them warmly and with respect regardless of how we met them. Community 2:8 is both initiative and relational in the natural and body modes of evangelism. One of the unexpected benefits we’ve found in Community 2:8 is that it helps us reach the increasing number of students who struggle with shame more than guilt. Many students have great cause for shame and therefore, they hide. What they need is a community where they can feel safe enough to bring their junk into the light. Your movement can provide that community and help them come to Christ. For a lengthier treatment of the topic of shame as it relates to evangelism, please see, “The Gospel for the Ashamed” in the Ideas section of this site. Centerfield Productions is a division of CruPress, a publishing house of Campus Crusade for Christ. The team consists of Crusade staff with other full-time roles, primarily in the field. Centerfield’s Ideas, Strategies, and Tools are born out of the experience of these staff and their attempts to solve the problems they face on campus. Tim Henderson and his wife Kellie have been on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ since 1993. He is currently the Campus Director at Penn State and the Director of Centerfield Productions. His email is tim.henderson@uscm.org. To download a pdf version of this article, please click here. Strategies 2005-08-04T18:28:00-05:00 http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/branding_your_ministry/ http://www.centerfieldproductions.com/post/branding_your_ministry/#When:16:47:02Z A couple of years ago we decided to hire a design firm to help us brand Campus Crusade for Christ at Penn State. Essentially that means we wanted them to help us think through a visual way to consistently represent the essence of Cru to the students here. In particular we wanted a recognizable, cost-effective way to repeat over and over that Cru is a place on campus where you can find authentic relationships, and thoughtful answers to life’s questions. A couple of years ago we decided to hire a design firm to help us brand Campus Crusade for Christ at Penn State.  Essentially that means we wanted them to help us think through a visual way to consistently represent the essence of Cru to the students here.  In particular we wanted a recognizable, cost-effective way to repeat over and over that Cru is a place on campus where you can find authentic relationships, and thoughtful answers to life’s questions. The ultimate solution Alliant Studios came up with utilizes a simple square blue logo that can be used to adorn any number of black and white photos of students in relationships.  There is also a standard typeface (DIN) for all headlines and copy, and rules governing how the brand is to be used.  To download a packet with several samples of our branded publicity and evangelism campaigns, see below. Why Brand? While there may or may not be an obvious advantage to branding the ministry on your campus(es), we have found several benefits at Penn State.  The whole process has helped us think through what we value, and has given us a way to champion and showcase it to the students in our movement and those we are trying to reach.  We think it also helps us to have a clear, repeated, and recognizable visual image as we try to help 42,000 students know we are here.  The bulletin boards crowd up quickly and I think a consistent image sticks better in student’s minds.  Finally, it has made all of our promotion simpler and less taxing.  Instead of trying to come up with a creative ad for every event, outreach, retreat, meeting, etc., we just take a cool picture, give it a headline and put the logo on.  Having a template that’s been thought through and which gives us both consistency and flexibility is really nice in the middle of a busy year. If you would like to adopt the same brand, you are welcome to.  All we would ask is that you use it consistently and according to the usage rules described in the logo packet, available below.  You are however free to chose a new color for the mark and use that instead of the blue.  Some ministries have chosen to reproduce the mark in one of their school colors.  We use Pantone Process Blue, which by virtue of being a process color is easily available.  You might want to limit yourself to a standard palette as well.  If you don’t wish to be constrained by the usage rules for this particular branding concept, you can of course create a new look on your own or hire someone to help you come up with a design that works better in your particular context.  I’d just ask you to start from scratch and not modify what we are using at Penn State.  If you do choose to replicate this brand, it could make it easier for you to adapt and use other resources we create here that might be helpful to you.  For instance, we created a series of evangelistic ads to run inside the buses on campus.  I believe that the heart of evangelism is praise. Whenever we share the gospel we are really “declaring the excellencies of him who called us out of darkness and into his wonderful light.” This campaign is explicitly based on that understanding of evangelism. There are five ads, each of which describes an attribute of God. Slowly over the course of the year we cycle through these ads, explaining the gospel as we go.  