One of the things that the staff and upperclassmen in Cru always rave about -- definitely the event they rave about most -- is this summer missions trip (called a Summer Project) in Ocean City, New Jersey. Each Cru campus basically partners with a different Summer Project where they try to send most of their people. Northwestern is partnered with Ocean City.
Starting in the fall of my freshman year, I've had Ocean City recommended to me more times than I could possibly count. But last summer I wasn't sure that I thought the project was a good use of time. It would take up almost the entire summer, I would have to support raise to go on it, and it seemed to be nothing more than a homework-less hangout for a bunch of college kids with nothing better to do. So instead I went to work in Nebraska.
This year I had Ocean City recommended to me with no less intensity. People have been talking about it almost since we first got back on campus. After a lot of skeptical conversations, I finally started to see the intent behind the project and the good it could offer. I had seen it as a fun hang-out time with a little bit of worship and Jesus time thrown in to justify support-raising, but the picture they presented was a lot more intense.
For starters, everyone's expected to get a 40-hour-a-week job, and they're expected to work towards sharing the Gospel with their co-workers. Not only is that a big time consumer, that really intimidates me because I tend to shy away from bringing religion into relationships. Then in the evening downtime, there's several of different things that happen.
A couple nights a week there's big group meetings where the team encourages each other, worships, talks about what's going on and generally builds community. On other nights there's discipleship, training in evangelism, or small group meetings. And throughout the week, and especially on weekends, the team goes out on the beach to try to share the Gospel with strangers.
I got a little taste of stranger evangelism on Big Break, a Cru trip to Panama City Beach over spring break, but everyone says that there's just an unbelievable amount of faith-sharing in Ocean City. This scares me right now, and I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of butting into a stranger's life to drop off my worldview, but I can't argue with the Bible and I'm hoping to get over my insecurities to be able to talk about my faith more confidently.
This is kind of a long-winded introduction to what Ocean City is about. It's a summer of learning about evangelism and God, getting pushed to be proactive about evangelism, learning leadership skills, and building a community centered on God.
I'm going to use this blog to prattle about what's going down this summer, so if you're interested in what a summer spent with a bunch of college kids talking about Jesus looks like, stick around!
Starting in the fall of my freshman year, I've had Ocean City recommended to me more times than I could possibly count. But last summer I wasn't sure that I thought the project was a good use of time. It would take up almost the entire summer, I would have to support raise to go on it, and it seemed to be nothing more than a homework-less hangout for a bunch of college kids with nothing better to do. So instead I went to work in Nebraska.
This year I had Ocean City recommended to me with no less intensity. People have been talking about it almost since we first got back on campus. After a lot of skeptical conversations, I finally started to see the intent behind the project and the good it could offer. I had seen it as a fun hang-out time with a little bit of worship and Jesus time thrown in to justify support-raising, but the picture they presented was a lot more intense.
For starters, everyone's expected to get a 40-hour-a-week job, and they're expected to work towards sharing the Gospel with their co-workers. Not only is that a big time consumer, that really intimidates me because I tend to shy away from bringing religion into relationships. Then in the evening downtime, there's several of different things that happen.
A couple nights a week there's big group meetings where the team encourages each other, worships, talks about what's going on and generally builds community. On other nights there's discipleship, training in evangelism, or small group meetings. And throughout the week, and especially on weekends, the team goes out on the beach to try to share the Gospel with strangers.
I got a little taste of stranger evangelism on Big Break, a Cru trip to Panama City Beach over spring break, but everyone says that there's just an unbelievable amount of faith-sharing in Ocean City. This scares me right now, and I feel really uncomfortable about the idea of butting into a stranger's life to drop off my worldview, but I can't argue with the Bible and I'm hoping to get over my insecurities to be able to talk about my faith more confidently.
This is kind of a long-winded introduction to what Ocean City is about. It's a summer of learning about evangelism and God, getting pushed to be proactive about evangelism, learning leadership skills, and building a community centered on God.
I'm going to use this blog to prattle about what's going down this summer, so if you're interested in what a summer spent with a bunch of college kids talking about Jesus looks like, stick around!
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