Did You Ever Belong to an Evangelical Campus Ministry?

No.

Never actually joined one of those, but my sophomore roommate was a fundie in CCC. He wanted me to protest the DaVinci Code with them and had a shitfit because I had a fifth of vodka in the fridge. Blegh. Even still being a Catholic at that time, I had no interest in their brand of Christianity.

Two of my closet friends are ardent Cru (Campus Crusade for Christ) attendees. As an undergrad, I went to a liberal arts school, and I can’t name one person who I know who went to church or any such organized worship regularly. Now, in grad school, I’m amazed at the 500+ students at Cru every week.

I have a few observations – the music is unfailingly bad, the sermons are decidedly uninspiring, and the students are amazingly brainwashed. I think the organization can be … nice. The students are all friends and it has a built-in support network that everyone probably takes advantage of at some point in college. That’s fine- instead of a sorority/fraternity, other club, or sports team, these kids build their social network through Cru.

What surprises me is how invasive these ministries are in the students life. Each week, they have bible studies, discipleship time, regular meetings, leadership meetings, meetings with other students, meetings with staff members, mentorship….the list goes on. All of this generally means that people involved in Cru have no life outside of Cru.

Another thing – opposite genders don’t really mix unless its a couple. Guys hang with groups of guys, girls with girls, and then the couples hang out (usually not alone) with one another. Then, come graduation, everyone gets married.

The talks are usually about resisting temptation and choosing the right path in life. The thing is, these kids only know one path and are so cornered in their ministry that they realize that there’s anything else out there that isn’t horrible.

Both, actually.

When I first went to college (a State University), I went to Intervarsity because my sister was in it at a different campus so I figured it was safe. I don’t remember anything explicitly bad about it in terms of indoctrination. In fact, it paled in comparison to the private Christian school that I attended from second grade till I graduated high school. I have plenty of positive memories of good times. I stopped going after about a year and a half of regularly attending meetings just because the meetings were so freaking lame most of the time.

A year or so passed and I joined Campus Crusade. By this point, I considered myself a fairly liberal Christian and I wasn’t afraid of disagreeing with other Christians about matters of dogma (much to their frustration), but the group was larger than IV and much more fun. Again, it had a hard time competing with my days at the Christian school. However, I was partly responsible for the group exploding on campus. I played bass and co-lead worship during every meeting and, with the more polished worship team thing going on, we attracted a lot of people. I’m sure that indoctrination was going on, but I had a lifetime of ignoring what the “preacher” was saying under my belt and that didn’t stop there. I was just in Crusade to have fun.

Nowadays, I’m a raging anti-theist and am embarrassed by those days. However, it is really useful when people start to question my Christian pedigree. My girlfriend (a life-long atheist) gives me the most quizzical looks when I bring up those times. She has a hard time reconciling the person she knows now and the idea of an evangelical christian.

Yes, I led by CU (Christian Union, maybe a UK term?). Like Carlie, it didn’t seem weird if you were in it. I met up with a very close friend of mine from those days not long ago. She too had become an atheist. We cringed at the people we evangelised (successfully, some of them, and some of them still so). And wondered whether it would be a dickish thing to do to ring them all out of the blue and tell them: “hey, you know all that stuff I told you about God?”… “well, not so much is true, as it turns out…”

Still at least I know the evangelistic shtick now. So I can now spread the good news of post-Christian enlightenment.

When I was a freshman in college (and already long-time atheist), a woman (I’ll call her “Ms. Kim”) approached me as I left my dorm and asked me if I would be interested in studying the Bible. I said, “For secular reasons, yes.” She asked if I was a Christian, and I told her I was an atheist. She replied, “Well, that’s okay,” in a tone that implied it was an easily overcome problem.

I agreed to meet with her every Tuesday, and I did my best to be very clear that I was there to learn about Christian interpretations, not to believe them. These were one-on-one study sessions, wherein she was clearly following a script. We would read from a passage aloud, alternating between her voice and mine at the end of every line. Once we finished the selection, she gave me a worksheet we would go over, discussing each answer. I quickly became uncomfortable with the slant of the questions because most of them presupposed my belief in God, e.g. “Do you believe that you, too, have sinned?” Ms. Kim would also pipe in with her own assertions, such as, “You have to decide if you believe that everything in the Bible is a lie or if God loves you and wants you to believe in him.” I tried to be as diplomatic as I could without lying.