We first talk about God’s goodness, then his mercy, then justice, then love.  The invitation to respond comes in the fifth ad which says that he is personal.  You should check them out. You can download pdfs of all five ads, and the full InDesign files below. Thoughts to Consider If you do decide to pursue this or another branding concept, here are a few principals to consider: As cultures change over time, the strongest connection to the gospel changes as well.  But in every society and every person there is always a point of need that the gospel alone can meet.  One of our jobs is to figure out which of the universal longings of the heart that only Jesus can satisfy is currently at the forefront of our culture.  We have found that students’ thirst for community is one of those connections and thus have built our brand around that concept.  There may be a different or stronger connection in your context.  Whatever it is I’d try to design the brand with that in mind. The above notion only works if you really are able to offer what you claim to have.  We genuinely have a pretty strong community at Penn State, which has enabled us to leverage those relationships to a strong evangelistic end.  An empty brand that makes vain promises isn’t worth anything.  Students will figure out pretty quickly if there’s no truth behind a pretty logo.  Make sure you are focusing on the reality of what you have to offer, not just the symbolic representation of it. If you do use a brand, try to use it consistently.  Think about how the values you are championing can be expressed in everything you do.  Think about all the modes in which you communicate and look for ways to reinforce both the visual identity, and the reality that lies behind it.  We have found this to be really challenging.  I’d strive for consistency in your publicity, powerpoint presentations, at weekly meetings, t-shirts, web site, fall retreat, etc. Finally, bear in mind that a slick ad campaign is no substitute for spirit-filled believers, living holy lives and walking by faith.  A good brand can help you communicate your message more effectively, but the power of the gospel isn’t predicated on typefaces and logos.  This is just a tool that can be helpful in the hands of godly students who are trusting God to help them reach their campus. By the way, if you’d like to understand more about the concept of branding, I’d recommend you check out Fast Company magazine.  It’s a great secular source for current, thoughtful, ethical lessons on leadership.  100% of their content is online and searchable for free.  I highly recommend it. Resources Finally, for those of you who might want to make use of the Cru brand here are some links and resources that could be helpful to you. Photos (20 megs) Ultimately it’s in your best interest to use photographs of your own students at your schools, but in the meantime here are some reasonably good shots that might help you get started. Logo Packet (11 megs) This contains the mark in several file formats as well as the document defining acceptable usage. Samples (11 megs) Here you can find a handful of examples of posters, postcards and such that utilize the brand.  Also included are pdfs of the bus ads. Bus ads (52 megs) This huge file has all of the InDesign 2.0 documents and images you would need to modify the contact info on the bus ads and run them on your campus.  You would also need to purchase the fonts which you can find below. Fonts Our brand uses a typeface called DIN which you can buy from FontFont.  You should probably purchase two packets.  One containing DIN Regular and DIN Regular Alternate.  The second containing DIN Bold and DIN Bold Alternate.  Each is $40 and come with five licenses.  There are other weights and variations as well, but Regular and Bold would be the two you really need. Labels Because we have a color logo but don’t want to pay for color copies every time we make a poster we had our logo printed on one square inch stickers that we adhere to the black and white posters.  We had them made at Consolidated Label.  Tina Meck was our account representative. Postcards We have created and mailed to the students several different postcards.  (See sample packet.) Some are evangelistic, some to invite them to events.  We’ve always used Modern Postcard for the production.  They do a fabulous job. Web site You might also check out our web site, PennStateCru.org, to see how the brand is used there. Centerfield Productions is a division of CruPress, a publishing house of Campus Crusade for Christ. The team consists of Crusade staff with other full-time roles, primarily in the field. Centerfield’s Ideas, Strategies, and Tools are born out of the experience of these staff and their attempts to solve the problems they face on campus. Tim Henderson and his wife Kellie have been on staff with Campus Crusade for Christ since 1993. He is currently the Campus Director at Penn State and the Director of Centerfield Productions. His email is tim.henderson@uscm.org. To download a pdf version of this article, please click here. Strategies 2005-08-04T16:47:02-05:00