Collegiate Times

A Cru student raises his hand in emotional connection to a portion of the evening worship service.

I promise I'm not going to steal anything," said the visitor, standing in the middle of a room of friends from Campus Crusade for Christ. "I promise."

What had been a rather normal Friday night out with friends had just gotten a little more unique. This visitor - a Virginia Tech student who participates in a varsity Olympic sport - had been kicked out of the local club Attitudes for being underage and had, while running from police, ducked into this Cru, as the group is known, get-together to seek refuge.

"We were all thinking, 'OK, which one of us knows this guy?' and nobody did," said Jon Newman, a senior electrical engineering major.

But a funny thing happened with this late night interlocutor. The Cru crew didn't bodily eject him or dial 911. They sat down and talked.

"It was amazing to talk to him about his situation and just reach out and offer him our friendship," Newman said.

Now this one-time trespasser has attended Cru's Thursday night worship services and exchanges text messages with Newman.

Listening with a wry grin the story was retold at a Tuesday night Bible Study, Cru Campus Director and Bible study leader Jeff Highfield pauses for a moment.

"Aiding and abetting, huh? Way to go, fellas," he says.  

The group breaks up in laughter.

Guns blazing?

Amidst the myriad Christian groups on campus, a brand of umbrella, campus Christian ministry groups like Cru provide a unique home for college students with ministries tailored to collegiate concerns and run primarily by students. What Newman's story accentuates is the fine line that many of these groups - some of them with evangelical Christian backing, some of them without - feel they must walk on Tech's campus: professing their faith while, in the parlance employed by many, "loving people where they are," whether within their own group or in the university community at large.

"The reality is that Jesus is a divisive figure. People love him or they don't think it's really true," Highfield, whose ministry is of evangelical bent, said. "Honestly, Christians over time have not always presented the Gospel in a very loving, kind way. There are those out there who are very aggressive and mean and nasty when they talk about Jesus. That's not us at all. We talk about loving people first. We think Jesus is the best and we want everyone to know him. But we need to love people where they are. We're not coming in guns blazing."

For junior international studies major and Cru Associate Student Director Lauren Flynn, keeping the religious guns holstered is about emulating Christ.

"Jesus was the perfect balance of grace and truth. He loved people and he was the hugest example of grace but he was also blunt when it needed to be said," Flynn said.

This practical approach to sharing the Gospel doesn't necessarily signify theological or ideological divergence, however, as the vast majority of groups do hold to rather conservative faith positions.

"But we might agree with everything that person believes but the way we would share it, we wouldn't use the same method," said Marilyn Clark, a staff member of Campus Bible Fellowship.  

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