For her part, Ms. Kim was very accommodating. She picked me up and dropped me off at my dorm every week and constantly offered to pick me up for a Sunday service. I eventually agreed to attend a single such service toward the end of the semester, the first church service I had attended in over a decade.

The service did include a very short quotation from the Bible, but most of the minister’s time was spent telling us about God’s love and reassuring plan. The service concluded with a musical performance from some kids my age, playing what I guess I would call Christian rock.

Following this, we had a small picnic outside, where I had the opportunity to talk with some fellow students who regularly attended service. I told them of my recent introduction to the group, and in so doing made a passing reference to the generally Protestant nature of the ministry; several of them were surprised to find out they were apparently Protestant. As conversation went on, still more were surprised to find out they had biblical names. I was invited to play Frisbee, and, not long after, I left.

In the next week, I told Ms. Kim I wouldn’t be returning for study the following semester. I did run into her in later semesters; she asked me if I was interested in returning to the group. I told her, “No thanks,” to which she smilingly replied, “Well, you still believe in Jesus, right?” I shook my head and left.

Immediately following my experience, I felt I may have crossed a line in taking advantage of Ms. Kim’s and the ministry’s hospitality; however, in retrospect, I’ve come to understand that both hospitality and guilt are designed into the operation of a ministry. If I hadn’t been an atheist when I entered the group, I might not have left as readily, if for no other reason than that there were a lot of friendly people there.

I did, by the way, manage to learn one or two things I didn’t know about Christian interpretations of the Bible. One session, we read about the renaming of the apostle Simon to “Peter.” Ms. Kim asked me why I thought Jesus gave Peter this new name, and, having no idea, I guessed: “Well, Jesus was the son of God, right? So he knew that he was going to have twelve apostles in his time on Earth, and that two more of them were going to be named ‘Simon.’ Well, he didn’t want three people to turn their heads every time he said his name, so he decided to rename one of them.” She laughed briefly, then told me that Peter’s name meant “rock,” and was symbolic of his place in the future church.

I’ve come to understand that both hospitality and guilt are designed into the operation of a ministry.

Love bombing. The gold standard for religious recruitment.

Loved the story RiftchaserMej. But have you any idea how much of their time they spent praying for you? Ms Kim’s atheist? I bet, every prayer meeting – we must pray for X… hmm I feel he’s coming near, but is still resistant… Lord soften X’s heart… The time spent with you was the tip of the iceberg.

And you didn’t even have the decency to convert in the end. Time-waster 😉

If you all want to write to me, I can tell you my story, but I dont want to post it. thanks Leespaner@hotmail.com

I was in one of these ministries in college as well. They were called a cult by some (ICOC) but when I was in there I didn’t see the brainwashing. Now that I’m out I look back in horror sometimes. I lived with girls from my church and they were always trying to get me to be more girly, since I’m a tomboy. They would pat each other on the back every time they reached out to a sorority girl, because that to them was the ultimate conquest. They were constantly obsessed with looks and Jesus (two things that Biblically don’t go together).

I eventually ended up leaving the church in my senior year of college, but despite the abuses, I kept on going back every now and then (brainwashing at work, people). I’m not going to go into what they did to me, but they put “sharing their faith” with other people above the health of their own “sister”. I’m glad to be gone, and haven’t had a desire to go back to that church since I became an atheist.

@Mike, anette,

One of the funniest things I ever saw in Christendom was a guy who’d been brought in to do the fighting-masturbation stuff with the guys and then ended up face to face with a co-ed audience. He blustered for a bit about it being a male battle, showed signs of weakness. Then the girls in the group descended on him like locusts (metaphorically). Pretending to be totally innocent, asking him all sorts of *really* awkward questions. Loudly asking each other about their own masturbatory geometry (which actually was also really rather informative for me!). Until he cut the whole thing short and ended with a prayer. The look on his poor fundamentalist face will stay with me forever.

Mike,

Thank you for sharing your story. It was very moving and heartfelt.

I was involved with a bible study this past year. There were a lot of meetings and such. I joined mainly to learn about Christianity, since I really didn’t know much and I wanted to make an educated decision. During the meetings, they condemned education, said that we shouldn’t ever question God, and showed a ton of videos of people who dropped all of their educational/life goals to “serve God.” Now, I’m all for people helping the homeless get back on their feet, or taking in pregnant teens who have been abandoned by their parents, or even building homes in third world countries. But to condemn education and skepticism?
Come on..
They also were hugely against Gay marriage. Calling it completely unnatural and that if you don’t believe that, you’re not a Christian.
It was only a matter of time before I saw through the bullshit and told them I don’t believe in any of it.
Since, I have gotten invited to hang out. But when I was telling them, apparently we were still “good friends” and they still wanted to hang out.

I once wrote about the mind control tactics of the Jehovah’s Witnesses, if anyone’s interested: http://www.jehovahs-witness.net/watchtower/beliefs/190673/1/Sociology-of-the-Cult-Family

Curiously enough, I think I’m of an age (mid-30s shhhh!) that we didn’t really preach much anti-gay crap. Granted, homophobia was one of the reasons I was propelled away from the church and superstitious belief (hurrah for the powers of bigotry!) but I think it’s becoming much more of an issue now.

I’m kind of at a toss up about it. I hope Christianity still stays bigoted because it’ll drive people away, and potentially to reason. But, I hope Christians stop being bigoted d%cks because hurting gay people isn’t funny.

My Christian boyfriend in high school turned out to be gay, as did my husband’s best friend 🙂 They were both very active Christians, even church planters. They’re both out now. One’s Anglican these days, and the other and his partner just left the church plant they started and abandonned religion, I think, all together. YAY!

Still, I think homophobia is turning the tide in Christianity these days.

Annette

I don’t think we had anything like that at my college. I attended a small Catholic university, and from what I remember, there was a campus ministry group, but I’m not sure I knew anyone who belonged to it. Their main function seemed to be organizing spiritual retreats. As far as evangelicals are concerned, I’m pretty sure there wasn’t a whole lot for them. If they had a group on campus, I didn’t hear about it. I only met two evangelicals during my four years there.

I was involved with CCC my freshmen and sophomore years. I made a few friends and that is why I stayed so long. I have always accepted evolution and supported gay marriage. I went to help after Katrina, went to Chicago to do inner-city work, and I went to the CCC Conference in Atlanta. I tried to believe but CCC is very anti-science. Changing my major to Geology was pretty much the nail in the coffin of my faith. I went to a bible a study and was asking about the flood and evolution and all of the answers I got were total BS. Christians have no real answers for either subject and apparently don’t see how big of a problem they are for their faith. I still keep in touch with a few people from CCC but I know that when I stopped going they were praying for me (my roommate at the time was an active member).

@Mike the Infidel

I have almost an identical story except for a couple of differences.

One, my experience was with the Baptist Student Union (BSU).

Two, I met my wife at the BSU. She’s still a nominal Christian, but loves me for who I am.

Thanks to everyone for sharing. Although I know there are many like us (apostates), you don’t always feel that, and it’s easy to feel isolated.

I was a member of The Navigators in college. We used to look down on anyone in Campus Crusade because they were, as we thought, just having fun, whereas we were serious about our faith.

I actually became a Christian in college as a member of The Navigators converted me. Before that, I didn’t really think much about god. I bought in to all their stuff. I went to their headquarters in Colorado Springs several times. I’ve hiked on their property.

Their biggest thing was the Topical Memory System (TMS) where you memorize a bunch of verses that you’d use when you go out and evangelize. I was always uncomfortable with that as it always seemed strange to just walk up to people and ask them if they know Jesus.

We had bible study once a week, a mass group meeting once a week, and you’d meet with another member once a week to talk about more private things and get guidance in your life.

I quit going to bible studies after two years because everyone just wanted to give the standard answer and just get a pat on the head. I wanted to know more. That’s what eventually led me to becoming an atheist. I asked too many questions about stuff that didn’t make sense to me. No one ever had a satisfactory answer.

When I read The Family this past year, it was amazing and scary the number of things that The Family does that reminded me of so many things, many word for word, that I did and said in college with The Navigators.

At the time, I thought The Navigators were really doing good work, but when I look back on it, the members at my college were mostly petty gossips who always made you feel like you were never good enough and you always had to do more to feel accepted.

Although we did some great volunteer projects, I always got the feeling that the people who did it, did so because we were supposed to, not because we wanted to.

Today, I’m only in contact with one person from college who is a member of staff with The Navs in Colorado Springs. The rest pretty much dropped me as a friend once I graduated college.

I could probably write a book about all my experiences, both good and bad with them.

I was a member of Campus Crusade, IVCF, and Catholic Christian Outreach. I really enjoyed the music, the fellowship, and the helpfulness. I joined all three in my first week, and other members helped me find my way around campus and that sort of thing. We had games nights, curled, played city-wide scavenger hunts, listened to speakers and hosted debates and panel discussions. I gave my testimony a few times, learned the Four Spiritual Laws, wrote parables I emailed to the others for inspiration, and usually cowered away from active evangelizing (except for a few bizarre exceptions). Ecumenism was my passion, and I spent a lot of time learning about the beliefs of the different people and denominations, and trying to reconcile the various beliefs and practices at least to the point where we could all work together as Christians.

I regret some of the stupider things I did and said because I believed I should, but for the most part, my time with these clubs was me having fun with fun people who I shared common interests with. I’m glad for the experiences, and the memories.

I was a member and a leader in Campus Christian Fellowship at Truman State University in Kirksville, MO. They sponsored dozens of Bible studies on and off campus and 2 church services a week on campus. We took a spring break trip every year to help out at Christian summer camps, mostly doing repairs during the day and hours of singing to god at night.

One story that sticks out is when the head of the ministry was getting some criticism/suggestions from another leader. He fired off an email to his list of followers saying that the devil had been attacking him. The other leader, a friend of mine, was a member of that email list.

Maybe a good or safe alternative is to read: The Questions Christians Hope No One Will Ask

http://www.amazon.com/Questions-Christians-Hope-Will-ebook/dp/B0049U4RJM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1290441017&sr=8-1

No, I mostly stayed away, even from the portion of freshman orientation which included the various campus church groups. All this, in spite of my mom’s constant reminders that I should “check out” the Baptist Student Union. I did go to one thing once, because a friend invited me and said they were having KFC sandwiches. Unfortunately they were just the “snackers”, little tiny things. But that was really just free food from the Presbyterian House.

That said, there was one guy in the BSU who I swear was gay, yet was engaged to a woman. I wonder how much the Baptists had to do with that rupture of logic? So glad I didn’t get caught in that trap. Although I’m sure my family would be happier if I had.

I started college determined to never loose my faith. I was a smart girl and knew the statistics on how many students “fall away” from god, as they call it. So I joined the BCM (Baptist Collegiate Ministry) and the CCF (Christian Collegiate Foundation.) The two groups were amazingly polar opposites in regards to how they did business. BCM was all fun and fire! Aiming to get students excited about serving god. And the CCF was just a sororiety with extreme exclusivity, I only went to a few meetings there before their unfriendliness got to me and I bailed.
I stayed with BCM for a while, going to bible studies and was even considering going on a mission trip to Malawi, Africa. But it became more and more clear that the whole organization had a political (A decidedly republican) agenda, that I just couldn’t reconcile.
Ironically, it was fervert studying of the bible and trying to become a better Christian that made me lose my faith. The more I learned, the less I believe. My brain won out over my soul and I officially let go of everything Christian three years ago. And the best I can summarize the transition is that I’m finally happy, and all it took was for me to stop praying for it to happen and start making it happen myself.

During freshmen year, I met several of the friends I kept through college at CC, but most of us left the organization after about a year. There was basically no CC by the time I graduated, but my friends who were still Christians formed their own club.

From what I heard from the older members in the group, this chapter used to be much more accountability partner oriented, and with that came problems with controlling personalities. They were also trying to change their reputation on campus. I presumed they had had some confrontation involving homosexuality.

Many of those in the campus leadership were intense. It seemed like the second or third sentence in a conversation with them was “So how are you and Jesus doing?” Since there were so few guys (5 out of 25), the seniors were quick to start feeding us toward leadership positions. I had no desire to lead discussions or Bible studies, yet they were still insistent since I was a guy who came semi-regularly.

One Bible study involved worksheets! The president asked us to write our testimonies to share. It was important to have a good testimony so that when you evangelize, people will see how much Jesus has changed your life.

I went to a fall retreat weekend that brought several colleges from the area. One night, they divided us by sex. We guys were split into teams. First, we trounced around the woods, looking for branches to build the tallest tower as some sort of teambuilding exercise. Then, each of us chose a person on our team to be team leader. Someone running the retreat came to each group, asking the leader to recite as many bible verses as possible that related to sexual purity. The leader lost the use of 1/2/3/4 limbs if he could only recite 3/2/1/0 verses. Then the rest of the team had to carry him or something. Then, a few female retreat people joined us in a room, and we could ask anonymous questions of them. I think they were along the lines of “How can we, as men, help women stay sexually pure?” or “How can we be effective leaders?”

I’m extremely late to the discussion, apologies but I just stumbled upon it. Throwing in my two cents in case anyone still reads this: my freshman year in college I joined Campus Crusade. I met some overeager sophomores at an ice cream social who seemed like the squeaky clean good Christian influence types, and being lonely away from home, I joined. I met several girls from my dorm and we all went together to the weekly meetings/bible studies. Early in the semester, one of the leaders’ moms joined us and started gradually taking over. She overstepped many leadership boundaries and our weekly bible studies started becoming very weird. She did a series on “maleness and femaleness” (still don’t know what the hell she was talking about), and when the girls met separately, the leaders would push and push people to share until someone cried. Major boundary violation. Quite a few people started leaving, and soon our meetings were down to less than half what they were in the beginning. Our leaders were quick to boldly proclaim that “they just don’t know the truth.” I admit I ignored several of the defectors for a while, thinking they were backsliding. The messages were becoming weirder and weirder, and during one bible study the message was over the top weird, it made no sense. Afterward, the same night, I approached a girl I trusted with some questions and doubts about the night’s message. She looked at me like I had four heads and proceeded to ignore me. On the way back to the dorm, my friends and I almost in unison said, “that was SO weird! right? let’s never ever go back! K!” and that was that. From that point on, the members of “the cult” would not speak to us or acknowledge us AT ALL. (Later they all went on to marry – each other. Creepy? Also, it turned out that the leader’s mother caused a scandal in a local church and was asked to leave. Crusade got better in later years after she left.) I knew I had made the right decision. I went through a major grief & separation period after that, questioning my faith completely, and what I’d now consider a period of depression.

Luckily my friends and I stuck together. We started partying for a while, and then we checked out other groups. We visited Baptist Student Union which I found revoltingly conservative and vowed to never go back after a skit in which several boys made degrading comments about gay people. I ended up in IVCF, “the liberal hippy group” and made several new friends there. After spending my whole life in church, I couldn’t just give up, despite a semester’s worth of spiritual abuse and cultlike experiences. I also went to a local church’s young adult service, which grew extremely popular, where I met several men involved in the Navigators at the local military base that ended up being kind of controlling toward us girls. I was involved in many more bible studies, went on missions trips, was an intern for the church’s youth group, and just threw myself in completely, despite nagging feelings that I didn’t quite agree or belong. I continually subjected myself to my own spiritual abuse, befriending people that were terrible friends for the sake of “accountability” and guilting myself when the friendships failed, believing I wasn’t good enough.

Long story short, yes I did participate, and overall, I believe I got burned pretty badly. IVCF is the only group I don’t have terrible memories of, but if I could do it over again, I’m not sure I would join that group either.